Jezebel: duh studies

"Nerd Girls" Learn To Abandon Risky Sex, Cutting For "Empowerment," Education, And I Am Really Happy For Them

Moe — Mon, 16 Jun 2008 15:00:00 EDT

For some reason I just read a story called Self-Cutting Linked To Risky Teen Sex. Okay, so I hate myself for actually reading such a story, since I was really only reading it for the purpose of reveling in how much I hate myself, which is fairly easy since I can't even get it up to make a joke along the lines of "Oh! Cutters and their bareback sex! What'll they take up next, coke and bulimia?" (You see the problem.) But no, I even went and bothered figuring out who we can thank for this breakthrough. Some research center underwritten by the toy industry, apparently. And here I am, trying to carve a post out of this crap when I would rather find a knife. Wouldn't it be cool if vibrators had fold out knives for cutters? Cool, but also scary, obviously? And the worst part is I'm reading about this cool new class of empowered "Nerdettes" that supposedly exists, and embraces its differences and enrolls in engineering classes, obligatory Tina Fey reference even though Tina Fey has fuckall to do with engineering but okay.

Hot geeky girls are a hot new trend, replete with a reality show and a spoofy beauty pageant and highly dubious sounding data such as:

Even women gamers far outnumber men ages 25 to 34, according to a 2006 study by the Consumer Electronics Association.

Oh, sure, find me a game that simulates cutting and cramps and vomiting up the wine you drank forming emotional attachments to horrible jerks and I will believe there is fucking gender parity here.

Revenge Of The Nerdettes [Newsweek]
Self-Cutting Linked To Risky Teen Sex, Study Shows [CBS News]

Why It's About Time For A President With A Long Index Finger To Wag

Moe — Tue, 29 Jan 2008 17:00:05 EST

What is it with women who preface statements with "I'm definitely not a feminist"? Now, I personally don't go around calling people I am a feminist, in part because of all those old Candace Bushnell columns in which flimsy freeloading unemployed socialites constantly excuse their unrelenting pursuit of sugardaddiness by saying "I'm a feminist," but that same anecdote goes to show you just how benign the word really is, right? I mean, equal status accorded to men and women — that's a no-brainer, right? Okay, well, now comes Helen Fisher, a renowned anthropologist, Match.com consultant and World Economic Forum speaker on the subject of the differences between women. She starts her speech, "I'm definitely not a feminist..."

And then goes on to basically say men are from Mars and women are from Venus. In brief:

Women are capable of thinking about more things at once and being more emotionally intelligent. Their screenplays are subtler, more ambiguous, and more complex. (Ever tried to get a guy to watch, say, Friends With Money? Yeah.) Years of having do deal with kids and chores and errands and cooking and sewing has evolved us into longer-term thinkers, better "multitaskers", better investors. They like to gather more data before making decisions, whereas men make all their choices as if they're going to die tomorrow.

Men are hunters, focusers, better in the short term, in the moment, more analytical; more direct, less complex, write more plot-driven screenplays.

So far so duh. And guess what? Testosterone is the culprit. How long is your ring finger compared to your index finger, Dr Fisher wants to know. If your ring finger's longer...you're less likely to care think about the long-term impact on the union symbolized by the ring on it before you fuck that cute intern because you've got more testosterone. And if your index finger is longer, the...better to wag it angrily in response?

Hey wait! But Tracie, and Anna and I all have longer ring fingers. Is evolution already working to combat these old stereotypes? (Bc I am the worst multitasker on the universe!)
Whatever. Speaking as a manly girl, I am sick of these studies that so confirm how inherently superior women are to men that you have to preface them by saying, "And I'm in no way telling you this just because I'm a feminist..." We already have to work for their dumb, overconfident, emotionally-stunted, all-trees-no-forest all-gut-no-intuition short term-obsessed "hunter" asses. Fuck spending any more time worrying about their motherfucking pride.

