Almost Heretical: Women in the Church and Gender Roles

505 thoughts on “Almost Heretical: Women in the Church and Gender Roles”

1. You should have your wife read your post 🙂

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2. “In some American schools, school boards fail to back up a teacher if they decided that kids need to follow the rules in a student handbook.”

   I’ve read a bunch of student handbooks in my district. I’d say the students have a few more rights than inmates, but that’s about it.

   We had to go to the principal because one class where there was a non-trivial cleanup process, the teacher was not allowing the students to clean up before the bell rang and the next class the teacher disallowed some of the material they needed in the class before. Student handbook says 3 tardies = detention, and student handbook says students must obey teachers. Student handbook does not say that teachers must make requests that obey the laws of physics.

   If I had to go to the school board for that one, I would hope they would take a stand for the laws of physics rather than backing the teachers when the students failed to follow the student handbook.

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3. Mark,

   There are some that are saying teachers are becoming teachers, because they are culturally programmed to do it or it is expected.

   I disagree with that assertion in that most teachers are freely becoming teachers without feeling culturally pressured. Most choose the classes they want to teach, though I’m sure there are a few exceptions, especially newer teachers.

   It is somewhat difficult to maintain a conversation in this format, without at times being misunderstood.

   I see women stepping up and filling 97.4% of the kindergarten positions and ask myself why? On this thread I dare not consider that maybe it is a better fit for women than for men and to even suggest, that I prefer a woman to be the one teaching my 5 year old grand daughter for various reasons, is offensive,

   It doesn’t bother me if someone like you disagrees, but having a discussion like this where I’ve been given the option of either being dense or obtuse, is nonsense.

   My wife and I have been discussing this, read your comment and now mine and I asked her which she prefers teaching our grand daughter and she said a woman, then she goes “but hey, that’s me”. She is her own person, independent minded and nobody is going to twist her arm.

   As for handbooks in a school. it isn’t that harsh. Show up on time, No bullying, Don’t misbehave or disrupt the class while the teach

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4. Mark,, continue,

   Don’t disrupt the class while the teacher is teaching, No cheating. Use curse words in the class room is tolerated more than when I grew up, but then it never happened.

   You can pretty much do all things on the list I gave you in Prison and get away with it with minimal consequences, except I’m sure if one gets caught (which is rare) bullying in jail they would be put into the “hole”.

   I think the idea of a handbook, is to respect basic rules so one doesn’t end up in prison.

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5. D – “I disagree with that assertion in that most teachers are freely becoming teachers without feeling culturally pressured.”

   But you say that simultaneously with saying that you like female teachers for young children. And that women can only teach in areas where there isn’t academic rigor. Yet, your only defense against the power of your prejudice is that the women you know would never bow to peer pressure. That is a spectacularly weak argument.

   You should read about the Milgram experiment, where normal, everyday people – those who would never bow to peer pressure, did just that. They administered what they believed to be a lethal dose of electricity to a game show contestant because of peer pressure and because “that’s what the rules said and you have to do it”. So, saying that having an entire society of people who think that their kindergarteners ought to be taught by women, and that 97% of kindergarten teachers are women, but that there is no causation between the two seems pretty willfully blind.

   Okay, so school handbooks are more restrictive than jail, but have you read it from the sense of… what happens if teachers aren’t kind and want to cause problems for my child? When I read it from that perspective, there are holes a mile wide, and so far, that’s how my child has had trouble in school – teachers that refuse to use common sense, and teachers that flaunt the homework restrictions placed on them by the school board.

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6. He said to my Mom, “I was tired of people mocking me for being a male hair-dresser. Many people I meet, including my family, think that this is a “woman’s” profession, and some suggested I must be gay.

   Daisy, my hair dresser is gay! But yes, these pressures work both ways in society. Thankfully, they are lessening a bit.

   And, to call you out for your complete sexism here. Women aren’t as likely to teach in Japan because…. their expectations on teachers are HIGHER???

   Nice catch, Mark.

   BTW, in reference to rules for kids, many of them don’t even have time to eat a proper lunch. Teachers can basically be dictators if no one stops them – there was a ‘contract’ the teacher made her kids sign going around last week severely limiting bathroom/nurse/etc trips and clearly showing glee at lording it over the kids. A bunch of people chimed in with stories of times they weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom or nurses office as children with predictable results.

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7. where I’ve been given the option of either being dense or obtuse

   I can’t believe this is still going on, but I want to say that every time you mention this you demonstrate that you have been fundamentally misunderstanding what I said. Which is…exactly what I meant by you being obtuse. Sigh.

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8. @Lea!

   You are a gem, Lea…..you made my whole week last week with your touching comment. Thank-you…..I love you here as you are such an encourager. LORD knows, we need more folks like you in this world. Keep adding grit to the plate here, as it edifies my faith so much! God Bless you Lea!

   Another side note….regarding teachers…..was blessed with having an amazing married couple in school, both the wife and husband were strong Christians and I loved them both, felt comfortable with the two of them teaching their prospective subjects, regarding them as an incredible blessing to my life. Many years out of college, married with children, and living me daily life on the farm, I felt compelled to send them a letter telling them what a positive, good and godly influence they were on all of us as students, wishing them all of God’s goodness in their lives.

   The gifts of the Holy Spirit, move both genders into doing His will in their lives. As the c’hurch focuses on gender roles, they are in fact, missing out on spreading the Gospel of Jesus Christ which sets people free from this kind of bondage!

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9. Many years out of college, married with children, and living me daily life on the farm, I felt compelled to send them a letter telling them what a positive, good and godly influence they were on all of us as students, wishing them all of God’s goodness in their lives

   I’m sure they were both absolutely thrilled to get that letter, too! What a lovely thing.

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10. Lea, “A bunch of people chimed in with stories of times they weren’t allowed to go to the bathroom or nurses office as children with predictable results.”

    Our kids’ doctor can’t believe that he has to sign a form that gives his patients permission to use the bathroom whenever they need to. Medically, having to hold anything in is not good. Most of our kids’ teachers have been great, but we have definitely had our issues with “demanding” teachers.

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11. Mark,

    Mark, I’m stating what is actually happening in a free country. It is a reality that 97.6% of women teaching the 5 year olds.

    So why is it OK that the majority of the 5 year olds are being taught by women who choose to teach kindergarten and the majority of men choosing not to? Then in the same breath you say that it is wrong for my wife and I, to prefer a woman teaching our 5 year old grand daughter, over a man?

    I lived in California for about 12 years and I have 3 male and female family members that are teachers. California Teacher unions have a lot of power and sexism isn’t tolerated, and yet the same thing is happening there as well, majority of teachers guiding 5 year olds are women.

    Male and Female teachers have options. They decide if they want to teach or not and what classes suits them best. The argument that women are culturally pressured to teach kindergarten is ludicrous. My wife and I are friends with a lot of teachers in the public school system and not a single woman we know, has been culturally pressured to teach.

    When my wife was a teenager, she admittedly grew up in a dysfunctional family (so did I) The youth group she was involved in, had both a man and a woman leading the teens. Her refuge was the woman as she confided with everything happening in her life. The were things my wife shared with her, she would never share with a man.

    My wife’s preference was seeking guidance from a woman, not a man. The woman leading the teens was more focused on the teen girls and the man was more focused on the teen boys,, it was a choice or a preference but also there was no cultural pressure on either the man or the woman to serve in the manner they were serving.

    Mark, I can tell you aren’t a fan of Student Handbooks, but most handbooks are screened by teachers and school boards and public scrutiny and usually they are on the same page, especially in California, the biggest liberal state in the U.S. Most of the rules in the handbook are there to promote good citizenship and to protect the kids. (and teachers)

    Probably the most restrictive rules are dress codes, where they don’t want students to where overly sexually revealing clothes and don’t want kids to look like a gangster, but even in California they don’t always enforce those rules, Rules that aren’t enforced, shouldn’t be in a handbook.

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12. D – “I think the idea of a handbook, is to respect basic rules so one doesn’t end up in prison.”

    Again, very naive. Try reading up on court cases where, for example, police officers or social workers were sued. A woman had a restraining order, for her and her children, against her husband. Her husband picked up the kids after school and then called her to say that he had them. She called the police. The police said, “we are not required to enforce a restraining order unless a judge contacts us”. By the time the woman went through the proper channels, the children were dead. The court ruled that the woman, although she had a court-ordered restraining order, had no “right” to police protection and enforcement of that restraining order.

    The student handbook is like the police department writing a rulebook for how citizens should behave. The only “rights” students are given are the rights that probably some state law mandated had to be written in the student handbook (e.g. Miranda rights). And, some loss of rights is explicit. For example, simply parking at the high school in the student parking lot is deemed agreement to search of the car and seizure of any contraband by school officials. Students do not have a right to refuse searches of their bags or lockers, even without “reasonable suspicion”.

    So, what rights do my kids or I have against an authoritarian school official who wants to domineer students and invade their privacy? Absolutely none!

    For some reason, as we’ve talked about in other threads that all authority figures are rational, reasonable, safe, protective, honest, loving, etc., refuse to provide any real accountability for them, and then when they do really really bad things, after we deny, deny, deny, we assume it’s just a one-off occurrence and go back to being sheeple.

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13. The argument that women are culturally pressured to teach kindergarten is ludicrous.

    How do you know that, D?

    My wife and I are friends with a lot of teachers in the public school system and not a single woman we know, has been culturally pressured to teach.

    a) How do you know for certain that they weren’t? Social and cultural pressures can be subtler than you realize.

    b) Even if your female teacher friends didn’t feel pressured into nurturing roles, how do you know that no one is? Others here have offered differing perspectives and experiences. Are you claiming that they’re all liars?

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14. D – “So why is it OK that the majority of the 5 year olds are being taught by women who choose to teach kindergarten and the majority of men choosing not to? Then in the same breath you say that it is wrong for my wife and I, to prefer a woman teaching our 5 year old grand daughter, over a man?”

    Stop moving the goalposts. You are saying that there is no impact on women of societal peer pressure for women to be teachers, and that kindergarten teachers are 97% female just because women have some innate inclination to teach.

    I’m not saying it’s wrong to have preferences. But, those preferences ought to stay private.

    So, let’s say there just happens to be a high-school male reading this post who was interested in teaching kindergarten. He sees that people “prefer” female kindergarten teachers, and he sees that 97% of kindergarten teachers are female, and your conclusion that somehow, genetically, women are going to be better kindergarten teachers. Are you saying that this person isn’t going to feel discouraged from being a kindergarten teacher?

    So, by publicly proclaiming your preferences and your gender biases, you are creating a social pressure. For women, you’re saying teaching kindergarten is great!! For men, you’re saying teaching kindergarten is a bad idea.

    Then you’re trying to act as if the words you say have ZERO impact on people’s career choices.

    Did you arrive at your career choice in a vacuum? No one ever said, you’re good at X, you ought to think about doing Y? When people did say that, didn’t you take that seriously?

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15. No Mark, honoring a handbook is not naive. I have not referred to your thinking as naive or your disliking handbooks as loose thinking.

    We can disagree, but to refer one another as naive, when I haven’t walked in your shoes nor you have walked in mine would be unfair. My 5th grade year in Catholic School I didn’t learn. the noise and disruptive behavior and lack of respect made me wish I was in a public school, where I know that handbook rules would’ve been enforced.

    You idea of structure might be different than mine. I believe that most people who obey rules stay out of jail and it starts early in life.

    Mark, America and Politically Correct Public School Unions and it’s members doesn’t seemed alarmed or concerned that an over-whelming amount of teachers that are guiding our 5 year olds, are women.
    I make note of thinking that I’m ok with it or that my wife and I prefer a woman over a man teaching our 5 year old granddaughter, it getting a lot of negative push back.

    Interestingly, I’m not calling you naive for being gender neutral on your preferences or no preferences at all, who you want to teach your granddaughter.

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16. Mark,

    I’m not seeing woman being pushed into becoming teachers accept maybe in the 1880’s Little House on the Prairie

    I’m sure the ones that decide to teach find it easier to have kids, because they get more personal, sick leave, breaks their students get, which means they are home with their kids (including summers) more than they would be working a regular job. The amount of time off with pay/benefits and retirement makes teaching attractive.

    My aunt is enjoying a rather cozy retirement from teaching in Folsom and travels the world once a year. She felt no cultural pressure to teach.

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17. FYI, this is from Norway which has a long tradition of trying to be gender inclusive:

    There is a long tradition in the public discourse of childcare that being a woman is a natural and sufficient qualification for caring for children (Cameron et al., 1999), while men are represented in smaller numbers and seen as ‘token’ (Kanter, 1977) and outside the norm. The childcare occupation itself is gendered in the sense that tasks and duties require workers to construct and display gender as an
    integral part of doing their work (Acker, 1990). In additional, both men and women bring gender to childcare.

