Express Support for Amy Alkon

I join Dr. Helen, Glenn Sacks and Vox Day in urging people to support Amy Alkon's column in the Orange County Register. As one sees in the Dr. Helen link, Amy Alkon is broadly on the non-feminist side of issues when it comes to domestic violence, paternity fraud, 'affirmative' action, single mothers by choice and pointless discrimination against men in general.

Non-feminist positions need all the publicity they can get.

You can do at least one of two things to help:

1. Read her columns on a regular basis

2. Send a letter of support to Life@OCRegister.com

A speech LONG overdue

The CPAC masterpiece by Rush Limbaugh (11 parts~1 hour+) shows conservatives how they must speak if they are to win.

Dinesh D'Souza Gets it Right

Dinesh D'Souza has written "THE ENEMY AT HOME:THE CULTURAL LEFT AND ITS RESPONSIBILITY FOR 9/11". In it, he argues that American (and other) conservatives should look to build bridges with traditional Muslims in America and other countries rather than with liberal-leftists. This is because conservative Americans have considerably more in common with traditional muslims than with liberal-leftist Americans. An alliance with traditional muslims will isolate the fundamentalist Muslims and prevent them from recruiting because the wellspring of discontent directed toward the West for legitimate reasons will have dried up.


Quoting from the intro (the book was written during the Bush administration):

"To date, the Bush administration has made no serious attempt to articulate the moral case for American foreign policy to Muslims (or to anyone else). Many conservatives compound the problem by defending American decadence against the foreigners who hate and fear it. Shortly after 9/11, the Bush administration began consulting Hollywood executives and Madison Avenue executives to market “brand America” abroad. To this day the administration persists with this foolishness. Strangely enough what the administration is promoting is liberal solutions—separation of church and state, feminism and the idea of the working woman—together with the debased values of American popular culture. Of course these “solutions” only compound the problem. They further alienate traditional Muslims and push them toward the fundamentalist camp. So the liberals are correct, in a sense, that U.S. policy is “creating more terrorists,” but not for the reasons they think.
The Bush administration and the conservatives must stop promoting American popular culture because it is producing a blowback of Muslim rage. With a few exceptions, the right should not bother to defend American movies, music, and television. From the point of view of traditional values, they are indefensible. Moreover, why should the right stand up for the left’s debased values? Why should our people defend their America? Rather, American conservatives should join the Muslims and others in condemning the global moral degeneracy that is produced by liberal values.
American foreign policy should stand up for liberal values, but not for the liberal values associated with the cultural left. Rather, it must work to promote classical liberal ideas abroad. As conservatives, we should export our America. That means introducing in places in Iraq the principles of self-government, majority rule, minority rights, free enterprise, and religious toleration. But we must stop exporting the cultural left’s America. That means we should stop insisting on radical secularism, stop promoting the feminist conception of the family, stop trying to promote abortion and “sex education,” and we should try and halt the export of the vulgar and corrupting elements of our popular culture. When we cannot do these things, we should apologize to the rest of the world and make it clear that we too find a good deal in this culture to be embarrassing and disgusting.
There is no “clash of civilizations” between Islam and the West. But there are two clashes of civilizations that are shaping the world today. The first is a clash between liberal and conservative values within America. The second is a clash between traditional Islam and radical Islam, a clash within Islamic society. So realize it or not, American conservatives are fighting a two-front war. The first is a war against Islamic radicalism and fundamentalism. The second is a political struggle against the left and its pernicious political and moral influence in America and around the globe. My conclusion is that the two wars are intimately connected. In fact, we cannot win the first war without also winning the second war."

*bold = my emphasis

I support the argument in the last bolded section. It serves to sift out the fake conservatives from the real ones because it appeals to conservative principles, rather than race or some other red herring. This is a prescient argument because America and the EU are, through the UN, exporting feminism in stealth projects (microfinancing, 'family-planning' services, female-only education) to third world countries, many of whom are Islamic.

