January 12, 2014

What's good for women is what's good for men.

Meme alert!

1. In today's NYT, an opinion column by Stephanie Coontz: "How Can We Help Men? By Helping Women."
Social and economic policies constructed around the male breadwinner model have always disadvantaged women. But today they are dragging down millions of men as well. Paradoxically, putting gender equity issues at the center of social planning would now be in the interests of most men....

Putting women’s traditional needs at the center of social planning is not reverse sexism. It’s the best way to reverse the increasing economic vulnerability of men and women alike.
2. On "Meet the Press" today, David Gregory interviewing Maria Shriver about the current state of the war on poverty, which began in the Lyndon Johnson administration, with Shriver's father in charge. (At one point Shriver says: "Daddy ran the war on poverty.") Anyway, Shriver's done some new report, which Gregory calls "so interesting." There's much discussion of the centrality of the concerns of women, Gregory declares the "role of men" to be "interesting." Shriver says:
Men are totally a part of this conversation in terms of how they raise their daughters, in terms of how they support their wives and their partners. And what's good for women, at the center of the economy, is also good for men. Men need flexible hours. Men need sick days, because they're going to be caring for parents, as well. Men need all of the things that these women need. These are smart family policies that we're talking about in this report.
A bit later, Shriver again pairs the idea that women are "the center of the economy" with the assertion that what's good for women is good for men:
I think women are at the center of our country. They're at the center, as I said, in electing our political leaders. They're at the center of the economy. They're in the center of the family. And when women do well, men do well, and the nation does well. And when women do well, they don't just support other women doing well, but we support our sons and our daughters.

106 comments:

Anonymous said...

WHAT A CROCK...

Hyphenated American said...

Yes, and what's good for whites, is also good for minorities.

Hyphenated American said...

Daddy's war against poverty, a pretty funny phrase. Who paid for it, darling?

Bob Ellison said...

Happy wife, happy life.

Michael K said...

Bullshit. Pardon my French.

madAsHell said...

It's too bad that David Gregory didn't get that dream opportunity to replace Barbara Walters on The View.

mtrobertsattorney said...

I'm waiting for liberals and feminists to come out in support of a massive federal spending program to fund research on why it is that men die so much sooner than women.

mtrobertsattorney said...

I'm waiting for liberals and feminists to come out in support of a massive federal spending program to fund research on why it is that men die so much sooner than women.

campy said...

I'm waiting for liberals and feminists to come out in support of a massive federal spending program to fund research on why it is that men die so much sooner than women.

I fully expect that in Hillary's 2nd term as president we'll see an explicit goal to raise the life expectancy gap to 20 years.

Rockport Conservative said...

I guess she just didn't have a mother and grandmother who often used the phrase "what's good for the goose is good for the gander." Fortunately they weren't really always referring to a gender, in dealing with children, and mother had a bunch of us, it meant fair is fair.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Shriver is dead right. Unless you are talking about physical, social, emotional or sexual needs, men and women are identical.

Biff said...

A fellow in my neighborhood is fond of saying that his marriage is an old-fashioned, traditional marriage, where his happiness is the primary consideration.

"However," he says, "it is possible for my wife to be happy when I am unhappy. In contrast, if she is not happy, my life is miserable. Therefore, since my happiness is the goal of our marriage, all of our efforts are devoted to keeping my wife happy."

(Both spouses are extraordinarily accomplished academics and professionals.)

I've always found such humor to be a little demeaning to both spouses, and, in our university town, it would be inconceivable for a woman to make the same kind of joke about a husband.

Wince said...

Unfortunately, we all suffer when socialists "do well" for themselves and get their way.

Bart Hall (Kansas, USA) said...

Merde-de-taureau

There Michael. I fixed your French for you. Maybe in Spanish it is "Toro Poo-poo" ... but however, you slice things it's all a bunch of drivel.

Men suck up the normal travails of life. Women complain, and the lefties amongst them call for yet another government intervention to redress their perceived grievance(s).

jacksonjay said...


