Tuesday, July 10, 2018



Smart women need to marry down to become mothers because there aren't enough smart men to go around, researchers warn

Miz Inhorn again.  A singularly unfortuate surname for a feminist, one would think.  It is however her Ashkenazi father's surname. As the originating paper is unpublished, I cannot check what she actually said this time but if it is like the report below she is under a strange misapprehension. Education is NOT IQ. There is about a 50% of shared variance between them but that is a long way from identity.

So there is NO shortage of high IQ men.  The average male IQ is in fact slightly higher than for females and the distribution is leptokurtic, meaning that at the highest levels of IQ there are a LOT more men than women. So if the women cannot find them they are looking in the wrong place.

So what is it that Miz Inhorn has missed?  She has missed the fact that women have been slower to wake up to the education racket than men have. For a lot of people a degree confers NO economic advantage -- the graduate burger flippers in McDonalds, for instance.  And for others the advantage is only slight -- often too slight to make up for the years of missed employment. The history of an advantage to education is a history of a shrinking quantum.  It is not inconceivable that it will go into reverse as all the overeducated women search desperately for jobs

As ever, it is in business and the trades where the big money lies these days -- and many men go there in various ways rather than wasting time seeking the dubious honor of a degree. So females who aspire to marry a high earner would be wise to get to know some tradesmen and business types.  If she does that she is unlikely to find a less intelligent man -- just a more realistic man.

She may of course find him "uncultured" -- in which case she will get the just reward for her snobbery.  Perhaps some Christian values might be helpful to such a woman.

It is relationships that matter not your hobbies -- intellectual or otherwise.  Concentrate on people before all else and you will do well.  You might even find that "dumb" electrician to be a nice guy who will keep you in style.  And you can have your specialized conversations with your friends.

That's roughly what I do.  As a much published Ph.D. academic and as someone who ran Sydney Mensa for a number of years, I am betting that I have even greater difficulty than the ladies below in finding similarly qualified women to relate to. I never have.  So I don't try to.  I seek and find women with a good heart and have my specialized "cultural" conversations mostly with my son.

What I have just said runs hard against what women are mostly told these days but it is also traditional wisdom. And what has worked for thousands of years may have something to be said for it.



Intelligent women should consider marrying less clever men if they want to start a family, according to researchers.

There are simply not enough brainy men to go round – so women may need to widen their search, warned the author of a report that found a growing number of professional women were freezing their eggs because they couldn’t find ‘Mr Right’.

‘There are fewer educated men in the world for educated women to partner with,’ said Marcia Inhorn, professor of anthropology at Yale University.

‘So if women want to find a partner with whom they can have children, they need a more expansive notion of who is Mr Right.

‘A good partner might not be exactly someone of similar educational background and socio-economic circumstances but there can still be really wonderful relationships with men who are interested in marriage and parenthood.’

According to the World Bank, 70 countries have more women educated to university level than men. In Britain, the proportion of female students rose from 45 per cent in 1985 to 54 per cent in 2000.

Those who graduated in 2000 are now in their mid to late 30s and, according to Prof Inhorn, many are turning to egg freezing because they are unable to find partners of similar intelligence and educational background.

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority said 1,173 British women had eggs frozen in 2016, a ten per cent rise on the previous year.

Professor Inhorn’s study, presented at the European Society of Human Reproduction and Embryology’s meeting in Barcelona, involved questioning 150 American and Israeli women with high levels of education who had chosen to freeze their eggs.

She found that 85 per cent of them were single and the majority had opted for egg freezing due to a ‘lack of a stable partner’.

But women may be slow to follow Professor Inhorn’s advice as her own research also shows that hypogamy or ‘marrying down’ is unpopular with women.

‘They didn’t want to marry or partner with someone less educated and of lower socio-economic status,’ she said. ‘They wanted equality in their relationship.’ In fact, another study co-authored by Professor Inhorn found women often desired men from a higher socio-economic level.

‘Traditionally, women in societies around the world have tried to achieve hypergamy, or “marrying up” in an attempt to secure a better future for themselves and their children,’ the study said, although it acknowledged that with more women in education, ‘these trends may be reversing’.

SOURCE





Questioning the Push for Diversity

Forced diversity at any cost seems to be the reigning ideal.

