"The male advantage"

[4th law of robotics]

On a radio show one morning last year, a female professor at a well-known university tossed off the thought that if men are just going to hang out with their pals at the bar every night, women will take a pass on having kids with them. She didn't cite any studies, and she almost certainly didn't know any men who fit that description. But it didn't matter.

Casually disparaging the entire male gender is not only the last socially acceptable prejudice, it's a national pastime. Later I asked friends to name a few things men do well, and the answers ranged from "Leave the toilet seat up" to a flat-out "Nothing." Men have become a necessary evil—and maybe not all that necessary, once artificial sperm moves out of the lab and into a uterus. At the same time, women have become so disproportionately admired by both sexes that psychologists call this phenomenon the "women are wonderful" effect.

And Lord knows they are. But I was hoping one of my friends would pipe up to say that men and women aren't really all that different, and that both do plenty of things well. Feminists used to say something along those lines for the purpose of moving women into jobs traditionally held by men. So you would hardly expect them to argue now that men are a defective or inferior gender—unless they have completely forgotten how destructive it was when such things were said about women.
...

http://www.menshealth.com/best-life/what-men-do-well?fullpage=true


Excellent article. I would recommend reading it in full.

[4th law of robotics]

1. "Men are smarter than women"

Okay, we're stupider too. In fact, men tend to show up more at the extremes not just for intelligence (geniuses versus dolts) but for a variety of other traits, including height, weight, body mass index, and measures of physical and psychological performance. "Whether we are talking about kindness versus cruelty, curiosity versus close-mindedness, wisdom versus immature pigheadedness, self-control versus self-indulgence, or humility versus narcissism," says Baumeister, "there are more men than women at both the good and the bad extremes."

Given this tendency, it probably shouldn't be so surprising that there are more men at the top of most organizations. And in some fields, the opposite extreme is true too: There are more men at the bottom. (Oddly, women never mention this when they complain that a "glass ceiling" of discrimination holds them down.) In fact, there's a trap door to the sub-sub-basement—and, gentlemen, for us, admission is free. For much of our history, men have quietly accepted that the dark and dirty work of the world—digging the coal, stoking the furnaces, hammering the steel, collecting the garbage—is our lot.

I think this is in particular a good point. Yes men dominate at the top. We also dominate at the bottom. If we go out of our way to achieve parity at the top by moving more women in to high positions but do nothing to move men out of low positions isn't that essentially putting women above men?

We lament how many male CEOs there are. I haven't heard once of any program to produce more female garbage collectors (or fewer males, tomato tamato).

[lumberjack_jeff]

2. I'm going to start charging for squishing spiders. n/t

[libodem]

4. Dude

I'll pay it. Some of those big ones freak me out. I couldn't catch one with toilet paper inside the washer. It jumped at me so I ran the rinse cycle to drown it.

[Major Nikon]

6. I got called in for that job once

The secretary called me about a huge spider in the hall. I happened to have an aerosol can of industrial contact cleaner in my hand, so I brought it. By the time I made it there, all the admin people had left for the day. It was a big house spider. I sprayed it and a million baby spiders jumped off momma's back and died in a big circle around her. I thought it looked pretty cool so I left it for them to see the next day. Needless to say I wasn't called up for that job again.

[opiate69]

5. That`s my wifes job.. I`m the resident bee slayer.

[Major Nikon]

3. The only thing that's surprising is that Men's Health would take on this topic

I only read this mag occasionally so I don't know if they take on these types of subjects very often. The attitude I see is that if you dare take on 'controversial' subjects like these, you are compared to the KKK.