MetaFilter posts tagged with women and men

It's about improving the lives not only of women, but of men

catchingsignals — Mon, 09 Nov 2009 07:24:07 -0800

Video discussion on being a man with, and The Seven P's of Men's Violence by, Michael Kaufman, International Director of the White Ribbon Campaign. Feminism Brings Benefits to All -- Men Included. Rethinking privilege?

Domestic Violence: Women Abusers On The Rise?

Effigy2000 — Mon, 22 Jun 2009 03:36:20 -0800

To date, focus of most research into Domestic Violence has been on instances of violence against women by men based on the arguably sexist premise that it is more prevalent than instances of violence by women against men. However numerous books and studies have contradicted this premise, showing that men and women suffer domestic abuse in similar and sometimes equal rates. Despite this, preconceived ideas of gender roles still lead many to believe it would be virtually impossible for a woman to physically abuse a man, an attitude which Men's Rights advocates say often leads to many battered men hiding in shame, fearful of being ridiculed, or even prosecuted. Because men are less likely to report instances of DV perpetrated against them by women, very little is known about the actual number of men who are in a domestic relationship in which they are abused or treated violently. "In 100 domestic violence situations approximately 40 cases involve violence by women against men. An estimated 400,000 women per year are abused or treated violently in the United States by their spouse or intimate partner. This means that roughly 300,000 to 400,000 men are treated violently by their wife or girlfriend", although one advocacy website puts the figure in the US alone at around 835,000. And it appears as though many women who batter men are better able to get away with their crime, with one site arguing that female DV offenders benefit from gender bias.

The opposite sex

caddis — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 08:05:24 -0800

Lille Mand - Eight year old Mathis writes an essay for school entitled, "How to Understand Women." (via Neatorama) (It will be slow to load. Also, there is brief shower nudity so NSFW)

If A Tree Falls in the Forest, The Man is Still Wrong

Xurando — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:45:27 -0800

Most wives are Mad at Dad. "We're mad that having children has turned our lives upside down much more than theirs. We're mad that these guys, who can manage businesses or keep track of thousands of pieces of sports trivia, can be clueless when it comes to what our kids are eating and what supplies they need for school. And more than anything else, we're mad that they get more time to themselves than we do."

Billionaires have more sons

grobstein — Sat, 17 Jan 2009 13:21:16 -0800

Billionaires have more grandchildren through their sons than through their daughters, because the status advantage is more reproductively valuable to the sons. Therefore, it would be adaptive for the mothers of their children to bear more sons than daughters. But surely that can't be; mothers can't control the sex of their children. Oh but so it is: billionaires have 60% male children. This exciting research finding partly validates the work of LSE's seeming crackpot, Satoshi Kanazawa (also previously). It's getting harder to deny that simple evolutionary hypotheses have a lot of power to describe human life. The worldview of this pithy essay (previously) is looking more and more convincing.

Love in the Time of Darwinism

shotgunbooty — Mon, 17 Nov 2008 22:55:25 -0800

Kay S. Hymowitz strikes again. Previously, she wrote an article positing that "that too many single young males (SYMs) were lingering in a hormonal limbo between adolescence and adulthood, shunning marriage and children, and whiling away their leisure hours with South Park reruns, marathon sessions of World of Warcraft, and Maxim lists of the ten best movie fart scenes."
Now she has a new thesis: That angry, disenfranchised single young men use "Darwinist" philosophy to justify "resistance to settling down" and "unsentimental promiscuity". [via]

Venus and Mars - not what we thought

desjardins — Tue, 09 Sep 2008 16:20:09 -0800

Why aren't men and women becoming more alike? A husband and a stay-at-home wife in a patriarchal Botswanan clan seem to be more alike than a working couple in Denmark or France. The more Venus and Mars have equal rights and similar jobs, the more their personalities seem to diverge. International Sexuality Description Project findings.

