[General Battuta]

You're right, Kara, I'll reconsider my language. Those are good points.

I didn't mean to imply that, but nonetheless the implication was there.

The point I was trying to make is that women have to live in fear, whereas the odds for men (if not necessarily the repercussions) are extraordinarily low. It gets frustrating to hear people make the argument that 'well, men are raped too, so women don't have it any different'. While qualitatively true, there's a big quantitative difference.

Rape of males, just like spousal abuse of males is hugely under-reported.

I was always under the assumption that male rape victims were either molested children or victims of rape in jail by other men. Maybe I'm wrong about?  

Oh, jeez, dude. That's probably not very accurate.

While it's true that most rape is conducted by an acquaintance, friend, or family member, and that as a male you are comparatively unlikely to be raped except as a child or in prison, there are nonetheless plenty of exceptions worth considering.

[karajorma]

The point I was trying to make is that women have to live in fear, whereas the odds for men (if not necessarily the repercussions) are extraordinarily low. It gets frustrating to hear people make the argument that 'well, men are raped too, so women don't have it any different'. While qualitatively true, there's a big quantitative difference.

Fair enough.

Although I will point out that while men don't have to fear being raped in the same way they do face a larger danger of getting into a fight than women do. Your example of being shouted at by a car full of guys for instance wouldn't be nice for most guys who are on their own because they'd immediately suspect that they're going to get jumped.

The fear of an attack in this manner has caused a fairly rise in the amount of knife crime in the UK for instance as more young people have started to carry knives in order to deal with the threat that they might be attacked by a gang on the way home. Women by and large do not have to worry about this.

[General Battuta]

Quite so.

[High Max]

I can put myself in that situation and imagine the fear of being outnumbered by other guys if you are all alone as a man. I guess all one can do is avoid certain areas to lessen the chances of getting jumped. Even being outnumbered by women is no exception, I would think, if they intended to beat you or fight you. Both male and female can be quite good fighters as well.

Ahahahahahahahahahahahahaah

That reminds me; is it just me, or are crazy righties a lot less aware of their position on the political spectrum than far lefties? I mean, I'm pretty far to the left, but I know I'm pretty far to the left. High Max thinks he's a moderate, and he's hardly the sole far rightie to think that. See also, the various Fox talking heads.

That's an old comeback on HLP, but you can think whatever you want. All that matters here, I suppose, is I know who I am. Oh, and it was so funny that I forgot to smile

[Scotty]

That's an old comeback on HLP, but you can think whatever you want. All that matters here, I suppose, is I know who I am.

Don't post stuff like that when I'm drinking soda.  Now I need to get some paper towels.

I can put myself in that situation and imagine the fear of being outnumbered by other guys if you are all alone as a man. I guess all one can do is avoid certain areas to lessen the chances of getting jumped.

Why the hell is it always the victim's fault with you?  Some MOST people can't just decide to up and move whenever the hell they want to, often because of job requirements or trivial stuff like HAVING A ROOF OVER THEIR HEADS. 

[High Max]

I didn't say it was the victim's fault and I know you can't just get up and move away. I know people can be stuck in places. I'm talking more about avoiding dangerous areas and clubs (specific areas) or find an alternate route. If you think someone is trying to blockade your path, I would stay behind and wait for them to leave or take another route.

I've felt like I was in that situation before recently when riding my bike. Someone passed me and yelled like a crazy man, a passenger, I think (like how those idiots yell like crazy party animals out of their window at bicyclists when they pass them). Then he turned at the intersection and I turned since I was going that way, and after going down the road, I noticed this vehicle a few hundred yards ahead of me on the side of the road pulled over, and I worried they were waiting for me. So I pulled into a driveway with my bike and waited for them to leave. Instead of risking having to fight them or them running me down with their vehicle, I completely avoided the possibility of having to with cunning, attention to detail, and my lack of trust in general.

I'm the kind of person who believes that there is something I can do to prevent certain things. It least it is some optimism for a pessimistic person such as myself. I try to be a realist and not usually an optimist because a realist or pessimist isn't blinded by trust and is more prepared for disappointments or bad things, but I feel there is always at least some things a person can do to prevent certain things and I am optimistic when it comes to confidence usually.

