Monthly Archives: December 2013

Throwing like a girl(‘s brain)

by

Neuroanthropology

We’ve all read some of the discussions about differences in men’s and women’s brains, but the case of throwing overhand offers a cautionary tale about thinking we’ve found something inherent in being male or female. The danger is that we accept too quickly observed differences without digging a bit deeper into their variation and potential causes. In the United States, most of our readers will have run across the idea that women throw like, well, … girls.

In fact, the empirical gulf between average throwing ability in men and women is huge (just as it is symbolically important), dwarfing virtually any other measurable difference between the sexes, even things like aggression, frequency of masturbation, attitudes towards casual sex, and spatial abilities on paper-and-pencil tests.

Janet Shibley Hyde, one of the leading proponents of the ‘gender similarity hypothesis,’ concedes that there are some marked differences between men and women, singling out…

View original post 4,206 more words

Virginity Is A Social Construct

by

The Belle Jar

Jezebel published a piece today with the title “Nearly 1% Of Women Claim They Were Virgins When They Gave Birth,” and, because this is Jezebel we’re talking about here, they used this as an opportunity to shame and belittle the women who say that they became pregnant while still virgins. And just so we all understand what author Erin Gloria Ryan means by virgins, she writes that they are women who,

“… were unpenetrated by the peen of a man when they became pregnant.”

She further explains,

“This doesn’t include women who became pregnant via in vitro fertilization or artificial insemination; these are women who gave birth the old fashioned way and were like *shrug! SERIOUSLY GUYS I DON’T EVEN KNOW HOW THIS HAPPENED!”

Then (incorrectly) asserts,

“Getting pregnant without sex is virtually scientifically impossible, yet dozens of women in the study (who were teens when the…

View original post 946 more words

“They’re Illegal, and they don’t even thank us for locking them up!”

by

The Australian Independent Media Network

Good Christian

Interviewer: Good evening, tonight we have Liberal Minister for Truth, Ima Lyre, who’s recently returned from a trip to Nauru. Good evening, Ms. Lyre.

Lyre: It is a good evening, just shows that there’s no need for that carbon tax, doesn’t it?

Interviewer: Sorry, I don’t follow.

Lyre: Well, you should. That’s what all the Murdoch journalists do.

Interviewer: I mean, I don’t understand.

Lyre: it’s perfectly simple. It’s a good evening. There’s no warming. Everything’s fine.

Interviewer: I don’t see how one evening…

Lyre: Are we here for an interview or for you to ram your opinion down people’s throat?

Interviewer: Ok, how would you rate your first 100 days in office?

Lyre: Well, of course, it’s not up to me to rate it. That would be arrogant. That’s the Prime Minister’s job. And he rates it A+.

Interviewer: Some of the opinion polls are suggesting that people are…

View original post 560 more words

Pierce Harlan, “false rape” activist, gives up blogging in disgust with fellow MRAs. Then he doesn’t.

by

we hunted the mammoth

We’ve seen a lot of epic flip-floppery from Men’s Rightsers in the last few days on the subject of the Occidental College fiasco — that is, for those who haven’t been following it closely, the organized spamming of Occidental’s anonymous online rape reporting form with false reports by Reddit MRAs and 4channers. Notably, the Men’s Rights subreddit mod known as sillymod went from blaming the false reports on trolls one day to hailing them as necessary activism the next.

But a reader has alerted me to an even more epic flip-flop, this one from Pierce Harlan, a blogger obsessed with what he sees as an epidemic of false rape accusations.

View original post 768 more words