D'Souza got plenty of hell from the Right for saying what he did. My opinion is that this happened because way too many self-described 'conservative' white pundits would rather attempt to 'find common ground' with white folk who hold diametrically opposite ideals than with Muslims in other countries (or other non-whites) who hold similar ideals. For a variety of irrational reasons (elitism?, racism?, tribalism?), these pundits refuse to accept that conservative principles extend beyond race and culture. This is a big reason why blacks and Hispanics, a great many of whom have conservative ideals, don't vote Republican.


It is plainly clear that this is why the Republican party has hemorrhaged over the past several years. Moreover it helps one understand why Western feminism got as far as it did: powerful white men would rather support the counterproductive whims of a gaggle of uppity white women than the legitimate needs of the majority of black men.

Explaining the Iceland Anomaly

Earlier, I mentioned that I would try to make sense of why the Icelandic girls, on average, were outperforming Icelandic boys in math when the average everywhere else is in favor of boys over girls. I dug around the web and found the PISA data for 2003 and 2006 for Iceland and a number of other countries. I also used some data from the World Economic Forum on the Gender Gap Index which is some sort of a country ranking compiled by those who assume egalitarianism is prima facie 'good'.

The figure above shows how the Icelandic PISA score distribution breaks down by proficiency level around the Icelandic mean (506). Seven proficiency levels range from sub-level 1 (the lowest at the extreme left) to proficiency level 6 (the highest at the extreme right). For 2006, the Icelandic girl mean is 508, that for boys is 503 and the overall mean is 506. I have represented all three by the thick black line. Bars for specific sex left of the black line reduce the (sex-specific and overall) mean while bars to the right increase the same. Each bar is the product of the percentage of boys or girls within a proficiency level, and the midpoint of that proficiency level. The lowest three and highest two proficiency levels have more boys than girls but the fourth and fifth prof. levels have more girls than boys. '-M' symbolizes a net score deficit for boys relative to girls at a given proficiency level. There is a greater excess of 'above average' girls compared to the excess of 'exceptional' and 'dumb' boys. The 'exceptional' and 'dumb' Icelandic boys' excesses just about cancel each other out. Thus, the 508:503 advantage for girls over boys is entirely due to the excess of 'above average' girls in proficiency levels 4 and 5.
The fact that the mean is higher for girls does not change the fact that more boys than girls are in the highest proficiency levels, even in Iceland. In a country where every effort is made to elevate the performance of girls at the expense of boys, this is further evidence that math is a intrinsically a masculine activity.

The M/F ratio in the figure above is the percent of males/percent of females in a given proficiency level. One can see that Iceland is outside 1SD of the (European & US) OECD M/F ratio averages at ALL proficiency levels. The largest differences are at the three lowest proficiency levels. At the lowest proficiency level, Iceland is more than 3SD above the OECD mean. What is worse is that Iceland, at each proficiency level, is UNDERPERFORMING compared to the OECD average. By comparison, Norway, a country with a higher 2006 Gender Gap Index (0.799) than Iceland (0.781), is within the OECD SD limits in all proficiency levels (in spite of having a substantial number of immigrants who are academic underperformers relative to the locals). I used Norway for comparison cos many Icelanders are descended from Norwegian blood, cos the societies are similar and also cos the higher GGI means that sexism can be eliminated as a cofactor.

I want to establish that the quality of math education in Iceland has deteriorated from 2003-2006 and to do this I will show the variation of the percentage of (both male and female) students as a function of proficiency level in 2003 and in 2006 in the chart below.
As can be seen, 2003 was a better year than 2006 when both sexes are taken together. When taken apart, boys suffered heavily in 2003 and 2006 (-4 relative to 2003) but girls took a big hit in 2006 (-15 relative to 2003) if one cares to look at table 6.2c in the PISA 2006 datasheet. In 2003, the male and female averages were 507 and 523 respectively which was why one heard much ballyhoo about how girls were becoming smarter than boys. In 2006, the difference of ~4 points was statistically insignificant (standard error of 3.2).