Women and children, depending on credit rating

Blazecock Pileon — Mon, 25 Aug 2008 09:29:15 -0800

"Women and children, first," is a familiar cultural refrain, with its popular roots in the gallant sacrifice made by the male contingent aboard the doomed Titanic. Their sacrifice has inspired poetry, sculpture, male social clubs, and, of course, cinema. Yet, this sacrifice of near-mythic scale was in some respects a myth, with survival statistics skewing well in favor of men of higher social and economic class than children (and, to a lesser extent, women) of lower status.

Locked up and blue

carsonb — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 00:08:08 -0800

Men in Women-in-Prison [Films]
"This dynamic — of eroticized male exclusion from, and investment in, female relationships — was the defining feature of a handful of women-in-prison films from the 1970s. In these movies, female sisterhood, generally in the face of oppression, is itself fetishized — feminism is turned into a kind of masochistic male wet dream. How this unlikely cathexis occurred, and how it functioned, is the subject of this essay." Director Jack Hill responds, The only things I do want to take unequivocal credit for on the record are Bobby [Roberta] Collins' lines, "Get it up or I'll cut it off," which invariably brought down the house; and "Hah! Now I'm in my own natural element," when she falls into the mud, which, strangely, didn't even get many laughs. And then, a lot of Sid Haig's business, of course.

"Taking them off feels like an orgasm."

miss lynnster — Wed, 30 Jul 2008 22:19:59 -0800

Walking a mile in our heels. If you'd like to try it yourself, here are some handy pointers. Just be forewarned: after a few minutes your feet may feel like bloody stumps, but your calves will look irresistably fabulous.

Boring men?

djgh — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 07:20:05 -0800

Are men boring?

Let it blaze! Let it blaze! For we have done with this ‘education’!

hadjiboy — Sun, 24 Feb 2008 03:23:47 -0800

Virginia Woolf: A feminist's view on why we go to war.

Fear(less)

hadjiboy — Sat, 09 Feb 2008 12:25:05 -0800

Why Real Men Don't Cry [YouTube] On the other hand.

I Can't Do That Dave, now put your pants back on

wendell — Mon, 04 Feb 2008 02:43:52 -0800

In what may be the silliest poll ever taken, British women say Men Named Dave are Most Likely to be "Well Endowed". There's a whole "Top 10" and "Bottom 10" list of names... see how you stack up. The people who did the survey do this kind of thing for companies to get publicity. It works pretty well. This one was done for an online dating company, UK Dating, but the pollster got most of the publicity. Previously, for the same client, they surveyed for Names of Men Most Likely to Cheat (very UK-centric result). A beverage company commissioned The Most Common Lies and they've done a lot of other mostly useless surveys. Please note that Matt and Wendell did not appear on either list (but my condolences to Josh, #7 on the "little" list).

What goes around, comes around...

miss lynnster — Fri, 19 Oct 2007 23:48:21 -0800

Chasing women will take years off of your life. But hey, things always even out somehow. You'll just return the favor to your poor, innocent mother.

The Barry White Effect

MNDZ — Mon, 01 Oct 2007 09:36:53 -0800

Language Log is a great linguistics blog I have been reading, and I thought that Metafilter might be interested in these posts about sex differences in language use. The (less-technical) articles to which the bloggers are responding are all within the responses, so I didn't link to them. The Barry White Effect (voice pitch seems to correlate with reproduction) - Gabby Guys (men talk more than women) - Young Men Talk Like Old Women (usage of certain words) - Gender and Tags ("Certainly we don't seem to find real women and men as sums of the characteristics attributed to them") Are any of these differences actually caused by the speakers sex? The really fascinating thing, to me, is how unbelievably hard it is to study such a distinction.

The Return of Patriarchy by Phillip Longman

jason's_planet — Thu, 26 Apr 2007 09:10:53 -0800

“With the number of human beings having increased more than six-fold in the past 200 years, the modern mind simply assumes that men and women . . . will always breed enough children to grow the population . . . Yet, for more than a generation now, well-fed, healthy, peaceful populations around the world have been producing too few children to avoid population decline. . . . Throughout the broad sweep of human history, there are many examples of people, or classes of people, who chose to avoid the costs of parenthood. Indeed, falling fertility is a recurring tendency of human civilization. Why then did humans not become extinct long ago? The short answer is patriarchy.”

