TIME magazine recently served-up yet another gender-obsessed article entitled “Why Women Are Better At Everything.” I mean, who really believes that except women obsessed with “equality.” It is like a short person trying to compensate for their shortness by claiming that they are smarter than the tall person. Sometimes it is true; Paul Simon is supposedly 5-foot 2-inches tall (some say shorter) and Prince is under five feet, according to people who have seen him close-up. Despite their shortness, no one denies that their musical talents far exceed most of their contemporaries (and I dare say those plying the “music” trade today). But they are still short, and both are reportedly extremely self-conscience about this “disability.” Remember Alan Ladd in the Western film classic “Shane”? He was 5-foot-5; it was reported that he stood on boxes to stay in the frame, or his co-stars stood in trenches. It took some crafty camera work to make the brawl with the six-foot-two Ben Johnson look like something other than an unfair fight. Women—or at least those who spend an inordinate amount of time dwelling on the matter—see the world as far too dominated by the accomplishments of men, so they need to find some way to “even” the imbalance. How do they do this? By continuously referring to “studies” that have little or no relation to the real world, but do provide a consolation prize for the ever-expanding ego.
Now this latest TIME article—following a parade of other articles that claim that women are “better” at this, that and the other—claims that women are even superior in was is apparently the last bastion of male dominance, the business and finance world. A study by Barber and Terrance Odean “found that women's risk-adjusted returns beat men's by 1% annually. A 2005 study by Merrill Lynch found that 35% of women held an investment too long, compared with 47% of men. More recently, in 2009, a study by the mutual fund company Vanguard involving 2.7 million personal investors concluded that during the recent financial crisis, men were more likely than women to sell shares of stocks at all-time lows, leading to bigger losses among male traders. It also meant fewer gains when some of the stock values began to rise again.” Apparently all this has to do with the amount of testosterone men have, which leads them to be over-confident and do stupid things. However, these numbers may also reflect the fact that in the past few years the number of women choosing to work in or leaving trading and finance jobs on Wall Street have decline precipitously, leaving either the “best” or an insufficient pool for a credible comparison. At any rate, it is claimed that women have less testosterone, and so obviously they are less likely to do “stupid” or risky things. The women—and men—are who are making these inferences are generalizing in the extreme when they are not simply making things up as they go along to “explain” preconceived notions or find “faults” where there is none. Businesses cannot grow without some risk-taking; in the current state the economy is in, employers seem to be taking the low testosterone road, with something less than empathetic results for millions of unemployed people.
As if the dull blade was twisted in enough, women are also better soldiers, because they complain about pain less, according to Meredith Melnick, who wrote the article. It is statements like this that flushes womens credibility right down the toilet. “They're less likely to be hit by lightning because they're not stupid enough to stand outside in a storm. They remember words and faces better. They're better spies because they're better at getting people to talk candidly.” You mean, like, in bed?
“Of course, to most women none of this is much of a revelation.” Is Melnick merely trying to get a rise, or is she serious? If it is the latter, then she probably needs to get back on her medication.
It’s very easy to find gender warfare on the web, and it’s mostly BS. Some people believe that at some point in the distant past, human ancestors of both genders were “the same,” but their roles and accomplishments diverged until our own enlightened times when the rejoined at the same intersection. Gender differences were all arbitrary and societal in nature, and once “society” was removed as a hindrance, women began flexing their natural superiority over men (I’m just telling you what THEY are saying). The problem with this argument is that we view a different phenomena among our “ancestors” we are sharing the planet with today. In almost every higher species of life—particularly mammals—the male animal has a clear and separate role that requires at least physical supremacy over the environment in which he dwells. The principal difference in the human species is that in many aspects of existence, the brain and the power to reason can overcome limitations of the body, although certainly not in every case, such as in constructing the trappings of modern urban civilization. The fact that the gender politicians conveniently ignore this fact is part of the reason why taking them too seriously is both illogical and dangerous at the same time. Today, colleges and universities are wide open to women, in fact a majority of undergraduates are women. Yet the vast majority prefer to go into the subjective fields, such as social sciences and the “liberal arts”—the kind of fields that have little impact on the maintenance of the infrastructure of modern civilization. It has nothing to do with stereotyping as children or bias later; they are either just not interested, or there are reasons of a more objective nature--or what in the sports world are called the "intangibles."
