Home / General / What’s The Matter With Larry

What’s The Matter With Larry

/
/
/
545 Views

As noted previously in this space, there has been a very successful campaign to distort the firestorm over Larry Summers, the gist of which is that even suggesting that there might be innate differences between women and men cannot be done in public (which, of course, is why Steve Pinker recently lost his gig at Harvard and is now teaching a 5/5 at Tupelo Community College.) In the comments at Whiskey Fire, Echidne offers the most succinct summary I’ve seen of the actual problem with Summers’ comments:

What was upsetting about [his] statement was not that he proposed innate differences among other explanations, even though this is what I read on wingnut blogs. It was that he proposed innate differences using language and examples of a thirteen-year old who just thought about it for the first time evah! And that he did this in front of an audience which consisted of people specialized in studying the question. It’s like pissing on someone.

And add to that the fact that he asserted that innate differences were the [second: see update] most important factor despite this lack of knowledge, and…

…as noted in comments, he actually said that innate differences were the second most important, although still ahead of discrimination: “There are three broad hypotheses about the sources of the very substantial disparities that this conference’s papers document and have been documented before with respect to the presence of women in high-end scientific professions. One is what I would call the-I’ll explain each of these in a few moments and comment on how important I think they are-the first is what I call the high-powered job hypothesis. The second is what I would call different availability of aptitude at the high end, and the third is what I would call different socialization and patterns of discrimination in a search. And in my own view, their importance probably ranks in exactly the order that I just described.” I note, however, as I did about Supreme Court clerks that his “high powered job” hypothesis is just sexism in a different form; why does having children limit the hours of women but not men? (It’s also worth asking why men have also dominated academic departments in which, if Summers is correct, women must have as much or more innate ability.) On Echidne’s point, make sure to scroll down for the “daddy truck baby truck” stuff.

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Linkedin
This div height required for enabling the sticky sidebar
Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views : Ad Clicks : Ad Views :