Thursday, January 20, 2005

Pissing In The Wind: You add like a girl!

The President of Harvard recently tried to explain that part of the reason women don't achieve as much in math and science is because they're just innately worse at it. There's been a maelstrom of negative press, no doubt protests are about to commence, and let's see him try to get a date now.

But was he wrong? Men are faster than women, by and large. Women look less ridiculous when figure skating, perhaps without exception. So is it that unbelievable that women just don't quite get the wave-particle duality?

Or is it all a masculine-based construction? Maybe the very concept of measuring liquid with a graduated cylinder is rooted in a phallic object for a reason: to exclude women.

So, this week, we present the battle of the sexes. Foster, Levi, I put it, what are women better at, what are men better at, or is everybody equally good at everything? Are the Olympics a social construction that if we didn't go into it with preconceptions would have every man, woman, child, and animal finishing the 100-meter dash in 8.43 seconds?

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