[mxlm]

That's an old comeback on HLP, but you can think whatever you want. All that matters here, I suppose, is I know who I am. Oh, and it was so funny that I forgot to smile

A: AIUI a comeback is when one returns an insult in kind. You didn't insult me, I was simply laughing at an utterly absurd assertion you'd made regarding your political beliefs. So I'm not really sure what you're talking about.
B: I was laughing at you. It's not expected that someone who's being laughed at break out in a great big smile. Not by me, anyway. So I'm not really sure what you're talking about. Unless you think my observation on crazy righties lacking self-awareness was intended as a joke?

Oh, I should note that when I wrote that 'I'm not being insulting,' I meant it, but I have since decided that you, or more precisely your beliefs, deserve only scorn and ridicule.

[High Max]

Ok, it's an old type of comment on HLP for those who can't think in the middle and think that people have to be either this or that (black and white thinking), whatever. I really don't care what you think of me. You can't read minds and I don't know you. So I am fine with whatever things you want to assume about me. By the way, when you say laughing at me, that sounds so high school. I don't laugh at anyone here. Nice to know you are so easily entertained.

[Scotty]

Ok, it's an old type of comment on HLP for those who can't think in the middle and think that people have to be either this or that (black and white thinking), whatever. I really don't care what you think of me. You can't read minds and I don't know you. So I am fine with whatever things you want to assume about me.

WARNING!  Reality Bending Zone detected!

The middle is not where you think it is.  Most of the people on HLP are liberal or moderate.  They ARE the middle.  You are so far to the right that the middle seems left to you.

[High Max]

Ok, let's say from 1 to 5 (1 being very conservative and 5 being extremely liberal) I am a 3 in most ways and most people here seem to be a 4, and even 5 in most ways. Some of my views can be considered a 2 (some sexual morals because affection should be seen as special) and some a 4 (hate war + I like foreingers and I'm not racist). But even if my views aren't agreed upon by many here, then who cares? Too bad for you. I don't want to be a robot and I am my own person. But many here seem to be the same in their points of views, like they are robots.

I wouldn't even use the term American liberal or conservative since I go by universal terms and I'm not patriotic.

If you think I'm that far to the right, then maybe you should see some religious fanatics or old people and even younger ones who are damn racist, against interracial marriage, against immigrants, believe in the barbaric electrical chair, and nuclear bombs, and all that savage stuff, and they don't even allow their wife to leave the house and the woman having arranged marriages in some places and not even being allowed to choose who she wants to marry, and sometimes not being able to show her face, and then you can see I'm a moderate universally because I'm against all that. Stop thinking you know me.

Many here also think they are always right, like Bat, for example, accepting only science as reliable data and excluding experience and common sense data and saying it is misleading, and calling so-called scientific studies as all fact with no doubt, when some things could either be forged or misinterpreted as evidence; same with statistics as discussed earlier in this thread. Saying we know this and that when in fact, scientists say "we don't know" and "we could be wrong" and many even think they have proven stuff beyond the physical. Who knows?

Truth is, they don't know for sure and no source is entirely accurate, but Bat seems to have absolute faith in what they claim as evidence (or maybe it is just what Bat claims as evidence and not them) when it could be misleading since it is human nature to misunderstand or lie. Perhaps his faith has been misplaced without taking into account that it could be misinterpreted and forged to save the scientists' careers and reputations, or even misinterpreted as evidence to Bat and refusal to believe that it might not be evidence.

Same with religious people who are blind by whatever a book says. They think they are always right and anyone who disagrees is wrong. This gets old.

Maybe both sides are wrong. Even science always changes to fix its errors. There is no "we know for sure". It is "no one knows for sure". Perhaps the agnostic point of view is the wise point of view and to admit that me and you and everyone doesn't know for sure about so many things.

And here's a wake up call to anyone believing that true equality can be obtained: To believe so is living a pipe dream because as long as there are differences, there will always be conflict and hate. And if everyone was the same, then people would whine about that. Either ways, it's a pipe dream.