Next thing you know, Maria Schwarzenegger will be giving advice on to keep the old man from knocking-up the housekeeper!

So, is this Schwarzenegger chick an expert on poverty because she's mega-wealthy or because Daddy fought the war?

I know what it is, she's an expert because she's a Kennedy!

RecChief said...

huh. 40 years. Didn't we give up in Afghanistan after 8?

tim in vermont said...

The eternal truth: A woman is looking for one man to fill her every need, and a man is looking for every woman to fill his one need.

Other than that, we are the same.

"I'm waiting for liberals and feminists to come out in support of a massive federal spending program to fund research on why it is that men die so much sooner than women."

No, it is the women who are left alone and harmed by the situation, at least when they aren't freed from an oppressive male spouse. So the study will not start from the perspective of men dying earlier.

It is like the article I read one time about some genocide somewhere, and how awful it was for the women in the village that the men were all lined up against a ditch and machine gunned. Yeah, it was awful for the women, but was that the primary crime? Yep.

Why? Chivalry. What is chivalry about? We (men) are the product of millions of years of selective breeding by women. (women's studies majors will deny this, but the proof is in the pudding)

We as a group are programmed to want to please women the way Labradors are bred to fetch.

tim in vermont said...

Not to mention that we seem to live in a whiner take all society.

sunsong said...

Things have changed. What's good for women is good for everyone. I guess it depends whether you want to see everyone succeed. I do. The more people doing well the better, imo.

tim in vermont said...

"What's good for women is good for everyone"

This is both true and false. In other words, it's pretty meaningless. I think you need a better construction or more exposition.

Lewis Wetzel said...

Perhaps the truth is that what is good for women is good for homosexual men? Maybe Shriver knows a lot of homos so she thinks that what normal men are like.

Ignorance is Bliss said...

I think women are at the center of our country. They're at the center, as I said, in electing our political leaders.

This explains so much.

tim in vermont said...

Nevermind sunsong, I didn't realize it was you I was responding to. Go ahead and believe whatever nonsense you like.

"What's good for women is good for everyone." - True

"What's good for men is good for everyone." - False.

It is so obvious, people!

Gahrie said...

I think women are at the center of our country. They're at the center, as I said, in electing our political leaders.

I agree, which is why I think the 19th Amendment should be repealed.

Gahrie said...

I think women are at the center of our country. They're at the center, as I said, in electing our political leaders.

I agree, which is why I think the 19th Amendment should be repealed.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

I read something like this, from Koontz:

The highest proportion of stay-at-home moms is found among women married to men in the bottom 25 percent of the country’s income distribution. Most of these women cannot afford to work because of the high cost of child care, even though their partners and children would benefit from the increased income

You read it right: Women can't afford to work, because childcare is so expensive, even though their families would benefit from the increased income. What increased income? You've just pointed out that a poor mother of a young child loses money by working.

What we have is a situation where the choice is between subsidizing someone's childcare wages (that someone will, of course, also be a woman, though she appears nowhere in Koontz's analysis) so that a child's mother can go out and work for a little more than the childcare costs, rather than raising her own child.

Would it not be simpler to supplement the income of the family with the mother of the young child, allowing her to do (mostly) for love what the child care worker is perforce doing mostly for money? Why is raising a child (your own child, not whoever's is paying you this week) the only sort of work we ought somehow to make economically disadvantageous?

Bruce Hayden said...

This is total BS. This is a diversion from the War on Men that has been going on since Maria's daddy was passing out subsidies for single mothers raising their children out of wedlock. The natural, and expected that has been generational poverty, along with the gang violence that our inner cities have seen.

RecChief said...

@sunsong - what is "doing better"? and is there one definition? my grandmother told me several years ago that when she was my age, they didn't have much money but they "lived better" and she was talking about the '30s through the '70s

Bruce Hayden said...

I agree, which is why I think the 19th Amendment should be repealed.

The problem is that the last elections have shown the wisdom of not giving women the vote. So many, it seems, vote emotionally, and seem more willing, on average, than men to put their short term personal interests ahead of those of the greater society. No suffrage may have meant no Obama Recession, and maybe even a lower rate of illegitimacy and poverty.

