Gender gyre . . .

THE TIMES LITERARY SUPPLEMENT has a fine book review by Carol Tavris, "The new neurosexism", a review of "DELUSIONS OF GENDER", by Cordelia Fine. Apparently, a lot of recent literature on the mental differences between men and women is rather suspect. Tavris points out the book's importance:

Today we look back with amusement at the efforts of nineteenth-century scientists to weigh, cut, split or dissect brains in their pursuit of finding the precise anatomical reason for female inferiority. How much more scientific and unbiased we are today, we think, with our PET scans and fMRIs and sophisticated measurements of hormone levels. Today’s scientists would never commit such a methodological faux pas as failing to have a control group or knowing the sex of the brain they are dissecting – would they? Brain scans don’t lie – do they?

Well, yes, they would and they do. As Cordelia Fine documents in Delusions of Gender, researchers change their focus, technology marches on, but sexism is eternal. Its latest incarnation is what she calls “neurosexism”, sexist bias disguised in the “neuroscientific finery” of claims about neurons, brains, hormones.

“We have been here before, so many times”, writes Fine, with a sigh. No one disputes that the sexes differ physiologically, in hormones and anatomy, or that there are sex differences in the brain related to men’s and women’s different reproductive processes. The eternal question is, and has been, so what? What, if anything, do those differences have to do with work, love, success, ambition, talent, love of sports, and who does the housework? Perhaps they do, says Fine, but “when we follow the trail of contemporary science we discover a surprising number of gaps, assumptions, inconsistencies, poor methodologies, and leaps of faith – as well as more than one echo of the insalubrious past”.

Two minutes for interference and a game misconduct for being a dick

This piece in the Toronto Star lifts up a rock and shines a light on the worst aspects of kids' sports. Briefly, asshole hockey dad decides that the his son's competitive peewee hockey team is having any fun because they aren't winning often enough, so he decides that the kid he thinks is the least talented player should either be kicked off the team or at least be given less ice time and -without the coach's approval-goes ahead and calls a meeting of the team's parents to discuss this.
I have no idea whether the player in question was the worst player on the team or not, but since this is a competitive team, the player did have to try out to make the team, so they can't be that much worse than the other kids on the squad. Looking at the case in this light, the dad is just plain being a dick, right?
Well, let me add one more piece of information. The player in question was the only girl on the team.
So in addition to being a major dick, I suspect there may be more than a little sexism at play here.
As for the headline on the Toronto Star article: "Should hockey dad be 'ashamed' after girl's humiliating departure?" I would argue that he should have been ashamed well before she left and that the league should ban this clown from ever entering the arena again just on general "for the good of the sport" and "no assholes allowed" grounds. I think the coach, while not wanting to hold the asshole's son responsible for his asshole father's assholery, should at least ban said asshole from the dressing room and any other team affairs, simply on the grounds that deciding who to put on the ice and when is the decision of the coach and only the coach.

Or you could just keep on going to Mom's Cafe in Sooke.

(Click to enlarge) Via Broadsides. Now the "Have it your way" Burger King campaign of the 1980s makes sense.

Unlike this Gaviscon ad out of South Africa, (where the copywriter's second language was English), this one is clearly intentional.

I wonder what Terry O'Reilly would do with this?

She was a soldier

Dear Michael Coren,

Having read your latest column about the death of Canadian Forces Trooper Karin Blais as the result of a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, let me be as polite as I can in saying this: Fuck you, you sexist moron. Try your "women can't serve in combat" horseshit on some of the women in the early Israeli army or the Russian Army in World War II or any of these women. You'll be glad of Canada's universal health care system in the aftermath. Trooper Blais was a soldier like many, many others who volunteered, was trained to do a job and died serving her country with honor. Like Capt. Nichola Goddard, and 115 other soldiers, she accepted the risks involved in doing her job and for you to say she was "dressed up as a soldier" is an insult to every woman serving in Canada's military. Women have been serving in combat roles in the Canadian military with distiction for nearly 20 years. She was a soldier and died like one, her gender had nothing to with it.

Update: Nice to see the Torch weigh in on this one as well. It is nice to see some on the other side of the blogosphere break ranks to slap down such an offensive troglodye.(H/T to Dr. Dawg for the milnet link) If only they would do it more often. Why does the Sun give Coren a platform? Why on earth is such an ill-informed and offensive douchebag on television?

And, yes, I sort of figured this would set the Skipper off, but sometimes you need to call in the big guns to make a point.

crosspost from the Woodshed