Adrienne So also writes:

But it's terribly sad that, whatever the case's outcome, Bleskachek's trailblazing reputation will suffer.

Assuming the investigation was done fairly -- and among all U.S. cities of its size, Minneapolis is quite likely to do such an investigation fairly -- why in the world would it be terribly sad that a sexual harasser is located and dealt with?

It is only those with an IQ below room temperature who think women have different talents from me. The only people who will take this fall from grace the wrong way are those who've been taking everything the wrong way from day 1, anyway.

There is no evidence I've ever heard that appears to show lesbians engage in an unusual amount of sexual harassment; they are a group like other groups with their share of good qualities and less good qualities. There will be plenty of chances for women to rise to the top of any field, just as many already have.

My guess is that male fIrefighters -- by natural selection -- probably have more testosterone (literally) than the average bear, which makes them ever so much more defensive about their maleness (especially when a woman wants in to their profession). Which is entirely reprehensible and inexcusable. But male youth gangs and sports teams, also probably brimming over with Vitamin T, are similarly known for their propensities for bad behavior.

So without excusing a thing, perhaps we should be lesss than surprised when male firefighters act like teenagers, harassing women who want in to their profession.

Maybe firefighters as a group, regardless of gender, have more testosterone than the average Smokey the Bear. I surely don't know,

but it's interesting to speculate about.

The sentence should have read " . . . have different talents from men. (Boldface added here only to highlight where the error was.)

I find this outbreak suspicious, especially since the name of the company most cases were traced back to is "Natural Selection". I don't know how likely this is, but it wouldn't surprise me if someone with a grudge against evolution decided to punish this company for flaunting the main component of Darwinian theory.

You can talk all you like about cows and deer and contamination, but if that's really the explanation, why have we not had a trickle of cases all along?

No, instead we get a sudden flood of cases all in one week. Very suspicious, if you ask me.

But could how anyone write a story on this without finding out something about

a) how many males vs. how many females submit unsolicited articles -- and among these what are their acceptance rates?

and

b) how many males vs. how many females are solicited to write articles for these publications -- and among these (not alaready magazine staff members) what are the rates the writers agree to the assignment?

adn

c) among staff writers, what number are male and what number are female, and how does this compare to their numbers of applications for such jobs?

I recognize that collecting all this data is no mean feat -- but how is it that none whatsoever was collected?

One big reason (among, undoubtedly, many others) that men participate in certain activities in numbers that are disparate with those for women is simply that men and women (at least those raised in U.S. culture) are, statistically, not interested to the same degree in such things.

It's just reality that -- the way things are right now -- women are more interested than men -- statistically -- in activities that involve people (e.g., having conversations), and men are more interested than women -- statistically -- in activities that are more abstract, not involving people (e.g., chess).

Writing is notoriously a solitary occupation, so maybe women are less interested in it because it involves far less human contact than many other activities.

Of course, this is a mere guess. To answer this question, research needs to be done, like collecting the data mentioned at top.

But just laying out the bare numbers, and by innuendo implying that they are an indication of prejudice, is not good journalism.

Hysteria sounds like it was massively botched by doctors in the past -- who had no idea what caused it, or even how to define it.

But if the NY TImes is saying "it" is being considered seriously, there's a good chance (since by and large, reporters at the Times know from good journalism) that the word "hysteria" has been attributed a more precise meaning than in the past.

If you bother to read the article (for which I hope the author of this Broadside piece did, despite no evidence in favor of this hypothesis),

you find that doctors have a far more specific idea of what hysteria is, and a vastly wider knowledge of what it isn't (it is definitely not the uterus's wandering throughout the body).

But R. Traister would have us believe that this is all a conspiracy against women. The Times article makes it clear that there are specific symptoms associated with hysteria, related to a disorder of the relation between the mind and the body, and these are essentially the same symptoms that have been observed, and labeled hysteria, throughout the long historical use of the term.

In other words, despite huge mistakes over the course of history regarding hysteria, these have been soundly dismissed, but the symptoms of hysteria continue to appear . . . so even though its mystery is not truly understood, it is not an imaginary disease, either. It is apparently well within the realm of psychosomatic diseases. (Contrary to some popular opinion, psychosomatic diseases are genuine ones that involve the interaction of the mind and body.)

But alas, this article in Broadside certainly isn't contributing toward getting anything right.