I can’t escape the diversity mandate’s effects for a day — nearly every time I watch a movie or TV episode, there are moments its agenda is so glaring I can’t help but wince. For instance, Jessica Jones Season 2 is loaded with leftist identity politics (typical for Marvel): white men are portrayed as evil and incompetent; most couples are gay; women are strong, dominant, and independent; casual sex makes for an empowered heroine. (Nevermind that even still things never seem to be diverse enough, as Shoe0nHead comically ranted about.)

In the Slack channels of a Google-affiliated scholarship program that I was part of, an individual crusaded for the creation of a Slack channel for “people of color.” When I worked up the nerve (fearing that I would be removed from the program as a result) to state my objections to the proposed racial segregation, saying it would be a racist move and suggesting we should all help each other out as fellow aspiring web developers and look past racial differences, someone countered that it just makes them feel better to be with other black people (yeah, nothing wrong with wanting to be with people who share your skin color) and that black people can’t be racist. (A channel was created, but with the name “diversity in tech.” Somewhat less exclusive, but what is implied by a channel called something along the lines of “diversity in tech” is “white men are unwelcome in this channel.”)

When diversity occurs naturally, I have nothing against it. My attitude is indifference. But pushing for it is sinister and the justifications often provided are illogical.

Forcing Diverse Outcomes Necessitates Discrimination

Socially engineering equal representation in our workforce, schools, and even media is not progress. It is blatant racism and sexism that is not about fixing discrimination, but turning the tables with further discrimination. People should not be privileged or condemned on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation, but on their efforts, achievements, and conscientiousness — or lack of thereof. It was Martin Luther King, Jr., who said “I have a dream that my four little children will one day live in a nation where they will not be judged by the color of their skin, but by the content of their character.” Today, that desire is interpreted by many as bigotry.

I think people who grew up destitute and/or were abused as children should be given additional help, but race, gender, and sexual orientation are the wrong determinants. Should a white person who was born to homeless high school dropouts, physically abused throughout childhood (in addition to witnessing domestic violence), and eventually placed in foster care receive less assistance/opportunity than someone born into a wealthy, highly supportive, nonabusive family but who happens to be black? I think not.

Regarding race, of course, it’s not just a black-and-white issue. Evidence has come out that Asian people are being discriminated against by colleges implementing racial quotas (such as Harvard) and that they must work considerably harder than those of other races to be admitted.

Forced Diversity Means Sacrificing Better-Suited Candidates

When you need an important surgery, do you want to entrust your life to the most competent surgeon you can find, regardless of their race, gender, or sexual orientation, or do you want one less skilled but a member of group that was historically discriminated against? (In today’s ideological climate I suspect this question may not be received as rhetorical.)

Likewise, if a company is to maximize their profits, should they be hiring on the basis of competence alone or based on race, gender, or sexual orientation?

Of course, I’m not saying every person who is granted a position in order to fill a quota is not the most competent or appropriate for that position when the factor of their group identity is removed. But inevitably this will occur, and to suggest otherwise is dishonest.

Forced Diversity May Lead to Doubting of Merit

When you know some people at a company are being hired on the basis of race, gender, or sexual orientation, people may speculate that some employees are there as “diversity hires.”

Recall the surgeon example. A patient may wonder: Is this black lesbian female doctor working here because she is highly competent, or is she actually subpar at her job and here to contribute to the projection of a diverse image?

People may have lower expectations for women in tech because companies are hiring more of them to make their companies appear more diverse. Men may resent them because some can get farther with less effort (as a result of something that involves nothing other than luck). The dynamic of certain members of a company being privileged and punished may understandably lead to some resentment.

If you want members of a group that was historically oppressed or simply underrepresented in a career field (such as women in STEM) to be perceived as equally fit for their positions, privileging them in the workplace as a result of something wholly unrelated to their competence is doing them a disservice.

Further, for a refreshing perspective on racism toward blacks, see Coleman Hughes’ The High Price of Stale Grievances.

Diversity Shouldn’t Be Considered Important

One of the arguments for the importance of diversity is so people see other people who look like them in certain positions and feel like they too can achieve the same thing. If you can imagine it, you can do it, they say.

This is an irrational and toxic mentality. While it comes naturally, it is wrong to identify with others based on things like skin color, gender, or sexual orientation. This is the worst breed of tribalism: one based not on ideas or actions, but on things one cannot change.