Anonymous said...

Why won't any of these people tell us what is this third sex, the one that's going to pay for all the nice freebies which benefit both men and women?

Michael K said...

The solution: "What Your Cat Is Thinking. Plus, note this: “To this day the population of domestic cats is maintained in a semiferal state by the practice of neutering. About the only males available for domestic female cats to breed with are the wildest and least people-friendly tomcats who have escaped into the feral cat population. "

The future is coming.

B said...

And learning music helps with learning math.

You know what else helps with learning math? Learning math.

EdwdLny said...

Well Maria , if you drug your ass out of the fantasy world that you and your ilk inhabit you'd realize how much damage your bullshit ideas cause. Oh, and maybe you and your ilk could start paying your fair share since you shits continually remind productive people like me how it's our responsibility to pay more and more so that those "poor people " , who are still poor after 50 years of the war on poverty , can continue to leech off of those of us who chose and were taught to be productive. Taught to meet our obligations and responsibilities instead of demanding that others pay our way. Taught to provide for our families instead of abandoning them to the backs of those of us who chose to be responsible. Tell us Maria, when can we expect you to pay your fair share ? I'm hearing crickets. So bugger off you sanctimonious twit.

Carol said...

So, is this new Carefully Coordinated Theme going to replace the "Income Inequality" one?

Will Cate said...

If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.

fivewheels said...

"Social and economic policies ... have always disadvantaged women. But today they are dragging down millions of men as well."

So, Ms. Koontz, you're admitting that leftist social engineering directed by the government harms everyone and everything. We agree.

SomeoneHasToSayIt said...


God help us.

Rob said...

Maria Shriver is well-equipped to speak about poverty. She's been malnourished since the Johnson Administration.

Anonymous said...

What's good for General Motors is good for the country.

jimbino said...

"Men are totally a part of this conversation in terms of how they raise their daughters, in terms of how they support their wives and their partners."

It's time to put "in terms of" to rest. The proper English would be "with regard to" or "in respect of" of something similar.

Sam L. said...

The blind attempting to do something to or with or about the blind.

Not. Gonna. Work.

KCFleming said...

What's good for gay men is what's good for men, right?

Fr. Denis Lemieux said...

I read a column in a major newsmagazine a couple years ago about how women in one of the Baltic states (Latvia? Estonia?) had a terrible problem. You see, all the men in the country were committing suicide in droves. The problem: it was getting really hard for women to find a date for Friday night.
I swear most solemnly I am not making that up, and I kept looking to see if it was a satire. It wasn't.
For some reason, this thread called that story to mind...

Anonymous said...

Stephanie Coontz. I'll pass.

Anonymous said...

Bruce Hayden: The problem is that the last elections have shown the wisdom of not giving women the vote. So many, it seems, vote emotionally, and seem more willing, on average, than men to put their short term personal interests ahead of those of the greater society. No suffrage may have meant no Obama Recession, and maybe even a lower rate of illegitimacy and poverty.

All sensible people should favor denying the franchise to groups the majority of whose members tend to vote
emotionally or put their immediate personal interests ahead of those of the greater society - aka voting for politicians championing destructive "progressive" social policies aka dumbass Obama voters.

You have looked at voting stats by sex, race, marital status, etc., and realize this pretty much means no votes for anybody but white men, right? (Or maybe white women, too, since Obama as a matter of fact lost the overall white woman vote. Just leave out the single white women, and sanity is restored to politics. Hmm, iirc, a very high percentage, if not a majority, of single white men went Obama. Best keep an eye on them, too.)

Jus' sayin'.

Big Mike said...

And when women do well, men do well, and the nation does well.

Yes, of course. A rising tide lifts all boats. How could we have missed that?

I'm Full of Soup said...

Stephanie Coontz is a prof at Evergreen Univ which should be called Crackpot U.

George M. Spencer said...

D.I.V.O.R.C.E.

