{"id":2320,"date":"2011-04-13T05:36:46","date_gmt":"2011-04-13T04:36:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/?p=2320"},"modified":"2011-04-13T05:36:46","modified_gmt":"2011-04-13T04:36:46","slug":"roy-f-baumeister-is-there-anything-good-about-men","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/2011\/04\/roy-f-baumeister-is-there-anything-good-about-men\/","title":{"rendered":"Roy F. Baumeister – Is There Anything Good About Men?"},"content":{"rendered":"

Caine at FRDB posted<\/a> a very nice article that I will post here as well for others to enjoy. Do not be fooled by the title. It is very much science and not your typical newspaper rant about a particular sex.<\/p>\n

Roy F. Baumeister – Is There Anything Good About Men?<\/a><\/p>\n

I made a nice pdf version, both because it is nicer to read and because it will still be available if the link goes dead.<\/p>\n

Is There Anything Good About Men<\/a><\/p>\n

The beginning:<\/p>\n

“You\u2019re probably thinking that a talk called \u201cIs there anything good about men\u201d will be a short talk! Recent writings have not had much good to say about men. Titles like \u201cMen Are Not Cost Effective\u201d speak for themselves. Maureen Dowd\u2019s book was called \u201cAre Men Necessary?\u201d and although she never gave an explicit answer, anyone reading the book knows her answer was no. Brizendine\u2019s book \u201cThe Female Brain\u201d introduces itself by saying, \u201cMen, get ready to experience brain envy.\u201d Imagine a book advertising itself by saying that women will soon be envying the superior male brain!<\/p>\n

Nor are these isolated examples. Eagly\u2019s research has compiled mountains of data on the stereotypes people have about men and women, which the researchers summarized as \u201cThe WAW effect.\u201d WAW\u00a0 stands for \u201cWomen Are Wonderful.\u201d Both men and women hold much more favorable views of women than of men. Almost everybody likes women better than men. I certainly do.<\/p>\n

My purpose in this talk is not to try to balance this out by praising men, though along the way I will have various positive things to say about both genders. The question of whether there\u2019s anything good about men is only my point of departure. The tentative title of the book I\u2019m writing is \u201cHow culture exploits men,\u201d but even that for me is the lead-in to grand questions about how culture shapes action. In that context, what\u2019s good about men means what men are good for, from the perspective of the system.<\/p>\n

Hence this is not about the \u201cbattle of the sexes,\u201d and in fact I think one unfortunate legacy of feminism has been the idea that men and women are basically enemies. I shall suggest, instead, that most often men and women have been partners, supporting each other rather than exploiting or manipulating each other.<\/p>\n

Nor is this about trying to argue that men should be regarded as victims. I detest the whole idea of competing to be victims. And I\u2019m certainly not denying that culture has exploited women. But rather than seeing culture as patriarchy, which is to say a conspiracy by men to exploit women, I think it\u2019s more accurate to understand culture (e.g., a country, a religion) as an abstract system that competes against rival systems \u2014 and that uses both men and women, often in different ways, to advance its cause.<\/p>\n

Also I think it\u2019s best to avoid value judgments as much as possible. They have made discussion of gender politics very difficult and sensitive, thereby warping the play of ideas. I have no conclusions to present about what\u2019s good or bad or how the world should change. In fact my own theory is built around tradeoffs, so that whenever there is something good it is tied to something else that is bad, and they balance out.<\/p>\n

I don\u2019t want to be on anybody\u2019s side. Gender warriors please go home.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Caine at FRDB posted a very nice article that I will post here as well for others to enjoy. Do not be fooled by the title. It is very much science and not your typical newspaper rant about a particular sex. Roy F. Baumeister – Is There Anything Good About Men? I made a nice […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":17,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1624,1653],"tags":[1626,1664,1663,1132,1627],"class_list":["post-2320","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-evolutionary-psychology","category-psychology","tag-men","tag-psychology-2","tag-roy-f-baumeister","tag-sexes","tag-women","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/17"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2320"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2322,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2320\/revisions\/2322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2320"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2320"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/emilkirkegaard.dk\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2320"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}