So Greg Laden was on a panel concerning gender differences at Convergence. There is an interesting conversation about it on Cristina Rad’s blog. During the panel, Greg used the term “broken” and “damaged” by testosterone to refer to developmental gender differentiation of males. Stephanie Zvan has since attempted to clarify his use of these words.
You don’t have to deny the science to criticize Laden’s word choice. It was out-of-this-world abysmal.
However you want to dress it up in ultra-literalism, irony, or could “have been a little more complete”, he still used an incredibly charged derogatory term that obfuscated the science more than illuminated it.
Update: This is a nice read, also in response to Zvan, explaining some of the science. It also addresses something that Dadabhoy said during the panel.
I’m not going to do the thing where people assume there is parity. Because of cultural norms and history, it is not quite the same to insult women as it is to insult men. However, that lack of parity doesn’t magically make it okay to insult men.
Also, doing the egg-shell walk when you discuss negatively connotative female-typical traits or biology while being brash and stupid when it comes to negatively connotative male-typical traits or biology is an insult to women.
It’s saying that women can’t handle the truth while men are emotionally invincible.
Women have, on average, smaller brains. That shouldn’t insult anyone. It’s just true. Here is an article about it. Notice how patronizing the author feels she needs to be to the “ladies” reading the article.
It would be ridiculous for her to start her article with – “Women have pea-brains! What’s up with that? Wacka-wacka” However, making a whole paragraph that mostly apologized for admitting something that is a matter of direct measurement – hardly something up for debate – is bizarre.
There is another perspective on this that is being missed.
I assumed he was referring to testosterone having the effect of breaking neural connections. I couldn’t find a source for that and I haven’t had a chance to ask him if that was, indeed, what he was talking about. So, I’m just entertaining the notion that what he said might be, in a completely denotative and limited sense, true.
This benefit of the doubt doesn’t excuse his word-choice, however.
I have a son with a traumatic brain injury (TBI), as in, actually honest to goodness injury to his brain. He was in a car accident. Nobody uses the phrase brain “damage”. On none of the pages and pages of official documents, reports and evaluations, do they say brain “damage”. Of the dozen or so doctors and specialized educators he has had – none of them have used the phrase brain “damage”. I suspect the reason is that “brain damage” has been used as an insult for so long, and is so incredibly vague, as to make the phrase undesirable due to stigma and lack of utility.
So, you can imagine how the if you stand on your head, it is sort of literally true bit seems pretty forced from my perspective.
Trying to normalize the use of the word “damaged” to simply mean that something is developing doesn’t fly either. Even though it has this sort of interesting Shiva vibe to it – using it as a way to defend him is sort of wacky.
He also called men “broken women”.
YEAH – calling men “broken women” with a transgender man (who most likely takes testosterone to maintain transition) sitting right next to you has to be a comedy – right? haha – funny funny <sarcasm> How is that not messed up? I mean – really messed up.
He also made an analogy to dogs being “broken wolves” to clarify this.
This buys directly into the whole domestication complex of some masculinists, as well as the toxic assessment of men as “dogs” who cannot be responsible for their bad behavior toward women. At least that was just an analogy – still *face palm*.
Making the mistakes in the first place is not good. Constructing excuses for it and labeling those who point out the problem as sitting in a different camp – is really really not cool. Wouldn’t it have been easier and more honest – to simply say his word-choice had something to be desired?
Look, I’m not going to assume that Laden is some sort of man-hater and I’m not going to conclude what his motivations for using charged words were. However, it makes no sense to defend his language. It’s counter productive.
You can defend him, and clarify the science, without defending his unfortunate word choices.
Wutisdis said:
Respectfully: This is exactly what people have been saying about FreeThoughtBlogs in general.
There have been many more misandrist comments that have been ignored, or even worse, supported. I think what he said was very intended and pandering towards his crowd.
The defense of the use of his word just proves that they stand behind them and are constructing post-hoc rationalizations.
M. A. Melby said:
I know. I made this post, in part, to show how these conversations can happen.
You’re absolutely right. However, this is also a good counter-example to some of the more obnoxious barbs from the “FfTB” crowd. I’ve been able (as well as others) to discuss his comments at length on FtB without being 1) mercilessly attacked 2) ignored or 3) banned.
None of those things has happened while discussing this issue with Stephanie Zvan or with others on Cristina Rad’s blog.
Certainly there are camp politics going on – I’m not completely naive. However, conversations happen there, which is a pretty strong counter-example to the idea that conversations cannot happen there.
M. A. Melby said:
Just to be clear – I’m taking Stephanie Zvan word for it, that Greg Laden’s intent may well be some sort of rhetorical device, however that doesn’t change what he said and her post certainly seems to be a bit of damage-control – even though she frames it as further discussion.
Nothing wrong with further discussion. In fact, she was pretty clear that the reason for her post was to give a space to air the criticisms. That is the opposite of shutting down discussion, not in-line with it.
What he said was pretty terrible on all the levels I mentioned in my post. I mentioned why I thought his words were horrid on a FtB blog. I was not attacked or banned.
Wutisdis said:
Firstly: I apologize for my emotionally charged comments. As someone who’s been following the atheist scene, I honestly am a bit exhausted by this thing and wish it would blow over soon with no harm done to any of the parties, but we’ll see.
Unfortunately, it’s become an issue of trust, I think, and an overarching one. The protection of phrases like the “Y chromosome is broken” (which is also scientifically wrong, as the link you provided shows) and “The male brain is a female brain damaged by testosterone” is a valid criticism, when it comes to people, mostly at grass-roots level from what I can tell, increasingly not trusting them to have reasoned debate.
Wutisdis said:
Sorry, a clarification:
I refer to this in context of the recent furore regarding the harassment policies. I have a lot of problems with the Skepchicks’ proposed policies, and I have a problem with the American Atheists adopting large parts of it without question.
My point is, that their trustworthiness as an organization is called in question when blatant sexism like this is justified without even an apology, even in the face of a huge wave of criticism. That’s why I think this is a more serious issue than just “Greg Laden said something sexist”.
Andre said:
Thank you for this well thought out look into something I just dismissed as a dumb/bad joke.
Greg Laden said:
Hey I just saw this post (someone pointed me to it a minute ago). Yes, it’s a rhetorical device to get people’s attention. That should be obvious, but when it is not obvious, I don’t mind pointing it out. Then it does not have to be obvious, you can just know it is because you’ve been informed by the very person who used the rhetorical device. (Would have told you months ago but I don’t think you asked!)
It is not a bad choice of words. And there’s nothing wrong with the science, keeping in mind that this is intro-baby-level endocrinology and neurobio.
M. A. Melby said:
No worries. This post is discussing the problematic nature of what you said – not your intent (which has been communicated and cannot be assessed otherwise – because of my lack of mind-reading alien superpowers). Stephanie talked about intent quite a bit in her post, and she said she discussed it with you.
It seems that, to some, it’s just inconceivable that others can disagree and even occasionally say, “I don’t think that was okay.” without some sort of banning/shaming/ostracism/whatever. You know, the whole anti-FtB/A+/SJW narrative that gets repeated over and over and over again.
That’s why I linked this, because (yet again) someone was repeating this idea that anyone friendly or supportive of certain groups (or even of them existing at all) are all sorts of group-think, hive-mind, blah blah blah
As if we (that supposedly infinitely monolithic “we”) aren’t individuals who disagree (or even clash) on certain stuff once in a while. That we don’t actually “worship” a few popular personalities.
M. A. Melby said:
Also, thanks for posting to my blog with your reply. I should have given you that opportunity a while ago. Sorry about that.