Those women's-issues advocates are the "new conservatives" if by conservativism we mean conserving that which is accepted as conventional wisdom because it is socially accepted as true by a majority of people, or at least by people with power. Women's-rights advocates were often morally correct in their time, as it was was usually obvious by direct observation how women were treated differently; consigning all girls to take home economics; preventing them from playing certain sports on the organized school level; comparing the "feminine" to the "masculine" woman and using the "feminine" as the standard to which all women should seek to attain; etc. Many differences in the treatment of females, treatement that held them back or stereotyped them, were obvious.
But it was social-based logic and was devoid of science. It had it merits because discrimination against girls and women was obvious to reason. The science of the brain, when it comes to dividing the genders, is not obvious. But we don't put bras on boys; why do we force them to learn like girls, who do better in groups in classrooms, according to evidence? We dont put the same physical demands on girls, so why should they be forced to act in an academic setting like boys? Boys think better on their feet at certain ages, moving, using their muscles, getting the adreneline flowing. It keeps their attention on the subject.
But this is not what gender schooling is about. "What is right for the brain of a 6-year old girl is not necessarily right for the brain of a 6-year old boy," said the author of "Why Gender Matters,"
Leonard Sax, MD, PhD, and this applies to genders older than 6. Sax was using just one age group as an example. What is now called "gender discrimination" by the critics of gender-based education is not the same as what Justice Ginsburg was fighting."I simply will never be able to express how eye-opening this book has been for me. Yes me -- even though I thought I was a boy-raising specialist. After all, I have produced four healthy and smart athletes. I must know what I'm doing. But many of my boy-raising days I thought I was going mad. I'd come home from some sports event trembling because of the way the coach yelled at my kid. I'd ask my husband and whichever son it happened to be that day how they could stand being yelled at like that. Almost every time husband and son would look at me and not have any recollection of being yelled at during the game. Now I understand!!!!!!!!!" -Janet Phillips, mother of four boys, Seneca, Maryland
Or this critique from a man:
Or this:
It isn't equal opportunity for boys if they are forced to learn in a manner not built for the psychology of a boy's mind. It isn't equal opportunity for a girl who is forced to learn by competing with boys in ways that female brains don't work well in. Each sex is as equally capable of learning the same things as the other; it is in the methods that the differences create equality.
But in April of this year, "the ACLU of Georgia requested that the school district make public any and all plans to segregate Greene County schools by sex [adding that] 'the programs Greene County presented [are] unlawful because they deny boys and girls equal opportunity,' said Chara Jackson, Legal Director of the ACLU of Georgia..."
"Americans have long since learned that separate is not equal when it comes to educating our young people," said Jeffrey Gamso, legal director of the Ohio ACLU. "This is a throw-it-up-at-the-wall-and-see-if-it-will-stick situation."
http://blog.cleveland.com/pdextra/2007/12/aclu_against_samesex_schools.htmlBut it is equal when the needs are different. Activia advertising is aimed a women; there are no men in those commercials. STOP IT! Viagra ads are aimed at men; STOP IT! If we acknowledge our bodies are different, then we must acknowledge that the brains in those bodies are different. If the brains are different, the psychological makeup of the mind will be different.
What is difficult to understand in the role of the ACLU as the opposition to gender-based education, is that it not only comprehends but defends such gender-based issues on other subjects.
From the web pages of the ACLU
http://www.aclu.org/lgbt/ come these headlines: ACLU Applauds First-Ever Congressional Hearing on Gender Identity in the Workplace , ACLU Sues Old Dominion Freight Lines Over Firing Of Transgender Trucker , and Transgender Veteran Wins Sex Discrimination Lawsuit Against Library of Congress.So on the one hand the ACLU expects American law to allow bias in favor of those who claim they are psychologically built differently; on the other hand they want to prevent that same bias when science says the two basic genders themselves are psychologically different.
"Students are celebrating today after last night’s decision by the Nashville school board to protect students and school employees from gender identity and sexual orientation discrimination."
In the
ACLU Letter to the Department of Education on Single-Sex Proposed Regulations Comments the organization says "proposed regulations threaten to reverse years of progress, undermine existing protections against sex discrimination, violate legal guarantees of equality, and encourage school districts to provide educational programs that are inherently unequal."They can't have their cake and eat it too, but to be fair, the ACLU is not the only critic of single-sex education. But where is the "violation of equality" when a girl's psychology is recognized as being as different from that of a boy as her shoe size is? Where is the "sex discrimination" when boys and girls are given better opportunities to use their minds because they are separated?
Girls in TV shows produced on this subject have claimed--happily--that they were happier learning without the boys around and that it was easier to learn. Boys made similar comments.
Don't force the boys into feminine psychological settings when it comes to learning; and don't force girls into aggressive male-oriented psychological education.
