the Freudian slip of the day, and other things

[ricardienne]

I just typed quite blithely "whine-hall" when I meant "wine-hall." This is NOT a commentary either on Old English Lament-poetry or my own tendency to complain about papers, I swear.

But I have been having fun with words today. I compared modern attitudes toward criminals to laptop DVD players in my sociology "memo:" at some point they get stuck in the "wrong" region and there's no hope for their switching back.

And while I'm on the subject, I've been reading a fascinating paper on the Emperor Tiberius's neologisms. He's the one who was infamously told that, "You can confer citizenship on men, Emperor, but not on words." Someone should notify Bush, no? As a side benefit, I now know far more than I ever wanted to about Roman groupsex. Tacitus was not making it up about the depravity, it seems.

David Brooks was suitably horrible today. I'm not even going to bother putting the whole column up like I usually do. He summarized a book he has been reading about The Female Brain, and concluded that society needs to pay more attention to innate difference between men and women "that confirm traditional stereotypes."

I know that there are differences between the sexes. And I suppose we shouldn't ignore them. But this kind of talk REALLY bothers me. I cannot accept that a woman who is good at math or science is an anomaly, an outstanding and unusual member of her sex to whose standard the rest of us shouldn't be held. And, honestly, I'm sort of shocked that I even need to be making that last statement in this day and age. It's as though we're in the middle of a backlash -- at least an intellectual one -- against equal rights. Science shouldn't replace religion as the excuse for segregation of gender roles.

And really, I don't see how they can eliminate the effects of socialization from any of these studies. I found the article about stereotype threat. Take that, David Brooks.

Comments

[femalequixote.livejournal.com]

Hello, just here via wyldlittlepoet's Friend's Page. I read the Washington Post article you linked to and found it so fascinating I had to comment. I found it particularly interesting that the men's scores didn't change, suggesting that women think about themselves either as women or intelligent, academic people - whereas men have no problem seeing the two as synonomous.

I'd kind of like to take a similar test myself and see how subconsciously those divisions are buried - I mean, I'm intellectually of the opinion that most gender divided behaviour is due to socialisation, but does that mean I'm not still susceptible to those ways of thinking?