As a general rule,
people are uncomfortable with differences; they are uncomfortable dealing with them and uncomfortable discussing them. Some people will even deny that differences exist, between races or genders or household cleansers, for example, because if you allow for the possibility of a difference, then you allow for the possibility of a comparison and inevitably someone will conclude that one thing is smarter, stronger, more durable, more stable, more exciting, more moral or more delicious than another. Being thoroughly committed to the concept of genetic determinism (perhaps, as I am sometimes accused, to the point of irrationality), I believe there are real, empirically demonstrable differences between men and women, both physiologically and behaviorally. No one would dispute that men are, on average, discernibly taller and heavier than women, but if you suggest that there are differences in the genders in the manner in which information is processed or in emotional predilections, you may be confronted with a howl of dismay. Unfortunately, the howl of dismay has over the years virtually become my mating call, so I am not particularly adverse to it; nonetheless, it is necessary for an objective person to filter through their own prejudices to arrive at a fair estimation of the value of someone elses ideas.
My conclusion is that there is some common knowledge here masquerading as dirty little secrets. First, people like Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean probably really dont get a fair shake when it comes to intellectual credibility simply because they are women.
Americans, including most American women, dont take women as seriously as men as political or social leaders because those are roles which are seen as requiring typically masculine virtues such as decisiveness, emotional detachment, intellectual objectivity and the ability to be a real bastard. When you think about the fact that hotbeds of Islamic paternalism like Pakistan and Bangladesh have elected female heads of government, but in 2008 in America more Democrats (including me) chose the black guy with little experience and no record to speak of over the Lady of Steel, something notable is occurring. Women wont even consistently vote for women, which confuses me greatly, and industry, government, academics, athletics and the arts remain irrefutably to some extent male-dominated enterprises.
Second, if you are a physically attractive woman, you are going to get even less respect. This contention is a little more subjective, perhaps, and I dont have any sociological research to reference, but I do have a theory, and an opinion; or maybe a theory about an opinion about a theory. The fact is (according to me) that there is a part of the male brain that continually evaluates all females encountered for their potential as a mate. This mental undressing, far from being some perverted deviance, is an effort of the brain to determine the extent to which genes are properly expressed as an index of their utility in creating healthy, survivable progeny, should the opportunity arise. I will not go so far as to say this is a completely conscious process in all men, or that women dont have their own evaluation sub-routine, but there is virtually no man who hasnt at some point had his head snatched around by that unseen force to rotate in the direction of a female entering his visual field. This is more often the case when the brain, through analysis of peripheral visual data, has already made an unconscious preliminary determination that there are potentially really good genes present. Despite the scorn heaped upon males by women for this failure, it is truly an autonomic nervous response which requires great discipline to control. The point is, if you are female and hot, most men are too busy watching your pretty lips moving and visualizing different types of underwear to pay any attention to what you are saying. This problem is compounded by the tendency of many attractive women to exploit this
erotic hypnosis when dealing with male counterparts in social and business situations. Conversely, many women dont support attractive women in serious undertakings because they are envious and want to find something wrong with them. Their thinking is something along the lines of, sure, shes hot, but she dresses like a skank and she dont know shit about world oil markets. For those of us of average appearance and average accomplishment, it is really discouraging to see beautiful people running everything, so, lets be real; if Margret Thatcher looked like Sophia Loren, do you think she would ever have been the Prime Minister? But perhaps more interestingly, would she ever have aspired to be?
And finally, if you are a woman and have been discovered at some video beaver stroking, you are pretty much toast form a credibility perspective, despite the fact that you are just the kind of woman that men adore and most women would really envy your liberation and freedom of self-expression and might even want to do the same type of thing if they werent afraid of exactly the kind of embarrassment Carrie Prejean is experiencing right now. Throw in a boob-job and you are automatically assumed to be a promiscuous mental light-weight, which is still, in 2009, perhaps the most crushing indictment of a womans character possible. Just for the record, I do not believe gender-based rules of sexual conduct any longer have merit from a survival perspective and are, therefore, a useless vestige of more primitive times, but the world is not completely up to speed with me on that one.
So here I am; one the one hand, I truly believe that people like Sarah Palin and Carrie Prejean are inane aggregations of whiny vanity, self-serving denial, ignorance, hypocrisy, and irrationality; pretty much everything wrong with humanity, but I have to question whether I have dismissed them without adequate reflection because of genetic and cultural predispositions that have nothing to do with rationality and objectivity. A suicidally depressed Virginia Woolf wrote that a woman must have money and a room of her own if she is to write fiction. The meaning of these words can be expanded to all pursuits; women generally have to be in a situation where their ability to seek personal or professional fulfillment doesnt depend on the prerequisite of being taken seriously; women often have to prove the competence that in men is mostly taken for granted. This, no doubt, sucks; so, I probably should read Sarah Palins book, if only as an act of atonement, but since she didnt actually write it, Ill give myself a pass, but I will watch Carrie Prejeans home videos when they make the Internet; Im only human, after all.
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