Appropriate for Mother's Day

This link seemed appropriate for Mother's Day.

In recent paper in the journal "Science," a study claimed that there was gender-based differences in standard testing, in layman's terms: boys did better then girls. It's probably better not to get me started on the topic. My rant would last forever. I'm going to let the Feminist Chemists do the talking for me, they are much more articulate than me. They wrote a letter to the editor, which Science decided not to publish. I must say, I'm very disappointed in Science, I've always considered they wouldn't shy away from controversy. If they were bold enough to publish such a study, they should be bold enough to publish the response. I'd be interested to see the reviewer's comments too. I wonder if they sent it to a bunch a males for review.

Now the Feminist Chemists have published the letter themselves, and it can be found here (in case you missed out on the first link).

Added later:
I honor of Mother's Day, this story might seem relevant. I seem to remember when I was young that my mother didn't consider herself to be exactly a math genius. Although she always encouraged me, she probably was a result of an era in which girls just didn't do math. When she returned to college later in life, I had the opportunity to tutor her in math. Let it be known that my mother aced it! Easily. Way to go ma! Girls can do math just fine.

Definitions

When you do research, the outcome often depends on the questions you ask, or the way you phrase them. For example. This study that is mentioned on ScienceDaily. Thanks to Coturnix for pointing this out.

According to the study results sex lasting 3-13 minutes is better than longer sex. What struck me, was how they measured sex, and I quote:

"...from penetration of the vagina by the penis until ejaculation."

It isn't just me here, right, who thinks that this definition is a wee bit sexist, and mildly male-oriented? No, wrong. It is big-time sexist, and grossly male-oriented. Nowhere was the female orgasm mentioned. If the male ejaculates before the female has an orgasm, is sex over? I think you might find a woman or two (billion) who disagree with that. And I suppose, vaginal-penetration is the only activity that counts as sex.

And what about gay sex? I guess when two women have sex, it's not really sex, since there might not be any penetration. And when two men have sex, I suppose one can have an orgasm, and then it's over. Had the question been put a little different, the results might have been dramatically different.

I'm hoping that this is just bad reporting, and that the researchers had a better, more representative way of assessing the time sex lasts. But it sure sounds that at the very minimum, gay sex wasn't considered at all, and heterosexual intercourse was defined by decidedly male actions without any consideration of what the woman (who presumably makes up 50% of the interaction) experiences.

And I quote some more:

"Past research has found that a large percentage of men and women, who responded, wanted sex to last 30 minutes or longer."

You think that maybe questions were phrased better? It is likely to change the 3-13 minute range.

Distracting

It is distracting to read this on the morning that I am supposed to prepare for my oral qualifying exams. Yes, I know, I should read my written exams instead of atheist blogs, but they are the oasis of reason in this world of religious extremism, so I need my daily fix of sanity.

The Friendly Atheist helps spread the tale of the woman who was not allowed to be the referee in the men's basketball game, because a woman can not be put in a position of authority over boys because of the academy's believes. Un-effing-believable. Do they know it's the 21st century? I hope she sues the pants off of them. I'm not at all in favor of frivolous lawsuits, but this stupidity will only stop when the perpetrators are reached where it hurts them... in their bank accounts.

So much for my fix of sanity this morning.

Note added later: Apparently the woman in question has been thoroughly brainwashed by her old-fashioned institution. According to Fox News she has said that she is not angry at her school, and does not wish to take the matter any further. This is why change is so slow. Compliance to insanity does not improve changes of insanity going anywhere anytime soon.

Smart women

To contrast my post below on women (and children) who become victims of abusive men, this link.

Thanks to Bora for the link, thanks to Peggy for posting this.

The first computer programmers were women, for lack of available men during the war. Can you even begin to imagine what the world would be like without their efforts?

I can't help but notice that one of the women resigned her job to get married, another to raise a family. I'm hoping it was their personal choice (which I applaud), and not because they were prevented to have both a career and a family because of their gender (which I object to). I do know that everything needs to be analyzed in the context of the times, and that values change over time. Since Frances Bilas Spence and Marlyn Wescoff Meltzer were among the pioneers of the information age, I hope they were ahead of their time in their personal life too, and that they were empowered to make the choices for themselves and their families that they wanted to.

Speaking of feminism

This has been in the news lately:
http://www.cnn.com/video/#/video/us/2007/09/07/costello.mini.skirt.cnn
In short, a woman boarding a Southwest Airlines flight, was told her outfit was inappropriate. Uhh, so I looked at this outfit, not that it matters. It doesn't really matter what she was wearing for the purposes of this discussion. But I looked at the outfit anyway, and its not anywhere near inappropriate. Do they also ask men to change their outfits if their bellies are hanging over their belts? Or if their butt cracks are showing? This is so blatantly sexist, its unbelievable, and Southwest should be sued.

Moreover, why exactly does CNN's coverage add that she is a Hooters waitress. What does that have to do with anything. What sexist coverage! Southwest can consider itself boycotted by this blogger.