Quote from: tarmi on February 23, 2015, 03:57:29 PM

Quote from: oda.krell on February 23, 2015, 03:36:04 PM

Quote from: tarmi on February 23, 2015, 03:30:57 PM

in a modern world full of ak47, m16 and other machinery the "biological equivalence of abilities of men and women" sounds like the women are only not able to join dick swinging contests. nothing more.

try to marry some of those guys and you will find out the meaning of the word violence.

Yeah, see this is where bja is precisely right: by your own standards, anyone holding an opinion that makes him unpalatable to you to marry has an unacceptable opinion (societally speaking).

I prefer my society (and principles) to be slightly more permissive for variety of ideas than that.

no, people like billyjoe should be institutionalized!

Why? I disagree with him on the matter, but that's not the point we were discussing here.

Here's my view on the topic: there's scant biological evidence that women are intellectually less capable than men, and there's a lot more evidence that they underperform on, say, standardized tests because of cultural effects. So, personally, I'm leaning towards "Let's assume we're equally capable, until we've ruled out all or most cultural effects influencing the result". Basically, the argument Neil deGrasse Tyson made a while ago:

Quote

Ive never been female, but I have been black my whole life. So let me perhaps offer some insight from that perspective, because there are many similar social issues ...throughout my life Ive known that I wanted to do astrophysics since I was nine years old on a first visit to the Hayden Planetarium ... And all I can say is, the fact that I wanted to be a scientist, an astrophysicist, was, hands down, the path of most resistance through the forces of nature, the forces of society. Any time I expressed this interest, teachers would say, Dont you want to be an athlete? I wanted to become something that was outside of the paradigms of expectation of the people in power. ...

So, my life experience tells me that when you dont find blacks in the sciences and you dont find women in the sciences, I know that these forces are real and I had to survive them in order to get where I am today. So before we start talking about genetic differences, youve got to come up with a system where theres equal opportunity. Then we can have that conversation.

Note that his quote has been misinterpreted often, as saying "There are no genetic differences between men and women, black and white people." He said no such thing. He's saying something a lot more sensible: As long as there's strong evidence of cultural forces preventing women and black people from entering science, it's pointless to speculate about the much more vague, less understood genetic component.

All of that said:

You don't have to see it like that. You can have your reasons to believe women are less smart than men by nature. That belief still allows for two different paths: one where you go violently about bringing women down, and one where you only make your own choices based on the assumption above, i.e. the non-violent path. The line separating the two paths is not always completely clear, there's a gradual difference, but as a general distinction, it remains valid in my opinion.

That's the violent vs. non-violent sexist distinction I have in mind. "Violent" meaning, more or less, the same as "intolerant" in this context. And I know plenty of people who think that, as long as you have the right opinion - say, that women and men are equally smart - it's okay to be intolerant of the opposing views.

At that point, I disagree, and agree with BJA's earlier comment: I'd take a non-violent sexist over a violent non-sexist (where "violent/non-violent" mostly runs along the lines of tolerance of opposing opinions).

Here's the short version:

I consider being tolerant more important than being right, because the latter is heavily subjective anyway, despite what we tell ourselves to make it look like our rightness is righter than the other guy's rightness.