To be honest, I am living in a very different culture now from the US culture where social gender roles are more significant but also somewhat flexible. I do expect the post to bother Americans because it goes against what I call the myth of interchangeability, the idea that gender equality necessarily reduces to the idea that the sexes are interchangeable. I don't believe this and I think that equality has to be more substantive than this because interchangeability tends to mean that a male-normative model gives you hidden sexism. Exhibit A is Marissa Mayer's maternity leave duration. There is nothing equal about that.

The point is that when you look cross-culturally and cross-historically, where you don't have women certain things like rule of law don't happen (you see this develop in the American West for example as gender rates stopped being so lopsided).

I would suggest that recognizing that the genders do have differences in terms of social aptitudes and needs, and different positions relative to life choices is the first step in reducing the male-normative view on our economic model (i.e. "if you work like a man, and wait to have kids like a man, you will get paid like a man").

> the myth of interchangeability, the idea that gender equality necessarily reduces to the idea that the sexes are interchangeable.

This always drove me insane - people seem to confuse value equality/congruence and strict identicality. The latter seems to either try to create a female default and punish men for not living up to it, or create some weird fuzzy default that nobody really fits comfortably.

What we want is to say that women are as valuable as men, and then let individuals figure out who they want to be.

The answer isn't to change the (currently relatively male-normative) norm, it's to defenstrate the idea that having a norm in the first place is a remotely good idea.

> This always drove me insane - people seem to confuse value equality/congruence and strict identicality. The latter seems to either try to create a female default and punish men for not living up to it, or create some weird fuzzy default that nobody really fits comfortably.

It creates a female default and punishes men for not living up to it in some areas (like public school in the US), but it creates a male default and punishes women for not living up to it in other areas (academic careers in life sciences, the job market, etc).

> The answer isn't to change the (currently relatively male-normative) norm, it's to defenstrate the idea that having a norm in the first place is a remotely good idea.

Agreed.

> What we want is to say that women are as valuable as men, and then let individuals figure out who they want to be.

Agreed here too. The question then is, how we address this.

> Does that entire paragraph not just objectify the wife

Objectify is a really overused term that has lost all relevant meaning. How can saying that someone is better than you at something possibly objectify that person? Maybe I'm overly sensible as well, but it's really sad that this is where PC has led us.

"...one of your most valuable business resources is your wife."

That's the objectifying part imo.... Would you disagree?

"...one of your most valuable business resources is your accountant"

Do you consider that statement equally objectifying? If not, why?

Yes, I do.

I think it's perfectly fine to objectify a role though... An accountant is an object after all.

Is "wife" not a role as well?

In that case, isn't "Human Resources" a department whose entire reason for existence is to objectify everyone equally?

I think it might bother you because the author assumes that's his own inability to navigate complex social relationships is innate to his maleness. In fact, many men are adept at understanding social and emotional subtexts very well. There's no magnitude-order difference in innate ability as described, or if there is, it's not a permanent, unlearnable gulf.

This comment bothered me because OP is fetishizing and tokenizing women in a way that purports to be admiring and supportive of them. In fact, he simply has weak social skills; for example, this post.

Yes I think you nailed it. "I don't suck at this and can't improve at it because it's a male thing and I'm a male"

See, the problem is that the people who complain about this are also the ones who say it's valuable to add women to a group of men (or indeed the reverse), because it results in more balanced decision making.

It can't be both. Either men or women are (as groups, i.e. averages) innately differ on the social vs analytical axis, and diversity is a net plus, or gender is entirely socially constructed, and adding women to a group shouldn't do anything in aggregate.

Studies point to the former rather than the latter.

What about simply having different experiences?

Stupid analogy: I hate it that only tall people seem to design store displays of pants. Remarkably, tall people don't seem to notice that putting the small sizes on the top shelves and the larger sizes lower does not make sense. It's because they have a different experience of reaching for things on shelves. Height diversity, though, makes for a better user experience.

It is true in my stupid analogy that tall people and short people do have genetic differences, as on average they innately differ in height. But it is not their innate genetic traits that makes these tall people ignorant both on the social and analytical axes when designing store displays.

Or is it? Hm....

There's a big difference between "on average, women are more socially adept while men are more mathematically adept" and "women socially understand things at a level most men will never achieve". The former is a statement about averages; the latter is a statement about absolutes.

It's okay to make generalizations based on imperfect correlates - like gender - as long as you understand they're generalizations, and are open to revising your judgment if new, more specific information appears. The comment that sparked this thread didn't evidence any of that understanding.

You have a weird definition of 'innate'. Socially constructed effects are still effects. You still want a mix of people that have different traits and skills, even if they have nothing to do with biology.

So your demand of advocates of inclusiveness is to either a) concede that their support for female participation stems from a belief in the existence of a sensory mode or organ which only females have; or b) concede that women have nothing to offer which cannot be replicated by men and therefore there is no need to include them?