    In discussions of organizations and gender in kindergartens, much research has investigated the ways in which working with children is gendered, either directly towards adults’ attitudes and practices (e.g. Askland & Rossholt, 2009; Brandes et al., 2012; Cameron, 2013; Eidevald, 2009), identity, profession and education (Hedlin & Åberg, 2013; King, 1998; Martino, Kehler, & Weaver-Hightower, 2009; Peeters, 2007), or limited to male workers (Emilsen & Koch, 2010; Murray, 1996; Nordberg, 2002, 2005). Studies reveal that it is not gender per se, rather staff attitudes and behaviour of childcare workers towards the children and their awareness and knowledge of the construction of gender, which contributes to gender construction. Brandes et al. (2012) illustrate this in their study of German kindergarten teachers who have completed professional training. This study shows little or no differences between males and females in their pedagogical practices.

    An explanation might be that the effect of professionalization was to engage critically with the idea of gendered practice and that they thereby had a heightened awareness of self, compared to workers with a lower level of training. However, this study shows that gender matters when the workers were interacting with the children and in the choice of themes and materials they included in the activities they did with the children.

    Gender practices beneath the surface of professional behaviour, which become visible in relation to the gender of the child, are in accordance with Cameron et al.’s (1999) findings in a study of workers with different professional education backgrounds in kindergartens in England. In theory, there were no differences in the allocation of tasks between men and women. However, the staff expressed that there were differences in expectations between men and women care workers. Men in contrast to women were expected to do practical tasks inside and around the building
    and engage in physical play with the children. Gendered expectations illustrate how gender divisions underpin professional practice and predominant thinking about gender

    So, what they’re saying (in uber-liberal Norway) is that not only is there an assumption that women are “naturally better” teachers, but that the occupation itself has been defined in a way that better suits women and makes it difficult for men to succeed. And, if that isn’t enough, when there are males around, the assumption is that the males will take care of the “male jobs” in addition to their normal work duties.

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18. Naive is probably the nicest word I could come up with. Daisy and I have linked to studies that demonstrate EXACTLY THE OPPOSITE of what you are trying to claim.

    Studies, meaning experiments that were done in accordance with scientific principles and peer-reviewed as being statistically significant.

    And you offer…. your opinion and the opinions of people around you.

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19. Mark, I have to run, I’ll read your note when I get back later.

    After I clicked the sent icon, it did occur to me, that if there are women that are culturally encouraged to teach it would have to be the nuns in the Catholic School I attended. In fact I’m not even sure if they were paid the same as lay men and women teachers in that school.

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20. D, “Mark, America and Politically Correct Public School Unions and it’s members doesn’t seemed alarmed or concerned that an over-whelming amount of teachers that are guiding our 5 year olds, are women.”

    No, I bet women and men pay the same union dues, and if our society thinks that women are naturally gifted at childcare, then why would they be alarmed?

    It’s the countries like Norway that are starting to question why the ratios of men and women are vastly different in certain professions that are uncovering the underlying reasons, which have nothing to do with innate ability, mind you.

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21. D said,

    The argument that women are culturally pressured to teach kindergarten is ludicrous.

    No, it’s not.
    What an incredibly ignorant comment to make, especially in light of the fact I’ve been linking you to many articles about this very topic the last few days. I guess you’ve not bothered to read them.

    I’m a woman who was raised in the United States, and the conditioning to act a certain way, by culturally accepted gendered stereotypes, begins when one is young.

    Of course being a man, you are largely blind and oblivious to the messages girls receive because you are not on the receiving end of them.

    Girls are conditioned to avoid to steer clear of behaviors or careers considered appropriate for boys and men, including entering into classes, area of study, or college majors, that are considered “masculine.”

    This all came out about a year ago, also, in the James Damore Google Memo fiasco: one reason of a few there are more men than women in tech careers (such as computer programming) is that women are taught young that boys and men naturally possess tech-related aptitudes, and that boys and men are naturally more gifted at math.
    This causes a lot of girls, as young as junior high age, to opt out of taking more math, science, etc.

    I have many links on my blog about this sort of thing, which I have linked to before. Here is it again:
    _Are Schools or Pedagogical Systems Designed to Favor Girls Over Boys? No, Not By and Large – Links to Research, Articles, Studies_

    I also linked you to pertinent, related topics, such as pages about Unconcious Bias and Benevolent Sexism. You must be ignoring those too.

    This kind of thing subtly discourages girls from entering certain career fields later in life:
    _Teachers Give Girls Better Grades on Math Tests When They Don’t Know They Are Girls_

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22. _Teacher bias may help discourage girls from math, study finds_

    _Teachers unintentionally turn girls away from math and science, study_

    And what does American culture say about girls, boys, and math/science?
    Why, that boys and men just naturally excel at math, science, and tech related fields, and that boys are just wired to enjoy such subjects, while girls and women are just better at, and are wired for being more interested in, being nurturing, clean, neat, compliant, and are better at reading and language based courses / tasks.

    Tell women from the time they are girls, and send them messages that they are “better at” or “designed” more for child care, reading, and writing, and well, don’t be surprised when girls and women later in life tend to opt out of tech careers, or ones more dependent on science and math, and go into careers such as kindergarten teaching.

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23. Oh, and how could I forget?
    Then, in addition to secular culture sending gender stereotypes messages to girls, we have American Christian Gender Complementarians either teaching girls that they are meant be only Stay at Home Wives and Mothers, or that it’s their God-given design.

    While other Complementarians say, well, it’s okay if women work outside the home, but NOT in jobs they consider “masculine,” such as Police Officer (see John Piper) or in the Military, especially not in combat positions.

    And D – the amount of naiveté is cute here – wants to believe that girls and women are not conditioned at all, due to gender stereotypes, or pressured regarding careers, whether to even have one at all, or which type to enter into?
    Please. Cue Lea’s highly apropos “dense or obtuse” comment from earlier in the week, because it totally fits here.

    American society message to girls:
    “Math and science are not for you! Those are subjects for boys! Girls are terrible at math.”

    _When Do Girls Give Up on Math and Science? It’s All Over Sooner Than You Think_

    This page says it’s a similar phenomenon in Europe:
    _The exact age when girls lose interest in science and math_

    “Conformity to social expectations, gender stereotypes, gender roles and lack of role models continue to channel girls’ career choices away from STEM fields,” said psychology professor Martin Bauer of the London School of Economics, who helped coordinate the survey of 11,500 girls across 12 European countries.

    …Microsoft also found that girls are more likely to pursue a career in this area if they think men and women will be treated equally in the workforce.

    “Perceived inequality [in the workplace] is actually putting them off further STEM studies and careers,” Microsoft said.

    Six in 10 girls admitted they’d feel more confident pursuing a STEM career if they knew men and women were already equally employed in these fields.

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24. There was a study published a few years ago (have not been able to find links to it yet, because I cannot recall the name of it or all the specifics of it)…

    But these researchers set up two or three testing situations to see how much gender stereotypes can impact how a woman takes a test, and how well she scores on the test.

    The researchers had two or three classrooms as part of their experiment.

    In one, they just had men and women sit down and take a math test straight away. The “teacher” in the room (hired by the researchers, but the students did not know that) simply handed out the tests without saying anything to the students, or at least not anything about gender.

    In the other class, the researchers had the “teacher” make some kind of comment aloud to all the students about women taking the test, and possibly how women find math harder than men do.

    Anyway, the upshot of this research is that when women are reminded of their gender shortly before taking a test (especially one that is gender stereotyped in favor of men, such as a math or science test), women make lower scores.

    In classes where women are just given the test and no comments about their biological sex is made, they earned higher scores.

    I have to run out and do a few errands in a bit, but I will try to Google some more for that research paper, so I can link to it later (if I can find it). I cannot remember the name of the study or the terms used, which makes it more difficult to even know what to Google for.

    Or, if anyone else here knows the research I’m talking about, please feel free to link to it.

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25. Per my post above:
    I think the term I was looking for is Stereotype Thread.

    _Stereotype Threat and Women’s Math Performance_

    _Is The College Board Making The SAT More Difficult For Women?_

    Snippets from that page:

    Over the last several decades, men have consistently scored over 30 points higher than women on the math SAT. In 2015, for example, women averaged a score of 496 while men’s average score was 527.

    Unfortunately, SAT scores not only impact university admission offers, but also influence women’s self-perceptions of their own math ability.

    And that’s not all. SAT scores turn up again in post-college job interviews and can influence major life choices including career decisions and college majors.

    Now, the College Board, who administer the SAT, may be making things even worse for women who are struggling to catch up to their male peers on these tests.

    ….You may have heard that the SAT was recently revamped. In order to check out the new format, test-prep industry tutors decided to sharpen their pencils and complete the exam themselves.

    What they found, according to the New York Times, was relatively egregious gender bias.

    On the surface, the offending questions may not seem like a big deal, but take a closer look at the questions, and then I’ll explain why they could have a major impact on women’s scores.

    -One math question asked the students to examine a chart that showed more boys than girls in math classes.

    -In the verbal section, students were asked to analyze a 19th century argument that a women’s place was in the home.”

    Again, on the surface, these questions may not seem like a serious issue. However, anyone who has taken some psychology classes knows how these types of questions can trigger stereotype threat – a juggernaut of women’s performance on important math exams.

    Stereotype threat is significant because once it’s invoked it can impact a woman’s performance on all of the math questions, not just the questions that mention sex or gender. Here’s how it works.

    Stereotypes, like those that suggest girls aren’t good at math, raise self-doubts and increase anxiety during high-pressure exams, and result in worse scores for women on math tests.

    Remind the stereotyped group of the stereotypes, and you can increase their anxiety making their test scores worse. In this case, any reminder that women don’t perform as well as men at math can alter women’s performance on the whole math portion of the test.

    Yes, girls and women being socially conditioned to enter certain career paths, or discouraged from entering others, or taking course work necessary to enter certain careers, is VERY REAL.

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26. Post above, correction:
    “Stereotype Thread.”

    Should read, Stereotype Threat – not “thread”
    That was a type-o.

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27. Try to tell me, again, D, how gender stereotypes don’t affect women at all in the workplace, or which careers they chose to enter?

    _How Stereotypes Can Drive Women To Quit Science_

    Snippets:

    Walk into any tech company or university math department, and you’ll likely see a gender disparity: Fewer women than men seem to go into fields involving science, engineering, technology and mathematics.

    …It isn’t just that fewer women choose to go into these fields.

    Even when they go into these fields and are successful, women are more likely than men to quit.

    “They tend to drop out at higher rates than their male peers,” said Toni Schmader, a psychologist at the University of British Columbia. “As women enter into careers, the levels of advancement aren’t as steep for women as for men.

    …Steele and other psychologists said a psychological phenomenon could be influencing the performance of students.

    When there’s a stereotype in the air and people are worried they might confirm the stereotype by performing poorly, their fears can inadvertently make the stereotype become self-fulfilling.

    Steele and his colleagues found that when women were reminded — even subtly — of the stereotype that men were better than women at math, the performance of women in math tests measurably declined.

    Since the reduction in performance came about because women were threatened by the stereotype, the psychologists called the phenomenon “stereotype threat.”

    Stereotype threat isn’t limited to women or ethnic minorities, Steele wrote elsewhere. “Everyone experiences stereotype threat…..

    …Over the years, experiments have shown that stereotype threat affects performance in a wide variety of domains.

    “For a female scientist, particularly talking to a male colleague, if she thinks it’s possible he might hold this stereotype, a piece of her mind is spent monitoring the conversation and monitoring what it is she is saying, and wondering whether or not she is saying the right thing, and wondering whether or not she is sounding competent, and wondering whether or not she is confirming the stereotype,” Schmader said.

    All this worrying is distracting. It uses up brainpower. The worst part?

    “By merely worrying about that more, one ends up sounding more incompetent,” Schmader said.

    Mehl and Schmader think that when female scientists talk to male colleagues about research, it brings the stereotype about men, women and science to the surface.

    When the female scientists talked to men about leisure activities, it didn’t activate the stereotype. It wasn’t that women liked to talk only about their weekends and personal lives.

    When the women talked to other women about science, the stereotype wasn’t activated. It was the combination — women talking to men, and women and men talking about science, that activated the stereotype threat…..

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28. D – I kinda waffle on whether it’s okay for you and your wife to have a gender preference for your kindergarten teacher. I can’t read your mind to decide what would motivate you to make that statement. But what would you think if I said, “I would prefer my 5yo granddaughter to have a WHITE teacher?” Doesn’t that just scream racism?

    I guess the core of the question is what Daisy specifically addressed and what I’ve been trying to address.

    The words you use have power. The words you use have influence. It’s easy to imagine that your words have influence when you are specifically trying to influence, but it’s much harder to realize that your words can have influence that is unintended.

