335 replies to this topic

[Stormig]

I don't buy it. The same situation is in neighbouring Georgia. Their female team has always been stronger than the male team and has always been one of the leading teams in world championships. Same in Russia and especially in China. In is not socially conditioned.

Like Quebecer said, all those are ex-Communist countries, China still Communist. If you're going to hold the opportunities men and especially women are given in these types of countries with the others, whether it be school, sports, or others, then I really have nothing to say to you, especially with such "flippant" arguments about Beethoven's ego.

[Stormig]

BTW, Armen, what's your point if you iterate that the world's best female chess player ranks 150th and women's teams were better than the men's in Georgia?

[Armen]

Like Quebecer said, all those are ex-Communist countries, China still Communist. If you're going to hold the opportunities men and especially women are given in these types of countries with the others, whether it be school, sports, or others, then I really have nothing to say to you, especially with such "flippant" arguments about Beethoven's ego.

You're out of arguments

BTW, Armen, what's your point if you iterate that the world's best female chess player ranks 150th and women's teams were better than the men's in Georgia?

Georgian women play better when they play with women from other countries not when they play Georgian men's team.

[Stormig]

Armen, one word of advice: don't take yourself too seriously. Nobody gives a flip what you buy or do not. The gender issues forum is too heavy for you.

[nairi]

Well, I do find it interesting that in games like chess men and women are separated in competitions. I understand this division in physical sports, where it would be obviously unfair to have women and men compete against each other, but chess? A mental sport?

Storms, I think the point is that in these (ex-)communist countries where women are given equal opportunities when it comes to chess, men still do better compared to women. I'm sure there are women who could beat Armen at chess with a snap of their fingers, but so far no woman has proven to beat the likes of Kramnik and Kasparov. Can you explain why?

[Stormig]

Storms, I think the point is that in these (ex-)communist countries where women are given equal opportunities when it comes to chess, men still do better compared to women. I'm sure there are women who could beat Armen at chess with a snap of their fingers, but so far no woman has proven to beat the likes of Kramnik and Kasparov. Can you explain why?

I can't explain why, because it is not my area of expertise or anything but I can speculate and do think that, even in Communist countries, you never had equal opportunities. I do acknowledge that there were more opportunities for women there compared to most of the rest of the world. I've met some ex-Soviet and former bloc ladies, and I've been amazed with their talents and all - music, sports, whatever. Still, though, I don't think it was ever equal. You still had grandmas and mothers who were influential in some families.
Moreover, remember what I said? In this post:

My personal opinion/experience is that men display more standard deviation - there are the extremely, excentrically smart, and then there are total block-heads, both of these in comparison with women. We women are more consistent, have a sturdier column to hold the roof, if you will.

I think that very much ties in.
I'm inclined to think that many people in the West can visit at least one school in three-four districts in search for chess clubs and see that most are boys, with a fraction of "nerds"... It IS social conditioning. "Good boy, learn, beat, and you'll be a man!" vs. "Weren't you going shopping with your friends today?"

[Med]

Could this difference be that men are more agressive and a bit more egoistic while women are more yielding and caring, even are considerate to the others' well-beings?

As I was writing my essay on the cultural symbolism of Ararat I started reading a lot about our history and culture again. I can't help but think that we as a nation, as a culture, are more kind, caring, and yes, yielding, than our neighboring countries. Maybe this is the reason that we still exist when all the great ancient civilizations are history, but also this is the reason that we, as a culture, have struggled so much, been tortured, always been held back... Now, more than ever, I can see a comparison between gender characteristics with that of nations and their cultural characteristics. I don't know if I make sense...

In my 28 years I can say that I learned not to ascribe human characteristics to nations. Or certain national stereotypes to all individuals from that country. We can all go downhill from that point. It's quite tempting to do so and a habit I also can't seem to get away.

[Armen]

Actually according to Confucian ethics women are subordinate to men and have played little if any role in the Chinese court throughout their history.