[Nuclear1]

It's also different extents of liberalism.  Your typical American liberal is not the same as a typical European liberal.

[Goober5000]

We have empirical evidence that simple speech can involuntarily lower math exam scores in women.

We do?  Citation, please.  Bear in mind that positive or negative feedback can affect behavior to a certain extent in both men and women; that's why we encourage kids.  I wouldn't be surprised to see evidence that encouragement or discouragement affects behavior.  I would be surprised to see evidence that the effect is greatly amplified in women.

The mechanism of stereotype threat means that a misogynistic individual can actually force women to conform to stereotypes simply by subconsciously activating those stereotypes.

If this is true, it means that women are a lot more psychologically fragile than I have historically given them credit for.  Does a simple verbal taunt affect their constitution to that degree?   Are iamzack and Rian etc. psychologically at risk by reading High Max's posts in thread?

Maybe you should clarify what you mean here.  Because that statement certainly sounds like it could be used to prove High Max's case.

[General Battuta]

We have empirical evidence that simple speech can involuntarily lower math exam scores in women.

We do?  Citation, please.  Bear in mind that positive or negative feedback can affect behavior to a certain extent in both men and women; that's why we encourage kids.  I wouldn't be surprised to see evidence that encouragement or discouragement affects behavior.  I would be surprised to see evidence that the effect is greatly amplified in women.

Banaji et al. have a substantial body of work on the topic. For a good overview I suggest this Wikipedia page. This page, however, is hardly up to date; it fails to note how extremely subtle the triggering stimuli may be, and the fact that they can be presented as subconscious primes (a female face blinked for 4 milliseconds, below the threshold of conscious detection, for instance.)

I admit to being mildly peeved that you think this has something to do with positive or negative encouragement. Research psychology is hard science. There is very good, very well-controlled research happening here, and it is well beyond the level of simple encouragement. Encouragement is a System 1 conscious process; the process we look at here is not resident in consciousness.

This is the topic I perform research on.

The mechanism of stereotype threat means that a misogynistic individual can actually force women to conform to stereotypes simply by subconsciously activating those stereotypes.

If this is true, it means that women are a lot more psychologically fragile than I have historically given them credit for.  Does a simple verbal taunt affect their constitution to that degree?  Are iamzack and Rian etc. psychologically at risk by reading High Max's posts in thread?

Maybe you should clarify what you mean here.  Because that statement certainly sounds like it could be used to prove High Max's case.

It has nothing to do with being a woman. Indeed, it has nothing to do with any conscious factors, including emotional stability. The effect is entirely resident in System II automatic processes which occur far outside of the spotlight of awareness and without significant detection or interference by System I consciousness.

The effect can be induced in white men, black men, white women, black women, Asian men, Asian women - anyone. All that's required is a relevant stereotype. (The issue is, of course, that there are far more harmful stereotypes about women vis a vis men...though it is not purely in the man's favor.)

Ask white men to identify their race before playing basketball? They perform poorly compared to a control group. White men can't jump.

Ask Asian women to identify their race before a math exam? They do well at math. Asians are good at math.

Ask Asian women to identify their gender before a math exam? They do poorly. Women are poor at math.

Ask Black individuals to identify their race before taking a simple GRE test? They get about half as many questions right as a control group. Black people are stupid.

These are all controlled experiments, mind. The only difference between the experimental group and the control group is that the experimental group ticked a little box or read a little essay or heard an off-hand remark.

The stereotype activation is unconscious; it is not anything they are aware of. Staggeringly, I can have you read an article about old people, and when you stand up and walk away, you will walk more slowly than a control group. It has nothing to do with encouragement or discouragement. Simply ticking a box to identify race or sex will do it. Hell, reading an article will do it.

Isn't that nuts?

You can force people to act in accordance with stereotypes. Even if they don't want to. Even if they dislike the stereotype with all their hearts. A woman could rant at you about how men are only capable of feeling anger, and, believe it or not, you would probably be primed to exhibit greater anger. It's not something that only works on women, it works on everybody. But the problem is that the stereotypes associated with women are more broadly negative (and, yeah, I'll cite that too if I can find the papers.)

