Tag Archives: Feminist

News

Scientists discover how fathers improve brain development of children

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Story from the Wall Street Journal. (H/T Andrew)

Excerpt:

Dr. Braun’s group found that at 21 days, the fatherless animals had less dense dendritic spines compared to animals raised by both parents, though they “caught up” by day 90. However, the length of some types of dendrites was significantly shorter in some parts of the brain, even in adulthood, in fatherless animals.

“It just shows that parents are leaving footprints on the brain of their kids,” says Dr. Braun, 54 years old.

The neuronal differences were observed in a part of the brain called the amygdala, which is related to emotional responses and fear, and the orbitofrontal cortex, or OFC, the brain’s decision-making center.

[…]The balance between these two brain parts is critical to normal emotional and cognitive functioning, according to Dr. Braun. If the OFC isn’t active, the amygdala “goes crazy, like a horse without a rider,” she says. In the case of the fatherless pups, there were fewer dendritic spines in the OFC, while the dendrite trees in the amygdala grew more and longer branches.

A preliminary analysis of the degus’ behavior showed that fatherless animals seemed to have a lack of impulse control, Dr. Braun says. And, when they played with siblings, they engaged in more play-fighting or aggressive behavior.

In a separate study in Dr. Braun’s lab conducted by post-doctoral researcher Joerg Bock, degu pups were removed from their caregivers for one hour a day. Just this small amount of stress leads the pups to exhibit more hyperactive behaviors and less focused attention, compared to those who aren’t separated, Dr. Braun says. They also exhibit changes in their brain.

The basic wiring between the brain regions in the degus is the same as in humans, and the nerve cells are identical in their function. “So on that level we can assume that what happens in the animal’s brain when it’s raised in an impoverished environment … should be very similar to what happens in our children’s brain,” Dr. Braun says.

Read the whole thing.

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Commentary

Barbara Kay analyzes the anti-male policies of the Liberal Party of Canada

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Check out this editorial written by Barbara Kay. (H/T Andrew)

She doesn’t like the way that feminists discriminate against men. In the editorial, she considers the Liberal party of Canada’s plan to use government power to discriminate against men.

Excerpt:

As for a gender commissioner, if the Women’s Caucus really wants to go there, they might start by recommending the abolition of equity programs in university. Enrolment in most programs is so female-skewed, an outsider might think men have fallen victim to some mysterious plague. And given the dropout rates of boys, one might call it a plague, because gender-wise the education system is sick. Boys are disadvantaged K-12, with teaching methods geared for girls and a very poor understanding of how boys learn best. Just this week Toronto proposed sweeping changes to education to make up for years of apathy toward the eroding performance gap.

Maybe this putative gender commissioner could ask why Ontario health units only screen for abuse in incoming female patients 12 and older, not male patients, even though male adolescents suffer nearly as much sexual abuse as girls.

And how about a thorough investigation of the family court system, where almost 90% of contested custody cases end up with sole custody going to mothers? How about support for equal parenting, a long-overdue gender-fair initiative that can’t get traction because groups like the Liberal Women’s Caucus aren’t interested in gender fairness?.

Because when the Women’s Caucus says “gender” they mean “women’s interests.” If an honest gender commissioner were ever appointed, he or she would recommend the complete dismantlement of all women’s government-funded lobby groups.

This article made me think of how a man is 184% more likely to die if he gets prostate cancer in Canada, where single-payer health care is politicized and extremely anti-male, when compared with the free market system in the United States. I am wondering how it helps women to constantly overlook the needs of men. Don’t women have sons, fathers, brothers and husbands?

By the way, if woman wants to impress a man, a good start would be to read books on the issues that Barbara talks about and then start to write and advocate for men in the public square. Stephen Baskerville’s “Taken Into Custody” is a good start. Or Jennifer Roback Morse’s “Love and Economics”. Women need to make marriage seem reasonable to men, and the best way to do that is to convince the man that you understand all about marriage and parenting.

Commentary

Feminists urge preferential treatment for women in math and science

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Here are the latest numbers from National Journal magazine. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

Women now claim more than 57 percent of all bachelor’s degrees, 61 percent of all master’s degrees, and half of all professional and doctoral degrees, according to Education Department data cited by University of Michigan economist Mark Perry and others. They also earn more Ph.D.s than men in the humanities, education, health sciences, and social sciences, in-cluding two-thirds of new psychology doctorates.

And Obama and the Democrats are on board with pushing men further out of the university:

Administration officials and others are “promising to litigate, regulate, and legislate the nation’s universities until women obtain half of all academic degrees in science and technology and hold half of the faculty positions in those areas,” as my colleague Neil Munro detailed in the July 4 National Journal.

With federal agencies already preparing aggressive gender-equity reviews, the feminists’ biggest potential weapon is Title IX, the 1972 law barring sex discrimination in education. While commendably opening up opportunities, Title IX has also been used to require colleges to field as many female athletes as male, even though fewer women are interested. Many colleges have met their quotas by cutting back programs for male athletes.

The push for what some feminists call “Title-Nining” the sciences makes especially timely the recent publication of The Science on Women and Science, a book of 10 essays edited by Christina Hoff Sommers of the American Enterprise Institute.

So, the future for the Obama administration is to “Title-Nine” science and math to make sure that women and men are equally represented. Even if they have to shrink math and science programs down to nothing to have 50-50 parity. As long as the feminists achieve their goal of a perfect 50-50 distribution of men and women in every area of life, then it’s all worth it, right? Who needs math and science when you have feminism?

And there’s loads of taxpayer money (some of it mine) available to help the social engineers achieve their goals:

As the academic debate rages on, feminists seeking to engineer 50-50 male-female ratios have already directed millions of dollars of federal and university money to special efforts to increase the number of girls and women in math and science. They may also be sending a message that boys and men are on their own, except perhaps for re-education programs to purge them of gender bias. Ever-more-overt quotas (“goals”) in hiring and promotions to push women ahead of better-credentialed males are very much on the feminist agenda.

“Few academic scientists know anything about the equity crusade,” Sommers writes. “Most have no idea of its power, its scope, and the threats they may soon be facing. The business community and citizens at large are completely in the dark.”

I am a huge fan of Christina Hoff Sommers and have both of her books on feminism. I hope this new one is as good as the others! I wonder what women will do for husbands and fathers when there is a shortage of decent, educated, hard-working men? Good thing I don’t have any sisters or daughters to worry about. But I feel bad for marriage-minded women today. Everything was ruined by feminism before they were even born.