Gender Issues

[Lief Erikson]

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

I still don't see how this is more efficient than simply letting both men and women into the military based on some relevant criteria like combat fitness.

However, I think this is the basis of our disagreement. You feel that the most important criteria is gender, so that is the first selector. After that other qualities/skills applicants possess would mean they would carry on in the army. I place other qualities/skills ahead of gender, so they are the first selector instead. What do you think?

Let's look at this a different way. Let's just say that all women's eyes, for whatever reason, are incapable of properly looking through a rifle's scope. Not possessing this ability is unacceptable in the army. Therefore, no woman can be in any part of the army where she would have to use a rifle. The limitation is based not on the fact that she is a woman, but because she can't physically use a rifle. If a man couldn't use a rifle either, he would face the same restrictions. Therefore it's not about gender, but about ability. Do you see the difference here?

Maybe I don't see fully what you're talking about. The way I see it, a psychological combat-preparedness that is genetically engrained in a gender may very possibly affect a person's ability in combat. I also don't think it would be very easy to test this, though maybe trainers have techniques that can do it and that I don't know of. But you know some troops (I'm talking about male ones here) just crack under pressure when put in the actual battlefield. They were okay beforehand and in training, but the pressure of actual battle is too much for them. They didn't know it would be like that before it happened to them.

I do think that there is a lot of evidence that men tend to overall be more psychologically prepared for battle than women. Gender, in my view, therefore directly connects to combat ability. Though I accept that there will be variation within both genders and I hope I could allow for that in my country's laws.

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

I see what you mean now.

We actually know very little about the human brain and how the mind works, so you should be extremely careful about what judgements you make about people based on perceived psychological differences.

Well, in my view there is very strong evidence that there are significant psychological differences between the genders. I presented a good deal already.

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

Political science is an art, not a hard science. The scientific aspect of this dicipline is the methodology used for surveys, studies, writing papers, etc. Academically, political scientists try to be as rigorous as possible, presenting data with statistical significance etc.

Political science being an art doesn't make it any less valid, but it is important to remember that it is an art, and that means there is a lot in this field (as with psychology, for example) that we simply cannot study properly. This matters. We may never reach an answer to questions like "to what lever does our culture affect political leanings?"

In this thread, you've made a few statements along the lines of "this study shows that women vote for war less often, therefore they should not be in politics," or some such. But what is the scope of the study? What is the sample size? How diverse was the sample size? These things affect what kind of conclusions you can draw from the answers.

I absolutely agree. And in the same Political Science textbook that told me about the observed difference between the voting of men and women, these points about statistical reliability were discussed. They know all of those things and wouldn't put these kinds of statistics or statements in college textbooks (remember I read it in two different books I was assigned to read) as facts if they didn't check out.

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

More importantly, consider carefully what conclusions it is appropriate to draw from a study. If the study concludes that women politicians vote to go to war less often, what exactly is that telling you? Be careful not to overreach what the study has actually covered.

I agree. I also have used a variety of sources and forms of evidence to back my conclusions, and I believe that they are all strong. I'm not relying on any single piece, though. I'm not saying, "because this system of male leadership and male fighting role exists in most of our primates, it exists in us too and is biological." Nor am I saying, "because this system of male leadership and male fighting role exists throughout human history across cultures, geographical areas and time periods, it is biologically established." And neither am I making the statement that, "because the Political Science Branch has established through a variety of statistics taken from many diverse countries that have distinctly different cultures and in all of them it holds up that men are more aggressive than women in spite of those different ideological values, we can say that women are psychologically different from men." I'm using all three of those evidences together to draw the conclusions I am, and those are all big, well established sources of evidence. I also have cited some smaller scale sources that add additional evidence to back my conclusions, such as the licensed and published psychotherapist who described how women are more left brain and men more right brain, and the feminist who argued that there is no reliable evidence of any matriarchy having existed in human history, which, if true, would also contradict expectation if one assumed that men and women are psychologically about the same. You see, it's an accumulation of evidence that I'm using, not any single piece alone.

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

2. Different Votes for Different Folks

With the women and war example again, let's assume for the sake of argument that women support war less than men. Let's also assume that this is bad for the country.

Lawmakers, then, decide that women will not vote on a bill pertaining to war, while men don't get to vote on, say, whether or not education is mandatory.

Problems with giving adults different voting rights will be endless, and I do mean endless.

I'm arguing that we deny women the right to vote at all, not that we only allow them to vote on certain things. I do think that we would probably do better if their minds dominated certain professions such as health care or education. That's within the profession itself and how it's internally managed. That's not involving issues that would be voted on in state or national elections. Those involve a leadership role that I think the evidence (from biology and history) indicates should be primarily men's.

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

A. Women today will never stand for this crap.

Suggesting different voting rights would be political suicide, and if it ever happened, there would be rioting in the streets.

Agreed. I don't think that this will ever get anywhere in the West.

The most I'm hoping for is that my own personal activism in discussing these things with people and perhaps strangling myself by publishing something discussing it is that this may cause some people to show more respect toward our ancestors.

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

C. The costs and benefits of this dual voting system.

Let's just say for the sake of argument that the useless data (see below) was actually correct. That means that if women are not allowed to vote on matters of war, the country will trend more towards being in favour of war. However, this does not reflect the wishes of the entire nation, thus defeating the entire purpose of democracy.

Votes always involve a majority winning over a minority. Therefore the wishes of the entire nation are never reflected in a democracy.

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

Now, if it's not democracy you care about, why bother giving anyone the vote? I mean, if you don't want to know what your people think, why ask?

I believe that men were more genetically, psychologically prepared for leadership than women. And I think that women were genetically, psychologically prepared for other things than men are. So while I care what all the people think, I think that the decisions should be made by the gender most genetically prepared to make them.

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

Also, your above quote implies that it's bad to not support war. But if you prejudge what the outcome of a vote should be, you again defeat the purpose of democracy - questions at the polls must be completely neutral so that you can allow the country to make up its own mind. By imposing these restrictions, you are defeating this goal.

This doesn't presume that fighting every war or maintaining support for every war is a good thing. However, it says that men are more psychologically equipped for the fighting role and for the decisions involving that role than women are and therefore should make those decisions.

Originally Posted by Nurvingiel

A note on statistical significance

Statistical significance is important. It decides if data from the group surveyed indicates a meaningful difference in the population as a whole. (More detail on this concept here.)

<stats rant>

Let us examine these numbers:
These numbers are utterly and completely useless. They tell us nothing. Why? Because they are not, say it with me folks, statistically significant. "But," I hear you protest, "Most of the percentages for men are higher then that for women." Doesn't matter, all the numbers are devoid of meaning.

Now, if these numbers are actually significant, give us the real stats and then we'll talk. </stats rant>

Why do you say these numbers are not statistically significant? I've read part 1 of your link (I don't have the mathematical expertise to do part 2, I expect), but I find nothing in there that undermines the significance of these statistics.