I disagree. Women have always played important role in all empires. Imperial court is a concentration of power, money and pleasures. It naturally involves women. Chinese emperors had a big group of women (the empress, other wifes, concubines, slaves etc.) and some of them have played crucial roles in historical events. For example the Chinese tradition ascribles the invention of silk to one of the empresses.

http://english.peopl...1007_51966.html

Also, the last Chinese monarch was a woman empress Ci Xi of Qing dynasty.

[Armen]

Harvard President Urged to Resign

http://www.cato.org/...2-17-05d.html#3

"Harvard University President Lawrence H. Summers faced pressure from some faculty to resign Wednesday as a controversy over his comments about women evolved into a broader indictment of his leadership," Reuters reports.

"Summers' remark last month suggesting that innate differences between the sexes might explain why women have trouble reaching top science jobs has become a rallying cry for many Harvard professors upset with his overall management style."

In "PC Radicals Still Attacking Speech on Campus," Cato education policy analyst Marie Gryphon writes: "Advocates of free speech should be deeply concerned that such tactics are being tried in American classrooms. Political correctness is running roughshod over the type of challenging intellectual discourse that results in a quality education. Once again, the most sanctimonious arm of the new left proves that, while it appreciates some types of diversity, diversity of viewpoint is not its goal."

The Cato book You Can't Say That! documents the efforts of activists and courts that erode civil liberties such as free speech in a misguided attempt to eradicate every vestige of "discrimination" in our society.

[Stormig]

When in fact, ...


Business is much better when the boss is a woman

KAREN MCVEIGH


Key points
• A higher percentage of firms with female bosses were increasing their sales.
• Women attracted to wholesale & retail, property and education & health.
• Federation of Small Businesses has seen female membership rise sharply.

Key quote
"Ironically one reason for this is the fact that so many employers fail to use women’s skills to their full potential and often don’t offer enough flexibility to women, and increasingly men, in the workplace. It is these businesses that will pay the price in terms of losing highly skilled female staff as more women go off to set up on their own." - EQUAL OPPORTUNITIES SCOTLAND

Story in full
COMPANIES run by women are outperforming those run by men, according to new research.

A survey of 12,000 small and medium-sized businesses showed that a higher percentage of firms with female bosses were increasing their sales and taking on staff than those run by men.

Business leaders and equality campaigners said last night the results showed the vital contribution women can make to the Scottish economy.

The report, by the Small Business Research Trust in partnership with the Forum of Private Business, showed that 44 per cent of the companies led by women recorded sales growth in the third quarter of last year, 7 percentage points more than the average figure.

Almost three out of ten women-led firms recruited workers in the same quarter - again a substantially higher proportion than the average. They also had higher expectations of future growth. Twenty per cent of female-led firms said they expected to take on more staff in the fourth quarter of 2004 - four points above the level of all the businesses taken as a whole.

The survey sheds light on the industries female owner-managers are drawn to. The three biggest sectors were wholesale and retail (34.8 per cent), property (21 per cent) and education and health (15 per cent).

Sandra Benn, president of the Association of Scottish Businesswomen, which has 1,000 members, said: "It’s great news. It shows the contribution women make to the nation’s prosperity. What women value is the support of role models in the industry and a better understanding of what it is that makes a successful business."

Ms Benn said the survey possibly reflected the fact that a large percentage of women work in service-related industries, such as alternative therapies or healthcare where flexible working allows them to care for children.

A spokeswoman for Equal Opportunities Scotland said many employers who fail to use to the full women’s skills in the workplace pay the price by losing highly skilled workers who set up on their own.

"EOC Scotland welcome this report - it’s vital for the Scottish economy that we harness the talent of women and encourage them to set up and grow businesses," she said. "For too long many women have been held back by out-moded assumptions that business is a man’s world. We know that the situation is slowly changing.

