Women Are Better At Everything
Really?!? Meredith Melnick explains for TIME:
Recently in the Wall Street Journal, MarketWatch columnist David Weidner noted that women “do almost everything better” than men — from politics to corporate management to investing.
Weidner cites a new study by Barclays Wealth and Ledbury Research, which found that women were more likely than men to make money in the market, mostly because they didn’t take as many risks. And why are they risk-averse? Because they’re not as overconfident as men, the study found.
The study’s findings backed up those of previous research on the topic: in a 2001 study [PDF] of 35,000 American households with an account at a discount brokerage, financial scholars Brad Barber and Terrance Odean found that women’s risk-adjusted returns beat men’s by 1% annually. A 2005 study by Merrill Lynch found that 35% of women held an investment too long, compared with 47% of men. More recently, in 2009, a study by…
Sweden Debuts Gender-Neutral Preschool
At best, a school model for the more-enlightened future, and at worst, an intriguing social experiment. Via Yahoo News:
At the “Egalia” preschool, staff avoid using words like “him” or “her” and address the 33 kids as “friends” rather than girls and boys.
From the color and placement of toys to the choice of books, every detail has been carefully planned to make sure the children don’t fall into gender stereotypes.
Egalia doesn’t deny the biological differences between boys and girls — the dolls the children play with are anatomically correct. What matters is that children understand that their biological differences “don’t mean boys and girls have different interests and abilities.”
The taxpayer-funded preschool which opened last year in the liberal Sodermalm district of Stockholm for kids aged 1 to 6 is among the most radical examples of Sweden’s efforts to engineer equality between the sexes from childhood onward. Breaking down gender roles is…
Madame Restell: The Wickedest Woman in New York
Madame Restell was a flamboyant 19th century abortionist whom history remembers as ”the wickedest woman in New York” —but had she been? Victorian Gothic takes a critical look:
The cover of The New York Illustrated Times for February 23rd, 1878 depicts the arrest of the notorious abortionist Ann Lohman, alias “Madame Restell,” by the moral crusader Anthony Comstock. Flanked by reporters and deputies, the statuesque crime-fighter is pictured with a search warrant in hand, which he reads to the lady villain in the attitude of a holy messenger, banishing evil by its sacred words. Comfortably situated amongst the opulent furnishings of her Fifth Avenue mansion, Madame Restell wears a cool, appraising expression, as if to say “Ah, Comstock, my nemesis—I have been expecting you.” Her right hand is clenched into a fist, which overlaps the womb of a veiled woman who weeps with shame in the background.
Dubbed the “wickedest woman in New…
Women Like Pink Because Of ‘Berry-Picking’ Past And Boys Like Green Because Of Their Hunting Ancestors
Do pinks and purples remind you of gathering berries? Do greens and blues remind you of hunting in the forest? Finding a reason other than cultural influence as to why genders seems to lean towards specific colors, scientists look to our past. Via Fiona Macrae at Daily Mail:
Girls really do prefer pink – and not just because it is pretty.
Scientists have shown that females are drawn to pinks and reds and men to blues and greens – and they believe the explanation lies our hunter-gatherer past.
As the gatherers of the operation, women’s brains became fine-tuned to the purples and reds of ripe fruits and berries.
The men, meanwhile, developed a preference for the clear blue skies that signaled good weather for hunting.
The theory comes from Chinese scientists who asked more than 350 students to study 11 colours for three minutes and then rank them in order of preference.
The students also underwent…
Why Do Girls Wear Pink?
No, it’s not an immutable law of nature. In the 1920s, retailers began encouraging pink (a strong color) for boys and blue (a dainty one) for girls, before the trend reversed after World War II. For centuries prior, both boys and girls wore white dresses.
In light of hysteria over a photograph in J. Crew’s new catalog depicting a mother painting her son’s toenails pink, Smithsonian Magazine explores how we got to this point:
For centuries, children wore dainty white dresses up to age 6. “What was once a matter of practicality—you dress your baby in white dresses and diapers; white cotton can be bleached—became a matter of ‘Oh my God, if I dress my baby in the wrong thing, they’ll grow up perverted,’ ” Paoletti says.
The march toward gender-specific clothes was neither linear nor rapid. Pink and blue arrived, along with other pastels, as colors for babies in the mid-19th century, yet the…
Are Women Developing Immunity to the Sexual Harassment ‘Virus’?
ScienceDaily reports:
Sexual harassment may have become so commonplace for women that they have built up resistance to harassing behavior they consider merely “bothersome,” suggests a provocative new study by Michigan State University researchers.This effect, said lead investigator Isis Settles, may be similar to the way people build up immunity to infection following exposure to a virus.
“When women view sexual harassment as bothersome, it doesn’t seem to be associated with distress,” said Settles, associate professor of psychology. “In some ways this suggests that sexual harassment is such a widespread problem that women have figured out ways to deal with it so it doesn’t interfere with their psychological well-being.”
For the study, which appears in the research journal Social Psychological and Personality Science, the researchers examined surveys of more than 6,000 women and men serving in all five branches of the U.S. military.
