Letters to the Editor
healthyskeptic
Published Letters: 671 Editor's Choice: 14
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not suprising
[Read the article: Older women leave young'uns in the dust]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]In my experience, and supported anecdotally by studies, men and women seem to have, on average, different maturation curves regarding physical achievement, risk taking, and pain tolerance.
Some studies suggest women have greater inherent pain tolerance due to child birthing for example. However, what that neglects to consider are socialization and expectations. i.e. childbirth is expected to be a painful experience for women, so there is a natural forbearance towards it. But that isn't generally the case for athletics and risk taking in general for most women.
By comparison men are expected to be tough and ignore physical pain, as well as to supress emotions to remain functional. Men highly value toughness, in athletics, and also in career and other walks of life. The epitome of that being military service and contact sports. Biologically, men are also wired for that having testosterone which increases risk taking and physicality which also conditions a person towards physical toughness.
So, to some extent we're biologically specialized, but we're also highly plastic. Males naturally have testosterone which encourages them to push the envelope. But women are also capable of training themselves to overcome pain as well when desirable, as in child rearing, or with older women having learned to push themselves further from experience.
The question then is to what extent is it desirable, for women to become less sensitized, and for men to be more sensitized, and what the other side effects are, and in what lifestyles one is better than the other.
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-- MRuedy, rather patronizing
[Read the article: Older women leave young'uns in the dust]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Perhaps if older women are working out/competing for reasons other than simple aestetics (sic)
I think that's rather patronizing and presumes most young women athletes are just Miss South Carolina in gym sweats.
For serious women's athletics, that's obviously not the case. We're talking about women who run marathons here. The same could also be said for tri-atheletes and such.
If they're being held back by something psychological, as the article implies, it may be testosterone's relation to pain tolerance, it may be social norms which influence training, it could be something else.
But it's not something as superficial as beauty considerations and lack of dietary knowledge. That's insulting.
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-- MRuedy
[Read the article: Older women leave young'uns in the dust]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]and btw, I suspect that patronizing comment was starred because it echo's the another shallow faux-feminist trope: i.e. women diet too much for superficial reasons, and that fit women must be anorexic. Which is just more patronizing and enabling American women to continue being statistically 2/3 overweight, 1/3 obese.
I rarely hear faux-feminists address the problem of obesity, though it's clearly the leading killer of men and women.
Faux-feminists prefer "full figured" and "size diversity" and other euphemisms to patronize women, while clothes sizes continue inflating and Americans continue Super-Sizing themselves. "Vanity Sizing" is now common in women's clothes, with yesterday's size 10 being the new size 6, or even 4!
But again, today's faux-feminists aren't exactly intellectually honest or thinkers to begin with.
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-- proudfemme
[Read the article: Men prefer a Mrs. to money?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Why the nickname "proudfemme" and isn't that rather limiting?
Wouldn't it be pretty moronic for a guy to name himself "proud-masculine" or "macho-man" and rather limiting?
That's exactly the problem with so much faux-feminism these days. Too many "Women's Studies" grads, often lacking other intellectual credibility or experience. It results in dogmatic one-dimensionality and axe-grinding self described "feminists" for whom it's an end unto itself.
Too often the people who identify as "feminists" have only that.
Like the way a "footballer" seeks only to play the game of football forever, or a simple "soldier" is neither a diplomat or a philosopher, but a grunt whose purpose is battle.
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and btw
[Read the article: Men prefer a Mrs. to money?]
[Read more letters about this article: Here]Also left out of this discussion is the fact that men are far less penalized for choosing a career move for family-based reasons than women are.
That is complete BS. Companies in the USA usually accommodate family considerations only to a very limited extent, for men or women.
For example, if a man didn't accept a transfer to manage another office, and skips that step on the ladder, for family reasons or any reason, it's certainly going to effect his career. The notion that mngt is going to say "he's a mench" and promote him anyways, is patently absurd. Only in feminist anst-land does that actually happen.
In reality, if a guy passes up something like that for family reasons, or a woman takes an extended maternity leave and misses something, or plenty of other family related choices, it's going to effect their careers. The idea women are penalized more is just paranoia and excuse making.
For example, i know a lesbian who works overseas for long periods, a month or more, without a single day off. Then she returns to the US or travels for a month off. She has no family or children. She's technically skilled, highly valued by her company (a big conservative corp) and makes a lot of money. Her gender has nothing to do with it. But there aren't many women in her overseas long-term program, because more women choose to raise children, which obviously doesn't allow them to leave for months at a time, and fewer women generally opt for that sort of socially isolating and totally independent lifestyle.