It turns out that in 2003, 11% of girls and 18% of boys were at a combined sub-level 1 and level 1. This is compared to 15.3% of girls and 18.3% of boys in 2006 at the same combined level. The percentage of boys at level 6 was 7% in 2003. In 2006, it became 2.7%. The percentage of girls decreased from 4 to 2.3%. It appears that 'medicore' Icelandic girls have become 'dumber' and that 'exceptional boys' have become 'above average' over the period 2003-2006.

I wanted to see how two feminist countries: Iceland and Norway compared in 2006 and so I constructed the chart below where I compared Icelandic[boys]:Norwegian[boys] ratios to Icelandic[girls]:Norwegian[girls] ratios within proficiency levels. The idea was to eliminate as many confounding variables as possible and see how much of an impact bad math education has.



Relative to Norway,

1. At the lowest proficiency levels, Iceland has disproportionately more boys than girls (red columns higher than blue columns).

2. At the highest four proficiency levels, Iceland has disproportionately more girls than boys.

3. The Iceland girl:boy ratio increases as proficiency level increases (difference between red and blue columns increases from level 3-6).

If Icelandic and Norwegian society are similar in general terms and both don't have the bad juju of patriarchy (GGIs for both are in the top 4 globally which means they are both very feminist), it follows that something is wrong with the dissemination and/or learning of math in either Norway or Iceland. Given that Iceland is outside the OECD average at all proficiency levels in the worst way, that math proficiency at all levels has deteriorated in Iceland from 2003 to 2006 and that Norway is within the SD limits of the OECD average, something is wrong with Iceland.

There are two conclusions that can be arrived at by looking at the charts above:

1. The negative math effects in Iceland are socially caused. Based on looking at results from PISA 2003 and 2006, there is a deficit of good math teachers in Iceland. The bad math education has demonstrably affected both girls and boys. Relative to 2003, over a 3 year period, smart boys have become less smart and mediocre girls have become dumber.

2. There is a complete failure to raise the math ability of Icelandic boys at all proficiency levels particularly at the lowest proficiency levels. Since the number of the least proficient boys has remained constant over 3 years at ~18% (@sub-level 1 and level 1), it is entirely possible that the teachers are either apathetic or incapable or unwilling to help them become better.

Vindication

Several months back, I wrote a post critiquing a feminist publication that attempted to show there were no sex differences in mathematics.

Recently, La Griffe du Lion, whose initial math article I used to support my critique, has produced another article critiquing two feminist publications, one of which is the same one I lambasted.

I was glad to see that a number of problems I highlighted in my post are corroborated in his article, most notably the ACT-SAT miscomparison, the dishonesty of combining junior grade math scores with high school math scores so as to cover up the post-pubescent advantage of boys over girls and the pointlessness of judging relative gender proficiency without using complex questions. The rather incredulous feminist thought process underlying this is that if girls are equal to boys in grade 2, they should also be equal in grade 11. If they are not, then discrimination must be involved. When one points out that boys are deficient in reading compared to girls over a similar time period, the feminists invoke patriarchy=bad metaphysics to explain why only girls should get disproportionate help for math but boys shouldn't get the same for reading.

Griffe, in an important and impressive discovery (Figure 8 in his latest article), shows the impact of nurture to be negligible compared to nature when it comes to the relative proportions of girls and boys at the PISA 5 level (high math proficiency level). This strongly indicates that a genetic component is almost wholly responsible for math ability and that this component has a significant linkage with male physiology (because the ratio of men to women increases with higher math proficiency). A major part of the problem explaining this to feminists is that feminists, in most instances (being the lower IQ individuals that they are), don't possess the mathematical ability to understand, in detail, why they don't have mathematical ability. The few feminists that do are intellectually dishonest, ideologically motivated and deliberately lead the less mathematically inclined feminists on a gap-busting wild goose chase. All this would be highly amusing if people (both males and females) were not negatively affected by the fact that feminist ideology decides education policy almost everywhere in the West.