EDIT: And here's an example of the kind of conundrum women have to face all the time:

"Thus the predicament of 'stereotype vulnerability': The group members then know that anything about them or anything they do that fits the stereotype can be taken as confirming it as self-characteristic, in the eyes of others, and perhaps even in their own eyes. This vulnerability amounts to a jeopardy of double devaluation: once for whatever bad thing the stereotype-fitting behavior or feature would say about anyone, and again for its confirmation of the bad things alleged in the stereotype."

A woman going into a math exam not only has to deal (subconsciously!) with the knowledge that 'women are bad at math', but also (consciously or not) with the knowledge that if she does poorly at math, it will confirm opinions that women are bad at math! Talk about double jeopardy.

And this is why it's so important that women be allowed to speak up - because it would be tremendously easy to say 'women are *****es, they complain.' It's already part of the female stereotype. It's a powerful and effective way to dismiss the voices of women.

tl;dr version: the cognitive loophole that creates this vulnerability is present in everyone, not just in women. But it harms women and racial minorities far more often because they have so many more negative stereotypes associated with them.

A great example: you can run an experiment where you have a subject perform a really boring number-identification task for two hours. Between each set of numbers, a face is flashed for 3 or 4 milliseconds, faster than the conscious mind can adapt. The face is either Black or White. The subject is totally unaware of these subliminal flashes.

After two hours, the computer crashes, and an experimenter tells the subject that they will have to do the study over again. The participant's reaction is videotaped, and the amount of aggression and anger coded by a blind panel.

Subjects who saw Black faces exhibit far more aggression than those who were primed with White faces. They have no idea why. They have no idea they were seeing faces. At no point did this even enter their awareness.

This stuff is both fascinating and kind of terrifying. And, ironically, people are far less receptive to it than the idea that everyone carries their own personal clock and that time is not universal (see relativity.) Nobody likes to hear that their own brain has bugs in need of patching.

[The E]

*snip*

Many here also think they are always right, like Bat, for example, accepting only science as reliable data and excluding experience and common sense data and saying it is misleading, and calling so-called scientific studies as all fact with no doubt, when some things could either be forged or misinterpreted as evidence; same with statistics as discussed earlier in this thread. Saying we know this and that when in fact, scientists say "we don't know" and "we could be wrong" and many even think they have proven stuff beyond the physical. Who knows?

*snippety snip*

You really do not understand how science works, do you?

"Experience" and "Common Sense" may be starting points for scientific inquiry, but they can't be its endpoint. The scientific method works like this:
1. You make an observation (Like, for example,Things that fall seem to accelerate while falling)
2. You make a hypothesis based on 1) (For example: The rate of acceleration is related to the mass of the falling object)
3. Using that Hypothesis, you design an experiment to prove or disprove the hypothesis. (Example: You let two objects of the same shape, but with different weights, fall down in parallel, measuring the time it takes for them to fall a given distance)
4. Using data from the experiment, you can now either formulate a theory (if the experiment confirms your hypothesis), or go back to step 2 if it doesn't.

Using this methodology, we arrive at a theory. This theory may then be used as the basis for further experimentation, and can be assumed to be true for purposes of formulating other hypothesises (sp?).
Now, the tricky part about science is that any theory may (and indeed must) be challenged, using the methodology described above. If you make an observation that cannot be explained using the accepted theory, it is YOUR duty to go through the steps to see what is going on.

Now we come to "Common Sense" and "Experience". Both of these are highly subjective, and as such, subject to bias (especially the observational and confirmation variants). The scientific method is designed to eliminate these factors to arrive at conclusions that are as close to being descriptive of objective reality as possible.
But as I said, they form the starting point of any inquiry. The scientific method, however, forces you to be able to cast aside those starting points if they cannot be confirmed through experimentation.