If you want to do something, don’t let “external messages” influence you. If people who look like you don’t happen to be equally represented, so what? That doesn’t determine what you can or should do with your life. So long as you have an equal chance to pursue whatever endeavor is of your liking, that’s all that matters. I am a champion of equal opportunity for all, but vehemently against discrimination — even when it benefits individuals belonging to a category that was historically oppressed.

The Ironic Responses to the Anti-Discrimination Stance

As Thomas Sowell said, “If you have always believed that everyone should play by the same rules and be judged by the same standards, that would have gotten you labeled a radical 60 years ago, a liberal 30 years ago and a racist today.”

In my experience anytime someone publicly voices an anti-racist, anti-sexist position or even a fact-based stance regarding forced diversity, they are attacked as a racist, sexist, and so forth.

It happened to James Damore, who was fired from his job as a senior software engineer at Google (despite having had just gotten the best possible performance evaluation) for posting this on a skepticism message board that was only visible internally. Essentially its message was that it’s unlikely that discrimination is the only reason for the discrepancy between the number of men and women in tech given the ample evidence that women tend to (at the group level) prefer to work with people, while men tend to work with things (many ignore or deny this inconvenient detail, attributing the disparity entirely to discrimination), and that it’s immoral to have female-only groups and policies that privilege women while punishing men in the company. See also feminist Christina Hoff Sommers’ commentary on the memo and James Damore’s interviews with Jordan Peterson and Joe Rogan.

Listen to Dave Rubin’s intolerant, hostile treatment by protesters at a lecture he gave at the University of New Hampshire. His message was essentially the same as MLK’s: that we shoudn’t prejudge people based on immutable characteristics; yet students continually tried to drown him out with loud noises and robotically chanting “black lives matter,” and when given the opportunity to respond to what he was saying, they couldn’t produce anything of substance. (One female who did bother addressing him in some way other than a droning chant ended her spiel accusing him of not wanting to hear a woman speak defiantly — a nonsequitur, unrelated to anything he has said — followed by fervent applause from her fellow hecklers.) This encapsulates the word “farce.”

Bret Weinstein, a professor at Evergreen College, was castigated and eventually resigned (as students called for) because he refused to stay home on a day on which a group of people at that college ordered white students, staff, and faculty to absent themselves from campus. Here’s an uncut video of his treatment by a vicious, thoughtless mob of students subsequent to his act of defiance. He attempts to reason with them: “I’m interested only in dialectic, which does mean I listen to you, and you listen to me,” to which a female voice spews, “We don’t care, you white turd. We are not speaking on terms of white privilege. This is not a discussion,” followed by the group’s sputtering of obscenities and chasing him down the halls, chanting “Hey hey, ho ho, Bret Weinstein has got to go!” Listen to an excerpt of his interview with Joe Rogan in which he recounts the debacle and provides his justification for choosing not to participate.

I know that voicing my views — clearly wrongthink and heresy in this atmosphere dogma — will bring me enemies. When I have done so in the past, I have been accused of being a white supremacist, sexist, and other antithetical labels. And of course, it would be more convenient for me to remain silent on these issues. But as the late Christopher Hitchens advised, “Never be a spectator of unfairness or stupidity. The grave will supply plenty of time for silence.”

SOURCE





Political correctness can’t tranform boys into girls

Connecticut lately is getting plenty of practice trying to believe impossible things, not least because of high school sports contests that let boys compete as girls if they insist that they want to be girls. Two such boys, excellent athletes, recently have been finishing first and second in track meets for girls.

There has been some grousing that this is unfair, but on the whole it seems that those most directly aggrieved by the expropriation of the girls events are afraid of coming out as politically incorrect. They fear acknowledging the obvious - that there are physiological differences between the sexes, starting with the male and female chromosomes, differences that in general give athletic advantages to males, advantages confirmed by the instant success of the boys competing in the girls track meets.

Connecticut law now presumes to deny this basic science by insisting on the right of people who reject their biological gender to use the bathrooms designated for the other gender. The ancient right of sexual privacy has been crushed under the heel of this political correctness.

Biology and science are being discarded in favor of mere individual desire, leaving society with no objective criteria for determining whether someone is male or female. People are to be only what they call themselves, though it used to be understood that, as Lincoln noted, just calling a tail a leg doesn’t make it one.

If, as this trend presumes, there are really no differences between the sexes, there no longer will be any rationale for gender divisions in sports, from schools right up through professional leagues. As men who impersonate women begin competing that way, athletic opportunities and recognition for women will be reduced, as the success of the transgendered high school runners in Connecticut already has reduced them. Are women really going to sit quietly through this?