Ask A Man?

feelinglistless — Fri, 20 Oct 2006 03:51:28 -0800

Ask A Man? "You have come to the right place for love, relationship and dating advice. Ask a man will provide you with the love, relationship and dating answers you seek. Our staff of amazing men have agreed to break the "man code" and tell you the absolute truth about what your man is really saying to you." For example: "Men want respect. In a man's world, men are nothing without respect. In a relationship, a man needs to know his woman respects him. "

Perihelion

The Jesse Helms — Tue, 08 Aug 2006 17:56:38 -0800

Text messaging for teenage girls is like an orgasm explains neuropsychiatrist Louann Brizendine. The doctor from Yale provides the science behind why male and female brains are different in architecture and chemical composition.

(some) books are for girls

grobstein — Mon, 10 Apr 2006 22:28:56 -0800

Gender differences in literary taste - The Guardian (inter alia) has been reporting two English professors' studies of reading habits and feelings about books by gender. Others (newest to oldest): most revelatory books by reader gender (for men), (for women), author gender by reader gender. The methodology may not be unassailable but the findings are interesting and plausible. [viaduct vianochicken]
Sidenote: I did a little research following a comment on MR and reached a non-obvious conclusion: wo men hate Akira Kurosawa (check out those charts; for comparison). Theories welcome.

Body image and sex

semmi — Thu, 16 Mar 2006 22:49:55 -0800

Body Image Relates Differently To Sexual Risks Taken By Men And Women. Males with positive body image may seek multiple sexual partners and engage in unprotected sex. Women, on the other hand, may use the confidence that comes from a positive body image to resist multiple partners and insist that a condom be used when they do engage in sex.

Yahoo's top 100

BuddhaInABucket — Mon, 31 Oct 2005 07:41:21 -0800

No list that puts MeFi at #55 is perfect, but Yahoo's 100 Sites for Men includes lots of other goldmines, like an info source for embarassing problems, hangover cures, and other gems like Draw Your Boss. Ladies, don't miss the top 100 Sites for Women, and if anyone's Ball of Paint needs are unfulfilled, you can always check out the Top 100 Weird Sites.

So She's Holding Out?

John of Michigan — Sun, 23 Oct 2005 08:09:35 -0800

Why Your Wife Won't Have Sex with You. That quack Dr. Phil says that while sex is only 10% of a marriage, it's 90% when you're not getting it. Or words to that effect. There's some truth to that. This site discusses, from woman's point of view, why a wife might not feel like sex--often for years at a time. She also goes into greater detail (with insights taken from her own life and experience) such issues as some causes and what a man can do.

A mouse is no substitute

symphonik — Sun, 17 Apr 2005 22:45:22 -0800

(all links safe for work) Some once hypothesized that as pornography became more accessible and more mainstream, men in turn would become uncontrollable, ravenous sexual beasts. I always thought this myself: a man will see something in porn that a real woman won't give him—Internet porn now caters in a click to every fetish you can imagine—and he will find a way to get it.

My ex-girlfriend, observant and intelligent beyond her years, always used to tell me the opposite: it wouldn't turn men into beasts, having their way with every woman they saw. No, it would turn them away from women completely, libidos and their ability to connect with real females weakened by the hardcore acts and impossible bodies that only porn stars could give them. The porn would crave some intrinsic desire, but leave both people in the couple lonelier and less fulfulled.

Now I think she was absolutely right.

Schoolgirls Unite!

dame — Wed, 09 Feb 2005 10:03:23 -0800

Single-Sex Education When WNYC's Leonard Lopate Show decided to discuss (audio) the Summer's gender brouhaha, an interesting thing happened. The guest expected to support gender difference interpretations, Dr. Sax, and the guest expected to discuss structural challenges to women in the sciences, Dr. Bell, agreed on one solution: single-sex education. As the AP noted last summer, single-sex public education is up. Though some object on the basis that separate is never equal, Dr. Sax's organization claims both boys and girls see definite results. And even if you don't agree with Dr. Sax's reasoning, he says the studies are on his side. After all, girls schools have given us awesome ladies like Rosa Parks, Sally Ride, and me.