I saw an article titled “Men are living almost as long as women” and I suspected that this is because men are living longer rather than women living shorter and (b) was mock-surprised that they didn’t title it something like “Women losing ground on aging compared to men” because… you know… that’s how articles like this are so often framed. Sure enough, I get to the third paragraph:
So the guys are catching up to us. This trend is partly due to the advent of Lipitor, bypass surgery, and other medical advances that are helping to keep men from dying early of heart attacks. Yet even as their lifespans are getting longer, ours are not keeping up at our historic pace. Researchers say this is because women are so stressed out these days that they’re resorting to unhealthy habits such as skimping on sleep, grabbing fast food, and relying on meds, alcohol, and cigarettes to cope. Ouch! Here’s hoping we can learn to mend our ways and stop literally killing ourselves slowly.
So the moral of the story, as when we hear sob stories about how tough it is for women when men lose their jobs en masse, is that women are being cheated.
Not long after, I read this article about how you can wipe out the male spacial skill advantage with a female-empowered culture. So it’s the patriarchy that is preventing equality! Indeed, this new study “suggests that spatial reasoning differences may also be the product of society.”
Quite interesting! So what did they do? They looked at two societies, one which favors men and another which favors women. The result? In the society that favors men, men did better. In the society that favors women… it was a tie. What do I mean by “favors women”?:
Among other differences, the Karbi are patrilineal; women do not typically own land, and the oldest son inherits the family’s property after the death of the parents. The Khasi could not be more different in this regard. Men are not allowed to own land at all, any money or goods earned by a male are handed over to his wife or sister, and inheritances go to the youngest daughter in the family.
So, if we want parity in this specific arena, all we have to do is strip men of all of their rights. Yay! This is going with the long theory that where women outpace men, it is earned and we should not concern ourselves with it. But when the inverse is true, it’s a problem that needs to be fixed. Here, apparently, lies the solution.
Less snarkily, if the study reveals anything, it’s this: If you give men every conceivable advantage, they unsurprisingly outperform women in this arena. But there is apparently no social order (short of just killing the men or refusing to educate them) where women can outperform men. This suggests the opposite of what the article says it suggests: there is something innate going on here.
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I think a woman wrote this post, where is the real Will?
Feminist Journalism
This is a redundancy.
I think journalism, by its very nature, tends to attract people who lean left. People who believe in changing the world, rather than preserving the status quo. Academia is similar.
Yes, I understand that the New York Post, Wall Street Journal, and Fox News Channel exist, but in the aggregate they are a small sliver of the media. Of course, they are all properties of News Corp.
Actually, the main reason why the male-female life expectancy gap has narrowed is the fact that more and more women smoke.
Do you have a cite on that, Peter? All I’ve read about smoking trends is that it’s going downward.
I think journalism, by its very nature, tends to attract people who lean left. People who believe in changing the world, rather than preserving the status quo. Academia is similar.
This assumes that it’s the political left that wants change and the right that doesn’t. In contemporary politics, I’m not sure that’s true.
The secular decline in violence may also be a factor. Though you’d never know it from listening to feminists, men are far more likely than women to suffer violent deaths. Fewer violent deaths means a narrowing in the life expectancy gap.
From the first article “Yet even as their lifespans are getting longer, ours [women’s] are not keeping up at our historic pace.” is somewhat misleading: women both live longer than men, and live longer than women did in the past. The acceleration in women’s longevity has declined, at least relative to men’s.
Matrilineal does not mean matriarchal. Matriarchies are myths made up by brutally mysogynistic cultures and some sorts of radical feminists. Arguably the two cultures studied are more like patriarchal/egalitarian than patriarchal/matriarchal.
As to the second article: at the risk of both being all HBD up in cha, [where it is quite reasonably discouraged] and channeling Whiskey, Darwinian acts on different traits in different cultures. Where women have more freedom and economic independence, men with traits that lead to appealing to women get selected. Those traits may not load on a visual/spatial factor as much as in other cultures.
Brandon,
Wouldn’t a dearth of domestic violence in women favor women’s life-longevity in comparison to men?
Arguably the two cultures studied are more like patriarchal/egalitarian than patriarchal/matriarchal.
How is it egalitarian to pass land on to daughters and not sons? Convince me of that and you actually validate the article itself. Female performance would then become equal in an egalitarian society.
I’m not sure whether you’re parodying feminists or asking a serious question.
…On second thought, it must be a serious question, since a feminist wouldn’t acknowledge a decline in domestic violence.
Like I said, most homicide victims are men. Accidents, too (see table 15 in this PDF). If there’s a general decline in rates of homicide and/or accidents, it will reduce the male-female life expectancy gap. For this decline to increase the gap, it would have to be skewed heavily towards female deaths.
I follow all that. For some reason, I misread your original statement to say “a decline in domestic violence.”
On a decline in violence in general, that would definitely help men out more than women.
This assumes that it’s the political left that wants change and the right that doesn’t. In contemporary politics, I’m not sure that’s true.
I still think that it is the left that wants change and the right that doesn’t. All the right wants to change are the president and the senate majority leader. The rest of the status quo is fine. The left believes in change even when they have political power. They want to use that power to affect change.
I still think that it is the left that wants change and the right that doesn’t.
I’m not sure that’s really true these days. The right (rank-and-file, if not politicians) wants to cut government to size, ban abortion, and so on.