You can't see a third possibility in between those two?

> Does that entire paragraph not just objectify the wife and establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience?

Re objectification: couples get advice from their life partners. That doesn't mean this is their life partners only goal.

Re: 'establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience' is there anything ethically wrong with this? Would you prefer a citation be added, eg, 'newborn female infants stare at faces more often than male newborn infants'?

Or do you find the mere existence of differences between the sexes to be 'offensive'? In which case, you're more than welcome to be offended.

>Re objectification: couples get advice from their life partners. That doesn't mean this is their life partners only goal.

Completely true, valid point.

>Re: 'establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience' is there anything ethically wrong with this?

I would argue that there is something ethically wrong with this. Take this statement:

>" women think socially with a level of complexity that I think most men never approach."

Yeah, on it's face it's a compliment(I guess?), but all it really serves to do, in this context,(for me, might read totally different to you) is illustrate the differences between the two sexes. Where's any evidence that his assertion is true?

Anecdotal evidence is by definition flawed. I don't really understand where you're failing to see the potential for harm in this.

> Would you prefer a citation be added, eg, 'newborn female infants stare at faces more often than male newborn infants'?

Do you have a source stating that females raised in the same environment as males exhibited a higher level of social complexity? Because, yes, I would like to see that before changing my worldview based upon this persons statement.

>Or do you find the mere existence of differences between the sexes to be 'offensive'? In which case, you're more than welcome to be offended.

Not at all; what I find offensive is when people try to extrapolate meaning and form social constructs based upon differences that often aren't conclusively proven or even relevant. When I'm talking about these differences I don't mean boy-penis girl-vagina, I mean boy-brave/courageous/smart girl-cute/supportive/geeky.

In my opinion these social constructs are already so ingrained in our society that this will be just as long and drawn out a problem as racism. I mean just define Masculine and Feminine in your head.

I'm not trying to make a point here, or to white-knight, my original response was just how that post genuinely made me feel, I didn't like it.

>> Would you prefer a citation be added, eg, 'newborn female infants stare at faces more often than male newborn infants'?

> Do you have a source stating that females raised in the same environment as males exhibited a higher level of social complexity? '?

Yes, I have a source stating precisely that newborn female infants stare at faces more often than male newborn infants (Baron Cohen at Cambridge):

http://www.dailymotion.com/playlist/x1xv47_BrainwashingInNor...

This study is so flawed as to be scientifically worthless.

The experimenter who was interacting with the babies and measuring the time they spent staring at faces knew the gender of each baby - in other words, it wasn't double blind. This is a well known recipe for allowing the experimenter's bias to influence their recording of the results. This is just one of several basic flaws in the study; see the analysis starting on page 113 of Cordelia Fine's "Delusions of Gender."

"Delusions of Gender" has lots of similar analyses of the research "proving" innate gender differences. The takedown of Louann Brizendine's references starting on page 158 and the one about the frozen salmon MRIs on page 150 are particularly hilarious. One example:

"Casually, Brizendine notes, 'All of the therapists who showed these responses happened to be women.' For some reason, she fails to mention that this is because only female therapists, selected from phone directories, happened to be recruited for the study."

Not being double blind doesn't make it scientifically worthless.

Not does it invalidate male/female roles being consistent across over 200 cultures.

If you accept that men build muscle different from women, and have different hormones, could you not also accept that the differences in gray/white matter proportions, size etc are not 'cultural'?

Laughable.

> Re objectification: couples get advice from their life partners. That doesn't mean this is their life partners only goal.

Women objectification is about treating a woman like an object, a belonging, a resource.

As it turns out, the person writing the parent comment defined a founder's wife as "one of your most valuable business resources". That person should have said, "some of your most valuable business insights will come from your wife". It wouldn't be objectification, but it would still establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience.

Assuming unproven differences between the sexes to be true has always been ethically borderline from a scientific perspective. From a social perspective, it artificially deters persons of each sex from doing something which is then implicitly considered "unnatural" for them.

> As it turns out, the person writing the parent comment defined a founder's wife as "one of your most valuable business resources"

To be fair, in a world (the world of business) where employees are referred to as "human resources", everyone involved has already been objectified.

Let's put the shoe on the other foot:

> The person writing the parent comment defined a founder's husband as "one of your most valuable business resources".

Nope, not offended. The husband is valuable, in no way does it state this is the only value of the husband.

Things look different removed from context. In this case, the relevant context is the history of marriage as a property agreement arranged between the husband and the father of the bride.

I agree with you completely. It belies an inappropriate attitude for the 21st century.

There are plenty of scientifically well-documented cognitive differences between men and women, though the OP doesn't sound informed on them, and yes it is considered impolite to know about them if you're not working in a psychological research lab.