This survey from England must be causing weeping and wailing and garnishing of teeth (Yes. I know it's "gnashing") in feminist and teaching circles. I suspect all the propaganda that kids get shoved down their throat these days has backfired. Excerpt:

<blockquote>"The survey of almost 1000 girls aged between 15 and 19, conducted by a mobile entertainment company, TheLab, found that many young women's favoured role models were men's magazine models, with C-list celebrities Abi Titmuss and Jordan ranking higher in the hero worship stakes than author J. K. Rowling, The Body Shop founder Anita Roddick, and feminist Germaine Greer. Almost half the respondents listed Titmuss as a role model, while 9 per cent chose Rowling and only 4 per cent Greer. Offered a selection of occupations, 63 per cent said they would rather be a men's magazine model than a doctor, teacher or nurse. The second most popular choice was "lap dancer", at 25 per cent, with teachers trailing at 3 per cent".

<a href="http://theage.com.au/news/opinion/sex-and-empowerment-can-go-hand-in-hand/2005/08/18/1123958177218.html">Source</a></blockquote>

I love it!

My post on female IQ got me a heap of emails so, although the subject is a bit off the regular track for "Tongue-Tied", I feel I should comment on the concerns that readers have expressed. In a way, the topic is VERY appropriate for "Tongue-Tied" because it is the unmentionable nature of IQ research that has enabled so many misunderstandings about the subject to flourish. So I think I should spend a bit of time in telling you what nobody else is likely to. Let me start with one well-expressed email that I received:

<blockquote>"As a woman, I don't have a problem with the IQ findings. I tend to believe it, as my personal experience has shown that men tend to be more analytical than women. My issue is with the way IQ is measured. My opinion is that IQ tests place a lot of emphasis on analytical abilities, but not much on "other types" of intelligence, such as creativity, multi-tasking, musical genius or whatever. For example, women tend to be a lot more perceptive than men, especially when it comes to relationships. They also can have more agility of mind; that is, they can do more than one thing at the same time, and do it well (better known as multi-tasking). Everyone has his or her own strengths, which leads me to believe that IQ tests are mostly useless. Instead, instructors/employers should be trained to identify individuals' strengths and how to capitalize on them.</blockquote>

Most of what the lady says is right. There are ways in which women tend to do better than men -- and multi-tasking is certainly one of those ways. What the lady does not know is that the abilities measured in IQ tests are NOT just some arbitrary selection of puzzles. The whole notion of IQ arose from an OBSERVATION: the observation that people who tend to be good at solving one sort of puzzle also tend to be good at solving lots of other seemingly unrelated puzzles. In other words, what Binet discovered <font color="#ff0000">in the 19th century</font> was that problem-solving is GENERAL. There is such a thing as general problem-solving ability (often abbreviated as 'g'). So over a hundred years have gone by since Binet's discovery and most people still don't know of it! If that is not a truth that has been thoroughly tongue-tied, I don't know what one would be (actually, I can think of a couple of others but I will save them for another day). So IQ tests are simply collections of different puzzles that do in fact go together. Success on one does tend to predict success on all the rest.

And what that means is that IQ tests are VERY useful. For instance, if you are hiring for a job that requires a lot of problem-solving, you can use an IQ test to predict which applicant will be best at that job -- <i>no matter what the problems may be in the job you are hiring for</i>. And IQ tests are also very predictive of educational success. If you have a high IQ it is much more worthwhile to spend up big on a university education than if you have a low IQ.

As an example of how ability generalizes, take mechanical aptitude: I am very good at all sorts of academic things so lots of people would think I must be hopeless at practical things like mechanics. And it is true that any time my car needs fixing I hand the job over to an expert. But I like fixing locks. I am an amateur locksmith. Locks are just another puzzle to me. So one day, I was at a small gathering where some ladies were having trouble with the deadlock on their front door. So they took it off and opened it up. And immediately, bits and pieces went "SPROING" everywhere. They were of course completely stumped by that and did not for a moment think to ask a hopeless academic like me to help. So I said: "Maybe I can help". They looked at me with great skepticism. But in ten minutes I had it back together and all working properly. I hope they learnt something about 'g' from that episode.

Now I have just used an example above to illustrate what I am saying. But the example is NOT the proof. The proof is the gazillion times researchers have found that problem-solving generalizes. One of my other readers of my post yesterday made that mistake. She said that men got all the Nobel prizes because good education has become available to women only fairly recently. But that was not the point at all. The researchers who wrote the article in <i>The British Journal of Psychology</i> that I referred to yesterday relied for their conclusions on hundreds of studies with IQ tests. The bit about Nobel prize-winners was only an illustration, much like my locksmithing illustration above. Examples prove nothing by themselves. They just help you to understand how generalizations work out in practice.

