Women in science: science is ‘sexist’

At The Federalist, Joy Pullmann quotes from a female PhD candidate who pronounces science to be ‘sexist’ — because it’s not subjective. Apparently women and minorities can’t ‘do’ objectivity and logic.

(An aside: why are ‘women and minorities‘ always lumped together, as over against White males, as if they have some kind of implicit bond, or commonality — other than, say, not being able to handle objectivity, logic and reason, maybe?)

Well, I’ll buy that; many if not most women (and certain minorities) cannot seem to handle logic or objectivity. The thing is, the old feminists, before feminism went completely off the rails, did not admit that women were incapable of being logical or objective. To admit such a thing would be to concede the assertions made by those bad old “male chauvinists”. Incidentally, that term ‘male chauvinist’ was before the term ‘sexist’ was invented. But in any case, feminists wouldn’t admit that women are prone to being subjective, primarily emotion-driven, and prone to illogic.

And I say this as a woman.

Sure, there are exceptions to every rule, though they are sometimes very thin on the ground, and the feminists relied heavily on pointing to some rare exception, a female with a very high IQ, or a woman who accomplished something in a scientific field. Marie Curie comes immediately to mind; she served as an example that was supposed to prove that women could be just as good at science as men. As if an exception ever disproves a rule, though people still resort to that kind of argument more than ever, especially with regard to minorities. Example: George Washington Carver, the black male equivalent of Marie Curie, or is it the other way around.

Recently I was reading a piece about 1940s actress, Hedy Lamarr, in which it was said that she invented something called Spread Spectrum Technology. I admit, that means nothing to me; I was not a science major though I was very interested in science. Now, Miss Lamarr admittedly had a co-inventor there, a George Anthiel. Oddly, he was not a scientist either, but a composer of avant-garde music. So the story is rather strange. In any case it appears she did not produce any other ‘inventions’.

Speaking of Hollywood actresses, there was another actress, Jill St. John, who allegedly had a genius-level IQ, reported to be 170 or so, though some sources said slightly less. However even though later it was reported that the whole ‘genius’ story was cooked up by her publicity agent to set her apart from that year’s current starlets, the story is still repeated as here on the Wikipedia page.  Once lies have been told, they are hard to refute; nobody ever reads the refutations. So I can’t help wondering if Hedy Lamarr’s ‘invention’ was another publicity story.

Maybe I am too suspicious. In Hedy Lamarr’s day, there was not the social pressure to ‘shatter the stereotypes’ about women and minorities, but in today’s climate there is increasing social pressure to exaggerate or hype any accomplishment by a woman or a nonwhite minority in order to “prove” that stereotypes have no basis.

But then feminists like this Laura Parson are perpetuating what they call ”stereotypes” in admitting that women do not have logical or objective minds, as a rule. But instead of saying the obvious, that maybe women (or womenandminorities) are just not made for science careers generally, they recommend that science change to suit womenandminorities.

The writer of the Federalist piece, unfortunately, resorts to egalitarian/liberal arguments, ultimately, but in any event, the point is made that feminists and all egalitarians have to resort to all kinds of convoluted and bizarre flights of rhetoric because the facts are not on their side.