    For example, it’s “traditional” as the study I mentioned said that women are thought to be natural childcare providers, and as a corollary that men are not. You seem to believe this because it’s behind your claim that 97% of kindergarten teachers being female must equate to some gender-specific difference. So, are you certain in ABSOLUTELY EVERY conversation you’ve had that you did not ever influence women towards childcare and men away from childcare simply because your belief said that women are better at that than men? (and that you have a stated preference…)

    If “subtle” and “unconscious” seems wacky to you:
    – why are negotiators told to wear dark suits and red ties?
    – why do restaurants typically have yellow in their logos?
    – why do brides wear white?
    – why do movie villains wear black?
    – why are school walls painted pink or green or brown?

    If something so subtle as the color of a logo or of a room can have an impact on our emotional state, why do you assume that there is no psychological effect from a male or female child having thousands of interactions with people who “prefer female kindergarten teachers”?

    Do you realize how much money is spent understanding what makes you purchase product X vs product Y and how to get you to switch without you even knowing why? Did you know that Target was able to figure out which of its customers were pregnant simply by tracking their purchases?

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29. Under challenge: Girls’ confidence level, not math ability hinders path to science degrees

    Snippets:

    April 2017

    Summary: Girls rate their math abilities lower than boys, even when there is no observable difference between the two, a new study has found.

    …Perceived ability under challenge was measured using a nationally representative longitudinal study that followed 10th grade students over a six-year period until two years after high school.

    A series of questions in the 10th and 12th grade surveys asked students to indicate their level of agreement with statements such as “I’m certain I can understand the most difficult material presented in math texts.”

    “That’s important because those confidence levels influence the math and science courses students choose later in high school,” Perez-Felkner said. “It influences whether they choose colleges that are strong in certain science majors. It also influences the majors they intend to pursue and the majors they actually declare and continue on with in degrees and potential careers.”

    These conclusions address perceived ability beliefs in a critical time where more talented young women tend to depart from male-dominated science career pathways during high school and college.

    ….Perez-Felkner and colleagues argue gender differences in confidence in their mathematics ability in challenging contexts has considerable longer term consequences.

    Gender disparities in college major choice are associated with the gender pay gap as well as an insufficiently large and diverse labor pool of scientific talent in some of the highest-growing fields in our increasingly scientific global economy.

    The authors note boys are encouraged from a young age to pursue challenge — including the risk of failure — while girls tend to pursue perfection, judging themselves and being judged by more restrictive standards reinforced by media and society at large.

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30. Mark said,

    The words you use have power. The words you use have influence. It’s easy to imagine that your words have influence when you are specifically trying to influence, but it’s much harder to realize that your words can have influence that is unintended.

    The following was in one of my Daisy blog posts I linked D to but which I assume he ignored:

    LikeLike

31. (Part 1)
    Sorry, that last post posted before I intended; don’t know why. Let me try again.

    Mark said (to D),

    The words you use have power.

    The words you use have influence. It’s easy to imagine that your words have influence when you are specifically trying to influence, but it’s much harder to realize that your words can have influence that is unintended.

    …For example, it’s “traditional” as the study I mentioned said that women are thought to be natural childcare providers, and as a corollary that men are not. You seem to believe this because it’s behind your claim that 97% of kindergarten teachers being female must equate to some gender-specific difference.

    So, are you certain in ABSOLUTELY EVERY conversation you’ve had that you did not ever influence women towards childcare and men away from childcare simply because your belief said that women are better at that than men? (and that you have a stated preference…)

    Men and women are treated differently, and this is due at times to gender stereotypes. Here are some links about that.

    The following was in one of my Daisy blog posts I linked D to but which I assume he ignored: Or, apologies, from another post on my blog,

    “On Men Not Believing Women and Being Blind to the Sexism and Harassment Women Often Endure”

    This page is about a person born a woman but now presenting herself as a man.

    He discusses how he is treated with way more respect now that people assume he is a man:

    _Why Aren’t Women Advancing At Work? Ask a Transgender Person._

    Having experienced the workplace from both perspectives, they [transgender people] hold the key to its biases.

    …Ben Barres is a biologist at Stanford who lived and worked as Barbara Barres until he was in his forties.

    For most of his career, he experienced bias, but didn’t give much weight to it—seeing incidents as discrete events. (When he solved a tough math problem, for example, a professor said, “You must have had your boyfriend solve it.”)

    When he became Ben, however, he immediately noticed a difference in his everyday experience:
    “People who don’t know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect,” he says. He was more carefully listened to and his authority less frequently questioned. He stopped being interrupted in meetings.

    At one conference, another scientist said,
    “Ben gave a great seminar today—but then his work is so much better than his sister’s.” (The scientist didn’t know Ben and Barbara were the same person.)

    “This is why women are not breaking into academic jobs at any appreciable rate,” he wrote in response to Larry Summers’s famous gaffe implying women were less innately capable at the hard sciences. “Not childcare. Not family responsibilities,” he says. “I have had the thought a million times: I am taken more seriously.”

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32. (Part 2)

    D should totally read this:

    _Male Scientist Writes of Life as Female Scientist_

    Neurobiologist Ben Barres has a unique perspective on former Harvard president Lawrence Summers’s assertion that innate differences between the sexes might explain why many fewer women than men reach the highest echelons of science.

    That’s because Barres used to be a woman himself.

    In a highly unusual critique published yesterday, the Stanford University biologist — who used to be Barbara — said his experience as both a man and a woman had given him an intensely personal insight into the biases that make it harder for women to succeed in science.

    After he underwent a sex change nine years ago at the age of 42, Barres recalled, another scientist who was unaware of it was heard to say, “Ben Barres gave a great seminar today, but then his work is much better than his sister’s.”

    And as a female undergraduate at MIT, Barres once solved a difficult math problem that stumped many male classmates, only to be told by a professor: “Your boyfriend must have solved it for you.”

    “By far,” Barres wrote, “the main difference I have noticed is that people who don’t know I am transgendered treat me with much more respect” than when he was a woman. “I can even complete a whole sentence without being interrupted by a man.”

    Barres said the switch had given him access to conversations that would have excluded him previously: “I had a conversation with a male surgeon and he told me he had never met a woman surgeon who was as good as a man.”

    …While there are men and women on both sides of the argument, the debate has exposed fissures along gender lines, which is what makes Barres so unusual.

    Barres said he [who once presented himself as a woman] has realized from personal experience that many men are unconscious of the privileges that come with being male, which leaves them unable to countenance talk of glass ceilings and discrimination.

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33. __

    LikeLike

34. (Sorry for the weird post of mine above. The blog is acting strange for me today, which is why my post above is empty.

    Sometimes when I hit the “Enter” key, the blog submits my post, when I’m just trying to start a new return line, not publish my posts!! (It was doing this last week too.))
    Anyway,
    (Part 3).

    D needs to read this stuff too, and have his eyes opened:

    What Happened When A Man Signed Work Emails Using A Female Name For 2 Weeks

    Man and woman switch names in viral workplace sexism experiment

    Snippets:

    Then one day, he [the male employee] was interacting with a client [in an e-mail exchange] who was proving to be especially difficult.

    “He is just being IMPOSSIBLE. Rude, dismissive, ignoring my questions,” Schneider tweeted. “Telling me his methods were the industry standards (they weren’t) and I couldn’t understand the terms he used (I could.)”

    Schneider said he was confused until he realized he’d been signing his emails with Hallberg’s [his female co-worker] signature — an easy mistake to make because of their shared inbox. He then decided to reintroduce himself.

    “IMMEDIATE IMPROVEMENT. Positive reception, thanking me for suggestions, responds promptly, saying ‘great questions!’ Became a model client,” Schneider wrote, adding, “Note: My technique and advice never changed. The only difference was that I had a man’s name now.”

    After that the pair decided to switch names for two weeks — he’d sign as Nicole while she would end her emails as Martin.

    To summarize, “it f—ing sucked,” Schneider shared. “I was in hell. Everything I asked or suggested was questioned. Clients I could do in my sleep were condescending. One asked if I was single.”

    Hallberg, however, was having a much better time.

    “I had one of the easiest weeks of my professional life,” she wrote in a response piece for Medium.

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35. My church growing up had no formal dress code. I wore shorts partly for comfort because the church was not air-conditioned, and partly because there was a somewhat cultish push for conformity that I sensed. They weren’t athletic shorts, but khakis or Dockers that I wore with a polo shirt and tennis shoes. So, the only dress code “violation” was the shorts. No one at church EVER confronted me for wearing shorts to church, but I somehow knew that wearing shorts was not okay.

    This was confirmed years later, after I had been out of the church for many years, by a friend. She told me that she was on a nominating committee for positions in that church. They were nominating men to be ushers in the church and my name came up. Others on the committee said, “Mark can’t be an usher because he wears shorts.” There was no written “usher dress code”, but that was enough to guarantee that I would never be usher.

    So, I knew that wearing shorts was not socially acceptable, I knew that it was a subtle form of rebellion. Evidence shows that others in the church knew and acted as if it was not socially acceptable, yet as far as I know, no one ever gave me a dirty look or suggested that I wear anything different.

    —
    I remember from college psychology, although I can’t find it online, that there was an experiment done. The subjects were supposedly on a game show. The stated purpose of the game show was that they needed to match the pace of a flashing light, and there was a gauge that supposedly showed how “close” they were to matching the pace.

    However, the real purpose of the gauge was to count the rate at which the subjects blinked their eyes. So, while the subjects were completely intent on matching the pace of the signal light, the gauge was reporting the rate of their eye blinks. The subjects were interviewed afterwards and none of them had any idea what was really happening. Yet, surprisingly virtually all of the subjects increased their rate of blinking more and more as the experiment progressed.

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36. Mark said,

    This was confirmed years later, after I had been out of the church for many years, by a friend. She told me that she was on a nominating committee for positions in that church. They were nominating men to be ushers in the church and my name came up. Others on the committee said, “Mark can’t be an usher because he wears shorts.” There was no written “usher dress code”, but that was enough to guarantee that I would never be usher.
    

    That would be a sneaky and clever way of getting out of being an usher if one did not want to be an usher. 🙂

    Speaking of gender roles and stereotyped expectations in studies and career choices.

    When I was in college, the first two years, my father would ask me what career I wanted to go after.
    I said, “Career X, which means I have to major in Subject Z.”

    My dad thought it was a poor career choice.
    He told me the first two years I was in college, “Why don’t you marry a doctor or a lawyer?”

    By my third year, my Dad actually got a little less sexist and started telling me,
    “You can be anything you want. Why don’t YOU go to law school or medical school and become a lawyer or a doctor?”

    To this day, I find that a little shocking.
    My father is one of those dads that is hyper critical, never wants to give praise – that my dad finally broke down and said I should go after a law or medical degree tells me he must have thought, deep down, I am intelligent enough to accomplish either one. I’m surprised my dad thinks I’m smart enough to go into either field.

    BTW. I may be changing careers in the near future, so I may be going back to college.

    The career I am leaning towards entering has a lot more science involved than my old one.

    If I try to get a degree in this area, I am going to have to take a lot more science than I did before. And I still have to struggle, to this day, with the old anxieties about me personally not being great at science, and that, due partly to the stereotypes that “science is for boys.”

    If you’re a guy, I know this must stuff I’ve been talking about in this thread may sound weird, but many women really are/were subjected to messages that you guys do not get, so I think if you are a man, you are oblivious to what women have put up with or heard in schools, or how we are treated differently on jobs or in college classes, etc, but we are.

    When I hear black people (I am not a black person) talk about being pulled over for “driving while black,” or being followed around stores by sales clerks (as though they are shop lifters), I tend to listen to things like that with a very open mind…

    Because I’ve been aware for years that black people have to put up with messages or different treatment that the rest of us don’t. The same kind of thing holds true for gender.
    Women may be subjected to things that men usually are not, and some men don’t want to believe this, because they do not personally experience it themselves.

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37. _Young Girls Often Believe Stereotypes About Women’s Intelligence_ – Contributed by Zawn Villines

    Snippets:

    …Girls as young as 6 years old are likely to believe stereotypes about women’s intelligence.

    ….Taken together, the various trials suggest children begin to accept gender stereotypes about women’s intelligence between the ages of 5 and 7.

    These stereotypes affect their assessments of their own intelligence, which then affects their decisions on activities they are willing to try.

    HOW STEREOTYPE THREAT CAN THWART SUCCESS

    The study points to previous research suggesting gender stereotypes can become self-fulfilling prophecies.

    Stereotype threat, for example, is a predicament people may find themselves in when they feel they are at risk of conforming to a widely held stereotype about their group. Several studies have found when women and girls are reminded of their gender, or of gendered stereotypes about women and math, they perform worse on math tests than they otherwise would.

    If girls accept gender stereotypes at a young age, these stereotypes are likely to affect their academic performance, their interests, and their career choices.

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38. Is D still on this thread?
    This is also for you, D:

    This is from the UK:
    _Redrawing The Balance_

    There’s an interesting riddle which goes along the lines of:

    A father and his son are in a car accident. The father dies at the scene and the son is rushed to the hospital.