Requiring those runners to compete against their biological gender would deny them no opportunity. As this would remain a free country, the boys could still style and present themselves as girls. No one would have any power to interfere with their personal lives. There would be no need to review their medical histories, as is done elsewhere with claims of transgenderism, nor to psychoanalyze them. They could be themselves and their unconventionality would be no more publicized than it already is. No longer taking advantage of others, they would be less resented.

Indeed, in that case any honors they won might be considered not just more fairly but also more courageously won than honors they won by pretending to be girls.

Political correctness can intimidate people into silence but it can’t control what they think, and honors received by able-bodied boys and men competing athletically against girls and women are not likely ever to be considered completely legitimate - and they shouldn’t be, no matter how much the White Queen enjoyed believing impossible things.

SOURCE






Half of Tasmania’s Anglican churches are slated for sale, leaving communities reeling. Is this Tassie Christendom’s death knell?

C'mon!  Anglicanism tells us nothing about Christendom.  Homosexuality is all they seem to believe in these days.  They have left both the Bible and their own "39 articles" behind years ago.  They still sometimes talk the old talk but their churches are now little more than social clubs

Ron Sonners strides through the tombstones and crosses that creep up a gentle grassy slope, stopping just shy of the portal into St Peter’s, an elegant Georgian church perched on a hill overlooking the Tasmanian farming village of Hamilton. He wants to show me the war graves but the most frequented plot in the grounds of this heritage-listed Anglican church is the fresher mound where his niece’s son lies ­buried. She brings flowers and her unfathomable grief twice a week, seeking solace. He knows who is here in the cold, packed earth because he ­gardens and cares for this place, proud of the new cemetery gates, the old wooden door rehung, floorboards replaced and recarpeted, improved wiring, the levelling of the flagstone entrance, all done with volunteer money and labour.

The passage of convicts, free settlers and their kin has worn a shallow dip across the threshold slab of pale stone through almost two centuries of service since the church opened in 1838. Tested by the vicissitudes of fortune and faith, the dwindling congregation scraped by cheerfully enough until last month, when parishioners learnt St Peters was on a hit list of 76 churches in Tasmania — more than half the total 133 — slated for auction to fund compensation for victims of child sex abuse by the Anglican clergy. Forget “temporal things” such as bricks and mortar, Tasmania’s Anglican Bishop, the Right Reverend Richard Condie, urged clergy and lay members of the governing synod that endorsed the scheme last month. “What a miserable and pathetic gospel we would have if it could be destroyed by the loss of a building. Our ­discipleship, our following of Jesus, our trust and hope and life is so much more than real estate.”

Sixty-one of the churches under threat are in pinched rural hamlets. Five of the six Anglican churches in the vast central midlands parish of Hamilton have a “for sale” sticker. These towns have lost services, post offices, banks and now churches that in many cases dominate the skyline, the main street, occupying parcels of land donated in perpetuity by private citizens, built through subscriptions, maintained for 100 years or more by the collection plate and the sweat of parishioners.

At Windermere, on the Tamar River north of Launceston, a psychologist and stalwart of ­St Matthias says: “I’ve cried and prayed every night over this decision.” In the West Coast town of Queenstown, where the local mine has closed, volunteer preacher and businessman Kevin ­Bailey admits to being “very stressed” about the ­potential loss of St Martin’s, which would force folk to drive 50km on winding roads to the nearest alternative. The church warden of St Marks at Cressy, south of Launceston, hasn’t slept for three weeks: “It tears the heart out of you.” In Pyengana, a speck in the state’s far north-east, the tiny white clapboard church, recently painted and reclad by locals, offers sanctuary to a dairy farmer who goes there anytime he feels the need to be close to the graves of his two teenage children.

“Country people vote with their feet. They just leave and they don’t come back,” says Nichola Ball, whose family have been baptised, wed and buried at St John the Baptist in Ouse, 15km north-west of Hamilton, for four generations. With its pressed tin spire, wooden fretwork and chunky blue stone, the tiny church was built by her great-great-grandfather in 1843. “Whoever buys this is going to have to buy Walter Ross Bethune,” she hoots of her great-uncle’s resting place under the altar. The blackwood lid of the stone baptismal font was carved by revered ­Tasmanian arts and crafts artist Ellen Payne. “We love this church,” Ball sighs, pausing to read the rapturous comments from tourists and others tracing their ancestral footprints who have signed a leatherbound book in the porch. “Door is not locked. Visitors welcome,” says the sign.

