Are Laurence Summers' postulated theories possible? Yes. There is evidence to support them.

Yet notice that the Katherine Hopkins et al managed to back Summers down with addressing his ideas. Hopkins et al merely said they were offended, and speculated on social consequences. That was enough.

If Hopkins can win arguements sans evidence but only with hysteria, then who needs science? This a said testimony to intellectual defeating powers of political correctness.

Note that Hopkins make impossible to even consider the possibility that men and women do not have proportional abilities to do high level math and engineers. Sad.

David

I think it is about time that people stop equating equality with equal in every way. Men and women are different, and I have no problems with the idea that overall men tend to be more math and sciency, while women tend to be more verbal-that doesn't mean that women can't enjoy math or science or go into engineering or men can't major in literature, but that overal men tend to trend one way and women the other.

That doesn't mean it is sexist, and it doesn't mean that everything is biased. I actually think the more we learn about humans, the more almost everything seems to be some combination of nature and nurture, and I see no reason why math and verbal skills won't/don't fall into the same area.

Sorry, but reading the reaction by Dr. Nancy Hopkins, I can't help but mentally translate to "Oh my, I've gotten a case of the vapors!"

The problem is obvious:

Penis envy.

There are sex-based differences throughout the body but not in the brain? Not likely. And does anyone seriously deny that male toddlers bang blocks and stare at tractors, while female toddlers do other things?

Xoxotl, we may also describe Hopkins's reaction as "hysterical," but doing so may bring violence down upon our persons.

Jim your point about the differences in how kids play is a good one.

My daughters and my nephew (all around 3ish at the time) were playing with barbies together. My daughters were brushing their barbie's hair, and dressing them up, while my nephew's barbie was flying around the room and exploding.

Same toy, two very different ways of playing, and I am pretty certain my sis and brother in law weren't teaching him that.

Our son, now 40, was three or four when we visited friends whose two little girls were playing with their Barbies. He hadn't seen one before, but he immediately knew what to do, he picked it up, arranged the limbs to resemble a gun and started "machine gunning" the room. Our friends, parents of daughters only, were appalled.

Our kids were not permitted to watch television, so I have no idea where he got that idea. We are not gun nuts, have never owned or even seen a real gun, but as kids our boys played cowboys and G.I. Joe, ran around in summer blasting each other and their friends with power soaker water guns. Our daughter disdained the crudeness of her younger brothers, but did deign to join the water pistol fun around the pool once in a while.

Our kids, two boys and a girl, were not acculturated to choose masculine or feminine toys, college courses or career choices, nor did we denigrate our daughter's choices if they weren't the so-called better (read masculine) choices. Girls are being told in not so subtle ways that math and science are the higher calling and if they don't have any inclination or interest in these disciplines, they are inferior.

Whether or not women and men are genetically engineered in certain ways isn't the point. The point is to stop making girls feel bad if they don't want to build bridges or find an alternate energy source and to stop making boys feel bad if they have no interest in sports and other "manly" endeavors like blowing up the chemistry lab.

The "non-judgmental" left, however, isn't satisfied with just making everybody dissatisfied with their bodies, their minds and their choices, because they also frown on the loner nerd, those enigmatic totally focused creatures, mostly boys, who aren't social adept, who don't know what day of the week it is, who spend all their time deep in the bowels of their computers and who don't know or care what's going on outside their own world.

In fact. liberals will not be satisfied until all individuality is erased and we are all just cogs in the wheel of world socialism.

We'll all be a lot better off when the president of a major university concerns himself with running the institution and when biology professors of whichever gender (gender only applies to grammar, but I'll leave that argument for another day) concern themselves with their microbes and microscopes.

The great advantage women have in an engineering or science major in college is that they have their choice of dozens of men who have no idea how to pleasure them.

IMO, Gene Expression has the most interesting collection of commentary on the Summers kerfuffle.

Bill, did you mean to link to this Michelle Malkin post?

LINK

You linked to a trackback url.

Monsieurs et Madames,

There are, at the extremes of human variability, those who are termed idiot savantes. They are, historically, exclusively male.

There are, at the extremes of certain intellectual pursuits, among which are mathematics, physics, chess, go, cybernetics... those who we recognized as geniouses. They are, historically, exclusively male.

Those who do not know when it is raining are usually all wet.

Regards,
Roy

>>>"She walked out in what she described as a physical sense of disgust."

Thus proving Mr. Summer's point that perhaps men and women ARE different after all?

Yes, one would think the hallmark of any good researcher would be the ability to examine the facts, research and underlying premises of a hypotheses without losing one's lunch or collapsing. Madam Curie, for example, was nauseous for simply years on end, but later discovered this was due to low-level radiation poisoning...had Ms. Curie's nausea prevented her from further research we may never have had some critical empirical data on the nature of radioactivity.

Just one more academic comment that encourages revisiting the need for women's colleges. An environment where women can successfully learn, progress and gain confidence in any field of study they choose. A supportive atmosphere where ridicule and negative comparisons are absent and where women's ways of knowing are treated with respect.

I'm tired of listening to this hypocritical whining about Summners comments. Yes we all are different and not everyone can achieve the same level of excellence in a given field.
That is not what distresses me about this discussion.It is the purposely hypocritical slander of his detractors. They seem ignorant or at least blind to the comments of a former alumnus of Harvard. Which none of them wish to call to account and is by any standard more sexist. These are the words of John F. Kennedy. "You can led a whore to Vasser, but you can't make her think". Considering the source it's easy to see why Summers defamers chose to over look this notorious remark.
Prehaps those so outraged over Summers remarks could better direct their energies in a witch hunt directed at Kennedy's memory.
Lets keep things in prospective.
BPR