Of course, with TIME on a roll, it couldn’t stop with the “women are superior in every way” shtick; the call of victimhood is just too great. In the “Get a Life” department, the magazine complained about a “racy” ad campaign featuring the top women tennis players. The women were dressed in the typical fashions of the day, their bulging forearms and biceps bursting forth from the willowy fabric; this is not always a pleasant sight to behold, but the WTA is banking on enough of the players will strike the right balance between, uh, what was that—“beauty and power?” TIME is upset that this ad campaign “demeans” the players by focusing too much on the “beauty” part, and as usual it allows politics to get in the way of reality. In the grand slam events, the men and women receive the same prize money, but it’s the men’s matches that generate the bigger money draws; people are aware of the fact that the men’s game is (slightly) more advanced physically and aesthetically than the women’s. A few years ago, before Martina Hingis was banned for testing positive for cocaine, she played in doubles match in one those “children” events at the U.S. Open. Her partner was Ana Ivanovic, and they were up against Andy Roddick and some amateur goofball pretending to “funny.” Naturally, Roddick was expected to play along and let the girls win, but you could tell the “joke” was starting to wear thin on him. Near the end, with Ivanovic serving with all her might, he just let a return go as he would have in a match against a male opponent, and both Hingis and Ivanovic fell flat on their asses; they were clearly unhappy that Roddick had the bad manners to show them up.
TIME and its gender flunkies might not be aware of this, but people (or at least men) can tell the difference between real and pretend. Men are the biggest consumers of sports, and they are interested in what is the best quality; if newspapers decided to devote half their copy to women’s sports (especially in a slimmed-down section like the Seattle Times’) at the expense of what interested them, the paper would lose a quarter of their print sales in no time. The question is, then, how to get men interested in, say, women’s tennis?
"’Yes, these women are beautiful, but we see lots of cleavage and legs, and it's set to music that is reminiscent of soft-core porn,’ says Nicole LaVoi, associate director of the Tucker Center for Research on Girls & Women in Sports at the University of Minnesota. ‘That might be interesting and titillating, but it isn't going to make me turn on Wimbledon.’"
The WTA already knows that it can’t count on the casual female television viewer to watch women’s tennis, so it needs some other strategy. LaVoi claims that there is no evidence that sex sells sports. She is obviously basing that on what she thinks, but then again she isn’t a man. In our break room at work, tennis is not the hottest ticket in town, but the recent Wimbledon women’s semifinal between Maria Sharapova and Sabine Lisicki had a few people riveted to the TV—and it wasn’t because of the intense play, but because Sharapova is OK on the eyes, and because of those short skirts flopping up and down. Sure, there are a few tennis fanatics out there, but the casual viewer needs more to draw him in.
“The WNBA has come under fire for focusing its campaigns on its more attractive players — like Diana Taurasi, who has long, flowing hair and appeared nude on the cover of ESPN magazine last October.” I didn’t get it either, particularly since Taurasi isn’t that good looking (and wasn’t half as revealing as Lauren Jackson in that Australian magazine a few years ago). But reality check time: Last year during the WNBA playoffs and its abysmal ratings, ESPN tried to sell the games on athleticism, because they knew they couldn’t sell it on those ugly baggy shorts; they failed miserably. The fact is that ESPN is losing money on their WNBA contract, and despite their best efforts, ratings have been flat for years. It’s bad enough that the play is such that a boy’s pee-wee league team looks more professional, but it’s just too dull to watch. That’s just the simple fact. It has nothing to do with lesbian bogeywomen”—if it’s tough to watch, you won’t get anyone outside the core fan base to even give a damn.
What seems to anger gender politicians the most is that any imagery of femininity is a “threat” to their asexual vision of themselves and the world. What they don't understand is that sexuality has always been about power, getting men to do things that they wouldn’t normally do (like watch womens tennis); sometimes it has negatively impacted women, but usually it has been used to their advantage. The WTA players involved in the ad campaign seem less offended than the academics and activists--probably because they know that maintaining the fiscal viability of their sport requires such minor "sacrifices."
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