From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com (Steven B. Harris )
Subject: Re: Why Fewer Women in Science?
Date: 16 Sep 1995
Newsgroups: sci.skeptic

In <43b97u$r9l@due.unit.no> Martin Ystenes <ystenes@kjemi.unit.no>
writes:

>Also other experiences support the following explanation of the low
>interest women have in maths and science:
>- There girls culture, in contrast to the boys culture, is in general
>not very interested in science.
>
>Then comes my explanation for this:
>- The science way of thinking is encouraging competition, which the
>the girls culture does not like.
>
>Because: The idea of science is that one should question others ideas,
>trying to debunk them. This requires the acceptance of the risk to
>hurt others feeling, and the will to fight for your opinion. You
>fight among others by reading more. And reading more is somewhat
>fascinating also because you know it gives you a certain advantage in
>the next discussion.
>
>This leads to an explanation that women in general seme to be more
>interested in "anti-science". They are not that much used to be
>debunked.

A nice lovely politically correct explanation.  There's only one thing
wrong with it:  Girls are perfectly willing to risk hurting others'
feelings in every area from academic literature analysis to gossip-- so
long as it doesn't involve math.  The more math a subject requires, and
the less relevence it has to biology, the less women are interested in
it.  Chemisty is on the borderline.  Highschool chem classes now have as
many girls as boys.  Physics is still way skewed.  Women make excellent
scientists, and have no problem arguing science if necessary, but one
still finds most of them in the biosciences.

   Culturally we find that women are indeed perfectly willing to attack
other people's CHARACTER.  The difficulty of science is that it requires
attacking IDEAS, without paying so much attention to character.  Perhaps
indeed this is cultural thing, and women have a harder time with it at
first.  But it's something we all have to learn.  Women, too.  That's
one of the key lessons which all sciences have to teach.

                                         Steve Harris

From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Newsgroups: sci.med,talk.politics
Subject: Women and Men and Biology (was: Tamoxifen - Italian study)
Date: 26 Nov 1998 21:07:09 GMT

In <365CCA55.72DA@netcom.ca> Tom Matthews <tmatth@netcom.ca> writes:

>Gail Gillespie wrote:
>
>> Two things: ovariectomy often ISN"T up to the woman, since many are
>> frightened into it.
>
>When someone makes a decision without being under outside duress, that
>decision is "up to them". This is the very basis of any code of personal
>responsibility for ones actions (that, granted, is being abandoned in
>our society, at an alarming rate).

Comment.

   Yes.  Women are FRIGHTENED into it.  So they're not responsible.
Perhaps we should change the laws to give women less autonomy, being as
how they are more easily frightened into making choices by being told
about scary consequences?  Since women apparently are less capable of
seeking second opinions and are more likely to be stampeded into making
bad decisions on the basis of a single authority figure's
pronouncements, perhaps there should be a separate category of
political and civil rights for them, somewhere between children and
adults (ie, men).  I think all of this follows.  No?

    Amusingly, I hear more and more of this from feminists who want it
both ways.  If a 15 year-old gets pregnant, she's supposed to be adult
enough to be able to choose to have an abortion.  But woe betide the
man involved, because at the same time she's considered a child,
without the mental maturity to be able to decide if she wants to have
sex.  The message is that if women make a decision and suffer bad
consequences, they are to be held-blameless for the decision, and the
nearest man is to be blamed.  If women make the right decision, or want
the power to make a given future decision (for which the consequences
have not come in, yet), suddenly they are to be seen as flinty-eyed
autonomous adults, and don't you dare mess with them.

    Not long ago in this thread somebody was complaining that women
have hysterectomies because somehow MEN have taught them to believe
that periods are a curse, and the implication is that they mutilate
their bodies because of some cultural imperitive.  The idea that some
woman who bleed through half a dozen large pads every day of their
lives might take it into their heads to do something about this, all on
their own, is apparently anathema.

    In the past, cultural imperitives have forced difficult roles on
women.  But no less on men.  At the battle of the Somme (and battles
before and since) hundreds of thousands of men, obeying cultural
imperitives had to charge across bare mud into massed machine-gun fire
(with predictable consequences).  No women were expected to do this,
and any man who refused would have been labeled a coward, and likely
would have been rather unsucessful with women at home, even if they
didn't put him up before a firing squad.  Culture has its price on
everyone.

   Yes, indeed, it is true that some silly things women do are to
please the demands of men.  The opposite is just as true.  Many a woman
has starved herself to look good to men, and many a man has been killed
in some silly and risky adventure in order to gain the power, money,
notarity, etc, which allows his pick of females.  Two sides of the same
coin.