Is Your Ring Finger Long Enough For This Job? [Salon]

Women Work "Harder" Because They Take Their Dumb Jobs Way Too Seriously

Moe — Thu, 27 Dec 2007 15:00:58 EST

A new study says women and men are different about something! (Think it's about time I programmed a series of command keys so I could type those eleven words with minimal effort? Yeah, only a dude would be that lazy. Or enterprising. Whatev.) Anyway, this study says that women work harder than men. Because they're perfectionists who set higher standards for themselves.

She recently asked both a male and a female colleague for help on a project. The female colleague said that to do a good job, she would need to do three days of research first. The male colleague said he could finish the work in an afternoon.

That's one of the conductors of the study, a sociology professor at the University of Virginia. And I think this gets to the crux of the issue, right? The colleague is being asked to help with a sociology project. She's not being asked to research, say, the evidence of nuclear proliferation in Iran. She's not mapping the human genome. She's helping a professor who supports her obvious assertion to a reporter by citing anecdotes. What the fuck does she need three days for? To be a better anecdote?

Maybe I just answered my own question. Anyhow, here is where I could go the extra mile and dig up all those other studies about how women think they are better at multitasking than men but are actually not, or how women work only slightly longer hours than men, or how men are more playful and women who play videogames have higher IQs, but in the spirit of gender equality I am going to exhibit some of that fundamental male arrogance and decree this post to be "good enough."

(And to that end, people, I illustrated this post with Tina Fey before I wrote the snarky headline or indeed, much of the post. It is not meant as a knock on Tina or the character she plays on 30 Rock, as her work is obviously very, very important to the future of humankind, so don't give me a hard time about that OR the fact that she doesn't get to play as "funny" a character on the TV show because she is trying to depict this harried, frazzled caricature of a female; haven't we been through that enough already?)

Do Women Work Harder? [US News]
Women Must Work Harder [UVA Today]

You Shrill Humorless Bitches Can Stop Being All Jealous! Testosterone Makes Men "Funnier"

Moe — Fri, 21 Dec 2007 14:00:32 EST

OH MY SHIT MORE ON THE "MEN ARE MORE FUNNIER THAN WOMEN" BEAT SAY IT AIN'T SO. Here's an idea: testosterone is what makes men funnier. That's what this unicycling psychologist who got his study published in the British Medical Journal is saying. Compiling that Mitchell report musta been a hoot then, yes??? Anyway, the finding is based on the results of a few days going out and riding a unicycle and seeing who cracked the best jokes about it. Post-pubescent males made the funniest jokes and were the most aggressive about cracking them and aggression is linked to hormones and this whole thing is totally suspicious because you know what lowers your testosterone levels? Alcohol. And you know when aggressively funny dudes are actually funny? When everyone is drinking it. But there are some more problems.

For one thing, I am sick of studies that fall under the realm of "duh." Of course people whose hormones empower them to be more aggressive about their joke-making are going to be funny. Have you ever hung out with a seriously funny dude? It takes weeks before you can get a joke in edgewise, and that's if you can even understand what the hell their powerfully-ingrained dudejoke sensing mechanisms even finds so funny already. Then there is the whole matter of the fact that they are SO MUCH LOUDER. They also like to repeat themselves, and they tend to find themselves funnier than you ever will, and so there is this snowball effect where the laughing becomes contagious, like yawning, and soon the DUMBEST THINGS ARE FUNNY. And by dumbest things I don't mean, like, a range of dumb things, I mean generally "butt sex" and "miscellaneous other homo shit."

Anyway I'm willing to chalk this whole entire sequence of events up to testosterone. In fact, I would further venture that as a woman, I can't even comprehend what a dude means when he says the word "funny." I think there is some pheremonal component I'm missing, maybe because my pheromones are otherwise occupied syncing my period and inexplicably drawing me to unemployed fat guys.

But here's the part I don't get: where in the testosterone molecular structure is the part that gave you the idea to conclusively prove testosterone makes you funnier by riding a unicycle and subjecting yourself to the merciless jeering of overfed 11-year-old bullies?

Because that's actually pretty fucking funny.

Humor Comes From Testosterone [BBC]