Steve Moxon took part in a debate at the Cambridge Union in January. The motion is quite funny, because it would do nicely as a summary of The Paula Kirby Thesis:
This House Believes the Only Limit to Female Success is Female Ambition
So pull your socks up and get on with it! No whingeing, and by “wingeing” I mean “reporting on social factors that impede women.”
Moxon didn’t altogether wow the reviewer.
Steve Moxon, on the other hand gave an appalling performance, his odd choice of showing a powerpoint presentation giving him the air of an enthusiastic but often inaudible lecturer and his offensive thesis that women should aspire to the traditional female role of being young, beautiful and attracting a mate and leave men to the business of leadership and success was met with audible derision from the audience.
PC bastards.
Moxon wasn’t the only champion of unPC though.
Liz Jones, however, was perhaps the most controversial speaker, finishing a staggeringly sexist speech with “I’m not surprised women don’t get to the top: I am staggered we have jobs at all”, after suggesting that women “always put their personal lives first” and spend their time in the workplace chatting and crying. She also declared “I believe women prefer domesticity”, suggesting that “they prefer to be martyrs”, a ridiculous generalisation and display of regressive, misogynist ideas perhaps not unexpected, given the views she has expressed in her columns, but still disappointing.
Funny how that sounds like Paula too. Victims; whining; crying; martyrs. It’s all the same playbook.
But never mind that; imagine my joy to find a (very long) comment from Moxon himself right under the article!
Well what a scientifically illiterate (not to mention PC-fascist) view the reviewer here took of my presentation at the Cambridge Union debate.
Contrary to her unfounded claim, it was anything but prescriptive of how either women or men should behave: it was an explanation, drilling down through layer beneath layer, of the essential nature of the sexes; this explaining why it is that as ever we don’t see women in top positions to the same extent as we see men.
He likes that “drilling down” metaphor, doesn’t he. But what does he use to drill with? The power of his own mind? It’s not child’s play, drilling through the layers to discover the essential nature of the sexes. I suspect what he means is just home-made ev psych, applied to find what he wants to find.
It’s the unthinking capitulation to the hegemonic oppressive politics of PC-fascism that is the worse offence, though. That it’s business-as-usual elitist-separatism hiding behind a pretence to be about equality is not exactly hard to spot, and a fraud on such an unprecedented scale is unlikely to last for very much longer, despite the best efforts of journalists.
Mmm. That’s what the skeptics of Leeds have to look forward to, is it.
H/t Jim Lippard
Sheesh!
Is the interwebs to blame for making silly cranks like Moxon believe themsevles to be worthy of attention?
And for making dullards-in-the-pub beilieve them?
it was an explanation, drilling down through layer beneath layer, of the essential nature of the sexes; this explaining why it is that as ever we don’t see women in top positions to the same extent as we see men.
Well thank our lucky fucking stars that a man was finally brave enough to stand up to the business-as-usual elitist-separatist hegemonic oppressive politics of PC-fascism. Clearly, he risked his life just to explain how the essential nature of the sexes inevitably leads to men being in charge.
I’m sure the femistasi will be breaking down his door any minute, assuming they can stop chatting and raising babies for long enough.
Ah good, Hayley heard back from a guy at Leeds Skeptics in the Pub, so follow her link above to see what he said and her thoughts about it.
Must be something special if it can drill through the glass ceiling from above without breaking the whole damn thing.
“as ever we don’t see women in top positions to the same extent as we see men.”
Yes, but women have advanced a good deal since the 1950s. Why might that be, if women have always been too stupid and lazy to succeed? Might it be because now it’s not illegal to refuse to hire a qualified woman just because she’s a woman, for example?
No doubt he would say it’s all feminism giving those women an unfair advantage. Sigh.
It would if you’re a shameless straw-manner, certainly. Still, I suppose we shouldn’t be surprised at that, coming from the person who called Kirby insane.
More and more of us are getting wise to you people.
Rawlinson,
“More and more of us are getting wise to you people.”
Could you go back to your “us” and leave we “people” alone?
Seconding Marta’s proposition. Whoever ‘us’ is you definitely belong with them.
Yeah, I didn’t call Paula Kirby insane, either.