Is T. Boone Pickens for Bigger Government?
It seems I was wrong about T. Boone Pickins being all for capitalism and keeping government out of the market. "WE Demand", Bad Science, and Socialism Disguised as "Political Will"
The T. Boone Pickens' Energy Independence Plan has nothing behind it yet but empty words. In is called "An economic revival for rural America," and in total it reads:
"Building new wind generation facilities and better utilizing our natural gas resources can replace more than one-third of our foreign oil imports in 10 years. But it will take leadership.
On January 20th, 2009, a new President will take office.
We're organizing behind the Pickens Plan now to ensure our voices will be heard by the next administration.
"Together we can raise a call for change and set a new course for America's energy future in the first hundred days of the new presidency — breaking the hammerlock of foreign oil and building a new domestic energy future for America with a focus on sustainability.
You can start changing America's future today by supporting the Pickens Plan."
In effect, this makes it sound as if Pickens, perhaps America's best known "oil man," is calling for government interference in the working of the energy market. And the "Pickens' Pledge" saying, "Today we can announce 17 Members of Congress have signed on!" "http://www.pickensplan.com/news/2008/09/23/pickens-pledge-avalanche/?tr=y&auid=4047163 only makes those 17 look like big-government interference-spenders in the private sector. The "Pledge" is not even in a cut-and-paste format, so you have to go see for yourself how devoid of any real "planning" it is. http://www.pickensplan.com/thepledge/
While I do not disagree that America must lower its deep dependence on imported oil, and probably must use wind and natural gas as Pickens says it does (he's the expert, not me,) this call for independence does not require "leadership" if that "leadership" means giving billions of taxpayer dollars--as Obama is calling for--to "investors."
Pickens himself has proved it is not necessary, that capitalistic enterprise alone can do it. Pickens' own website says it best:
To witness the economic promise of wind energy, look no further than Sweetwater, Texas.
Sweetwater was typical of many small towns in middle-America. With a shortage of good jobs, the youth of Sweetwater were leaving in search of greater opportunities. And the town's population dropped from 12,000 to under 10,000.
When a large wind power facility was built outside of town, Sweetwater experienced a revival. New economic opportunity brought the town back to life and the population has grown back up to 12,000.
In the Texas panhandle, just north of Sweetwater, is the town of Pampa, where T. Boone Pickens' Mesa Power is currently building the largest wind farm in the world.
In addition to creating new construction and maintenance jobs, thousands of Americans will be employed to manufacture the turbines and blades. These are high skill jobs that pay on a scale comparable to aerospace jobs."
If Pickens can do this on his own, if Warren Buffet can invest $5 billion into one bank, if other rich capitalists can put their money here and there, then why are they not doing what Pickens is doing in energy?
The "leadership" needed in Washington is the leadership to get out of the way by reducing government interference where it exists, where it prevents greater investment by either capitalists or by people like you and I.
Do you know you can put up a wind turbine--expensive yes, but you can do it--and the energy companies are required by law to buy back whatever energy you don't use within your own household? That is a strikingly good law, since the power companies are government-allowed monopolies in the first place.
How about leadership that makes it easy for neighborhood cooperatives to put up a few turbines and run the neighborhood at lower costs than buying from the big company, while selling back the surplus?
Why does every plan for "leadership" require making government bigger and spending the taxpayer dollar for the plans they "guarantee" will make energy cheaper for us in the long run? Who cares about the long run if we have to pay upfront for plans put into operation by the government-allowed monopolies that are set up for the purpose of using our tax dollars?
If the Pickens' Plan does not require using government money, but only requires getting goverment out of the way where it may be in the way, why doesn't Pickens tell us this? "Leadership" without definition always means tax-and-spend. "Leadership" properly defined in a free market nation means letting the free market work.
Pickens is making it work. He's putting thousands of people to work. He reducing his own community's dependence on energy generated by natural gas.
Why can't other rich people be convinced to do that same? That, Mr. Pickens, is real leadership, and it is what you yourself ought to be doing since you are proving to be the expert.
Mr. Pickens, your plan and your pledge have meat on them, and it seems to be the meat off the backs of the already bankrupted American taxpayer.
But if the new law President Bush and the Fed and the Treasury department want is passed, none of this will matter, because the Fed and the Treasury dept. will absolute power to rule your pocketbook and no court in the land and not even Congress will be able to stop it. [See The Last Nail in the American Fascist Takeover.]
And if the Fed and Treasury come to have this absolute power, then Atlas might as well shrug right now, wave goodbye, and leave us all to the moral darkness that no amount of natural gas or wind power can alleviate. CEC
Publishing Note Re: Reader Comments
The Free Assemblage of Metaphysical Naturalists is the sm of the