    At the hospital the surgeon looks at the boy and says,
    “I can’t operate on this boy, he is my son.”

    How can this be?

    Did you figure it out?

    The surgeon is his mother.

    On hearing the riddle, many people are confused, or take a few seconds to find the answer.
    The reasoning behind the delay is something that you have likely never even thought about: ingrained gender stereotype.
    It’s the reason why when you hear of a surgeon, many immediately picture a man, instead of a woman.

    Redraw The Balance, a brilliant campaign by leading creative agency MullenLowe London for the charity Inspiring the Future, aims to change this.

    …When a class of 22 children between the ages of 5 and 7 in the UK were asked to draw a firefighter, surgeon and a fighter pilot, 61 pictures were drawn of men and only 5 were female.

    The powerful two minute film depicting this was shot on location at Whitstable Junior School in Kent and captures how, “early on in their education, children already define career opportunities as male and female”.

    After drawing their images, the children are stunned to see that the women they’d originally been in the classroom drawing images with, are actually a firefighter, surgeon and a fighter pilot.

    Same experiment, from the UK:
    _‘He’s big and strong’: Children are stunned to meet FEMALE firefighters, surgeons and RAF pilots – after drawing MEN doing those jobs in a social experiment_

    -Children aged five to seven drew pictures of people doing different jobs

    -Nearly all drawings of firefighters, surgeons and pilots featured men

    -Video shows the class looking shocked as three women walk into the room

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39. Kind of related:
    _‘Mercury 13’ Review: Grounded Aspirations – Even Though Some of the Women Applicants Out-Performed the Men Candidates, NASA Did Not Use Them_
    (this is an article excerpted on my Daisy blog)

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40. Just saw this:

    D said,

    I was responding to Mark, you and I are done, I didn’t even read past “D said”.

    That’s up for me to determine.

    This is also ironic, considering you like to hound other posters for days on end, usually over some trivial, tangential, like HUG using the word “penis” in a post, or what Lea meant or didn’t mean with the phrase “dense or obtuse.”

    You were pretty much ignoring most of the content I posted anyway, so I’m not sure what the difference is at this point.

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41. Quote:

    (d speaking),
    I was responding to Mark, you and I are done, I didn’t even read past “D said”.

    You can write up 5, 6, 7, or 8 lengthy responses in a row, spending hours putting them together and I have decided not read a single one,

    I won’t read what you write even though we mostly agree on most of the abuse topics on this thread. I’ll need you to response back, so I don’t get the last word in.
    

    Translation:

    “Don’t bother me with excerpts from studies and research that show my beliefs are incorrect! I’ll just keep spouting off my opinions as though they are fact and ignore any information that contradicts and challenges my beliefs”

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42. D saying in a post to Mark:

    It doesn’t bother me if someone like you disagrees, but having a discussion like this where I’ve been given the option of either being dense or obtuse, is nonsense.

    Wow, D will not let that one go!

    And it wasn’t even Mark who first said that phrase, it was Lea on page 1 of this comment thread about a week ago. LOL.

    Then a couple of days ago, I asked D to please drop it. But he did a post or more about it, so I ran with it.
    Only then did he request for me to drop it a few times.
    But he’s bringing it up yet again, and bringing it up with Mark. Weird.

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43. Lea said,

    I can’t believe this is still going on, but I want to say that every time you mention this you demonstrate that you have been fundamentally misunderstanding what I said. Which is…exactly what I meant by you being obtuse. Sigh.

    Exactly.

    D never did understand why you said what you said.

    I offered about 34 times in a row a few days ago (scroll back up this page to see if you like) to explain it to him, but he just kept asking me to drop the matter. Then he brought it back up again himself.

    He really likes to major on the minors, ignores the main points someone raised in a post, he gets very fixated on one particular phrase or term someone uses, like “dense or obtuse,” or like with HUG on another thread, who used the word “penis,” and quite often, some of these side issues are not terribly relevant to the main point(s) at hand.

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44. Mark said,

    Our kids’ doctor can’t believe that he has to sign a form that gives his patients permission to use the bathroom whenever they need to. Medically, having to hold anything in is not good.

    This has also been an issue with some adults and workplaces.

    There are some employers who won’t allow their staff to use the restroom whenever they need to.

    I read one article about Amazon a few years ago that said Amazon treats some of their warehouse workers in that manner.

    I think that’s terrible. If someone has to use the facilities, let them use the facilities.

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45. D said,

    So why is it OK that the majority of the 5 year olds are being taught by women who choose to teach kindergarten and the majority of men choosing not to?

    …Male and Female teachers have options. They decide if they want to teach or not and what classes suits them best. The argument that women are culturally pressured to teach kindergarten is ludicrous.

    Why do women choose to teach children…

    Often it’s because women are socialized at a young age to believe that certain courses of study are not for girls or women, but are for men.

    So girls opt to work in stereotypical “feminine” occupations, such as teaching.

    I’ve only explained this 20 times on this thread already.

    Stuff like this plays a role in which careers women choose when older:

    To see if there was any long term fallout from the biased grading, the researchers followed the children all the way through high school.

    They found that girls who had been downgraded in elementary school were less likely to sign up for advanced math and science courses in high school.

    The researchers suspect that the bias is unconscious. “I am sure they are completely unaware of it,” Sand said.

    This isn’t the first study to show that girls’ interest in math tends to drop off as they get older, but it may well be the first showing that teacher bias could be part of the problem, said Patrick Tolan, a professor at the Curry School of Education at the University of Virginia and director of Youth-Nex, the UVA Center to Promote Effective Youth Development.

    Source for above info:
    _Teacher bias may help discourage girls from math, study finds_

    LikeLike

46. D said,

    I’m not seeing woman being pushed into becoming teachers accept maybe in the 1880’s Little House on the Prairie

    Gender bias is not a thing of the past: it exists in 2018, even in your very posts where you keep repeating that you “prefer women teach your kids because (you imply or say) women are better at teaching kids than are men.”

    If that is the kind of garbage you teach your daughters, nieces, or grand-daughters, of course they are more likely to look into becoming teachers than say, lawyers, doctors, or scientists.

    Because you’ve led them to believe teaching is just what women do.

    _Watch what happens when you ask kids to draw a surgeon, a firefighter and a fighter-pilot_

    Snippets from that page:

    As the United Nations Human Rights Office of the High Commissioner explains, “a gender stereotype is harmful when it limits women’s and men’s capacity to develop their personal abilities, pursue their professional careers and make choices about their lives and life plans.”

    In this way stereotypes can further inequality as evidenced both in the types of professions young women and men gravitate towards, and the gender pay gap, which currently sees Australian women earn 83 cents for every dollar a man earns (or $261 less a week).

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47. D said,

    My aunt is enjoying a rather cozy retirement from teaching in Folsom and travels the world once a year. She felt no cultural pressure to teach.

    How do you know for certain? Did you ask her?

    Is she even aware?

    When a girl is raised in a sexist culture with certain expectations for her gender – such as, suitable careers for women include teacher and nurse – it may never occur to these women that they were influenced by societal gender norms to go into those professions and to stay out of careers considered more “masculine,” such as police officer or engineer.

    I am a woman who was raised in Christian Gender Complementarianism as a kid, and I did not fully realize until my adulthood how sexist and wrong Complementarianism is.

    The lesson from that is that women can be brought up in a sexist culture (or sexist religious views) and think sexism is normal or good.

    It’s not until later in life and/or if one starts to question what they were taught to believe that one can see that maybe those teachings or assumptions about women are wrong.

    This (or related issues) popped up in some of the studies I linked to on my blog.
    Like this one:
    _Stereotypes lower math performance in women, but effects go unrecognized, IU study finds_

    … Boucher found that expectations did not match reality: While both sexes expected female test-takers to experience greater anxiety and pressure to perform under the influence of negative gender stereotypes, both male and female observers expected women to successfully overcome these roadblocks.

    Observers expected stereotypes to increase women’s anxiety, but they did not anticipate that the anxiety would undermine performance.

    Moreover, this misperception occurred in both men and women. Being a woman did not confer any special insight into women’s experiences of stereotype threat; female observers were almost equally likely to overestimate the performance of other women under stereotype threat.

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48. Others on the committee said, “Mark can’t be an usher because he wears shorts.”

    Ridiculous. Mark, I guarantee I would have you as an usher, shorts or no shorts!

    [This is a good description of the ‘unwritten rules’ phenom. There are, in any organization and in life, rules and unwritten rules. The unwritten rules tend to be more enforced than the written ones. We definitely see this in gender policing at times]

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49. So girls opt to work in stereotypical “feminine” occupations, such as teaching.

    Cutesy romantic movies have adorable kindergarten teachers as the model girl. It’s definitely a thing.

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50. Lea, A bit off topic, but I definitely use my clothing to allow people to make up their own minds about me. I graduated with honors with a double major, and went on to get masters degrees at a top university, but I dress at the bottom of the acceptable dress code, whatever it is. And, I find that, for the most part, people leave me alone and let me do my own thing.

    We were at a group meeting and somehow my coworker who interviewed me mentioned where I went to grad school. It was pretty funny to see the shock and disbelief on peoples’ faces.

    When I was in high school and people found out how much I knew about computers… I was pretty much the tech support department for the church and acquaintances of friends. Looking inept became somewhat of a defense mechanism, which tied in well with my learned fear of making mistakes.

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51. I definitely use my clothing to allow people to make up their own minds about me.

    That reminds me of a family member who would drive a car he referred to as ‘the heap’ to downplay expectations – especially when car shopping. Your clothes send signals and those signals can be manipulated.

    Or you can just wear what you want. That says something too.

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52. Mark said,

    We were at a group meeting and somehow my coworker who interviewed me mentioned where I went to grad school. It was pretty funny to see the shock and disbelief on peoples’ faces.

    People do often tend to make assumptions over things like this (like you wearing shorts to church must mean you are an incompetent doofus, for example), and it bothers me.

    I had something similar happen to me. When I was in my early 20s, I used to work a part time, minimum wage job, just for a few months, mainly a summer job.

    I was also attending community college at that time.

    One of my managers at that store, the district manager, who visited our store about once a week every other week, used to stop by.
    This dis. mgr. was very condescending and rude. She was probably in her 40s or 50s, old enough to know better.

    Well, at that stage in my life (early 20s), I had zero self confidence, was very insecure, and I had extreme social anxiety disorder.

    Also, I am an introvert and perform tasks better when I do NOT have to do them in front of a boss (or other people). I work better and quicker when I can do it alone, or at least with pleasant (non-judgmental) co-workers.

    This cow I worked for, the district manager, would stand there and stare at me as I did tasks around the store, which made me ten times more nervous, so I would trip over my own two feet, or accidentally drop the products as I was trying to shelve them as she was watching.

    That manager would stand there and shake her head at me, side to side, and act as though I was a moron, because I would drop things or make mistakes (which I was only doing because she insisted on breathing down my neck as I did stuff).

    In the store’s back room one day, she and the store manager were talking. I was standing there with them.
    I don’t remember how or why this came up, but I mentioned to them that I was in college at that time, and I was making straight A’s in my classes (which I was in fact doing. I excelled at school work.)

    After I volunteered that information,
    The dis. mgr, looked me over, and with a look of scorn and disbelief on her face said sarcastically to me, “YOU? YOU are in college AND you are making A’s?”
    – as though she could not believe someone as supposedly clumsy, inept, and dumb as me could be a college student and doing well grade-wise. She was mistaking my nervousness around her for stupidity, among other things.

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53. Lea said,

    (Daisy quote)
    So girls opt to work in stereotypical “feminine” occupations, such as teaching.

    (Lea replied)
    Cutesy romantic movies have adorable kindergarten teachers as the model girl. It’s definitely a thing.

    I remember in the movie “Bruce Almighty” that Jennifer Anniston’s character played a kiddie-garten teacher. Also, I think that was the case for Ben Stiller’s on-screen girlfriend in the “Meet the Parents” movie – she taught K-garten or 1st graders. Oh, and in the movie “Just Go With It,” the on-screen GF of Adam Sandler taught grade-school kids. There does seem to be a theme in a lot of movies of “GF works as a teacher.”

    And to clarify again, I am not opposed to women choosing to work in stereotypical careers, if they are doing so of their own accord.

    I concede (and I think I even conceded this back on page 1), that there may in fact be some women who do enjoy working around children so much that plays a big factor into why they enter teaching.

    But then I also think it should be acknowledged (and I never saw D acknowledge this) that American (and other nations) do in fact have gendered expectatations about what girls “can” do, what they “should” do, and that girls are supposedly “better at” certain tasks more so than boys,
    -and we women pick up on those messages when we’re girls, and yes, those messages can and do influence some girls and women as to what we major in once in college, and what careers we choose to go into.

