Sunday’s Forum
Steven L. Taylor
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Sunday, January 5, 2025
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29 comments
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About Steven L. Taylor
Steven L. Taylor is a retired Professor of Political Science and former College of Arts and Sciences Dean. His main areas of expertise include parties, elections, and the institutional design of democracies. His most recent book is the co-authored
A Different Democracy: American Government in a 31-Country Perspective. He earned his Ph.D. from the University of Texas and his BA from the University of California, Irvine. He has been blogging since 2003 (originally at the now defunct Poliblog).
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Marjorie Taylor Greene is quite concerned that “a foot of snow” falling on D.C. will disrupt the certification of Trump’s presidency. She vows to walk to the Capitol if she has to do so.
Are MarkedMan and I the only commenters here today?
@CSK: Someone’s got to do it!
@CSK: Yes.
@gVOR10:
You don’t count?????
Unelected illegal immigrant S. African oligarch, President Musk:
Response from regretful MAGA influencer, Jasmine Keith:
Womp womp.
Nice article at link. It shows that when working in groups that larger groups are slower and that groups that are all male are more likely to lie or engage in unethical behavior. While it doesnt give lots of detail it gels with my years running a corporation. A committee or group with only guys was much more likely to tell me everything was going well when it was not. I eventually learned that groups of all women or all men could work well but they were both more likely to have issues and things worked better if there was a mix.
Steve
https://docs.iza.org/dp16954.pdf
@CSK:
Maybe Mike Pence is available to help her out?
@al Ameda:
Isn’t she one of the merry band that wanted to hang Pence?
Totally thrilling news: Amazon Prime is set for the global release of a documentary on the “truly unique story” of Melania Trump.
From escort to First Lady.
@CSK:
It would be nice if a foot of snow would fall in DC on the 20th.
A friend of my wife’s forwarded along a great line yesterday, “The world would be better off if we were celebrating trump’s funeral and Jimmy Carter’s inauguration.”
@Sleeping Dog:
A lot of people will be celebrating when Trump shuffles off this mortal coil, including, I suspect, his wife.
@steve: interesting! Late yesterday I posted this on the open thread; your post reminds me of a discussion in the comments that followed the original article (I’ll describe them in a follow up comment).
Here’s what I posted yesterday:
Returning to an earlier discussion of the challenges facing boys and young men today, Cheryl Rofer wrote an article for LGM that referenced this article: Why Boys Don’t Go to College.
The article makes some good points, IMO, and addresses a disagreement I often have about one of the main reasons some claim that boys have trouble in school: schools being designed for girls’ success and not boys. The reality is, the expectations that help a student to succeed, such as being able to sit still and follow directions, are not that different from what they have always been for hundreds of years, long before education was something that girls commonly had access to. In fact, I’d argue that teachers today have a better understanding than teachers 50 or 100 years ago did about the importance of hands-on and collaborative learning, as opposed to simply sitting in a lecture. The one factor that I would agree may affect boys more negatively than girls is the reduction in time spent for recess.
So if not the structure of K-12 education, what changed? The article’s author makes a good case, across educational environments and occupational industries, that what has changed is the larger presence of women and girls. She calls it “male flight,” and likens it to white flight from neighborhoods and cities. Whether a specific profession, career field, or an educational institution like college, once something gets coded as “female,” then men start fleeing. The author argues that until we acknowledge this, we can’t begin to address it. She offers one suggestion: a return of all-male schools and colleges. (She offers it as a footnote, so whether she favors it as a solution, or merely as a realistic accommodation, is uncertain).
@steve: the discussion that followed in the article’s comments included questions about whether some work environments, due to being predominantly male or female, were hostile to the other gender, with people from both genders saying yes. Several women challenged the men on this point, pointing out that the women were identifying specific actions that resulted in environments hostile to women, such as sexual harassment, and talking down, dismissing, or ignoring female contributions. In contrast, the men weren’t saying anything concrete except that they didn’t like it or didn’t feel comfortable in a majority female workplace.
So one guy took it upon himself to identify the “concrete” problems with predominantly female workplaces: something along the lines of them being “too conformist, conflict-averse, and collaborative, which stifles male creativity.” Lest you wonder whether this guy was coming from a place of misogyny or not, he then opined that the biggest advances in human history have always occurred when women are most oppressed, and if the US adopted policies for women similar to those in Afghanistan, we’d see male creativity flourish like never before.
Anyway, his claim that it’s women who are too conflict-averse directly contradicts your point about “A committee or group with only guys was much more likely to tell me everything was going well when it was not.”
@Monala: No dog in the fight anymore (and, formerly, an advocate for single-gender schooling for some students), but I’m reminded that the reason we moved away from “boys’ schools” was because they tended to become networks that funneled their charges into political, business, and social milieus to the exclusion of less privileged groups–the “old boys’ network.”
Not always and not exclusively, but often enough to create disproportionate advantage. This may be why the author is… hesitant (?) to offer it as a “solution.” Still in all, potentially a good accommodation (provided that the goal is really expanding opportunities and that expanded opportunity is a genuine solution in a system that may well already be at saturation).