"Ironically one reason for this is the fact that so many employers fail to use women’s skills to their full potential and often don’t offer enough flexibility to women, and increasingly men, in the workplace. It is these businesses that will pay the price in terms of losing highly skilled female staff as more women go off to set up on their own."

The spokeswoman said the report lent weight to the EOC’s recent recommendation that the executive should set up a Scottish centre of excellence designed to promote and provide the skills, opportunities and business links to encourage women to progress at work and in business.

Yesterday, Nick Goulding, chief executive of the Forum of Private Business, said: "The report is strong evidence that the government is right to adopt measures to encourage female entrepreneurs to set up in business.

"It is vital we see more women going into business and driving the UK economy. If women started up businesses at the same rate as men, 150,000 extra new firms would be created every year."

He added: "The government has set itself an ambitious target to increase the number of female-owned businesses to 20 per cent of the UK business stock by 2006.

"That target needs the support of the political, business and media worlds if it is to be achieved from its current level of 15 per cent."

A spokesman for the Federation of Small Businesses in Scotland said it had seen its membership of businesses wholly owned by women rise from 12 to 17 per cent in the past 18 months.

The survey also looked at the size of female-led firms. They are predominantly in the microbusinesses category, employing between one and four people, with a quarter in the five to nine employee category. Only 16 per cent of women-led firms are in the category of ten to 19 employees, and 14 per cent have 20 to 49 employees.

Forgoing a flash lifestyle to get success in business

REBECCA Cuthbert, 34, has run the award-winning Cuthbert Recruitment, a recruitment and training firm for the legal industries, for five-and-a-half years.

She has overseen its steady growth from three to 14 staff. The business now has an office in Glasgow and Edinburgh and last week, she won the Institute of Director’s Director of the Year Award for Edinburgh and Lothian.

She puts her success down to ploughing her profits back into the business and loyalty from her staff.

"I know a lot of businesswomen and the thing is, we don’t go out and buy flash cars in the first year. In the last five-and-a-half years we have re-invested all the profits back into the company. Me and the other directors are not interested in flash cars or high-maintenance lifestyles. We have a saying, that you leave your ego at the door. There is no bravado. I was driving a Volkswagen Polo for the first two years."

"Year three was the worst. We had a great first year and tried to grow the business too quickly. It nearly went under but we managed to pull it back."

Ms Cuthbert, a mother of two, said that staff loyalty was important.

"The staff see that I’m not spending the profits on myself and as a result, there is a lot of commitment - and loyalty and commitment is worth its weight in gold."

She said that Scotland’s size helped.

"The great thing is that you are never far away from key decision makers. You can be a big fish in a small pond. You always know somebody who knows somebody who can help."



This article:

http://news.scotsman...fm?id=198342005

Small and medium sized enterprises:

http://business.scot...ics.cfm?tid=482

Sexual discrimination:

http://news.scotsman...ics.cfm?tid=156

[Stormig]

print close
Wed 9 Feb 2005 show images

Britain salutes Dame Ellen

KAREN MCVEIGH


Key points
• Ellen MacArthur declared a dame as sailing achievements honoured
• Youngest ever dame speaks of breaking solo world sailing record

Key quote
"There are lots more records out there" - Dame Ellen MacArthur

Story in full IT HAD been, she admitted, a "horrendous" sail home. But after a rapturous welcome at Falmouth harbour from thousands of well-wishers and a bear-hug from mother, Avril, and father, Ken, Ellen MacArthur - now Dame Ellen - finally, gleefully, let the stresses, strains and sleep deprivation of the last 71 days slip away.

To a cacophony of klaxons, whistles and cheers, she bounded about her 75ft trimaran like a delighted child, arms aloft, waving a flare in each hand. Then, with a little difficulty, but the sort of steely determination we have come to expect from the 28-year-old world record-beater, she uncorked a magnum of champagne and sprayed it over her boat, while bouncing up and down on its netting.

Her welcome home was made extra special with the news that she is to be invested as a Dame - the youngest person ever to be awarded the honour. Downing Street’s announcement of the title was followed by another, that of honorary Lieutenant Commander in the Navy.