What would Tammy Wynette say about Michelle and her man?

Gonna be lonely for somebody in that big white house.

n.n said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
n.n said...

The war on poverty had marginal, short-term success because it addressed symptoms and promoted dissociation of risk (which promotes corruption). The feminists succeeded to raise the government revenue through coaxing women into taxable activities. The war on poverty's success can be measured in progressive corruption and devaluation of capital and labor. The demand to normalize abortion (i.e. state-sponsored execution through lethal injection or dismemberment) was also critical to make the numbers work.

They absolutely dread organic growth, which explains their frequent and pervasive failures. Ironically, they place their faith in intelligent design, because they are afraid of distributed (i.e. individual) change. The consequences of denigrating individual dignity by design and over time are progressive and terminal.

Anyway, everything is a social construct according to these social deviants. People should take note and reject their well-intentioned advice and direction. Their perspective of reality is incongruous with traditional human and civil rights, as well as biological imperatives.

YoungHegelian said...

I thought I remembered that National Lampoon did Sargent Shriver's Bleeding Hearts Club Band in the 70's/

cubanbob said...

Angelyne you are on to something: let's leave voting to net taxpayers.

Levi Starks said...

Michelle just gave me a great idea,
We'll pay stay at home moms to go next door to each others house and look after each others children,
That way everybody wins...

Anonymous said...

cubanbob: Angelyne you are on to something: let's leave voting to net taxpayers.

That would be an interesting analysis. We can probably safely assume that net tax-eaters tend to vote Democrat. But there are more lib-voting net taxpayers out there than conservatives like to credit. I'm pretty sure Asian-Americans, for example, have low levels of tax-eaters relative to other groups, but they went overwhelmingly for Obama, and are a solidly Democrat-voting demographic.

I'd also consider that having skin in the game doesn't magically confer civic virtue or concern for the long-term common good, either, as any survey of corruption and cronyism would reveal.

Anyway I was just ribbing Bruce about his facile analysis, since just about every group but white men would also have to be categorized as "emotional voters who shouldn't be trusted with the franchise", if liberal group voting patterns are the criterion.

Foobarista said...

How about flipping the meme: what's good for men is good for women? Somehow I don't think that would get the same adoring coverage in the media.

Freeman Hunt said...

All the women packed in at a point near the northern edge of Kansas casting ballots, with concentric rings of money, stores, husbands, and children around them.

Freeman Hunt said...

The gut effect of her center comments is claustrophobia.

David said...

Even though what she said is bullcaca, at least she piled it deep.

Freeman Hunt said...

It makes sense that a liberal would picture the economy as having a center.

Carl Pham said...

Goodness, a New York Times column sure to be as widely unread as John Kerry's memoirs and the prattlings of a mummified Kennedy-era doxie do not constitute a meme. That's like calling a pair of snowflakes winter.

Milwaukee said...

"And when women do well, they don't just support other women doing well, but we support our sons and our daughters."

Whoa. Men protect and provide for, women nurture. I don't see women providing for me or any man in that quote.

I did see a survey that 76% of millionaire men wanted to find a poorer woman to help and support. But 85% of millionaire women wanted to partner with a millionaire man because they didn't want to have to take care of him.

As a divorced, college educated man, I would be better off with a poorly educated woman who loved me than a well educated harpy.

Ken Mitchell said...

mtrobertsattorney said...
"I'm waiting for liberals and feminists to come out in support of a massive federal spending program to fund research on why it is that men die so much sooner than women."

Because we want to!

And to paraphrase Biff: "If Mama ain't happy, ain't NOBODY happy!"

Anonymous said...

Random Kennedy Robot says:

On the Road to Ending Poverty There Are many Small Bridges That Are Hard to Navigate at Night After a few Drinks. Press On.

Anonymous said...

Random Kennedy Robot says:

I Suffered, Too, Due to Marina Oswald's Unhappiness: We Are All Connected.

Anonymous said...

Random Kennedy Robot says:

Ich bin ein Woman.

Anonymous said...