   The blame game, evolutionarily, is silly.  Peacocks have that large
and ungainly tail, which undoubedly makes them more subject to
predation, because pea-hens *like* such tails, and for no other reason.
No tail, or poor tail, and you don't get to be a father of new
pea-fowl.  Do we "blame" pea-hens for perpetuating this nonsense?  No.
Blame is not appropriate, for this is how pea-fowl are.  Let us try to
apply this idea a bit to human biology, and call a truce.

                                         Steve Harris, M.D.

From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Newsgroups: soc.men,sci.med,alt.support.divorce,soc.singles,alt.romance
Subject: Re: FAQ Women to Avoid for Marriage
Date: 29 Oct 1998 07:43:07 GMT

In <7192cv$1ebhd@fido.engr.sgi.com> bitbug@seal.engr.sgi.com (James
Buster) writes:

>In such cases, the "compensation" due the spouse for "years out of
>the workforce" will vastly exceed what said spouse could possibly
>have earned in the career they had before marriage. As such, it is
>clear that divorce law has nothing to do with "compensation", and
>everything to do with making sure that, if you enriched your wife
>(and, in those rare cases where the judge is actually thinking,
>your husband) during your marriage you must continue to do so
>after your marriage. That this almost universally benefits women
>at the expense of men is surely an oversight that feminists will
>not hesitate to correct.


   Not <g>.  Feminists are great at ferretting out sexual inequality
when it does not benefit them, but not otherwise.  They had a fit at
the notion that women should pay more social security or private
retirement plans.  But this proposal was simply based on the fact that
women enjoy (on average) more years of collecting these benefits and
thus are paid more.  But the idea that men should pay more for car
insurance, or life insurance, simply because insurance companies pay
out more claims to men in those cases, bothers feminists not at all.
So women pay the same social security and retirement plans (by law),
but men pay more for life insurance, medical insurance, driver's
insurance, and so forth.  Go figure.

   Similarly, if the subject of inequality in women's pay is brought
up, you will hear that this is prima facie evidence of sexual
discrimination, since otherwise women would be earning just as much as
men.  But if the subject of alimony is brought up, you'll hear that
husbands should pay up because it is their fault specifically that
their wives aren't earning just as much as they are, due to their
keeping their spouses at home, and the women agreeing to this.
Feminists want this both ways, but it's double-dipping to say the
least.  What, they think nobody's noticed the lack of honesty?  We
have.

                                     Steve Harris

From: sbharris@ix.netcom.com(Steven B. Harris)
Subject: Re: ::: Earth Women Against Alien Brutality ::: (was Dead Grey meat on 
	the pavement)
Date: 08 Jun 1997
Newsgroups: alt.ufo.reports,alt.alien.visitors,alt.paranet.ufo,
	alt.alien.research,sci.skeptic,alt.paranet.skeptic

In <865733819.580315@optional.cts.com> density4@spamblock.cts.com (Blue
Resonant Human) writes:
>
>Lou Minatti <slaroche@concentric.net> wrote:
>
>>I'm liking this concept. Think I'll have to build me a web page and
>>spread the word. Way I figure it, there aren't any laws about blowing
>>away visitors from other planets. 'Specially not ones rustling cattle
>>anuses and kidnapping sensitive new-age types then lecturing them on the
>>importance of living "green."
>
>Hmmm....didn't you mean to say "bending them over and shoving strange
>probes up their asses while 'evolving their consciousness' and
>lecturing them on the importance of living 'green?'"
>
>Some of these poor abductees have simply had enough of all the lies
>which these Clever Space Aliens spew with such reckless abandon.  In
>fact, a movement of Angry Feminists -- the EWAAB or Earth Women
>Against Alien Brutality -- have rallied together by the hundreds to
>put an end to this parasitic sexual brutality.
>
>"Sex attacks by space aliens MUST STOP!" they cry.
>
>You probably think I am making this up.  I am not.  Check it out for
>yourself:
>
>	http://www.brotherblue.org/brethren/anita.htm
>
>-A Concerned Earthling




    And people have no sympathy for men who worry that they may be
falsely accused of rape by a crazy woman.  "There are no women that
crazy," say the feminists.  "When a woman cries 'rape' she's not making
it up."

   Uh huh.  And then you get into organizations in which
dozens--hundreds-- of women are claiming to have been raped by space
aliens on board flying saucers.  Wups.