Behind her, in the turquoise water of Falmouth harbour, was the flotilla of small craft that accompanied her on the last part of the gruelling solo voyage that took her 71 days, 14 hours, 18 minutes and 33 seconds - trimming the previous world record set by Frenchman Francis Joyon by 32 hours, 35 minutes and 49 seconds.

As she set foot on land for the first time in nearly three months she said she was exhausted but "very very happy".

"We’ve got the sunshine and the boats around us and it’s absolutely extraordinary," she said. "I can’t believe how many people are out there watching. It’s something very special, and I’m over the moon."

The Queen and the Prime Minister, Tony Blair, sent their personal congratulations.

MacArthur, who shot to fame in 2001 when she finished second in the Vendee Globe round-the-world race, earned her place in the nautical record books at 10:29pm and 17 seconds last night as she crossed the finishing line between France and Cornwall. She is now, officially, the fastest person to sail single-handedly around the world.

Her yachting triumph will place her among an illustrious list of British nautical heroes, although some argue that her state-of-the-art trimaran and the technological advancement in sailing has diminished her achievements. She is not in the same league as pioneers such as Sir Francis Chichester, who received a knighthood in 1967 when he became the first person to sail around the world solo. Nevertheless, she has achieved much.

Sir Chay Blyth, writing in The Scotsman today, praises MacArthur for her "amazing" feat. Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, the first person to go non-stop around the world, who was in Cornwall yesterday to welcome her home, praised the "slip of a thing" that has endured.

For the sailor, who stands 5ft 2in tall, the record came at a price and she spoke of the constant frustrations and difficulties where she had to "dig deeper than ever before".

Her 22,000-mile voyage took her past the Cape of Good Hope in South Africa and round Cape Horn in South America.

Yesterday, she said that the southern ocean, where she lost a five-day lead over Joyon after a serious gale, was the worst.

"It was so, so difficult with the boat, just trying to keep her going and trying to look after her and not break things in those conditions," said a clearly exhausted, but smiling MacArthur. "That really did push me to my absolute limit because things were not easy."

Moved by the response she received, she wiped back tears as she addressed the cheering crowds, some of whom had gathered before dawn.

At a specially erected stage at the National Maritime Museum, she added: "I don’t think I will ever manage to communicate how difficult it has been, but certainly to look at it all in the past, it is amazing how time can heal things and the difficult moments turn to positive moments."

But when asked whether she ever imagined she would not be here, she faltered, before replying, to a riot of applause: "To be honest I don’t think I let myself, because you have to believe."

She paid tribute to both her yacht and her support team. "Here I am on stage, but my partner in crime is sat down on the water. She has been the most incredible boat and the team who built her are responsible for the fact that I am here right now safe and well, and also with a record."

MacArthur, who is from the landlocked county of Derbyshire and has been sailing since the age of four, has battled hurricanes, dodged icebergs and endured temperatures from freezing to up to 32C.

She spent endless sleepless nights through some of the world’s most notorious weather spots.

But it wasn’t all bad.

She spoke of the good things: seeing an albatross "coming to say goodbye" when she left the North Atlantic, "one of the first times I smelled the land again" and "the light at Ushant" in France, at the finishing line.

In contrast to four years ago, when she completed the Vendee Globe, when she hated leaving her craft, MacArthur was happy to leave her boat B&Q, which she nicknamed Moby, yesterday. She hardly gave it a second glance as she stepped on to the rubber dinghy with her parents to be taken to the dock. But there was a reason for that, she said. It wasn’t the end, merely the beginning for them both.

"There are lots more records out there," she said. "I do not want to stop sailing this boat. It is a nice pause in a good story."

She intends to make another attempt at the transatlantic west-to-east solo sailing record, which she missed out on by just 75 minutes in June last year, and a first attempt at the round Britain and Ireland time.

Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, who joined her on the podium, said he had believed that Joyon’s record, set last February, would stand for at least ten years.

He said: "You have managed to put us back on the sailing map and I think we are all terribly grateful to you, Dame Ellen."



This article:

http://news.scotsman...fm?id=150432005

[Anonymouse]

I disagree. Women have always played important role in all empires. Imperial court is a concentration of power, money and pleasures. It naturally involves women. Chinese emperors had a big group of women (the empress, other wifes, concubines, slaves etc.) and some of them have played crucial roles in historical events. For example the Chinese tradition ascribles the invention of silk to one of the empresses.

http://english.peopl...1007_51966.html

Also, the last Chinese monarch was a woman empress Ci Xi of Qing dynasty.

That is incorrect. I did not ask for the role concubines or empresses or slave girls played in history. I simply stated that Confusion ethics have a hierharcy in its philosophy - master to slave, husband to wife, emperor to subject, etc. - which if you knew you would not have stated that. This was one of the problems that occured when China conquered Vietnam - because Vietnam gave a role to women, whereas in Chinese culture they were subordinate. Everyone plays a role in history, even the janitor (if we choose to mention them) that doesn't mean it was significant, and certainly not in Confusian ethics.

Edited by Anonymouse, 27 February 2005 - 12:25 AM.

[Armen]

That is incorrect. I did not ask for the role concubines or empresses or slave girls played in history. I simply stated that Confusion ethics have a hierharcy in its philosophy - master to slave, husband to wife, emperor to subject, etc. - which if you knew you would not have stated that. This was one of the problems that occured when China conquered Vietnam - because Vietnam gave a role to women, whereas in Chinese culture they were subordinate. Everyone plays a role in history, even the janitor (if we choose to mention them) that doesn't mean it was significant, and certainly not in Confusian ethics.

I understand what you say. But there is another dimension to it as well. Choose almost any Chinese martial arts fairy tale type movie and you will see lot of women with swords, spares and stuff fighting with men. Woman-worrior chararter is in their culture. What is that?

[Armen]

http://today.uci.edu...il.asp?key=1261

Intelligence in men and women is a gray and white matter

Men and women use different brain areas to achieve similar IQ results, UCI study finds

Irvine, Calif. , January 20, 2005
While there are essentially no disparities in general intelligence between the sexes, a UC Irvine study has found significant differences in brain areas where males and females manifest their intelligence.

The study shows women having more white matter and men more gray matter related to intellectual skill, revealing that no single neuroanatomical structure determines general intelligence and that different types of brain designs are capable of producing equivalent intellectual performance.

“These findings suggest that human evolution has created two different types of brains designed for equally intelligent behavior,” said Richard Haier, professor of psychology in the Department of Pediatrics and longtime human intelligence researcher, who led the study with colleagues at UCI and the University of New Mexico. “In addition, by pinpointing these gender-based intelligence areas, the study has the potential to aid research on dementia and other cognitive-impairment diseases in the brain.”

Study results appear on the online version of NeuroImage.

In general, men have approximately 6.5 times the amount of gray matter related to general intelligence than women, and women have nearly 10 times the amount of white matter related to intelligence than men. Gray matter represents information processing centers in the brain, and white matter represents the networking of – or connections between – these processing centers.

This, according to Rex Jung, a UNM neuropsychologist and co-author of the study, may help to explain why men tend to excel in tasks requiring more local processing (like mathematics), while women tend to excel at integrating and assimilating information from distributed gray-matter regions in the brain, such as required for language facility. These two very different neurological pathways and activity centers, however, result in equivalent overall performance on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as those found on intelligence tests.

The study also identified regional differences with intelligence. For example, 84 percent of gray-matter regions and 86 percent of white-matter regions involved with intellectual performance in women were found in the brain’s frontal lobes, compared to 45 percent and zero percent for males, respectively. The gray matter driving male intellectual performance is distributed throughout more of the brain.