Random Kennedy Robot says:

Chappaquiddick: The Waterloo of the War on Poverty.

Annie said...

sunsong said- " What's good for women is good for everyone."

Do you mean lots of welfare that has turned inner cities into chaotic hell holes, their men absent, their children feral? Yeah, women have done a bang up job with all that 'help'.

Anonymous said...

Above All Else Women Want to Be Rickrolled: They Spend Their Evenings Amidst Lit Scented Candles and Sleepy Tabby Cats, Searching for the Elusive Hyperlink Bait-and-Switch That takes Them to the Man of Their Dreams. He Knows the Secret Heart of Women: He Will Never gonna give Them up, Never gonna let Them down, Never gonna run around and desert Them. Furthermore, He Will Never gonna make Them cry, Never gonna say Goodbye, Never gonna tell a Lie and hurt Them. Once One Understands This, One Truly Understands Women.

For a Woman, the Act of Being Rickrolling Excites a Sense of Being the True Center of a World Where Their Needs are Fully Understood and Cared For, Where They Can Dance Freely After a Long Day of Volunteer Work for the Environment, Safe in the Support of a Non-Threatening Man.

Pessimists Might Argue That the Woman has been brought to Rick Astley Against Her Will, But This is the Kind of Thing Pessimists Always Say: Women WANT to be brought to Rick Astley, Hence the Lit Scented Candles. More than "brought": They want to be 'Delivered.'

Rick Astley Understands that when Women do Well, Men do Well, and the Nation does Well; Women Understand That Rick Knows This. Men, Find Your Inner Rick Astley: the Fate of the nation is Yours.

Anonymous said...

Front Page material, That.

Anonymous said...

The "Sleepy Tabby Cats" can Easily Be Replaced By a Poodle in the Lap and the Point Will Be the Same.

MayBee said...

And when women do well, they don't just support other women doing well, but we support our sons and our daughters.

Notice who women apparently don't support when they do well.

MayBee said...

Women doing well in society tells us something positive about the men in that society. Men historically had power, and they decided to share it in the very best cultures.

This is a bit of a chicken and egg situation, and certainly nothing to build economic policy around.

Bruce Hayden said...

Anglelyne - My suggestion about disenfranchising Women was not said with a straight face. I have ancestresses who worked for suffrage starting (that we know of) in the 1850s, and my mother was the state legislative chair and chief lobbyist for the League of Women Voters. But, you are correct, that by my logic, the country would be better off if the franchise were limited to white males, or at least non-Black males. But, realistically, when it comes to Blacks, it is the women who are the problem, with so many of the men in prison, paroled, or dead. And, so, I think that we could safely go back to my suggestion of just removing the franchise for women.

What I forgot to add to my reasons that women putting Obama in the White House being bad was the recent loss of Fallujah, and maybe soon all of Anwar Province, to al Quaeda, after spending so many American lives to throw them out, and apparently squandering so many more lives in Afghanistan in the "surge" that he expected to fail, but implemented for political reasons.

For good evolutionary reasons, women tend to be more self-centered and narcissistic than men. Not always, but statistically. Just look at all the TV ads about women pampering themselves. Why? I would suggest because it was evolutionarily advantageous. The women who were pampered and well taken care of had secured better quality mates, who were able to provide superior resources (both physical and genetic) for their children.

In any case, the comment above about women having sons and daughters, and so were concerned about males was illuminating. Their primary center has long been themselves and their children, grandchildren, etc. And after that maybe the rest of the family (including husbands) and the local community. Notably, what is missing is concern about the larger community, and esp the national good.

But what is worrisome about the War on Poverty, and the related institutional fatherless childrearing, is that so many females are willing to sacrifice the good of their children, by having them out of wedlock, for their own material self-good. Many/most of them seemingly give up the good of their children in order to not have to deal with getting and keeping the childrens' father around and involved. And, as a result, their daughters follow them into single parent poverty and their sons go to prison or die young.

stlcdr said...

Someone will point out that these women (wimin') are, by some measure, successful which goes against the message they are sending.

