Men and women are the same, so get over it

If you have a mean face, clipped hair, and dangling earrings, this study is probably on your short list of holiday gifts. If you are female and have renounced all traces of femininity, then this is right up your alley. If you believe that the opinions of social scientists trumps your natural instincts, then this study is definitely for you: "The Gender Similarities Hypothesis".

The Red Star proudly publishes and article on this study by reporter Gail Rosenblum on 11/11/05: "Time for a truce?".

Anyone Red Star reader with a modicum of insight or an ounce of common sense knows that they have an agenda. We've detailed their agenda in this blog ad nauseum, but it bears repeating. The Red Star (including, but not limited to, their editorial board) endorses socialism and big government; multiculturalism; "equality", not meritocracy; virtually any and all alternative lifestyles; the rights of the criminal over the victim; and on and on. In short, they want to be like France (How's that working out for France, by the way?).

So this topic fits the Red Star's agenda. Here's a sample from the study:

"Saying, 'We can't communicate because you're a man and I'm a woman' doesn't work anymore," Hyde said. "Better, 'Let's work on it.' "

How, you may wonder, did this tidbit slip past us for, like, forever? Let's go back about 30 years. In the 1970s, Hyde was a new psychology professor at Bowling Green State University in Ohio, keenly interested in gender "differences," or at least in the assumption of gender differences. But, being an academician on the inside of, well, academia, she and her colleagues were developing hunches that were nothing like what we've been led to believe on the outside.

All this time we thought men were different from women. Our eyes have deceived us. We've been living in the stone age.

Human nature also plays a role. We have a huge tendency to categorize each other as a way of making sense of the world, Hyde said. We place people into boxes: male/female, black/white, gay/straight. Then we make them stay there.

Well, there you go. We can just be what we want to be. You can be a gay black man one day, and a straight white female the next. How fun this will be.

So, back to the '70s. During that decade, a new way of measuring gender difference became available. This method, called "meta-analysis," allowed social scientists like Hyde to analyze hundreds of similar studies at once to see what a whole bunch of researchers were finding out about the same topic.

This makes more sense. The 70's is about the time our culture started it's moral decline. The 70's is the decade that brought us abortion on demand, Jimmy Carter, malaise (see: Jimmy Carter), the disintegration of the nuclear family, the rise of Mid-East terrorism (see: Jimmy Carter), and exponential increases in drug use (see: Jimmy Carter).

Here's some of the "gender" study findings:

Gender differences were small or nonexistent for:

• Mathematical problem-solving.

• Verbal and nonverbal communication.

• Leadership effectiveness.

• Sexual satisfaction.

• Self-esteem.

• Moral reasoning.

Gender differences were strikingly large for:

• Masturbation: Much higher among men.

• Attitudes about casual sex: Men are far more approving.

• Motor behaviors: Guys can throw farther.

• Aggression: Higher among men, but the differences were less definitive than expected.

So men and women are the same, except that men can throw farther.

How naive we have been. Only a fine literary gem like the Red Star could publish something so profound.