According to the researchers, this more centralized intelligence processing in women is consistent with clinical findings that frontal brain injuries can be more detrimental to cognitive performance in women than men. Studies such as these, Haier and Jung add, someday may help lead to earlier diagnoses of brain disorders in males and females, as well as more effective and precise treatment protocols to address damage to particular regions in the brain.

For this study, UCI and UNM combined their respective neuroimaging technology and subject pools to study brain morphology with magnetic resonance imaging. MRI scanning and cognitive testing involved subjects at UCI and UNM. Using a technique called voxel-based morphometry, Haier and his UCI colleagues converted these MRI pictures into structural brain “maps” that correlated brain tissue volume with IQ.

Dr. Michael T. Alkire and Kevin Head of UCI and Ronald A. Yeo of UNM participated in the study, which was supported in part by the National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

About the University of California, Irvine: The University of California, Irvine is a top-ranked public university dedicated to research, scholarship and community service. Founded in 1965, UCI is among the fastest-growing University of California campuses, with more than 24,000 undergraduate and graduate students and about 1,400 faculty members. The second-largest employer in dynamic Orange County, UCI contributes an annual economic impact of $3 billion.

[Armen]

Men and Women Really Do Think Differently

http://www.livescien..._brain_sex.html

Men and women do think differently, at least where the anatomy of the brain is concerned, according to a new study.

The brain is made primarily of two different types of tissue, called gray matter and white matter. This new research reveals that men think more with their gray matter, and women think more with white. Researchers stressed that just because the two sexes think differently, this does not affect intellectual performance.

Psychology professor Richard Haier of the University of California, Irvine led the research along with colleagues from the University of New Mexico. Their findings show that in general, men have nearly 6.5 times the amount of gray matter related to general intelligence compared with women, whereas women have nearly 10 times the amount of white matter related to intelligence compared to men.

"These findings suggest that human evolution has created two different types of brains designed for equally intelligent behavior," said Haier, adding that, "by pinpointing these gender-based intelligence areas, the study has the potential to aid research on dementia and other cognitive-impairment diseases in the brain."

The results are detailed in the online version of the journal NeuroImage.

In human brains, gray matter represents information processing centers, whereas white matter works to network these processing centers.

The results from this study may help explain why men and women excel at different types of tasks, said co-author and neuropsychologist Rex Jung of the University of New Mexico. For example, men tend to do better with tasks requiring more localized processing, such as mathematics, Jung said, while women are better at integrating and assimilating information from distributed gray-matter regions of the brain, which aids language skills.

Scientists find it very interesting that while men and women use two very different activity centers and neurological pathways, men and women perform equally well on broad measures of cognitive ability, such as intelligence tests.

This research also gives insight to why different types of head injuries are more disastrous to one sex or the other. For example, in women 84 percent of gray matter regions and 86 percent of white matter regions involved in intellectual performance were located in the frontal lobes, whereas the percentages of these regions in a man’s frontal lobes are 45 percent and zero, respectively. This matches up well with clinical data that shows frontal lobe damage in women to be much more destructive than the same type of damage in men.

Both Haier and Jung hope that this research will someday help doctors diagnose brain disorders in men and women earlier, as well as provide help designing more effective and precise treatments for brain damage.

[Anonymouse]

Feminists Get Hysterical
by Heather MacDonald

First it was Harvard vs. Summers—and now Estrich vs. Kinsley.

Gee thanks, Susan. Political pundit Susan Estrich has launched a venomous campaign (links here and here and here) against the Los Angeles Times’s op-ed editor, Michael Kinsley, for alleged discrimination against female writers. As it happens, I have published in the Los Angeles Times op-ed pages over the years, without worrying too much about whether I was merely filling a gender quota. Now, however, if I appear in the Times again, I will assume that my sex characteristics, rather than my ideas, got me accepted.