We are then going to be assailed by the struggles they had to get to where they are.

The 'message' is that "you aren't happy because of everyone else". We become a society of excuses, which is the downward spiral of achievement - or lack of it. Instead of solving our own issues, we do nothing, because (so I've been told by some chick on TV) it's someone else's fault.

Of course, it's the build up to the 'sexist' meme, as the 'racist' meme draws to a close.

Anonymous said...

And remember, the only measure is materialism.

According to these type: women want more power and more money.

They'll fail precisely because of that.

For what doth it profit a woman to gain the whole world, and lose her soul?

Fen said...

Run this through a few feminist website and see what it gets you:

"I think men are at the center of our country. They're at the center, as I said, in electing our political leaders. They're at the center of the economy. They're in the center of the family. And when men do well, women do well, and the nation does well"

Timotheus said...

Then we can definitely say, using the principle of contraposition, that "If it's not good for men, it's not good for women."

Hammond X. Gritzkofe said...

To summarize, depending on which parts of the article you are reading:
..men and women should be treated differently because they are the same; or
..men and women should be treated the same because they are different.

Larry J said...

Will Cate said...
If momma ain't happy, ain't nobody happy.


And if Daddy ain't happy, nobody gives a shit. Get back to work, Dad. Bring home more money to make Momma happy.

RecChief said...

"Men are totally a part of this conversation in terms of how they raise their daughters, in terms of how they support their wives and their partners."

AH I see, it's all about what men can do for women. Not exactly the meme of independent women after all is it?

Fernandinande said...

Putting women’s traditional needs at the center of social planning is not reverse sexism.

Correct; it's just sexism.

And "social planning" sounds like a nifty, totalitarian idea - Sieg Heil, dudettes!

scott said...

I believe that US gender-feminists are going to continue to pervert American law enforcement until we reach a point where hetero-sexual relationships become a legal liability for guys, and guys are forced to go "MGTOW" just to keep their basic cicvil rights.

scott said...

I believe that US gender-feminists are going to keep perverting American law enforcement until we reach the point where hetero-sexual relationships become a legal liability for guys, and guys are forced to go "MGTOW" just to keep their basic civil rights.

scott said...

I believe that US gender-feminists are going to continue to pervert American law enforcement until we reach a point where hetero-sexual relationships become a legal liability for guys, and guys are forced to go "MGTOW" just to keep their basic cicvil rights.

Fen said...

Will our women wonder why we didn't protect them from Sharia? Why some of us even joined in?

The feminist culture of hatred for males has given momentum to a swinging pendulum.

campy said...

Eight years of President Hillary Rodham are coming! Are you ready?

Jane the Actuary said...

So here's a phrase I'm trying to popularize (not too successfully so far): the Big Cat model of family life. That's what progressives seem to want; give a woman enough free child care and the fate of men is utterly irrelevant to her, as long as they mate periodically, like the leopards or cheetahs on a National Geographic special.

http://janetheactuary.blogspot.com/2013/12/big-cats-and-human-relationships.html

NotWhoIUsedtoBe said...

This is untrue on its face.

Freeman Hunt said...

In order for women to achieve equality, AA programs in our favor must be completely eliminated. They're an insult.

Anonymous said...

Why? Chivalry. What is chivalry about? We (men) are the product of millions of years of selective breeding by women. (women's studies majors will deny this, but the proof is in the pudding)

I (and Ms. Althouse) know of a law professor at the University of Tennessee that would slightly disagree with that. He states that Chivalry was a code for both sexes.

Peter said...

'Edward Lunny' said, "Well Maria , if you drug your ass out of the fantasy world that you and your ilk inhabit you'd realize how much damage your bullshit ideas cause."

I'm sure she'd tell you that you just have to break some eggs to make an omlet.

Yet when she says ""Men are totally a part of this conversation in terms of how they raise their daughters, in terms of how they support their wives and their partners" she somehow misses that the net effect of the woman-centered policies is a model where men don't raise their daughters- because they're mostly non-resident fathers. And all the taxmen in the world can't force non-resident fathers to contribute as much as resident ones do.