    D never proved the thing he assuming.
    If I am understanding him correctly, D assumes that just because there happen to be more women in profession X than there are men, this must mean that all to most women WANT to be in job X more than men, and/or that most to all women are “better at” X than most men.

    I know that James Damore and Jordan Peterson operate under those assumptions. They don’t want to see or admit that sexism and gender stereotypes play roles in why women end up doing what they do career-wise.

    Sometimes, out-right sexism on a job can cause a woman to quit a job or change careers.

    Ever since the “Me Too” movement started, I began seeing quite a number of articles about how women quit a career because of being sexually harassed by men often.

    For example, there was a news interview with a woman who started out in the music business. After being sexually harassed repeatedly (particularly by one guy who owned a record label), she quit the music biz and got into another profession altogether.

    That sort of thing happens to, but a lot of men are loathe to admit that it happens. I think they feel more comfortable remaining oblivious or blind to the staggering amount of sexism and gender stereotypes that inform what what say, do, or think.

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54. Type-o correction of –

    That sort of thing happens to, but a lot of men are loathe to admit that it happens. I think they feel more comfortable remaining oblivious or blind to the staggering amount of sexism and gender stereotypes that inform what what say, do, or think.

    Correction:

    That sort of thing happens too, but a lot of men are loathe to admit that it happens. I think they feel more comfortable remaining oblivious or blind to the staggering amount of sexism and gender stereotypes that inform what women say, do, or think.

    (If we had an Edit button for our posts on here, I’d be happy to edit most of my typing mistakes)

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55. Lea,

    There might be a lot of female teachers and even a higher percentage of them are teaching 5 year olds, than men, but forgive me, if you think I’m trivializing that profession as “woman’s work”.

    When I notice a significant percentage amount of women teaching the younger ones I have to ask myself why? I’m not buying the argument that it is exclusively cultural pressure, though maybe there could be a little of it, but not much.

    Having grown up much of my childhood with a single mom she found it difficult working full time at great exhaustive expense, making less money that teachers make with no retirement benefits or job security like tenured teachers get. Though in the 60’s and 70’s teachers compensation wasn’t that great.

    I think most women (and some men who also teach) choose to teach because they like it. But also most family’s are facing economic reality where both parent’s are forced to work. Though teaching isn’t easy, but for teachers with kids, it provides better opportunity to be with their kids, as teachers generally have similar 180 day schedule as they share the same holiday and vacation schedule, plus they are given sick and personal day’s included in their contracts.

    I’m actually seeing a lot of husbands and wives that are both teaching which can actually be a convenient perk of sharing similar schedules, instead of one working days and the other working nights and not able to take a couple of months off during the summer.

    I made an observation that 97.6% of women teaching the younger ones and shared a personal opinion embraced by both my wife and I and it never occurred to me that my opinion would’ve created the push back that it did.

    Let’s say for one minute that some women are culturally pressured to teach, there aren’t 97.6% of them being pressured to teach younger kids. I don’t see cultural pressure occurring in the magnitude some on this thread are suggesting and it certainly isn’t currently happening in the majority of universities that are now dominated by liberal professors.
    Though professors in those universities can make up to 400 to 500 K, so maybe they are majoring in education because the money is pretty good.

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56. Let’s say for one minute that some women are culturally pressured to teach, there aren’t 97.6% of them being pressured to teach younger kids

    This entire conversation and your inability and unwillingness to switch topics from teaching small children is a great example of the cultural pressures put on women to teach small children – because this is the MAIN role in life you want to talk about for women and you refuse to deviate from it.

    You have spent paragraphs telling everyone that you think women are the ones who should be teaching young children, and that you would not accept a man in such a role. That is cultural pressure going both ways.

    There are plenty of practical and financial reasons that have also been discussed, and they contribute. In fact, I read an article that said women’s salary in teaching compared to private sector used to be higher, but now it has fallen as more avenues have opened for women in other jobs.

    Why do you not see that this is a chicken and the egg situation? Which came first, society that only accepts women as teachers (and nurses) or lots women as teachers? Hell, in Jane Austen novels high born women who fell on hard times were pretty much only accepted in governess or companion positions. This stuff goes way back.

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57. Lea,

    I’ve also talked about women stepping up and filling in “roles” of counseling where a woman has been abused not wanting to talk to a man or women leading a women’s ministries as well and being involved in youth groups where there are girls.

    I never, nor would ever think or suggest that woman can’t be a doctor, lead a nation or lead a church. In fact my father doctor is a woman.

    My wife specifically told me, there are things that she confided with to a woman in the youth group she was involved with that she would never confide with a male leading a youth group.

    Maybe a reason why there so much discrepancy in our schools with women teaching the younger kids is they appear to be surrounded by them at an earlier age, more so than men. I don’t rule out some cultural pressure, but not 97.6% of it is cultural pressure.

    I played with my kids, but even so when my kids were younger they were more clingy with their mom for various bonding reasons, even though I bonded with my kids as well.

    I know growing up, my mom was strict, by it was my step-father that scared the hell of out me. (and I have witnessed and heard of other instances) So that is why I suggested that could be possible reasons why the discrepancy in teaching younger kids being taught by women in schools, as the stigma could be that men tend to be harsher on young kids compared to a woman, but also it seems as if they have more experience at early childhood development than men do.

    My sister-in-law didn’t want to work outside the home so she could be with her own kids, so she got a child care license and work out of her home. Most women also dominate childcare facilities, Though they should be paid more for the work they do.

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58. Regarding D’s post of SEPTEMBER 11, 2018 @ 11:43 AM
    and
    SEPTEMBER 11, 2018 @ 10:11 AM,
    where D said, for the one millionth time,

    <

    blockquote>There might be a lot of female teachers and even a higher percentage of them are teaching 5 year olds, than men, but forgive me, if you think I’m trivializing that profession as “woman’s work”.

    <

    blockquote> You’re missing why other people are objecting to your arguments,
    and it’s not really because they perceive that you are saying that teaching is demeaning because it’s “woman’s work,”
    (though that may have come up once or twice from other posters).

    The main reason why so many of us here are pushing back against your views is
    because of your assumptions as to why women end up in what careers they do (assumptions that are sexist).

    Because D is like a broken record and keeps repeating himself, I’ll repeat my previous answers to D:

    
    D never proved the thing he assuming.

    If I am understanding him correctly, D assumes that just because there happen to be more women in profession X than there are men, this must mean that all to most women WANT to be in job X more than men, and/or that most to all women are “better at” X than most men.

    I know that James Damore and Jordan Peterson operate under those (mistaken) assumptions. They don’t want to see or admit that sexism and gender stereotypes play roles in why women end up doing what they do career-wise.

    See also my response to D _Here_,

    And scroll up this page (and page 1 of the comment pages) to all the links I provided with reports and studies that show that gender stereotypes do play a role in why women choose what careers they do (including teaching),

    -and the reason some women end up teaching kids is not always because, or only, that women “want to” teach children, or that women are more inclined to want to be around kids.

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59. D said,

    Maybe a reason why there so much discrepancy in our schools with women teaching the younger kids is they appear to be surrounded by them at an earlier age, more so than men. I don’t rule out some cultural pressure, but not 97.6% of it is cultural pressure.
    

    That is not why.
    See _this post_ for links to studies that explain as to why women generally end up in teaching careers, rather than working as scientists, doctors, or as computer programmers.

    Teacher bias also plays a role in why girls go into what professions they do, along with other factors, such as social conditioning and gender expectations.

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60. Daisy,

    That’ fine.

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61. I have read over several pages specifically about why women enter the teaching field more so than men, and the reasons cited are not lining up with many, or most, of D’s assumptions.

    _The Teacher Gender-Gap_

    …These numbers are down from 2007, but suggest a clear female majority in the teaching profession, especially in the earlier grades.

    So why are male teachers still few-and-far-between in the United States? According to expert analysis, the most readily apparent answer is that sexism and status deter men from entering the teaching field.

    Girls have increasingly been encouraged to engage in typically male-dominated fields, like math and science in recent years, but boys have been given almost no incentive to engage in female-dominated professions, like education.

    As pointed out by Robert M. Cappuozzo, an early childhood education professor at the University of Alaska-Anchorage, “We don’t give boys the same opportunities that we give girls.”
    Because of this discrepancy, boys might be disinclined to consider a career in teaching.

    There’s also a disappointing stigma attached to male teachers who teach the earlier grades.

    According to Jeffrey M. Daitsman, a researcher at the Center for Practitioner Researcher at National-Louis University, male teachers responsible for younger students are accused of being “not masculine.”

    The stereotype encourages the thinking that, because male teachers are supposed to be disciplinarians, male teachers are “not masculine” for wanting to teach younger children who are not often heavily disciplined.

    In addition to sexism, men are often deterred from teaching because of the pay associated with being an educator.

    Many men feel the traditional pressure of being the “breadwinner,” and teaching is not known for being a lucrative profession.

    Bryan G. Nelson, the head of the Minneapolis-based nonprofit, MenTeach, says, “If we started paying elementary teachers $150,000 a year, we’d see a massive influx of male teachers.”

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62. _Why do so many women want to become teachers? _

    Snippets:

    … Gender imbalances among teachers have a lot to do with gender stereotyping, and the power and prestige connected with certain occupations within the profession.

    This is seen in the smaller shares of female teachers in the higher levels of education, in (perceived) more prestigious fields of study and in leadership positions. Women fill only 43% of the jobs in tertiary education.

    In secondary school, women are less frequently found teaching science, mathematics and technology classes.
    And, on average across OECD countries, 68% of lower secondary teachers are women, but only 45% are principals.

    This is particularly striking given that principals tend to be recruited from among the ranks of teachers – suggesting that female teachers are less likely to be promoted to principal than their male counterparts.

    So, the large share of women in the teaching profession is, itself, skewed towards specific jobs: those at the bottom of the education pyramid and the bottom of the hierarchy of power.

    So why, then, do so many women want to become teachers? Gender imbalances in teaching are the result of women’s conscious and strategic choices as much as of labour market conditions, social norms and cultural messages.

    In many countries, women’s increased participation in the labour market coincided with the need for more trained teachers in expanding education systems.

    Countries where female labour participation in general is low, like Japan, also have the smallest shares of female teachers.

    In addition, stereotypical views of teaching as a profession that, at times, resembles parenting, probably play a role, especially with younger generations of women who apparently value motherhood more than their own baby boom mothers did.

    Labour provisions that allow teachers to work part time and to flexibly combine work, family life and the care of one’s own children also seem to be more appealing to women.

    …But less well-known is that the salaries of teachers, as measured against the average wages of other tertiary-educated workers, are much more attractive for women than for men.

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63. _Why are So Many Teachers Women?_

    by Elizabeth L. Maurer
    AUGUST 17, 2017

    Colleges began enrolling women students in the mid 19th century. The earliest undergraduates anticipated using their degrees to become better wives and mothers.

    However, a critical need for school teachers arose as public education expanded throughout the country.

    Women— based on the popular belief that they were more nurturing than men— were seen as the ideal candidates to fill the need.

    Colleges expanded their teacher training programs and encouraged their female students to enroll at the expense of other majors.

    …Until the passage of Title IX in 1972, colleges and universities could legally keep women from enrolling in selected degree fields. Many did.

    This effectively maintained a pipeline of women towards a few, female-dominated professions, including teaching.

    While today, all major fields are open to women, there remains a distinct gender imbalance in undergraduate majors.

    Yes, that most to all women are “more nurturing” than men and would therefore make better teachers for children is a gender stereotype and a gender expectation.

    We women get pounded over the head constantly when we are children that we are supposed to be maternal, want to be around children, and have our own some day. So of course it figures we are either pushed into teaching professions, or assume that is what we should do or must be good at career-wise.

    Some women buy into sexist stereotypes without giving them a second thought. I kind of did for many years.

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64. From 2014:
    _Gender gap growing in teaching profession (cites Thomas Dee research)_

    Snippets:

    … As other occupations began to open to educated women in the 1980s, women entered other professions, and teaching became slightly less-feminized.

    But why are male teachers still few-and-far-between in the U.S.?

    Expert analysis insists that sexism … stereotypes, fear of accusation of abuse… and that for men, working with young children is perceived to come with low wages and low status.

    A 2006 study by Thomas Dee, now a professor at Stanford, suggests that boys do better in classes that are taught by men, while girls are more likely to thrive in classes taught by women.

    The study found that girls were more likely to report that they didn’t think a class would be useful to their future if taught by a man, and boys were more likely to say they didn’t look forward to a particular subject if it was taught by a woman.

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65. There’s a Stigma Around Men Teaching Young Kids. Here’s How We Change It.

    by By Aaron Loewenberg

    …. But we also talked about the challenges of being a man who teaches young children and why more men don’t choose this career path.

    Of course, compensation levels aren’t high for teachers of any gender, which makes teaching a hard sell for many people.

    And friends and family would sometimes respond with disbelief when we explained our career choice.

