Carmel wrote:Kelly: When you asked for empirical evidence of the fact that men and women are not equal, neurologically, I did. But you ignored the link I posted. You even claimed that telling you to check the link was evidence of no evidence. You were so lazy that I had to copy and paste the findings into this very thread. At that point, you conceded, but then, fool that you are, you claimed that the evidence I presented was different to that provided in the linked page, when the evidence was taken from that very page. Wake up to yourself, Carmel.
Carmel: Wake up to objective reality. The bottom line is that at most there is an average 3-4 points difference in iq scores. Some research shows no average difference at all. All of your intellectual wanking won't change that.
Okay, I'll go with this particular topic, or rather, re-iterate what I've already said. Before I do, please remember that there were at least three topics in this discussion, and to which my paragraph was referring: (i) the neurological differences between men and women (i.e. brain sex) - plenty of empirical evidence there, countering your "researched" claim that there isn't any; (ii) that differences in academic scores is strongly influenced by the growing tendency for academic institutions to favour female-friendly modes of instruction, causing a "drop-out crisis" by young males - plenty of empirical evidence there, again showing your reliance on statistics to be problematic; (iii) that the differences in I.Q. not only include higher averages for
all males than for women, but also, that when taking into account the different rates of growth of various parts of the brain, that students of advanced levels of math, tend to be male, far more than female, from the age of fifteen, and also that the very top mathematicians, such as Field Prize winners, have been all male to date.
I am clearly not the one engaging in wanking.
Kelly: At least I am biased in a good way.
Carmel: That's a matter of opinion.
You can kick and scream all you like, but you won't change the facts. You can suppress them, though. Good luck with that.
Kelly: Did you know that BMI should be calculated differently between men and women, so that men are often regarded as overweight when they are within the normal, healthy range, owing to their greater muscle mass and heavier weight relative to volume? In other words, men are naturally more "dense" than women. It is understandable if an obese man doesn't regard himself as fat, when he believes he ought to be big rather than slim. The generalisation was very fair, I think.
Worryingly, a slim, firm physique, usually at the lowest end of the healthy weight range, is very much admired in today's culture. This is increasingly causing men to believe they are overweight, when their weight is in fact healthy. It is also generally OK to be in the overweight (but not obese range) range, especially if you exercise and don't smoke.
-
Men's health forum, "Weight problems FAQs"
Other interesting facts about female vs male obesity:
- Obese men often have lower testosterone levels than non-obese men
- Most commercial weight loss programs are designed for women, and are used mostly by women
- Most commercial weight loss programs focus on foods, fad diets, or other gimmicks
- Genuine health organisations warn people to steer clear of fad diets and commercial weight programs that prey on people who want to lose a lot of weight fast (but unsustainably)
- There are legal female-only gyms because women don't feel comfortable going into the traditional free-weights type gyms
- Most body-builders are male
- Women tend to use machines rather than free-weights (cardiovascular training rather than strength-training)
These are just observations. I didn't create the phenomena. I just saw them.
Carmel: Thanks for the tedium, but you ran off chasing a ball like a distracted dog. The point was both, not one gender indulges in external stimulus to alleviate stress.
That wasn't the point. I wrote that women don't trust their minds. This is why they are easily driven to seek to alleviate their stress by using comfort, rather than dealing with the stress.
I mentioned that some men indulge in excessive drinking, you completely evaded this point.
I'm happy to deal with this point now. I didn't earlier because I like to be efficient. The first point is to ask whether men are actually equally prone to obesity as women. You were claiming they were. My argument was that men and women cannot be classified as overweight using the same BMI standard, as men would be regarded as overweight or obese owing to their greater muscle mass. I trust you understand the implication. To spell it out: many men would not believe themselves to be obese owing to a typical "heavy" body-image. So they aren't actually comfort-eating. Clearly, most heavy labour jobs are performed by males. These guys are hefty blokes. They eat energy-dense foods, like meat pies, fried chips, and so on. It's not comfort-eating. It isn't trying to alleviate psychological stress.
Now, I'll address your point about excessive drinking. Our second point is to look at the "beer gut". But wait, the beer gut is abdominal fat, and scientists tell us that men accumulate fat around the abdomen. This fat is not necessarily created by excessive drinking. So, it may not be a comfort-seeking activity that creates the obesity.
