> Does that entire paragraph not just objectify the wife and establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience?
Re objectification: couples get advice from their life partners. That doesn't mean this is their life partners only goal.
Re: 'establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience' is there anything ethically wrong with this? Would you prefer a citation be added, eg, 'newborn female infants stare at faces more often than male newborn infants'?
Or do you find the mere existence of differences between the sexes to be 'offensive'? In which case, you're more than welcome to be offended.
>Re objectification: couples get advice from their life partners. That doesn't mean this is their life partners only goal.
Completely true, valid point.
>Re: 'establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience' is there anything ethically wrong with this?
I would argue that there is something ethically wrong with this. Take this statement:
>" women think socially with a level of complexity that I think most men never approach."
Yeah, on it's face it's a compliment(I guess?), but all it really serves to do, in this context,(for me, might read totally different to you) is illustrate the differences between the two sexes. Where's any evidence that his assertion is true?
Anecdotal evidence is by definition flawed. I don't really understand where you're failing to see the potential for harm in this.
> Would you prefer a citation be added, eg, 'newborn female infants stare at faces more often than male newborn infants'?
Do you have a source stating that females raised in the same environment as males exhibited a higher level of social complexity? Because, yes, I would like to see that before changing my worldview based upon this persons statement.
>Or do you find the mere existence of differences between the sexes to be 'offensive'? In which case, you're more than welcome to be offended.
Not at all; what I find offensive is when people try to extrapolate meaning and form social constructs based upon differences that often aren't conclusively proven or even relevant.
When I'm talking about these differences I don't mean boy-penis girl-vagina, I mean boy-brave/courageous/smart girl-cute/supportive/geeky.
In my opinion these social constructs are already so ingrained in our society that this will be just as long and drawn out a problem as racism. I mean just define Masculine and Feminine in your head.
I'm not trying to make a point here, or to white-knight, my original response was just how that post genuinely made me feel, I didn't like it.
This study is so flawed as to be scientifically worthless.
The experimenter who was interacting with the babies and measuring the time they spent staring at faces knew the gender of each baby - in other words, it wasn't double blind. This is a well known recipe for allowing the experimenter's bias to influence their recording of the results. This is just one of several basic flaws in the study; see the analysis starting on page 113 of Cordelia Fine's "Delusions of Gender."
"Delusions of Gender" has lots of similar analyses of the research "proving" innate gender differences. The takedown of Louann Brizendine's references starting on page 158 and the one about the frozen salmon MRIs on page 150 are particularly hilarious. One example:
"Casually, Brizendine notes, 'All of the therapists who showed these responses happened to be women.' For some reason, she fails to mention that this is because only female therapists, selected from phone directories, happened to be recruited for the study."
Not being double blind doesn't make it scientifically worthless.
Not does it invalidate male/female roles being consistent across over 200 cultures.
If you accept that men build muscle different from women, and have different hormones, could you not also accept that the differences in gray/white matter proportions, size etc are not 'cultural'?
> Re objectification: couples get advice from their life partners. That doesn't mean this is their life partners only goal.
Women objectification is about treating a woman like an object, a belonging, a resource.
As it turns out, the person writing the parent comment defined a founder's wife as "one of your most valuable business resources". That person should have said, "some of your most valuable business insights will come from your wife". It wouldn't be objectification, but it would still establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience.
Assuming unproven differences between the sexes to be true has always been ethically borderline from a scientific perspective. From a social perspective, it artificially deters persons of each sex from doing something which is then implicitly considered "unnatural" for them.
Things look different removed from context. In this case, the relevant context is the history of marriage as a property agreement arranged between the husband and the father of the bride.
Re objectification: couples get advice from their life partners. That doesn't mean this is their life partners only goal.
Re: 'establish differences between the sexes based on anecdotal experience' is there anything ethically wrong with this? Would you prefer a citation be added, eg, 'newborn female infants stare at faces more often than male newborn infants'?
Or do you find the mere existence of differences between the sexes to be 'offensive'? In which case, you're more than welcome to be offended.