Estrich’s insane ravings against the Times cap a month that left one wondering whether the entry of women into the intellectual and political arena has been an unqualified boon. In January, nearly the entire female professoriate at Harvard (and many of their feminized male colleagues) rose up in outrage at the mere suggestion of an open discussion about a scientific hypothesis. That hypothesis, of course, concerned the possibly unequal distribution of cognitive skills across the male and female populations. Harvard President Larry Summers had had the temerity to suggest that the continuing preponderance of men in scientific fields, despite decades of vigorous gender equity initiatives in schools and universities, may reflect something other than sexism. It might reflect the fact, Summers hypothesized, that the male population has a higher percentage of mathematical geniuses (and mathematical dolts) than the female population, in which mathematical reasoning skills may be more evenly distributed.

A feminist gadfly in the audience, MIT biology professor Nancy Hopkins, infamously reported that she avoided fainting or vomiting at Summers’s remarks only by running from the room. And with that remarkable expression of science-phobia, a great feminist vendetta was launched. It has reduced Summers to a toadying appeaser who has promised to atone for his sins with ever more unforgiving diversity initiatives (read: gender quotas) in the sciences. But the damage will not be limited to Harvard. Summers’s scourging means that, from now on, no one in power will stray from official propaganda to explain why women are not proportionally represented in every profession.

The Harvard rationality rout was a mere warm-up, however, to the spectacle unfolding in Los Angeles, brought to light by the upstart newspaper, the D.C. Examiner. USC law professor, Fox News commentator, and former Dukakis presidential campaign chairman Susan Estrich has come out as a snarling xxxxx in response to L.A. Times’s editor Michael Kinsley’s unwillingness to be blackmailed. Estrich had demanded that Kinsley run a manifesto signed by several dozen women preposterously accusing him of refusing to publish females. When Kinsley declined, while offering Estrich the opportunity to write a critique of the Times in a few weeks, Estrich sunk to the lowest rung imaginable: playing Kinsley’s struggle with Parkinson’s disease against him. Said Estrich: Your refusal to bend to my demands “underscores the question I've been asked repeatedly in recent days, and that does worry me, and should worry you: people are beginning to think that your illness may have affected your brain, your judgment, and your ability to do this job.”

It is curious how feminists, when crossed, turn into shrill, hysterical harpies—or, in the case of MIT’s Nancy Hopkins, delicate flowers who collapse at the slightest provocation—precisely the images of women that they claim patriarchal sexists have fabricated to keep them down. Actually, Estrich’s hissy fit is more histrionic than anything the most bitter misogynist could come up with on his own. Witness her faux remorse at engaging in blackmail: “I really do hate to be doing this. I counted e-mail after e-mail that I sent and was totally ignored. I can’t tell you how much I wanted to help quietly. If this is what it takes, so be it.” Witness too her self-pitying amour propre: “You owe me an apology. NO one tried harder to educate you about Los Angeles, introduce you to key players in the city, bring to your attention, quietly, the issues of gender inequality than I did—and you have the arrogance and audacity to say that you couldn’t be bothered reading my emails.” Add to that her petty insults: “if you prefer me to conduct this discussion outside your pages . . . that makes you look even more afraid and more foolish.” And finally, mix in shameless self-promotion: “I hope [this current crusade is] a lesson in how you can make change happen if you’re willing to stand up to people who call you names, and reach out to other women, and not get scared and back down. If you recall, I wrote a book about that, called Sex and Power. It’s what I have spent my whole life doing.”

Selective quotation cannot do justice to Estrich’s rants. But their underlying substance is as irrational as their tone. Estrich lodges the standard charge in all fake discrimination charges: the absence of proportional representation in any field is conclusive proof of bias. Determining the supply of qualified candidates is wholly unnecessary.

For the last three years, Estrich’s female law students at USC have been counting the number of female writers on the Los Angeles Times op-ed pages (and she complains that there aren’t more female policy writers? Suggestion to Estrich: how about having your students master a subject rather than count beans.). She provides only selective tallies of the results: “TWENTY FOUR MEN AND ONE WOMAN IN A THREE DAY PERIOD [caps in original]” (she does not explain how she chose that three-day period or whether it was representative); “THIRTEEN MEN AND NO WOMEN” as authors of pieces on Iraq.