This is all one person, I think, leaving all these “we R all getting wise to you” comments, telling lies about me in 50 million places under 50 million different names, sending me stupid lecturey emails that all sound exactly alike. Probably Victor Ivanoff, but who knows.
Marta wrote:
Probably because they’d all be sitting around for a long time, waiting for one of them to have an original thought. And then when the crickets started, they’d accuse them of ‘silencing’.
I haven’t read this paper and know nothing about it, but this fact does not exactly inspire confidence in the soundness or objectivity of the research.
By the way, this idea that sexism is so edgy and controversial, opposing some imaginary matriarchal power structure, is just so ridiculous. We live in a sexist society. Sexism is the reactionary status quo. You want to be controversial? Invite Cordelia Fine or someone to talk intelligently about stereotype threat in the first place. Invite some feminist activists. Maybe just invite an equal number of female speakers, rather than like four compared to like 37 men.
As horrifying as it is to side with jackrawlinson in the slightest degree, if we’re being honest I would have to say that “She used to be sane. I don’t know what happened” amounts to the same thing.
No. It doesn’t. I meant “I don’t know what happened to make her post something out of character for a sane person.”
Salty – Amy commented on my FB post a bit ago that it’s annoying that there’s all this good work on stereotype threat, like Fine’s, and then one guy comes out with a “nuh uh” paper and wham, he’s invited to speak. Good point.
“PC fascism” is “hegemonic”? Srsly?
I really don’t want to belabour this, but you didn’t say “She’s a sane person, I don’t know what happened”, you said “She used to be sane”. If you spoke hastily and didn’t intend the implicit “she is no longer sane” then I would think a retraction was in order rather than a denial. You clearly own the moral high ground in this bizarre Kirby episode, I would hate to see an ass like jackrawlinson taunt and provoke you into giving it up.
It’s fair to say I implied she’s no longer sane, but that’s not the same as saying she’s insane.
Now it’s pointed out I’m noticing something interesting about the word “sane,” which is that it can mean rational, reasonable, level-headed, sensible, as well as literally not insane. The same isn’t true of “insane” – it never means just not reasonable.
I was using “sane” the former way, and given that, I’m not about to change it to “she is sane,” because I don’t think she is in that first, non-literal sense. But I’m not calling her insane, even by implication. Unreasonable, definitely, but not insane.
Fair enough. Personally I think that “it’s SAFE TO SPEAK OUT” stuff was straight-up bugnutz wacko and you can quote me on that.
Back to Moxon;
Stoet’s research found that “the existing state of knowledge does not support the current level of enthusiasm for this as a mechanism underlying the gender gap in mathematics.” Not exactly a mainstream finding. Perhaps Stoet was hard pressed for a reasonable speaker who would support him in discarding stereotype threat?
Ha!
I probably said similar things about what she said, but that’s different from saying she’s insane.
Endless Psych (a very sane guy) was telling me on Twitter the other day that stereotype threat theory is criticized (but he didn’t remember details) – I wonder if he was thinking of Stoet. Seems likely, with all this. (He’s another pub skeptic.)
The abstract of Stoet’s study can be found here:
http://psycnet.apa.org/index.cfm?fa=buy.optionToBuy&id=2012-00560-001
Firstly it’s a meta analysis of attempts to replicate studies of stereotype threat, secondly the authors claim that studies finding stereotype threat had ‘adjusted mathematics scores’ – whether they are claiming that the positive studies were biased in some way, I’m not sure. In any case it’s enough to raise an eyebrow.
I would like to think that they have been rigorous and objective in their analysis but Stoet’s endorsement of Moxon as a speaker kind of suggests otherwise.
Google-searching Stoet’s research also brings up many a right wing site, including one called ‘The British Resistance’, which is just as charming as it sounds. 😮
http://thebritishresistance.co.uk/tim-haydon/1570-science-is-on-the-side-of-sex-and-race-realism
In even implying that Paula is ‘no longer sane’, you have called yourself out as a bully, Ophelia. How deeper will you sink into this mire of your own creation?
‘Funny how that sounds like Paula too. Victims; whining; crying; martyrs. It’s all the same playbook.’
This is not even a parody of reality – this is simply a lie. Have you no shame, Ms Benson?
“Liz Jones”
Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhhh dear.
A lie. Is it. Is it really.
From Paula Kirby’s Letter: