For all of their good intentions and the rhetoric, today Red China is run by men as is Russia and women's equality is as far away there as most elsewhere.

I really think we are side-stepping the "politics of physiology." (I would say "biology" instead of "physiology," but that refers to a different debate).

Collectively, we are uneasy about physiological differences, yet the two sexes, universally, have different approaches to things.

The discussion of this started in the late 1960's and early 1970's and got lost along the way. I think this is why the word Feminist has lost its meaning.

Society clearly has laws and customs that accept this and laws that ask for equality are seen, at least by some, to fly in the face of physiology. Who we marry, what clothes we wear, who bears children, who fights wars, what athletics we participate in, what behavior is allowed, flows from physiology into law and no one blinks.

To say it again, this area is where, in my view, we will make our greatest strides in women's equality - where physiology is being used as a false reason for keeping women back.

I just had a funny thought.

My Dad used to hunt (he's too tired now) and so we always had champion hunting dogs when I was growing up. Occasionally my dad would enter the dogs in field trials (hunting competitions) and they usually did quite well.

The dogs were invariably females. I remember asking my dad why we always got bitches and he said "because males goof around to much, get into fights and waste a lot of time chasing bitches."

Wouldn't it be funny if we lived in a world where men were not aloud to hold important positions or paid as much because it was commonly understood that they "goof around, get into fights, and waste a lot of time chasing bitches."

Remember when women weren't aloud to be piolits because "what if they got their period (ie went insane)."

Red China or to the USSR, I was talking specifically about the struggles of the early 20th century and late 19th century in the US.

I am not sure I understand the rest of your argument/statement. Can you rephrase it for me?

I have to agree with you there, Dan. The communist & socialist parties are about the only consistent allies that welfare rights activists have had. Mainly, I'm sure, because they haven't been bought off by the gov't and turned into poverty pimps, the way most of the other big librul groups have (YWCA, for instance). And even though I'm not sure of their effectiveness these days (socialist events especially tend to be long-winded, in my experience), they still stand on the side of the poor and disenfranchised. Most of what I've learned about migrant worker struggles has been through Workers World Weekly and other socialist pubs. Few other publications give poor people's issues, especially welfare, more than a cursory remark. So I do appreciate the American, home-grown variety of socialist a lot.

"Socialist Worker" and the "International Socialist Review"?

http://socialistworker.org/

http://isreview.org/

having been a participant in a vast array of political, technical, and social working groups of various gender makeup, I have seen the gamut of behavior.

Male-dominated groups that cooperate, work in concert, and get the work done with little or no need for hierarchy, control, pecking order, and assigned tasks, and female-dominated groups that are extremely rigid, ordered, hierarchical, and a blizzard of "orders" from the "leaders" demanding and assigning tasks...and of course, visa versa, as in your description above.

I think that trying to define behavior based on gender is a trap.

...that women and men don't interact differently?

I would argue that the variation between the groups is smaller than the variation within the groups.

in other words, while it is clear that men and women often interact differently, I have experienced extremes of interactive style in both groups. Those extremes (competitive, hierarchical, dominance-oriented majority women groups vs cooperative, horizontally organized, equality-empowering majority men groups) are found both within and between those groups.

Thus, the factor (gender) does not fully explain the variable (behavior).

While women will sometimes rise to the chest-thumping level of men on occasion and not back down, overall I find women's discourse to be much more sane and rational then male discourse -- at least on most websites. dKos is a veritable testosterone bath, perhaps outdone only by DU or freeper fora.

Also, from what I learned in math and statistics, variance within a group vs. variance between groups is not a valid measure of disparity. A male group's dynamic could range wildly and a female group's dynamic could range wildly, while they have an overlapping area. People often point to that intersection and say, "See? We're just alike!" It just doesn't mean anything when you just look at that intersection.

It's obviously more subjective when we talk about "male" and "female" group dynamics, but speaking for myself, there is no question of when the moment is when a man joins an all-female bull session. No, gender does not "fully explain" behavior, but it's a very strong influence, if not determinant, if you ask me.

vs the variance between is an extremely important parameter - it is the basis for, and unavoidable stumbling block to the crazies on the Right who would try and use IQ tests as a valid measure of different levels of intelligence between races.

Stephen Gould laid it out, and his arguments stand unrefuted to this day: In the case of IQ (even if we grant that IQ is a valid measure of intelligence, which it is most certainly not!), the variance within one racial group is larger than the variance between different racial groups. This indicates that racial origin does not explain the difference between the groups. Period.

In my experience, I have not found women's discourse to be any more or any less sane or rational than men's discourse.

I have participated in group activities on a huge range of projects and subjects, from politics to science, from construction work to organizing parties to putting together newsletters and flyers.

My experiences have informed my opinion, and my opinion is that gender is not the determinant in behavior. I think that class, education, and upbringing are far more determinant than gender. Nurture, not nature.

You can speak to male-male interaction, and male-female interaction, but not female-female interaction. And vice versa for me. There's a difference to me between female-female and female-male interaction, but it's not so much who's more rational or more intelligent but rather how the dialog flows, how people listen and empathize.

There are also matters of perspective that come into the conversation and color it. Men's views on rape and sexual assault are rather different than women's, for the most part. There can be common ground and total agreement on the issues, but the understanding of the issues is different, coming from different places.

Right now it's like 80 degrees outside. That's warmer than most of the days year-round. But I'd hardly try to argue that day or night, it's the same difference because day average and night average are closer than the range of day temps or the range of night temps.

And when it comes to daytime creatures and nocturnal creatures, how can a daytime creature comment on how nocturnal creatures interact, when the daytime creature can only go by how nocturnal creatures interact with daytime creatures?

In other words, without exaggerating the men-are-from-mars-women-are-from-venus crap, let's not gloss over the fact that male physiology and female physiology are profoundly different, and that male culture and female culture, if we can generalize, are quite different. Boys and girls are raised with different expectations, different rules of behavior, different traits encouraged and discouraged, and so on. We live in a gendered society.

female-female interaction, having observed it and been a "fly on the wall" for many many years as a youth.

You see, I am an only child, and male...I was raised by my mother in a single parent household starting from the age of 8. My mother worked as a manager, director, advocate for HeadStart, Family Planning, WIC, Planned Parenthood, and etc for about 15 years...

After school, between the hours of about 3 and 6, when there were no activities, I spent that time at my mother's office.

But remember, I was what? 10? 12? 14? Functionally, socially, for all intents and purposes, invisible.

The vast majority of the people working in her office were women - some amazing, amazing women they were, too, I should add.

The toughness, dedication, love, passion, that came out of those women as they went about their thankless, dangerous, reviled work of helping the poor, the scared, the desperate, the confused, mostly young, nearly all poor, mostly women who went for help ... it just about killed me to see it then, and it still does today.

In any case, I was a near-invisible fly on the wall - a pre-pubescent boy sitting in the hall reading the planned parenthood informational literature and playing with the free condoms.

And I could and did spy on the business meetings and office meetings...and I saw the extremes (in three different offices over the course of about 6 years until I got my license and didn't go to her work so much)...and I saw extremes of listening and not, and empathy and total lack, and reason and insanity, and all the rest. My mom and I are extremely close, and always have been, in part out of necessity, but mostly out of common and shared political, social, and personal beliefs. I always asked her about that kind of stuff...and she told me her experiences.

All I can say is: I do not think it accurate to make the statement that women in general interact more rationally or sanely on a more consistent basis than men...Nor do I think that the converse is true - it is not accurate to say that men interact more sanely or rationally on a more consistent basis than women.

Last night I wrote sanely and rationally, and I still believe that, in general. That's not to say women are more sane and rational overall. Perhaps what I should have emphasized is that women's communication in general s more courteous and empathetic.

There certainly are distinctions, and while I appreciate your own views on female-female communication, I submit that your perspective is not definitive. In fact, I would submit the possibility that you were not as much of a "fly on the wall" as you think.

The differences come through even more sharply, for me, when it comes to debating style -- not as an overall indicator, but more of what kinds of things you see outside of the intersection.

As scribe noted in a different thread, many women will just go away in the face of aggressive argumentative discussion. Why seek that out? We often are the focus of male aggressiveness every day. It is not relaxing to engage with more of it.

On the other side, there are men who constantly come back at you, who correct your thinking, who scold you for your opinions, who pass judgment on your entire statement. A metaphor that comes to mind would be penetrating. Poking, jabbing, slashing. Metaphors of male existence, to many a woman. I'm sorry, but I believe many of your exchanges here fit this description, in my book. It's a vivid illustration of what I was trying (ineptly it seems) to argue in this sub-thread here.

I hope this can be an opportunity to learn about something you've so far been unable to see (at least by your own assertion).

A side note to RedDan:

In one day and 12 hours you've moved up to the #4 commenter for the week and #5 in the 12 days and change since the site was launched. -- And you're only two comments now one comment away from #3 and #4, respectively.

Perhaps you might consider taking a breather and just read for a while, and try to grok the vibe here and how it's different from other places, and save your aggressive arguing for other sites that welcome that kind of thing. I'm not suggesting you leave, but just read and hear what people are saying.

understood.

I get out of bed at 5:30am stagger over to the computer and NASCAR stupid in the form of Red Dan is all over our awesome site. But unlike the nicer women here, I'm not going to "hope" that this doesn't become the rule and I am not going to "hope" that Prince Sparkel Pony doesn't silence women's voices here, I intend to ensure that it is not the rule.

Red Dan you are an idoit. Anyone who witnessed an abuse shelter and is as unevolved as you are is simply not intelligent enough to post here. I'm not interested in having this site waste space on dumbass.

Shut up and sit down.