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Old September 18th, 2007, 11:15 AM
James Brody James Brody is offline
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Join Date: Jun 2004
Location: Philadelphia area
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Default Bill Bennett: Where the boys are...

According to William Bennett, popular talk show host, historian, and former Secretary of Education, only 40 percent of graduating college seniors are male. How come? And what can be done?

The motorcycle answers him. That is, Brando played a leather-jacketed hood, Johnny Stabler, who impressed people with vapid lines. He also rode a Triumph Thunderbird, not a Soft Tail or a Fat Bob, and he would have been unimpressed with heated vests and heated gloves, electric starters, GPS gadgets, cell phones, windscreens, and suitcases on both sides of his rear tire.

Johnny, however, doesn't matter. The ladies have money and some 30 percent of Harley's new sales are to women. For a similar reason, Chrysler's Jeep has become an SUV, rancher homes have become cookie-cutter palaces, and men are no longer men but metro-sexuals.

An intruder would also note the advances of women into former male domains such as the professions (ministry, the law, and university teaching), science, sales, jobs as editors, columnists, and talk show hosts, and middle management where the ladies start at higher salaries than the men but reach, so far, lower ceilings.

That same observer might also notice that females advance because males abandon territories to them. Such is particularly true in high school and college where conformity to instructor bias pays off in grades and future dollars. And the estrogenized-males in academia, like their female students, tend to be fastidious and speak in octaves matched only by NPR hosts.

This "feminization" of a culture starts at conception: an arcane phenomenon, "genomic imprinting," occurs in many species characterized by polygyny, that is multiple male partners for any one female. (Humans tend to be polygynous.) Her bias is to invest as little as possible in any one offspring, saving her assets for the next male with whom she partners. The father's bias is to get the largest, toughest kid from each female he impregnates.

Female imprinted genes, when separated from those of the male, lead to larger neocortex, retina, and nasal receptors but to smaller muscles. The father's bias is towards a smaller neocortex but a larger hypothalamus, larger muscles and bone, better dental enamel, and, sometimes, larger deposits of brown fats that quickly turn into energy.

So: if she "wins," the kid is apt to be smaller, more talkative, and less impulsive, biased towards cooperation and resource conservation. To the extent that dad "wins," the kid will be larger, stronger, and more impulsive, biased toward the acquiring new resources.

Thus, younger mothers tend to have sons and sons, simply because they are male, have more problems in gestation and elicit reactions in mothers that resemble an allergy. She is also more likely to abort a son than a daughter, especially in tough times. In at least one study, women who have daughters tend to live longer, women who have sons tend to die younger.

Males also have more problems in delivery, in preschool, in elementary school and high school. They are less dependable entry employees, they collect more traffic tickets, and pay more for insurance. More and more young couples date in her car and she drives because she has the insurance! Males, simply put, vary more than females. Criminals and Nobelists both tend to be male. Females tend to pull males towards the female average.

While there is tremendous overlap in male and female characteristics, the small differences that exist become crucial when there are fewer opportunities. As Charles Murray demonstrated so well, the arts and sciences, regardless of era or culture, have been almost exclusively male creations. And including one female in the group of high-achieving males in science means passing by 160 males who are equally qualified. A similar even occurs in business where women start at higher salaries but end with lower ceilings. We can expect the same result in survival-critical enterprises in the sciences.

Bottom lines: girls follow rules, boys break them, and girls try to make boys behave. Such is basic biology. The feminization of our culture, however, is pervasive and endorsed by males with too much cerebral cortex. (Larry Summers was chased out of Harvard not by females but by males who agreed with them! Females now chase males from responsibility in the larger culture in an eerie replay of what has happened to black males!) This nonsense also signals to outsiders that we can be invaded and once invaded, will discuss the matter rather than fight. The amount of bare skin, and I do love seeing it, shown by women signals to the males in a different culture that there are eggs to be had...

JimB

References:
Bennett, W. Morning in America, 9/18/2007, about 8am.
Burt, Austin, & Trivers, Robert (2006) Genes in Conflict: The Biology of Selfish Genetic Elements. Cambridge, MA: Belknap-Harvard, especially Chapter 4.
Murray, C. (2003) Human Accomplishment: The Pursuit of Excellence in the Arts & Sciences, 800 B.C. to 1950 NY: Harper Collins.
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