    For example, while making small talk at a family wedding, I was asked my profession and mentioned that I teach pre-K.

    My interlocutor nearly choked on her champagne, paused as if to ensure that she had heard my answer correctly, and then bluntly asked, “Why would a man want to teach young kids?”

    But behind closed doors, my male colleagues also discussed what we agreed was the largest, though often unspoken, barrier to recruiting more men into the field—a legitimate fear that male teachers might be labeled as potential sexual predators and even falsely accused of sexual abuse of children.

    We were acutely aware that just one allegation of misconduct, even if proved false, had the potential to wreak havoc on a teacher’s personal and professional life.

    In interviews I conducted with male teachers of young children as part of my graduate studies, every man I talked with brought up the stigma of being a potential danger to children.

    Teachers told me that you have to “watch yourself” at all times in a way female teachers don’t because an innocent gesture, such as a hug, could be perceived by others as suspicious.

    These anecdotes line up with the limited amount of academic research that has been conducted on the topic. After conducting numerous interviews with male teachers, Paul Sargent concludes that “operating under constant intense scrutiny influences every aspect of the men’s teaching lives.”

    … Male nurses were as rare as male early educators just a few decades ago. Since 1970, however, the number of male nurses has tripled as the stigma has started to fade and more men have found a growing and vibrant vocation in nursing.

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66. Please note that I do NOT agree with all views expressed by all persons interviewed in this article: I am only copying some of the most pertinent parts to this post:

    Why More Men Don’t Teach Elementary School

    by Susan Donaldson James
    March 2013

    … Stereotypes about male teachers, and sometimes mistrust, persist.

    “It’s very hard to change the suspicion of men who are going to elementary education when there are so few of them,” Thompson said.
    “Schools ask me to talk to men on their faculty and when I sit with them behind closed doors, they say the moms look at them like potential pedophiles.

    “If they are too nurturing or a mother comes in and sees a teacher reading in a chair and the child is leaning against the teacher or cuddling him, they freak out,” he said. “Men tell me they only have to look in the mom’s face to know what they are thinking.”

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67. _ Male teacher shortage affects boys who need role models_

    July 2017

    … Why there’s a shortage

    According to the Consortium for Policy Research in Education, only about 24 percent of all teachers were male in 2012, with just one in 10 men teaching elementary school students.

    …. Ethan Zagore, director of the University of Notre Dame’s TRiO program, a federally funded initiative aimed at helping disadvantaged youngsters obtain an education, says a number of factors contribute to the shortage, but a big one is that many people just fundamentally — consciously or subconsciously — believe the role of an elementary teacher is better suited for women.

    Jay Underwood, head of school for High Meadows School, a progressive, independent school for preschool through eighth grade in Roswell, Ga., agrees that teaching young children has long been considered a woman’s job.

    “Unfortunately, this misperception — and the stigma that comes with it — has led to a dearth of men in the teaching profession,” Underwood says.
    “We see this in other professions as well — nursing is predominantly female, manufacturing and IT are predominantly male — so it isn’t unique to teaching.”

    Another barrier is that while many colleges are focused on increasing the number of male teachers, there are not enough programs to meet the demand for their services or the increase in population, Zagore says.

    And maybe most importantly, the money just isn’t there.

    “Nationally, the average salary for elementary teachers is embarrassingly low,” Zagore says.

    … Why boys need men

    Underwood says it is important for boys to have strong male role models with open minds and challenge gender stereotypes.

    “All students benefit from diverse teaching perspectives, and gender roles are a big part of that,” Underwood says. “Boys learn differently than girls, so the daily interaction of an inspiring male teacher in their learning environment is highly productive.”

    David Hough, dean of the College of Education at Missouri State University, agrees that an adult male’s influence can be positive when the role model exhibits positive character traits.

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68. Daisy,

    That’s fine, your research won’t change the fact that the teachers I know, teach because they want to teach.

    The one’s I know travel the world during their extended vacation time or travel to national parks and on back packing trips or their ability to spend a lot more quality time with their kids than most that don’t teach working 40 to 50 hours a week for 50 weeks out of every year, working nights, graveyard or working 2 jobs in order to scrape by and put food on the table.

    If the teachers I know are oppressed, they have me and everybody else fooled.

    Maybe it is the sun tan they got from spending 6 weeks at their summer cabin that has me fooled.

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69. D’s post of SEPTEMBER 11, 2018 @ 5:05 PM.

    I conceded at least two or three times this past week when posting here that wanting to teach because one genuinely enjoys being around kids may be true for some women, or may be one reason of a few as to why some women go into teaching. However, the reams of research I’ve found about gender roles, expectations, and gender bias has shown that those factors also play a role in why men enter the jobs they do, and why women enter the jobs they do.

    You said,

    If the teachers I know are oppressed, they have me and everybody else fooled.

    I already addressed this up thread.

    Sometimes women, though usually big victims of sexism, may be blind to it themselves.

    I was raised under gender complementarianism (which is a religious form of sexism by Christians), but was told repeatedly by Sunday School teachers, TV preachers, my comp parents, church, etc, that gender comp was “God’s intent for men and women” and that it was “biblical.”

    I was never presented with opposing views of gender comp until after I had rejected it well into my adult years.

    But for many years while I was a gender comp, I just assumed it to be true.

    The same is true for a lot of gender expectations that pertain to other areas of life.

    A lot of women may become teachers never really stopping to consider just why they chose that profession.
    At first blush, they might tell you it’s because they like it, or enjoy being around kids, and may never even realize all the subtle, sexist messages they got as girls in grade school that women should be teachers and not, say, programmers.

    The articles I cited above also explained that one finds more females than males in teaching, especially very young kids, because men don’t like the low salaries, and they don’t want to be suspected of being child molesters.

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70. Daisy,

    Fair enough, I did admit there may be some cultural pressure on a woman to teach,

    One thing I won’t deny, is there are teachers that wish they were doing something else as they hate their jobs.

    The teachers in the school my kids and grandchildren attend, the salary is a non-discriminating pay scale so the ones with experience receive top pay no matter the class they teach, with exception of part-time teachers.

    I’m sorry that you endured growing up in a church filled with sexism. The same thing nearly happened in our church 5 years ago when a stealth hyper-Calvinist attempted to indoctrinate our church into becoming a Comp Church.
    Then after 2 years I finally figured out his doctrine and revealed to the church board who struggle to understand the Pastor’s methodology all the while my wife and I were (severely) spiritually abused.

    When the Board confronted the Pastor, he refused to disclose his doctrine and then packed and went back to Alabama, but not before cleaning out the church bank account.

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71. D – “I’m not buying the argument that it is exclusively cultural pressure, though maybe there could be a little of it, but not much.”

    I think that’s the end of the discussion. If you won’t buy the argument, even when it is presented in research articles and educational journals that gender stereotyping is a very significant determiner of occupation, then what is the point of arguing?

    “Don’t bother me with the facts, my mind is already made up!”

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72. Mark.

    I didn’t say that pressure didn’t exist for some to become teachers and I’m not minimizing the research you forwarded to me.

    What it looks like to me is both of us are emphasizing our own points, at first giving one another the impression that we were ignoring one another’s comments.
    You are emphasizing and more focused on the teachers that were in fact pressured to teach and I’m emphasizing that most teachers, willfully chose the profession they are in.

    I’m hands on when it comes to education as I’m surrounded by teachers in the public school system and not a single one of them looked oppressed and most don’t hate their job.
    My own family members loved teaching and then the time off, but also they retired early, while the rest of us are hustling trying to put food on the table.

    In fact I see a lot more people working year round office jobs, labor intense jobs or low income retail positions hating their jobs in much larger numbers than teachers hate their jobs.

    Or when both the husband and wife are working low wage labor intense jobs and in a lot of cases their benefits package and job security makes them constantly vulnerable as they live paycheck to paycheck, working different shifts and not seeing each other.

    I have a hunch that there is still a fair amount of women who are abused or being oppressed in a Comp situation, that can’t escape abuse because the economy has been brutal from about 2006 until even now for many.

    My family members that taught (nor did the teachers I know) didn’t feel the economic pain many other’s endured during the economic meltdown and all of them appreciate the amount vacation and holiday time they have, something most of us don’t have.

    The one thing that will drive a teacher away (or maybe the Gov’t going bankrupt and no longer able to pay teachers) is society not backing them up to instill orderly behavior so they don’t distract other kids from learning. I’m old school in that kids cursing in the classroom shouldn’t be allowed but instead have consequences.

    I served on school boards and the majority of teachers feeling oppressed is parents not backing them up when their children (mainly boys typically Jr and Sr High School) are grossly disrupting the class or grossly mis-behaving inside or outside the classrooms within the boundaries of the schools, then those parents petitioning the board to have the teacher removed from their position.

    Mark, we look at things differently, I think student handbooks need to be honored, but you tend to look at it differently, But that is because I haven’t walked in your shoes nor have you walked in mine. So for you or I to refer the other as naive or dangerous is something I won’t do to you, the thought never entered my mind.

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73. Ugh. What a comment. I’m a teacher, D. Do you know how many of us go to school in the summer to upgrade?, take In-Service training during our summer breaks?. provide school supplies as a matter of course?, coach sports teams in our spare time?, work for years to pay off student loans after 5 or 6 years of University?, ..the list goes on.

    You have no idea how demanding a teacher’s job is, D.

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74. You have no idea how demanding a teacher’s job is, D.

    Hi carmen! I’be been a little tired of this focus on teachers to the exclusion of all else but I was a little surprised at the mention of teachers hanging out at their summer house 🙄🙄

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75. It’s the one job everyone thinks they understand implicitly – because they’ve gone to school. 😦

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76. Yes Carmen, I know you have to go to school once in awhile,

    I never said teaching was easy. I know that you have recitals, parent teacher conferences, plays and programs as well as preparing curriculum (harder for first year teachers) and correcting papers and parents interfering or overprotecting their “little angel” of a brat.

    I chose the side of a teacher into attaining tenure because of severe behavior problems pulling a prank in the locker room and then getting caught and was told to clean it up.

    After spending hours on the phone with the parents after interviewing the teacher. the principal and teacher was correct everything checked out, the teacher was in the right but the parents never forgave me. The parents had political clout thought they could protect their kids one of which skipped 75 days of school and the other kids got into mischief regularly never forgave me.

    What I did imply, working in a factory, or a mill or any labor intense job isn’t a walk in the park either. (though union factory jobs seem to protect employees better)

    There is no doubt you earn every penny you make and earned the sick leave, personal days, holiday and vacation time you receive. And hopefully if you are teaching in warm climate you have A/C

    Unfortunately, the non-union employees working in a labor intense environment in 115 degree heat in a Northern California lumber mill or wood processing plant with no A/C, who doesn’t make the money or get the amount of time off they need to retool their bodies, also deserves similar compensation, but doesn’t even come close.

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77. I’ve been thinking (which is sometimes dangerous).

    I guess since most mass shooters in the United States are men (_source)

    and since most child molesters are men (_source_ – “Offenders are overwhelmingly male, ranging from adolescents to the elderly “)

    way more than there are women in either category – men must just be better at, enjoy, and have an innate talent at mass killing and child molesting.

    Men must be better at killing innocent civilians than women.
    Men must have been designed by God to want to kill people and to enjoy it and be so darned effective at taking innocent life.

    Since most men work as Garbage Collectors, and I’d guess that most Septic Tank cleaners are men (no stats to back this second one up, it’s anecdotal), men must really enjoy working with stinky trash and dealing with human waste / human sludge / poopy.

    I’d prefer a man to be my trash collector.

    If I had a septic tank, I’d prefer my septic tank cleaner be a man.

    Most janitors (custodians) who scrub out public toilets, mop floors, and empty trash cans, are men.

    I guess that’s because men really enjoy scrubbing other people’s poopy and urine off toilets and they enjoy cleaning up kid vomit if they work in grade schools.

    I think men excel at cleaning up barf and dried pee and poopy.
    That there are so many men in that profession, from what I’ve seen, is proof that men only choose to clean up puke and pee because they love it! And they are so much naturally gifted at it.

    There can be NO OTHER EXPLANATIONS OR REASONS as to why so many men get into the custodial profession.

    I know I would want a male janitor cleaning any restroom I use in a public building. (A woman just wouldn’t be up to snuff. Men just have so much more experience at cleaning other people’s crud, and they like doing it!)

    Most cult leaders are men.
    Most false teachers in Christianity are … men.

    Considering all that, I guess men are just better at misleading people and swindling them out of their money via bogus religious claims than women.