Thus we come to the final point. You say: "Saying we know this and that when in fact, scientists say "we don't know" and "we could be wrong" and many even think they have proven stuff beyond the physical. Who knows?"
This is a common failure mode when scientists communicate with others.
As Scientists, we are trained to avoid absolute statements like "This is so", and instead say "We think it is so, based on our experimentation". This may lead people like you, who are not trained to think scientifically, to believe that there is more uncertainty than there really is.

Then there's your statement about the unreliability of data. Again, if you believe it is so, you are free to examine the experimental data, do the math yourself, and see if it works out. You are also free to conduct your own studies on the subject. True Science is always open-source, as in, all data and all results are open for anyone to see, and for everyone to examine for the purposes of proving or disproving a given statement.

[castor]

If this is true, it means that women are a lot more psychologically fragile than I have historically given them credit for.  Does a simple verbal taunt affect their constitution to that degree?  Are iamzack and Rian etc. psychologically at risk by reading High Max's posts in thread?

By Max's posts? No. But if done habitually in the society you're part of, certainly. And not just women, but anyone subjected to such treatment (maybe counting out small minority groups where extreme training of mind is a practice, and people with certain mental conditions).

"Verbal taunts" are as dangerous as physical attacks, because they are direct attempts to reprogram the computers in our heads, those that tell us what world, and us, is all about. That is where we have the most to lose.

[MP-Ryan]

*snip*

I was a participant in one of those study designs as an undergrad, and I was all kinds of amazed at the results after the debrief.

[lostllama]

*snip*

I was a participant in one of those study designs as an undergrad, and I was all kinds of amazed at the results after the debrief.

Indeed. The findings from those triggered stereotype studies are quite interesting too, yet also disturbing.

[High Max]

Maybe you should clarify what you mean here.  Because that statement certainly sounds like it could be used to prove High Max's case.

I think everyone misunderstood me. I was not saying that women in general were emotionally unstable, I was saying that in usa and even in some other western countries, the average woman is, but I think that is a cultural thing. That applies to western men too. White men and white women are generally seen as those who have more power over non-white women (Asian, for example) and blacks, but the Asians I have talked to, my past girlfriend, and even the ones who reside here, seem to have more emotional control and strength than white men and white women and blacks living here, and I know Asians on average stay calm, and thus maintain peace.

White men and white women receive the least discrimination but yet they seem one of the least stable, in a lot of cases with few groups being the exception. Though people of other races here seem so to a certain extent. So perhaps emotional instability is not a result of discrimination, but the culture, too much power and obsession with the self. It cannot make one happy in the long run. Look at Hitler. He was not happy but he was white, powerful, but emotionally unstable.

I think the reason for emotional problems being so common here is a result of this culture, and perhaps in the other culture, they realize true happiness comes from not being so possessive and obsessed with money and the self, but instead, ture lasting happiness being obtained by putting love ones, health, and morals first, as well as being much more family oriented, while here, it is on average quite the opposite and people think that having all these things and money makes them happy forever, when it evidentally does the opposite.

[iamzack]

Have you actually been outside of the US, High Max?

[High Max]

No but I have experience with Asians who are native to their countries and came here temporarily, had a VN friend here who married a VN/American here, watch the travel channel, been intimate with and Asian (5 month relationship) and I know what she told me, did a lot of reading, and talk to a lot on IM (a few Vietnamese online) and ran into some here and conversed with them and them agreeing with me and saying that here people have trouble controlling their emotions, and I compare that with my experience of people who lived here all their lives, even some family members I have who seem unstable. I also ask many questions with Asians and have first hand experience with them. I'm hoping someday I can go to VN to visit. I've had a passport sitting here in my desk for a while. Hopefully it is possible to get a visa without going to an embassy. I think you can do that online these days and I researched that as well.

Note that I use the word "average" because I know that everywhere people can be unstable.


On a side note, I've talked to Italians (Mobius is on my IM list along with 2 other Italians), a Canadian (Noise), some Latinos, a British person, ect, online and have experience with Latinos in person (met a lot of foriengers at college and talked with them helping them learn better English, but many speak it good enough and very good), even had an intimate relationship with a Colombian before.