What did you expect to happen when you made the household woman-centric, and declared that the man's presence (but not the woman's) was optional?

As they say, sometimes when you tell a man that the only right he has regarding his children is the right to pay, he decides he'd just as soon have no rights at all.

tim in vermont said...

Chivalry may have been aspirationally a code for both sexes, but the reality is somewhat different.

Nomennovum said...

That women actually feel this way comes as a surprise to us, because ...?

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

B,

And learning music helps with learning math.

You know what else helps with learning math? Learning math.


Yep. I'm a strong advocate for school music programs (having benefited from them myself, and being married to a public high school orchestra director), but I hate, hate, hate that argument. Learning music is valuable in itself; it's not a means to boost your bloody math scores.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Freeman Hunt,

In order for women to achieve equality, AA programs in our favor must be completely eliminated. They're an insult.

Agreed entirely. Can we ditch the "sisterhood" while we're at it?

Soooo annoying watching "This Week" yesterday and the all-female panel discussion of Mary Barra (CEO of GM) and Janet Yellen (at the Fed). (I caught a different, also all-female, panel discussion on the same subject later in the day.)

Panelists hoping that either or both would hire lots more women and "change the culture." Noooooo! Hire the best. Do not let anything else influence you. Above all, don't try to "change the culture" in a specifically feminine direction, or you will be confirming every stereotype ever uttered about what happens when women get their hands on something.

Jane the Actuary said...

And behind every "kid who learns an instrument and has higher test scores" is a parent who nags them to practice, and, coincidentally, nags them to get their homework done. . . have there been truly randomized studies which control for all these correlations? But that's off-topic.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Timotheus,

Then we can definitely say, using the principle of contraposition, that "If it's not good for men, it's not good for women."

Nice!

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Jane the Actuary,

Blogger ate my comment :-(

The gist: If it were the nagging that did the trick, it wouldn't just be a math/music correlation, but an academics/extracurricular activities correlation, unless parents nagged only on particular subjects. There might, indeed, be some of that, but it'd be a pain to disaggregate it.

And there's the post hoc/propter hoc problem: Does studying music make you better at math, or does studying math make you better at music? Or is there just some neurological affinity between the two pursuits?

As you say, though, OT.

Brian Brown said...

"Daddy ran the war on poverty."

And what a resounding success that was!

Freeman Hunt said...

AA creates a structure in which every woman who achieves some position is logically suspected of being inferior to her colleagues until proven otherwise. This is unacceptable. It undermines our work.

Michelle Dulak Thomson said...

Freeman Hunt,

AA creates a structure in which every woman who achieves some position is logically suspected of being inferior to her colleagues until proven otherwise. This is unacceptable. It undermines our work.

Yes. And it's beyond vexing that we keep this structure even when we can see the harm it's doing, even when it so obviously devalues real work by real people. I hope I live to see the day when a woman who wins a post no woman has held before is assessed not as the "first woman" to do whatever, but in terms of what she has done and what she can do.

Bob Loblaw said...

Ah, feminists. Making every conversation about meeeeeeee.

w.johnson said...

A herd led by a mare is bound for destruction.

Anonymous said...

"ancestresses?"

Seriously?

Nichevo said...

Professor, and this is not a personal remark, do you ever feel a collective shame for your sex? I mean for your gender, for the female species? When you read things like this?

Again this doesn't attach to you. When I read about stories like the Steve Cohen or Bernie Madoff scandals, or Hasidim smuggling Ecstasy, I feel shame for all Jews (a shanda fur de goyim), the way, 50 years ago, a black man or a black leader, or a Negro as they were then called, might have felt shame about something like the a Channon-Newsom atrocity.

Just, it hurts my face to read stupidity like this. Doesn't it do yours?

Nichevo said...

Obviously C-N was not 50 years ago, but I consider it obvious that there would be no such sense of collective shame or guilt today; but 50 years ago if such a thing had happened there would have been. (I'd like to be wrong about that, though - the former, not the latter.)