Sexual harassment was a problem for both sexes, the study found. More…
Why Is There Not More Male Nudity in Mainstream Films?
Stacie Adams writes on the Nervous Breakdown:
Today I bring you a subject that’s very close to my heart. And by heart I mean sex organs.
I’m a 31 year old heterosexual woman who is appalled by the lack of male nudity in movies. Tits and girl ass are legion in film, and that’s OK, I don’t mind it. But, in the interest of this equality I hear so much about, perhaps we can add some rock hard pectorals and v-shaped abdomens into the mix? Some chiseled male bums? A quick shot of the little guy?
Remember when action movies always had that scene of the anti-hero crying into his refrigerator, or gun, or eight ounce glass of whiskey over his dead dog, or kid, or wife? And remember how in these scenes said anti-hero would always be without pants and have an ass like Michelangelo’s David?
Well, those scenes were put there for…
Study Claims Ogling Women Makes Them Worse at Math
I wonder what the first person to win two Nobel prizes, Madame Curie, would make of this study. Oh, I know the answer from a classic Simpsons episode … Stephanie Pappas writes on LiveScience:
Getting the once-over from a man causes women to score lower on a math test, a new study finds.
Despite this drop in performance, women were more motivated to interact with men who ogled them, perhaps because they were trying to boost their sense of belonging, psychologists report in the February issue of the journal Psychology of Women Quarterly.
“It creates this vicious cycle for women in which they’re underperforming in math or work domains, but they’re continuing to want to interact with the person who is making them underperform in the first place,” study researcher Sarah Gervais, a psychologist at the University of Nebraska, Lincoln, told LiveScience.
Men Have Clitorises
Here’s a chapter from my Disinformation-published book titled 50 Things You’re Not Supposed To Know: Volume 2 (2004):
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It’s long been noted that all of us start in the womb as sexless little blobs. We each had the same undifferentiated external equipment (a bud of tissue), plus two sets of internal ducts.
Depending on whether an embryo has a Y sex chromosome or two X’s, during week seven it starts developing into a boy or a girl. That little mound of tissue (the genital tubercle) either opens to form two sets of labia and a clitoris, or it closes to make a penis and testicles. When viewed this way, the similarities between guys’ and dolls’ private parts is obvious and has drawn comments since ancient Greek times.
But there’s a whole lot more overlap than you might suspect. Women aren’t the only ones who have a clitoris. Men do, too.
To fully understand this, it helps…
Virtual Reality Asks Tough Behavior and Anxiety Questions
Ever wonder what it was like to be the opposite sex? Ever wonder what it was like to be the opposite sex and abused? Virtual reality may be the key to engaging in such questions. BBC News reports:
Virtual reality is allowing scientists to ask difficult questions about human behaviour that were previously not possible or were thought too unethical.
A Spanish team has designed a trial that allows men to step inside the body of a woman subjected to violence.
Meanwhile scientists in London are simulating a controversial experiment from the 1960s in which people were persuaded to inflict pain on others.
The original experiments were condemned as immoral and too traumatic.
At Barcelona University, male volunteers have experienced life as a virtual young girl and then separately, witnessed violence towards her.
On returning to live the girl’s virtual life, the men empathized with her more than usual, feeling scared and insecure themselves.
“I want to know…
31-Year-Old Woman Poses As 14-Year-Old Boy to Become 16-Year-Old Girl’s “Boyfriend”
Patricia Dye, 31
Lawrence Budd of the Dayton Daily News writes:
A Franklin woman pretended to be a 14-year-old boy named Matt Abrams to get close to a Springboro girl, authorities said.
Patricia Dye, 31, of Franklin, remained in the Warren County Jail on Tuesday, July 6, charged with unlawful sexual conduct with and corruption of a 16-year-old Springboro girl in late May at the girl’s home. Dye, who used the alias Matt Abrams, is 4 feet 11 inches tall, smaller than the 5-foot-5 victim, according to police reports.
“They were boyfriend-girlfriend,” Sgt. Bob Marchiny said. “(Dye) looks just like a boy.” Police began investigating Dye after the girl ran away from a hotel where they had been living together for three days in June. The girl did not realize Dye was a woman, Marchiny said.
“We realized the person she was with wasn’t who we thought she was,” Marchiny said. Dye, arrested on June 30…
A Little Bit of Bohemia
The Infinite and the Beyond — Podcast: Episode 13 — A Little Bit of Bohemia
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In the latest episode of The Infinite and the Beyond, we look into bohemianism and its similarities to modern paganism. The history of bohemianism reveals a lot about modern paganism and even indicates much of where modern pagan ideals and sense of community have come from.
People typically often compare modern pagans to the hippies of the 1960s, but as we find out, the roots of the all of those counter culture movements from the last one hundred years run so much deeper!
Join us as we journey into the world of Green Fairy as we discuss absinthe the famous mythic bohemian drink of writers, artists, composers, and actors from the late 19th century. We look into absinthe’s brief history and learn how to prepare it, enjoy it, and how to buy it.