    Additional sources:
    (you’ll have to Google for these because I cannot link to this many pages in one post):

    “Female Mass Killers: Why They’re So Rare – Live Science”

    “Five men die from toxic fumes while cleaning septic tank at luxury Delhi apartment block – The Independent ”

    “Santa Barbara Killings: Why Are Mass Murderers Always Male? | Time”

    14 Behind-the-Scenes Secrets of Garbage Collectors | Mental Floss

    About 99% of U.S. garbage collectors are men…

    “Why are almost all janitors male? – Quora”

    65.8% of Janitors are men – source for that info:
    Boston Globe, March 2017,
    article title: “Chart: The percentage of women and men in each profession”

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78. D – “You are emphasizing and more focused on the teachers that were in fact pressured to teach and I’m emphasizing that most teachers, willfully chose the profession they are in.”

    Define “willfully”. I “willfully” went to the college I went to because the tuition was paid for. As a high honor roll student, I could have gone to most colleges, but I “chose” to go to that college. Now, that is a pretty easy to understand example.

    But let me dig into it a little deeper. It probably would have been economically better to go to the state university. It was pretty cheap for in-state students. It was a top university and I could have taken out student loans and gotten aid more easily because they had a reasonable financial aid department. But:

    My church pushed Christian colleges over state schools. State schools were actively anti-Christian.
    No one (parents/teachers/guidance counselors) talked about how to pay for college. It was the parents’ deal as far as the school was concerned, and it was my deal as far as my parents were concerned.
    The quality of Christian college students was played up (e.g. examples of brilliant students) and the quality of the state school education was downplayed.
    The quality of the Christian vocational education was played up and the state education downplayed

    I’m guessing I delayed applying (it took the admissions counselor sending me a mail saying… when are you going to apply? to get me to apply) because I really didn’t want to go, and I guess I somehow thought that maybe some opportunity would appear, but none ever did. So, I “willfully” went to that college 😐 In retrospect, it was a poor decision.

    “I never, nor would ever think or suggest that woman can’t be a doctor, lead a nation or lead a church. In fact my father doctor is a woman.”

    I was going to ask why there are so few female pastors in our “free” country. Do you think that women are naturally worse pastors, or do you think it might be due to cultural pressure?

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79. Mark quoting D on this:

    D –
    “You are emphasizing and more focused on the teachers that were in fact pressured to teach and I’m emphasizing that most teachers, willfully chose the profession they are in.”

    Did D cite any evidence for this?

    Where is he getting that information from?

    That he looks around and generally sees more female teachers in grade school than males does not necessarily mean that those women “willfully” chose that career.

    Everyone is influenced to one degree or another by cultural norms, and gender expectations and gender stereotypes are a part of those norms.

    I’m focusing on all women and men in my posts, not just the ones who “feel pressured,” because everyone is impacted to some measure by sexism and gender stereotypes.

    Some people are blinded to what stereotypes that they hold because such stereotypes are so deeply ingrained in our minds and assumptions about life and the world, we assume them to be true.
    There are some online tests that bear this stuff out.

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80. Daisy, I don’t dispute your statistics.

    I ask myself why?

    Is it because men are wired to be more physically and mentally more aggressive not just in criminal circumstances but in non-criminal circumstances?

    I suspect that in many cases, also had something to do in many case as not being mentored properly when they grew up, regardless of how they are wired.

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81. I was going to ask why there are so few female pastors in our “free” country. Do you think that women are naturally worse pastors, or do you think it might be due to cultural pressure?

    In many denominations, it’s not even just cultural pressure but straight up discrimination. You can go for the degree and be told it’s not for women. Or they’ll let you get it and then refuse to hire you. And then cultural pressure in the form of men turning their backs on you or refusing to listen when you are preaching even simply as an assignment. Etc.etc. It adds up.

    Sidenote: I read a story the other day about someone’s dad on twitter and how he was talented in math and interested in engineering. He was first a. Not told about opportunities for free tuition so to get an education he b. talked to a navy recruiter who told him they would train him in electrical engineering. When he got there he was c. Told that program was not for black people and he could only be in certain jobs like cook and housekeeper. And on and on. So you see how it all adds up to thwart him at multiple spots in different ways, even when he had aptitude and a specific goal (they did end up letting him into the program after he basically became known as the guy who could fix stuff and then he fixed something really important and was asked why he was not working in that area).

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82. Is it because men are wired to be more physically and mentally more aggressive not just in criminal circumstances but in non-criminal circumstances?

    Please tell me that you don’t really believe this, D. It’s horrifically insulting to men.

    I know that Daisy has given you lots of links to read, but I’d still like to recommend a book to you. It’s called “I Don’t Want To Talk About It”, by Dr. Terrence Real. The main topic of the book is covert depression, but Dr. Real also discusses at length the notions of male aggression, and how the factors of family upbringing, social conditioning, the influence of media play into it. He utterly dismisses the notion that men are biologically “hard-wired” for aggression.

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83. D said

    Daisy, I don’t dispute your statistics.

    I ask myself why?

    Is it because men are wired to be more physically and mentally more aggressive not just in criminal circumstances but in non-criminal circumstances?

    I suspect that in many cases, also had something to do in many case as not being mentored properly when they grew up, regardless of how they are wired.

    -Most trash collectors are men.
    -Most septic tank cleaners are men.
    -Most janitors are men.

    I guess men are just naturally better and interested in working with smelly garbage, and cleaning up stinky human fecal matter. And urine.

    As to if men are more naturally aggressive.
    Read the book
    “_Why Does He Do That – Inside the Minds of Angry and Controlling Men_”
    by Lundy Bancroft.

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84. From one of my previous links:

    Don’t Blame Mental Illness for Mass Shootings; Blame Men
    If you want to cut down on gun violence, first target toxic masculinity.

    …If you take time to dig into the research, you’ll find that mental illness doesn’t play the role in mass shootings and other gun violence that many, especially our politicians, seem to think it does.

    …Yet, while most mass shooters in the past 35 years have not been found to have a serious mental illness, nearly all of them do have one thing in common: their sex. Of the 96 mass shootings committed since 1982, all but two were committed by men. (Most of them were white.)

    ….To be sure, a variety of factors are associated with committing serious violence, such as a history of binge drinking, childhood abuse, living in a neighborhood with a high rate of violent crime and experiencing stressful life events. But being a male is often listed as one of the top two predictive risk factors for committing serious violence in peer review papers on the topic—more than any mental health diagnosis.

    …Furthermore, women live through the same experiences, from childhood abuse to stressful life events, at rates similar to or even higher than men. …And yet, women commit a very tiny fraction of these incidences.

    …So, what’s going on? According to sociologist Eric Madfis, the male gender-mass shooter connection may stem from cultural standards of how men are expected to react to stress and perceived victimization as compared to women.

    ….This isn’t just because of how men are built physically.
    While it’s true that having higher testosterone is often related to aggression, recent research indicates that testosterone is likely a result rather than a cause of violent behavior.

    This suggests that societal influences probably play a larger role in violence than any biological factor. After all, our culture is saturated in messages—whether in the media, in our military, in sports, at the workplace, or in our education and health care systems—that embrace and even endorse a distorted view of masculinity, which tends to value and encourage expressions of aggression by men.

    Even those men who might be suffering from mental illness are unlikely to seek out counseling because it is often stigmatized as “weak” for men to seek out help and admit vulnerability.

    …Madfis also notes that many men who commit mass shootings tend to be those who have failed to achieve financial and romantic success in ways that our society values and accredits as “manly.”

    As a result, Madfis explains, men may feel emboldened to resort to violence to gain both revenge and some level of notoriety as compensation for being denied what they thought they were owed, or felt pressure to attain.

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85. -Most janitors are men.

    And most housekeepers, in my experience, are women. Funny that.

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86. Daisy – I think Jimmy Hinton’s account of his father is pretty interesting in light of the conversation. I think his father changed a diaper once for a girl and got “interested” in what he saw. That began this sort of cat and mouse game where he tried more and more deviant behavior and also practiced how to keep people unaware.

    Lea – “In many denominations, it’s not even just cultural pressure but straight up discrimination.”

    That was mainly my point. D says that he supports female church leaders. Obviously, there are not many, percentage-wise. So, the question is raised, is this an innate female characteristic or a result of cultural pressure? Seems pretty obvious that this is a result of cultural pressure – and I’m being pretty general about that since on one hand, there ARE female pastors, but on the other hand most denominations and seminaries are doctrinally opposed. But to put words in D’s mouth, this is a “free” country, and obviously men must be more “willing” to be pastors than women.

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87. As a result, Madfis explains, men may feel emboldened to resort to violence to gain both revenge and some level of notoriety as compensation for being denied what they thought they were owed, or felt pressure to attain.

    This is why incels are rather terrifying. That ‘perceived victimization as compared to women’ you mentioned is absolutely present [and although men like MacArthur and those who rant about the #metoo movement may not take it so far, the ideas are in the same ballpark. An entire world of MRA’s and MGTOW’s and Incels have convinced themselves that the world has done them ill – and that gains by women are loses to them.] So these men who don’t feel like they’ve had the success they think they ‘deserve’ find someone else to blame and women are convenient scapegoat. They sit around all day and blame women for their rejections, and concoct plans for revenge. Some of them have followed through in recent years. It’s so, so toxic, and that blame of women is a consistent throughpoint.

    And violence against women is also a connector in many of these mass shootings that really needs to be explored in depth. In listening to true crime, so many serial killers had domestic violence and previous rapes in their background that they either were never prosecuted for or got off lightly. I think that just emboldens them.

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88. Seems pretty obvious that this is a result of cultural pressure – and I’m being pretty general about that since on one hand, there ARE female pastors, but on the other hand most denominations and seminaries are doctrinally opposed.

    Mark, in the denominations that are opposed they aren’t merely putting cultural pressure on women, they simply won’t hire them. Many won’t even train them. That’s what I mean.

    Interestingly, in the denominations that DO allow women, they are catching up quickly in the number of seminary grads, and surpassing the number of men. Now, this makes sense to me in the sense in some sense because women can only become pastors in a few denominations so they all sort of flow there. But it also makes me think of how, after years, centuries, of women being denied entry into colleges and professions, any tipping from majority men to majority women is somehow seen as a bit of crisis.

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89. Japan,

    I was responding to Daisy, as she made a lot of valid points about behavior and professions unique to certain men.

    I’m not insulting you, this is a discussion.

    Daisy, shared statistics that men tend to be more aggressive, but she also summed it up better than I did when I asked “Is it because men are wired to be more physically and mentally more aggressive not just in criminal circumstances but in non-criminal circumstances? when she proclaimed men have more testosterone.

    If you are going to be insulting, when I ask a question or share an opinion and then I verbally retaliate in return, then it makes both of us look more stupid then we already are being.

    As I explained to others, I haven’t walked in your shoes and you haven’t walked in mine. I have endured a lot of abuse in my life and severe spiritual abuse by a hyper-Calvinist.

    I intend on cutting everybody some slack, but if I’m being cursed at or being insulted by someone for asking questions or sharing observations that is going on in society and in the workplace then what is the use of having a discussion.

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90. Lea said

    -Most janitors are men.
    (Lea’s reply)
    And most housekeepers, in my experience, are women. Funny that.

    I’m waiting for D to respond to my point on those issues, which is a mirror of his.

    Insultingly assuming that the only or main reason someone takes on a certain career (especially if it’s low pay and/or has low esteem) is due to a lowered bar of gendered expectations,
    or that, really, the one and only reason a man would “want” to take a job scrubbing toilets is because he really, really likes cleaning other people’s doody.
    Or, maybe it would or could imply, depending on how one is presenting it (like D does when talking about women’s careers), that men are simply too dumb to work as doctors or lawyers, which is why they end up working as trash collectors or janitors.

    D’s views completely overlook and are for the most part (aside from some minor lip service) not willing to acknowledge other factors that play into why people enter what careers they do.

    I already mentioned up thread I may be changing careers in the near future, which means going back to college.
    And I may be doing so not because I hate my original career, but there are not many openings (in my original career) in the geographical area I am living in, and I am not able to move to a new location.

    So, in my case, my gender as to why I may be changing jobs has little to nothing to do with my biological sex. Good luck getting D to admit to that.

    You gotta dig how D flatly told me above he’ll just ignore any and all articles, interviews, and studies I link him to about the role sexism / gender expectations play in why people do what they do.

    D prefers his opinions and perceptions of the world to actual studies or to what women here have to say to him about our own experiences of living in the world, going to college, and applying for jobs and the gendered based expectations and sexism we’ve faced along the way.

    Because as long as D personally knows four (or whatever number of women family members), so long as he has one sister and three female cousins, who work as teachers, he assumes all, to the vast majority of, women must want to be teachers, and women must just be better at teaching kids.

    I asked D above, when he said he knows that his female relative (an aunt?) loves to teach, how he knows that?
    Did he actually ask her, or is he just assuming her motivations and reasoning?

    Anyway, even if D’s aunt did get into teaching because she loves it, it does not follow that gender expectations did not influence her choice at all, nor does it follow that all women who enter that profession do so because they love working with children.

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91. Mark to Lea:

    Lea – “In many denominations, it’s not even just cultural pressure but straight up discrimination.”