Let's move on to a relationship between alcohol and obesity in males. If men were actually using alcohol largely as a psychological crutch, then there would be studies about this psychological link to alcohol in men with true beer guts (ie. fat alcoholics), and nothing about women. We'd see studies titled "Anxiety and alcholism in men", or similar, and never find anything about "Phobias and alcoholism in women" or the like. But the data is not so conclusive.
For instance:
Alcohol abuse, depression, obesity are interrelated among young women.
Co-morbidity and familial aggregation of alcoholism and anxiety disorders
"...alcoholism was associated with anxiety disorders in the relatives, particularly among females"
Alcohol dependence and phobic anxiety states.
(...But the meaning is ambiguous, where it says the effect of using alcohol to self-medicate severe phobias, compared to not, is unknown in women. That could mean that women use alcohol without relation to phobias.)
Non-alcoholic males but not females experience a correlation between anxiety changes and perceived impairment
(...So alcohol itself could be to blame in making a male experience anxiety in relation to his behaviour, rather than it being used to self-medicate for anxiety.)
Anxiety and alcohol abuse
Some anxiety disorders follow from pathological alcohol abuse, others come before alcohol abuse.
"The high rates of comorbidity in some studies likely reflect a mixture of true anxiety disorders among alcoholics at a rate equal to or slightly higher than that for the general population, along with temporary, but at times severe, substance-induced anxiety syndromes."
The Structure of Genetic and Environmental Risk Factors for Common Psychiatric and Substance Use Disorders in Men and Women
"The underlying structure of the genetic and environmental risk factors for the common psychiatric and drug abuse disorders in men and women is very similar."
Alcoholism, Anxiety and Depression
"...it is concluded that alcoholism, major affective disorder and major anxiety disorder are distinct illnesses with different prognoses and treatments"
Kelly: I didn't say that. I said women rarely have intuition. They have animal instincts. Men aren't free of those instincts, but they are far more likely to clarify them.
Carmel: not necessarily, but they're far more likely to indulge their animal instincts. i.e. porn, rape, wife/child abuse, rampage killings, war. I'm sure in your your usual deluded fashion, you can find a way to turn this into something noble.
But I'm not arguing that men are free from animal instincts. I have already said that. All I am saying is that animal instincts are not intuition.
You're right that men's animal instincts are more overtly aggressive, than women's, that's quite true. Women's self-minimisation and aversion to risk is an animal instinct to avoid conflict, and we can explain these differences as an evolved role-division for the species' more efficient survival. Yet of course, it's clear that the aggression driving men to conquer women or other men - the will to power - is also expressed in more civilised forms, such as dominating delusions and mental confusion. It is precisely the same will to power that drives men to want to control their mental experiences. It is not a delusion to state this. It is why men are superior to women in some of the most rarefied, purely intellectual fields. Self-minimising, and wanting to avoid danger, is really quite obviously not going to be a psychological drive for intellectual mastery, now, is it?
As Weininger so aptly put it (whom I know you think is
out-dated):
This self-assertion of the mind over the innumerable similarities and differences that make reality so confusing has been compared to the struggle for life among all beings. We fend off the world through our concepts. Slowly and gradually we bring the world under the control of our concepts, just as we first retrain a madman's whole body in a rough and ready fashion in order at least to impose some limits on his ability to be a danger, and only restrain his individual limbs once we feel comparatively safe.
Kelly: You aren't conscious enough, or willing enough, to see something sitting right before your nose. It would mean you would have to challenge your comfortable place in society, admit that you're mediocre, philosophically inept, an unsubtle and coarse thinker, prone to flying off the handle instead of patiently examining the data for alternative explanations, and forgetful. If you did that, you wouldn't forget your admission. And this would be the same as inviting a lot of pain and stress into your life for a long time to come. You're not ready for it, so you shut your eyes, and, a perfect hypocrite, tell the seeing person that they, instead, are blind.
Carmel: Oh, ok, irony. That's cool.
Kelly:
"Words of open rebuke
Are better than hidden malice."
Carmel: Any excuse to wallow in your emotionalism and self righteousness.
I don't like unnecessary suffering. So I am glad if I have learnt to better myself, and I hope I can be efficient in helping others. Is this wallowing in emotionalism and self righteousness? If it is, so be it.
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