Words! Where are my words??

Holy hell, yo.

At the most recent meeting of the American Psychological Association one Dr. Roy F. Baumesiter of Florida State University gave a talk entitled "Is there anything good about men?". The conclusions that this man reaches are fairly...well, I'll let you read some (or all) of what he says (in short he says that women are less motivated (aka lazier) than men).

1. "Return for a moment to the Larry Summers issue about why there aren’t more female physics professors at Harvard. Maybe women can do math and science perfectly well but they just don’t like to. After all, most men don’t like math either! Of the small minority of people who do like math, there are probably more men than women. Research by Eccles has repeatedly concluded that the shortage of females in math and science reflects motivation more than ability. And by the same logic, I suspect most men could learn to change diapers and vacuum under the sofa perfectly well too, and if men don’t do those things, it’s because they don’t want to or don’t like to, not because they are constitutionally unable (much as they may occasionally pretend otherwise!)."

See, women like to vacuum under the couch and change diapers. So it's only fitting and right that they should do so, while MEN, who do not like these things, go ahead and teach physics at Harvard. Really, it's all so simple!

2. "Likewise, I mentioned the salary difference, but it may have less to do with ability than motivation. High salaries come from working super-long hours. Workaholics are mostly men. (There are some women, just not as many as men.) One study counted that over 80% of the people who work 50-hour weeks are men."

Yeah, but what that study didn't count were the number of people who work MORE than 50 hours a week...and may not get paid for most (or any) of them. Remember that woman who was chaning diapers and vacuuming under the couch? Or does it not count as "work" if you are unpaid and underappreciated?

3. "Creativity may be another example of gender difference in motivation rather than ability. The evidence presents a seeming paradox, because the tests of creativity generally show men and women scoring about the same, yet through history some men have been much more creative than women. An explanation that fits this pattern is that men and women have the same creative ability but different motivations."

Hmmm, it wouldn't be possible, just possible, that men appear to have been "more creative" through history because they weren't burdened with primary (or sole) responsibility for childcare and housekeeping? Nah, that couldn't be it. Women clearly prefer diaper changing to creative enterprises. Diaper changing is rote and easy, just the way we like it.

4. "Giving birth is a revealing example. What could be more feminine than giving birth? Throughout most of history and prehistory, giving birth was at the center of the women’s sphere, and men were totally excluded. Men were rarely or never present at childbirth, nor was the knowledge about birthing even shared with them. But not very long ago, men were finally allowed to get involved, and the men were able to figure out ways to make childbirth safer for both mother and baby. Think of it: the most quintessentially female activity, and yet the men were able to improve on it in ways the women had not discovered for thousands and thousands of years."

Wait, did this asshat seriously just take the credit for giving birth and hand it over to men? Think of it, girls! For thousands of years we were suckers, laboring and birthing in pain and squalor, all because we weren't "motivated" enough or "creative" enough to try to improve our sad station. And men were just beating down the door, trying to help us! Eventually, despite our best efforts, they got in, and in a matter of minutes were able to clean up our sorry enterprise. Baumeister is probably a fan of Hobbes (who famously suggested that perhaps people would need to be forced to be free. They might not want to be free, but since it was in their best interest they would have to be forced into it at first.).

As someone who mindfully, carefully, and purposefully chose to avoid birthing in this newfangled "male" way, I am deeply offended by his claim that what my midwives and I did to bring my children (safely, I might add) into the world was somehow the choice of the less motivated, or the uninformed. That's why "according to a recent study in the British Medical Journal, "Outcomes of planned home births with certified professional midwives: large prospective study in North America" (Johnson & Daviss, June 2005), concluded that outcomes were just as good and "medical intervention rates (such as epidural, episiotomy, forceps, ventouse, and caesarean section) were substantially lower than for low risk US women having hospital births." For example, amongst the home birth women, 3.7% ended up having a caesarean section compared to 19% for the US as a whole (for a similar risk profile) [2000 data]. The intrapartum and neonatal mortality was 1.7 deaths per 1000 low risk intended home births after planned breeches and twins (not considered low risk) were excluded.^[5]"

Of course, one does have to wonder why men spent thousands and thousands of years dying from simple infections and suffering pain from minor (tho unmedicated) surgery if they were so damn clever, right?

Bah.