Ball has joined Sonners on the frontline. Her cultivated manner camouflages a soldiering bloodline. “Unconscionable … disingenuous,” she says of the bishop’s plan to sell “our light on the hill”.

Parishes have until December to secure an exemption. Once churches are sold there’ll be the sweetener of diocese funds available to bankroll new ministry in school halls, living rooms, coffee shops, wherever. The fate of the graveyards is ­anyone’s guess; the state government is urgently reviewing its Burial and Cremation Act. Plots have been paid for everywhere I visit. Trust deeds are being pored over. Meetings are underway. This could be the saving grace of Tasmania’s Christendom or its death knell. Heritage, history, culture, religion: the social fabric of an island state is up for grabs.

Huge inverted red neon crucifixes menace the night sky on Hobart’s waterfront for Dark Mofo, the annual winter festival of the Museum of Old and New Art, a cultural phenomenon that has ­turbocharged Tasmania’s tourism-led economic recovery. The upside-down motif decried as blasphemous by Christian leaders is a neat metaphor for the turmoil triggered by the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse.

At Anglican church headquarters in nearby Macquarie Street, next to St David’s Cathedral, the fallout is written in Bishop Condie’s taut ­composure. “I’ve worked pretty much seven days a week for the last couple of months on this, as much as is possible humanly to do,” he tells me. “I’ve been trying to lead calmly but sometimes I think people have understood that to mean that I don’t care about this. I’ve wept over this. This is the hardest thing I could do and I’m incredibly sad that the Anglican Church in Tasmania is in this position. Evil people in our history did these terrible crimes and now our generation is paying for it, but I’m also filled with compassion for survivors of child abuse who have sat in this room and told me their stories. I can’t ignore that.”

His office in a city precinct of blue-chip real estate bears none of the lustre of corporate foyers. Worn carpet, cheap framed prints and mismatched furnishings are testament to a cash-strapped purse as well as a nobler disregard for secular trappings. Burdened by an annual deficit of $95,000, Condie insists he could neither ­borrow the $8 million for redress nor raise money through the sale of commercial assets, since these provide essential ongoing revenue for an institution in decline. “It would cripple us and we’d go out of business pretty quickly,” he says.

Tasmania has the lowest religious affiliation of any state and falling, according to the latest census, although the proportion of Anglicans compared with other religions, while also shrinking, is higher than the national average. To prepare for a looming compensation bill, the state synod last year introduced a sustainability test to determine parish viability. Churches had to demonstrate attendance by 30 households; sufficient funds to pay a full-time minister; ­pathways to encourage families and children; and ­evangelical and outreach activities. Survival of the fittest doomed the frailest rural congregations for auction despite the best efforts of parishioners to make ends meet. In Hamilton, for example, the elderly priest is part-time and unpaid. She earns a small salary from school chaplaincy work and the parish bought her a car and covers petrol expenses as she rotates Sunday services between churches.

Ministry matters more than church buildings in the figuring of Bishop Condie, an evangelical Christian aligned with the GAFCON (Global Anglican Future Conference) strand of conser­vative Anglicanism. Melbourne born and bred, his only exposure to a rural ­community occurred during an early two-year posting in a parish in northern NSW. Anglican officials around the country are ­monitoring his ambitious reversal of authority. Traditionally, veto over the sale of church property is vested with the parish councils but the Tasmanian synod handed the bishop power over the fate of 108 properties.

SOURCE 

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Political correctness is most pervasive in universities and colleges but I rarely report the  incidents concerned here as I have a separate blog for educational matters.

American "liberals" often deny being Leftists and say that they are very different from the Communist rulers of  other countries.  The only real difference, however, is how much power they have.  In America, their power is limited by democracy.  To see what they WOULD be like with more power, look at where they ARE already  very powerful: in America's educational system -- particularly in the universities and colleges.  They show there the same respect for free-speech and political diversity that Stalin did:  None.  So look to the colleges to see  what the whole country would be like if "liberals" had their way.  It would be a dictatorship.

For more postings from me, see TONGUE-TIED, GREENIE WATCH,   EDUCATION WATCH INTERNATIONAL, AUSTRALIAN POLITICS and  DISSECTING LEFTISM.   My Home Pages are here or   here or   here.  Email me (John Ray) here.  Email me (John Ray) here

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