    That was mainly my point. D says that he supports female church leaders. Obviously, there are not many, percentage-wise.

    So, the question is raised, is this an innate female characteristic or a result of cultural pressure?

    Seems pretty obvious that this is a result of cultural pressure – and I’m being pretty general about that since on one hand, there ARE female pastors, but on the other hand most denominations and seminaries are doctrinally opposed.

    But to put words in D’s mouth, this is a “free” country, and obviously men must be more “willing” to be pastors than women.

    There are some Christian women (I’ve seen discussing this online) who say they would love to be preachers, but most churches in the States are complementarian, and comps out-right refuse to allow women to be preachers, because in their opinions, in their interpretation, the Bible supposedly forbids women to be preachers.

    I’ve also seen discussions by women pastors, where they explain that even in more moderate to liberal denominations, where women are allowed to be preachers and in positions of influence, they seldom actually do put women in charge even in those churches.

    Such denominations only pay lip service to women leading and teaching – all the real power, teaching positions,etc, still go to men (again, this is according to comments by women who work as pastors or who attend “women as leaders” churches).

    Such churches say one thing but they do another.
    Sometimes it pays to look at what people do, not at what they say.

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92. (part 1)
    Lea said

    This is why incels are rather terrifying. That ‘perceived victimization as compared to women’ you mentioned is absolutely present [and although men like MacArthur and those who rant about the #metoo movement may not take it so far, the ideas are in the same ballpark.

    An entire world of MRA’s and MGTOW’s and Incels have convinced themselves that the world has done them ill – and that gains by women are loses to them.]

    So these men who don’t feel like they’ve had the success they think they ‘deserve’ find someone else to blame and women are convenient scapegoat.

    They sit around all day and blame women for their rejections, and concoct plans for revenge. Some of them have followed through in recent years. It’s so, so toxic, and that blame of women is a consistent throughpoint.

    The incels and men like them are defenitely an entitled bunch.

    As outlined in books like Why Does He Do That by Lundy Bancroft (and in other studies and articles I’ve seen) a lot of men (this gets into social conditioning and gender roles) are fed these messages from popular culture, their friends, video games, movies, their parents, etc etc, that they are entitled to certain things, including a young, hot girlfriend.

    One problem with this attitude is that they don’t do much self-reflection and so they won’t do any self-improvement.
    They are too busy looking out-ward and wanting to blame the world for stuff they could change.

    Maybe, if you are a single guy who cannot get a girlfriend, it may have to do with you.

    Women don’t owe these incel men (or any man) anything, but if you are remaining single despite wanting a date, it may be that you are
    -socially awkward, you never try asking women out (you just expect them to fall for you),
    -or you only approach the airbrushed looking model types (who are out or your league),
    -or, you have bad breath – perhaps you are out of shape and could benefit from a gym membership.

    There’s room for improvement there, I’m sure, but Incel type guys prefer to just sit around blaming women and feminism for their issues – so they will remain single. Their behavior and mindset turns into a loop.

    Most women can usually smell sexism, entitlement, and desperation from a single man from 56 miles away, and it’s a huge turn-off.

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93. (part 2)
    Lea said

    This is why incels are rather terrifying.
    …they think they ‘deserve’ find someone else to blame and women are convenient scapegoat.

    They sit around all day and blame women for their rejections, and concoct plans for revenge. Some of them have followed through in recent years. It’s so, so toxic, and that blame of women is a consistent throughpoint.

    I’ve read articles about these incel guys, (or about that male pervert who was running for Congress who wanted to legalize incest with kids, etc,) that on their private boards, they fantasize about, or argue for, how it should be legal for them to torture, rape and/or murder women – and one reason some of them say this is that they want to punish women because they are single.

    They are beyond disgusting. (And they wonder why no woman wants to be with them, heh.
    They give off those creepy, angry, bitter, “blame women” and “women are just cattle to be used by men” vibes.)

    And some of them push their sexist, stupid formulas.

    They sign up for PUA classes, where PUA idiots teach them about “negging,” or, “here are ten steps to getting a chick, guaranteed to work.”

    Right there is part of the problem – these men treat all women like we are identical, interchangeable widgets, rather than as unique individuals and as full human beings, so if “Approach A” (which is usually degrading and sexist) works at getting you a date with one woman, they are suggesting that same approach will work on all other women.

    But a lot of these attitudes are based on social conditioning.

    Unless any Christian here wants to argue that when sin entered humanity at The Fall, it somehow messed up men’s morality towards women, which could be a possibility, because God warned the first woman that now man would seek to rule over her (which was not God’s intent).

    Even so, I’d say social conditioning and the messages men get in the media play a huge role in all this, and it’s naive and stupid to ignore it or to down-play its significance.

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94. My impression at this stage is that I think that D just likes and prefers sexist gendered stereotypes and does not like to be confronted with studies or personal experiences that contradict his sexist world view.

    D said

    Daisy, shared statistics that men tend to be more aggressive, but she also summed it up better than I did when I asked “Is it because men are wired to be more physically and mentally more aggressive not just in criminal circumstances but in non-criminal circumstances? when she proclaimed men have more testosterone.

    You’re attributing views to me that I do not hold.

    I did not reply to you that,
    “Men are wired to be more physically and mentally aggressive because they have more testosterone.”

    I do believe that men are largely socially conditioned to deal with frustration by lashing out verbally or physically.

    Culture permits and expects men to be aggressive. So, boys grow up acting aggressively.

    Even the excerpted _article_ I provided previously says,

    To be sure, a variety of factors are associated with [men] committing serious violence,

    …According to sociologist Eric Madfis, the male gender-mass shooter connection may stem from cultural standards of how men are expected to react to stress and perceived victimization as compared to women.

    …This suggests that societal influences probably play a larger role in violence than any biological factor.

    After all, our culture is saturated in messages—whether in the media, in our military, in sports, at the workplace, or in our education and health care systems—that embrace and even endorse a distorted view of masculinity, which tends to value and encourage expressions of aggression by men.

    Here again is My Post that I think you are referencing.

    If you read research about violence and men (I’ve already excerpted one above), they have stated that testosterone alone is not responsible, but that social conditioning plays a part.

    My post was a parody of sorts of yours.

    I made a rather insulting post about men (vis a vis career choices and why men do what they do), in the same manner you’ve been making insulting posts about women.

    You didn’t touch my observations in that post about
    -most janitors are men
    -most septic tanks cleaners are men
    -most trash collectors are men

    Why not?

    Here again is part of what I said:

    Since most men work as Garbage Collectors, and I’d guess that most Septic Tank cleaners are men (no stats to back this second one up, it’s anecdotal), men must really enjoy working with stinky trash and dealing with human waste / human sludge / poopy.

    I’d prefer a man to be my trash collector.

    If I had a septic tank, I’d prefer my septic tank cleaner be a man.

    Most janitors (custodians) who scrub out public toilets, mop floors, and empty trash cans, are men.

    I guess that’s because men really enjoy scrubbing other people’s poopy and urine off toilets and they enjoy cleaning up kid vomit if they work in grade schools.

    I think men excel at cleaning up barf and dried pee and poopy.
    That there are so many men in that profession, from what I’ve seen, is proof that men only choose to clean up puke and pee because they love it! And they are so much naturally gifted at it.

    There can be NO OTHER EXPLANATIONS OR REASONS as to why so many men get into the custodial profession.

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95. you never try asking women out (you just expect them to fall for you),

    Daisy, this might be getting a bit off topic, but Elliott Rogers (serial murderer/incel traits) basically did exactly this. He expected women to run up to him and throw themselves at him and resented them for not doing it.

    Some men seem to have a perception that this happens to handsome men all the time. It may, but I think it’s more likely that these men are missing subtle signals because they are either young or socially inexperienced (often both). What they need is to drop the misogyny and figure out how to read people better, but I guess it’s easier to hate all women.

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96. D:If you are going to be insulting, when I ask a question or share an opinion and then I verbally retaliate in return, then it makes both of us look more stupid then we already are being.

    Was this directed at SKIJ? Because nothing he said was an insult to you. He said that perception that men are naturally violent was insulting to MEN. Then he gave you a book recommendation. This response is bizarre.

    SKIJ, I’ve seen Terrence Real mentioned before, it may have been by you!, but I haven’t read any of his stuff.

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97. Daisy,

    I don’t deny there is cultural pressure, but not all the time. Which is what I have been talking about.

    Mark is making an assumption I never made, with exception this is a “free country” when he wrote: “But to put words in D’s mouth, this is a “free” country, and obviously men must be more “willing” to be pastors than women.”

    Daisy, there is an obvious discrepancy in certain professions, especially in the case of women leading a church, I do believe there is a lot of cultural and biblical pressure that is preventing women from leadership positions in a church.

    I do see barriers being broken in that women are getting elected into Congress and the Senate, America nearly had a women become President for the first time, we have CEO’s that are women. in my case, my current boss of 10 years, is a woman, best boss I ever had.

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98. Lea said

    Daisy, this might be getting a bit off topic, but Elliott Rogers (serial murderer/incel traits) basically did exactly this. He expected women to run up to him and throw themselves at him and resented them for not doing it.

    Some men seem to have a perception that this happens to handsome men all the time. It may, but I think it’s more likely that these men are missing subtle signals because they are either young or socially inexperienced (often both).

    What they need is to drop the misogyny and figure out how to read people better, but I guess it’s easier to hate all women.

    I don’t think Incels (or some sexist men generally) understand that dating is hard for everyone, both men and women, and even sometimes for rich and sexy types, who culture tells us should have an easy time of things.

    In the last few years, I’ve read up so many biographical pages about famous movies stars and rock singers.

    Many of them are lonely and strike out in true love and even in getting dates.

    I read an interview singer Britney Spears (who is wealthy, pretty) went on a date with a guy – the guy was not into her at all. She said it was awkward.

    After Elvis got a divorce, his friend said Elvis was lonely and would say to him, “why can’t I get a girlfriend?”

    There was a big expose in VF magazine (or Cosmo?) about actor Tom Cruise. Cruise muttered in front of one of his CoS friends that he was lonely, tired of being single – so his CoS church started holding “auditions” for him so he could pick a wife!!

    Actor Zac Effron who is considered quite handsome talked a couple years ago about how he was lonely, so he signed up for a dating app – but he did not get a single response on there.

    Liz Taylor, Marilyn Monroe – very famous, considered very attractive – had multiple divorces.

    Movie star Burt Reynolds recently passed away. I did a lot of reading about his life, some of it including his dating life. He had a terrible time of it. He and his first wife didn’t get along, the second one maxed out his credit cards, things didn’t work out between him and Dinah Shore (spelling?)… he was considered sexy and successful back in the day, too.
    (I think he died single, never remarried?)

    I don’t think anyone in life, man or woman, sails into, or holds on to, relationships easily.

    Maybe it’s inexperience coupled with Hollywood Rom Com depictions of “meet cute” couples that cause these Incels to think everyone else in life has romance so easy. We don’t.
    Women sure don’t have dating easier, but Incels think we do.

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99. Lea,

    I responded to Daisy after she shared an interesting stat about criminals being mostly men when I asked:
    “Is it because men are wired to be more physically and mentally more aggressive not just in criminal circumstances but in non-criminal circumstances?”

    Then Japan makes a rather strange comment about me being horrifically insulting to men when he wrote:
    “Please tell me that you don’t really believe this, D. It’s horrifically insulting to men.”

    What I asked Daisy wasn’t horrific or insulting to men, it was a question I had to Daisy, for which she suggested the reason men are the way they are is because they have more testosterone.

    Japan’s question was a leading question in that I was being horrific, which is insulting.

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100. D said,

     I don’t deny there is cultural pressure, but not all the time. Which is what I have been talking about.

     This is not the impression I get from your posts.

     You seem to heavily and regularly deny the amount of societal messages girls get even while in grade school that boys do not receive, messages which, yes, can and do influence many girls later in life, and as they are going thru the educational system.

     I even gave you research articles above that bear this out – that what girls are taught when younger, and teacher bias against girls in classes, impacts which careers girls choose when they go into college.

     One reason I shied away from taking more math and science when I was in college and high school is that I had picked up the message from TV shows, movies, family members, teachers, and schools, that math and science are for boys, and that girls are not as good at those subjects as boys.

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101. D said

     Mark is making an assumption I never made, with exception this is a “free country” when he wrote: “But to put words in D’s mouth, this is a “free” country, and obviously men must be more “willing” to be pastors than women.”

     I don’t think Mark was so much putting words in your mouth as he was (accurately) paraphrasing your position thus far.

     You have indicated that the one and only reason women would ever want to enter Career X is because they LOVE Career X, it’s a free country, nobody puts a gun to a woman’s head and “forces” her to enter Career X. Women only enter Career X because they want to, just like your female cousins and auntie who works in Career X, all American women are just like your female friends and family.

     That is a summary of your position.

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