Griffe does not deal with the question of how much boys' education is stunted by feminism i.e. whether boys SAT averages or variability would be relatively higher than they currently are if feminism had been absent from schooling. It is obvious that since nurture/culture has a very small effect, relative to nature, on increasing the number of proficient girls relative to proficient boys, that the gender difference will remain regardless of feminist indoctrination at the highly proficient math level. Whether or not the same is the case at the lower proficiency levels is another question.

Griffe also mentions the outlier 'Iceland' which is the only country where, on average, girls have been getting higher scores than boys in everything including math for around a decade. He puts in a footnote to say that the reasons for why this is happening are unknown. I will try to answer the 'why' in my next post.

Female-Female Friendships Relatively more Tenuous

Here's an article summarizing research that finds female-female friendships are more tenuous and fractious than male-male friendships.

It describes female friendships as "significantly less tolerant, more volatile, and likelier to degrade based on a single negative incident than male same-sex friendships".

Yet, the author feels defensive and titles her article "Women are tougher on friendships than men: Study". The reason the title is entirely misleading is because it implies that women form few but very strong female-female friendships. The reality, judging by the paraphrasing detailed in this article, seems to be that women form fragile friendships with each other (re: cue words such as 'volatile' and 'likelier to degrade').
This is further reinforced by the study conclusion that "the deep emotional investment often thought to make women’s bonds stronger is often their undoing."

Cheryl Hickey is quoted in the article: "Men can be a little bit more practical, while women, well, we can be a little bit more emotional." Statements like this are viewed as making women more 'human' than men. However, in light of the conclusion above, all it does is link impracticality to "emotionality.

"Men were far likelier than women to be satisfied with their college roommate (100 per cent versus 46 per cent), even when involved in a conflict with that person (73 per cent versus 33 per cent). In double-occupancy dorms at universities of different sizes, men were, on average, only half as likely as women to request a room change (4.2 per cent versus 8.4 per cent).

And when participants were asked to judge a single negative behaviour by an otherwise dependable (hypothetical) best friend, women downgraded the friend’s reliability significantly more so than men."

Rather than resort to the well-worn feminist theology of cultural omnipotence, the lead author uses evolutionary psychology as an explanation:

"The researchers say a lower threshold for friends’ missteps has an evolutionary component, since reproductive success is tied to physical well-being.

“It provides a constant assessment of danger and can be very helpful to us,” explains Benenson."

I'm not clear on how exactly is it helpful to women to have tenuous relationships with each other because women would tend to have higher higher stress levels, which, in turn would compromise their physical well-being and their reproductive success. However, I can understand that women would tolerate higher levels of stress if it was relatively better than the even more stressful situation of having other women seducing their mates.

Uber-mangina/ultrafeminist Michael Kimmel tries his best to cover up the fact that this study debunks much of his bullshit research (on how men should be more like women) but ends up shooting himself in the foot: "He believes the result is relationships that can withstand more crises but are “a lot less intimate” than those between women, who he says excel at “the business of friendship.”"

Sheesh... another oxymoronic term: the "business of friendship"...If women excel at the business of friendship (ala Kimmel) and female relationships are relatively more tenuous (from the study), it follows that there is something amiss with making friendship a business, something Kimmel seems to endorse. If anything, the study conclusion shows that female friendships require less intimacy and that those between men are better than those between women. Ergo, even if Kimmel is right about male relationships being 'less intimate', he is inadvertently admitting that they are, as a consequence, better relationships.

The article closes with a typically female tactic: the anecdote presented as a counterpoint to a generality.

"Indeed, MuchMusic VJ Leah Miller describes the emotional bond between herself and singer Hilary Duff — whom she says she loves “more than anything” — as resembling that of sisters.

“When you know somebody so well and they know everything about you, of course there can be conflict,” says Miller, host of So You Think You Can Dance Canada. “But now that I’m older, I don’t really fight with my girlfriends. We’re more like a support system for each other.”"

So what even if all that is true? The exception doesn't negate the rule.

Happy 2009!

I wish you all the very best for the New Year!