ETA: “Anyway, his claim that women are too conflict-averse directly contradicts…”
Maybe the man was saying that women make men too conflict averse and misstated. Doesn’t help with why men shine on the boss more often, though.
@Monala:
Oh, yes, indeed. Male inventors from Afghanistan have done SO MUCH to advance the human condition.
@Monala: This, from mistermix at LGM, may be of interest. Rofer updated her post with two charts. This is expressed disinterest in college, not actual enrollment, broken down by gender and partisanship. Like so many other things, the exit of males is not a general population thing, it’s a Republican thing. Disinterest in college is low, and steady over 20 years, for Dems. It’s GOPs who don’t want to compete with, or associate with, or whatever with girls. Seems a bit self defeating, but that’s never stopped them.
On the other hand, there’s Shakardokht Jakari, a female Afghan inventor, She had to leave Afghanistan to make her medical discoveries, though.
Reminder to have tater tots on hand, if you want to commemorate 1/6 with Coup Day Tots.
To be more accurate, you would want to undercook them, so they are Failed Coup Day Tots, but I don’t recommend that. I recommend Tot-chos, which are just nachos with tater tots instead of tortilla chips.
@DK: Chess, the game is chess–not to be confused for a simpler game, often played by simpletons–checkers
@Jim Brown 32:
This reminds me of when my father was playing checkers with his 3-year-old grandson. He looked at me and whispered, “I’m trying to figure out a way to lose.”
@just nutha: @Monala: @steve:
I believe we’ve found the cause of right-wing incelery. (Not a real word.) They’re scared of girls.
What’s the point of going to college if there aren’t girls there? I mean, if you’re not getting paid, you should at least get laid. Latin translation for use in mottos and coats of arms: si non mercedem accipit, saltem coitus.
@steve:
Out of curiosity, what were the issues with women only teams?
@Monala:
lol, “conflict adverse”. So the following is heavily simplified. I work in a male dominated field with male dominance ideals baked throughout it (law). Somewhat early in my transition I noticed I was having huge problems with certain other women. I just couldn’t get anywhere with them and it was like constantly beating my head against someone else’s fist. There was another group of women that I got a long with famously. It was like sitting down with a friend to have a nice meal instead of work.
Finally it got so bad that I went to my therapist and asked her what I was doing wrong. She pointed out that the first group of women learned early on that to excel in a male dominated field they had to be smarter, and better, and HARDER, than all the men around them. If I tried to interact with them coming from a place of talky softness they were going they were going to see me as another man whose throat they needed to slit. To be fair, these women tend to treat other talky women as speed bumps as well.
I’ve come to observe that actually competent, intelligent fighty women are a wonder to observe. I still don’t care to deal with them, but I figured out how to present myself to minimize problems. The idiot fighty women are awful to deal with. Think Nancy Mace.
Now, this is overly reductive and probably tinged with a bit of sexism, but it’s been a wild experience.
I’ve also learned that almost all men are overly convinced of their own brilliance and that everyone is dumber than them. It’s soo frustrating.
@Michael Reynolds: Horndogs don’t need to go to college to meet women. They can meet them anywhere–Trump meets them in lingerie department changing rooms for example. The only thing that I have ever been able to see that separates incels from horndogs is that the incels are not aware of how repulsive their behaviors are in the same way that horndogs are aware. You go to college–particularly back in the days before Harvard was coed–to meet the contacts that are going to get you the clerkship that leads to District Court, Appellate Court, and finally, SCOTUS. Or the job at State or DoJ or IBM or any number of other jobs that should only be going to the right kind of men in the first place.
Incels fail because they are bad at being predators. Full stop.
https://bsky.app/profile/keithedwards.bsky.social/post/3lexmhcim7r2c
Donations to Biden’s inaugural fund in 2021:
Meta = $0
Tim Cook = $0
Sam Altman = $0
Google = $200,000
Amazon = $200,000
Donations to Trump’s inaugural fund in 2025:
Meta = $1,000,000
Tim Cook = $1,000,000
Sam Altman = $1,000,000
Google = $1,000,000
Amazon = $1,000,000
The oligarchy is here.
@Mikey:
Gross. I hope a couple oligarchs learn what happens when you cross actual power.
@Mikey:
The solution is right here.
@Beth: I have worked in education and social services, fields that are predominantly female, and I have worked with so many women who had no problems whatsoever addressing conflict head-on. As for his other two accusations, what he calls conformity is probably similar personalities being attracted to similar professions*—and you probably see similar levels of “conformity” in business, law, and engineering. As for the third, collaboration is a good thing (and often stimulates creativity by providing different perspectives), so I make no apologies for it.
* I recall one staff retreat in which we did one of the many workplace personality tests, and there was a high degree of overlap. The vast majority of staff scored very high on both interpersonal skills and intellectual interests.
@Beth:
“ almost all men are overly convinced of their own brilliance”.
Objection your honor! Or alternatively, #notallmen. I’d put the number at around 30%, about the same as the percentage of assholes in society by my estimate. Though I wouldn’t be surprised if it was higher amongst lawyers.