SlowpokeBlog

I love it when middle-aged right-wing dudes like NYT columnists David Brooks, and now the odious John Tierney, attempt to address gender issues. They always come off like spectacular doofuses, at least to those of us who've spent a lot of time in cultural studies.

Today, in the second of his massively unscientific columns about women's "innate" inability to compete, Tierney attempts to explain why Scrabble champions tend to be male, and why women wait in hotel lobbies looking for rock stars, as the product of very dubious evolutionary biology, without once examining cultural factors. He pretty much dismissed the role of socialization in his previous column.

While I'm not saying the brain has no role in our behavior, you absolutely cannot discuss gender without examining culture. Learned behavior is an umbrella that encompasses, and often overrides, whatever infrastructure we have in place. If some males are more competitive, Mr. Tierney, do you not think the intense fear of being a pussy that is drilled into them from Day One has anything to do with it?

I could yammer on about gender roles, but the point is, Tierney exemplifies the typical right-wing strategy of using pseudoscience to bolster their arguments, which invariably reinforce old stereotypes. To be at all scientific about human behavior, you have to consult sociologists and cultural anthropologists -- otherwise, you're just talking out your ass.