Incidentally, creativity is NOT like IQ. It does not generalize much. People who are highly creative in one field are usually pretty uncreative in other fields. For instance, I am extremely good at writing articles for scientific journals. And that is a highly creative field. In that field you are creating new knowledge and understanding about something. And I have had hundreds of such articles published. But I could not write a novel for nuts! So even in the single field of writing, there can be different types of totally unrelated creativity!

"The Times" of London is a highly recommendable paper for its straight-down-the middle accounts of most things (unlike a certain New York publication). The fact that it is a Rupert Murdoch publication (think Fox News) probably has something to do with that. But I think even "The Times" was a bit courageous to print the following story (excerpt):

<blockquote>"A study claims that the cleverest people are much more likely to be men than women. Men are more intelligent than women by about five IQ points on average, making them better suited for "tasks of high complexity", according to the authors of a paper due to be published in the <i>British Journal of Psychology</i>. Genetic differences in intelligence between the sexes helped to explain why many more men than women won Nobel Prizes or became chess grandmasters, the study by Paul Irwing and Professor Richard Lynn concluded. They showed that men outnumbered women in increasing numbers as intelligence levels rise. There were twice as many with IQ scores of 125, a level typical for people with first-class degrees. When scores rose to 155, a level associated with genius, there were 5.5 men for every woman. Dr Irwing, a senior lecturer in organisational psychology at Manchester University, said that he was uncomfortable with the findings. But he added that the evidence was clear despite the insistence of many academics that there were "no meaningful sex differences" in levels of intelligence".

<a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1749346,00.html">Source</a></blockquote>

Before all my female readers delete their bookmarks to this site, let me explain. I am a <a href="http://jonjayray.netfirms.com/survmeth.html">psychometrician</a> by trade so I do know a little about this. First, let me point out that <i>British Journal of Psychology</i> is Britain's top academic psychology journal. So it needs to be reckoned with. What it reports, however, has in fact been known to psychometricians for about 100 years. And that is that men and women have the same intelligence ON AVERAGE but the scatter of intelligence differs between the sexes. Female intelligence clusters much more closely around the average -- so there are fewer very dumb women and fewer very bright women. And that, I am afraid, is how the cookie crumbles. The geniuses tend to be men but so do the dummos. And I am sure most women have met plenty of the latter.

Comments? Email <a href="mailto:jonjayray@hotmail.com">John Ray</a>

My blood boils when I read the sort of arrogance and ignorance below. Excerpt:

<blockquote>"Salzman, an executive vice-president at the advertising agency J. Walter Thompson, has serious points to make about where men go from here. Society has changed for ever, she says, so males must adapt if they are to reassert themselves in a world increasingly defined and dominated by femininity. It is not just men who are fed up with male-bashing. Research shows that women, too, want men to assert themselves as confident, vital, masculine partners. They want "real" men back. But because we will never return to 1950s patriarchy - the genie cannot be put back in the bottle, thank God - men must redefine masculinity to accommodate who they are today. They must find, says Salzman, their own personal version of manliness.... M-ness (also known as my-ness) is defined thus: a masculinity that defines the best of traditional manliness (strength, honour, character) with positive traits traditionally associated with females (nurturance, communicativeness, co-operation)."

<a href="http://www.timesonline.co.uk/printFriendly/0,,1-7-1737856-7,00.html">Source</a></blockquote>

The female writer above has at last realized that most women prefer real men to pansies and has graciously decided that men can be men again. They don't have to ape women any more. But men still need to have SOME feminine characteristics. And what are they? "Nurturance, communicativeness, co-operation", we are told. So men can't communicate, can't co-operate and can't nurture. What gross and stupid insults! If any man had said anything comparable about women there would be uproar. The whole article shows how shut-off from the real world female writers can become. If men cannot communicate and co-operate, how the hell does the stupid b**** think they succeed in business? I suppose it is possible that the moron does not realize how important co-operation and communication is in business but, if so, she should retire from writing for good -- or take up fiction instead -- because she knows zilch about the real world.

And as for men not being nurturant, have you ever known an instance of "Daddy's girl"? It is one of the most beautiful human relationships you will see -- where a little girl and her father absolutely adore one-another. But Leftists and feminists never do care about reality. I myself had a particularly close relationship with one of my stepdaughters when she was little. She is now a beautiful young woman about to be married so we say very little to one-another these days. We don't need to. A quick smile between us tells both of us that all the old affection is still there. But I guess a lot of feminists have never experienced that sort of relationship so they really know nothing about men at all.

Comments? Email <a href="mailto:jonjayray@hotmail.com">John Ray</a>