Several questions present themselves: how many pieces by women that met the Times’s standards were offered during these periods? What is the ratio of men to women among experts on Iraq? Estrich never bothers to ask these questions, because for the radical feminist, being a woman is qualification enough for any topic. Any female is qualified to write on Iraq, for example, because in so doing, she is providing THE FEMALE PERSPECTIVE. (This belief in the essential difference between male and female “voices,” of course, utterly contradicts the premise of the anti-Larry Summers crusade.) Thus, to buttress her claim that Kinsley “refuses” to publish women, Estrich merely provides a few examples of women whose offerings have been rejected: “Carla Sanger . . . tells me she can't get a piece in; I have women writing to me who have submitted four piece [sic] and not gotten the courtesy of a call—and they teach gender studies at UCLA. . . .” It goes without saying, without further examination, that each of those writers deserved to be published—especially, for heaven’s sakes, the gender studies professors!

Self-centered? Thin-skinned? Takes things personally? Misogynist tropes that sum up Estrich to a T. It is the fate of probably 98 percent of all op-ed hopefuls to have their work silently rejected, without the “courtesy of a call.” But when a woman experiences the silent treatment, it’s because of sexism. Similarly, it is the fate of most e-mail correspondence to editors to be ignored. But when Estrich’s e-mails are ignored (“I sent e-mails to my old friends at the Times. Neither time did they even bother to respond.”), it’s because the editor is a chauvinist pig.

The assumption that being female obviates the need for any further examination into one’s qualifications allows Estrich to sidestep the most fundamental question raised by her crusade: Why should anyone care what the proportion of female writers is on an op-ed page? If an analysis is strong, it should make no difference what its author’s sex is. But for Estrich, it is an article of faith that female representation matters: “What could be more important—or easier for that matter—than ensuring that women's voices are heard in public discourse in our community?” Her embedded question—“or easier for that matter?”— is quickly answered. She is right: Nothing is easier than ensuring that “women’s voices” are heard; simply set up a quota and publish whatever comes across your desk. But as for why it is of paramount importance to get the “women’s” perspective on farm subsidies or OPEC price manipulations, Estrich does not say.

She provides a clue to her thinking, however. For Estrich, apparently, having a “woman’s voice” means being left-wing. She blasts the Times for publishing an article by Charlotte Allen on the decline of female public intellectuals such as Susan Sontag. Allen had argued that too many women writers today specialize in being female, rather than addressing the broader range of issues covered by their male counterparts. For Estrich, this argument performs a magical sex change on Allen, turning her into a male. After sneering at Allen’s article and her affiliation with the “Independent Women's Forum which is a group of right-wing women who exist to get on TV,” Estrich concludes: “the voices of women . . . are [not] found within a thousand miles” of the Los Angeles Times.

In other words, Allen’s is not a “voice of a woman” because she criticizes radical feminism. Estrich does not disclose if she conducted this sex change operation on all conservative women when compiling her phony statistics on the proportion of female writers on the op-ed page.

“Women’s liberation,” for the radical feminists, means liberation to think like a robot, mindlessly following the dictates of the victimologists. But if all bona fide women think alike, then publishing one female writer every year or so should suffice, since we know in advance what she will say.

Depressingly, Estrich’s crusade, no matter how bogus, will undoubtedly bear fruit. Anyone in a position of power today, facing accusations of bias and the knowledge that people are using crude numerical measures to prove his bias, will inevitably start counting beans himself, whether consciously or not. Michael Kinsley could reassure every female writer out there that Estrich has not cowed him by publishing only men for the next six months. It would be an impressive rebuff to Estrich’s blackmail. I’ll happily forgo the opportunity to appear in the Times for a while in order to get my pride back.

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