Sex differences, feminism, mind reading and God

It’s really been an interesting week for me. As I emerge myself further in my writing about women’s health and sex difference in terms of feminism, a media slanging match has erupted about equality and general and domestic violence in particular. A Mail article about Harriet Harman spearheading feminism by making it more difficult to beat a woman was aired. Today, an article in Femail (written by David Thomas) summarises all the Mail hates about Harriet.

Worse, it got personal. Not happy to critique policies, Rod Liddel of the Spectator has written a spectacularly misogynistic article that asks, well, at the risk of boosting my blog hit rate above 42, fuck her. That’s right. Rod asks us if we would have sex with Harriet after a few pints. Tanya Gold of the Guardian responds with a slightly more balanced critique of Rod Liddel and Harriet where she exposes Liddel of having a “caution for assaulting his then pregnant girlfriend in 2005”.

It’s been a week that has set back equal rights for everyone possibly years. Predictably the media frenzy has resulted in name calling and getting personal. I note Ms Harman seems to be keeping quiet and getting on with her job, but everyone else has an opinion.
I’m not going to bore you with sex differences and feminism, there’s a chapter in my book which is published next year about how this has moved on from 1960’s radical feminism and how the world hasn’t caught up. But I am going to state my theory on this.

If my journey through academia has taught me anything, it’s to differentiate between objectivity and subjectivity. It’s easy to read a theory about this, but I want to explain it in practice and it often comes down to this: ego and thought reading. There’s nothing more soul destroying than sitting at a policy meeting discussing a high level issue when someone starts to tell an anecdotal tale about how this relates to their experiences. Although these stories are as valid as anyone else’s story about whatever else, there is a time and a place to tell it.

Just to contradict myself, I’m going to do it now, but for the sake of illustrating my overarching point. Take for instance a conversation I had with a colleague. We were speaking about theology and my colleague told me that he believes that everyone, whether they know it or not, believe in God. He went on to tell a personal story about deathbed conversion where he prayed and he knew the person in a coma on the brink of death was converted. I intervened and told him that actually, there were some people who didn’t believe in God so that couldn’t apply to them. He told me that he knew that they did, even if they said they didn’t, because God instilled it in everyone, and that they were just in denial.

My colleague, for whatever reason, had invested himself in mind reading. He was projecting his ego onto other people for whatever reason made it impossible for him to tolerate someone not having a personal God. He went on to scaffold his opinion by explaining that this denial was often because the person had a hard life and had blamed God or questioned God. I held back from explaining that atheists might conversely see his vesting himself in superhuman qualities of mind reading a product of his own psychological issues. The point is, he had entirely missed this possible facet of opinion.

This thought reading investment is a big problem in the world today. It points first to the fact that the person who claims to know what other people are thinking has not actually listened to what they are saying, and second, to a lack of understanding of the point of view of the other. In child psychology, Piaget proposed several stages of development, and the last two, concrete operational stage and formal operational stage describe the transition from and egocentric child to a person who can operate abstract thought and reasoning or, more simply, walk a mile in someone else’s shoes. See the other person’s point of view. Not to necessarily agree but to show a respect for the opinion, knowledge and reasoning of another person. Constant returning to the personal experiential view to scaffold a point is a sign that the person is struggling with the last two stages (which, incidentally, Piaget predicts will occur at around 12 years old).

So how does this apply to Harriet? Ms Harman is working on high level strategy that is impersonal and objective. It is not aimed at personally harming anyone or causing suffering, but at justice,morality and equality. Now, because there is not an adequate critique of why women should not have equal rights, should not be beaten, not be raped, critics of feminism and human rights have resorted to oppressing Ms Harman herself in a personal manner in this case opening a media discussion about the most obvious of sex differences, sexual intercourse. This is to, presumably, highlight that men and women are physically different, a fact that feminist are completely aware of. And this is a circular action that only supports the need for feminism and equality regulation.

Feminism does not mean some stereotypical bra-burning harpie with a banner, it represents grown up women and men who have cleared Piaget’s stages and are able to think about the collective, the bigger picture without having to resort to constant personal reference. In other words, they can separate the personal fro the societal, the subjective from the objective. They have observed women’s inequality (easy to evidence, just take a trip to a women’s refuge) and reasoned that feminism is actually to value difference. It is the right to choice without fearing the oppression of patriarchal and misogynistic jeering, or other men and women’s ego-laden personal opinions. Or worse, a punch in the face or a kick in the stomach.

1 thought on “Sex differences, feminism, mind reading and God”

  1. Don’t know anything about Harriet Harman or the issues that sparked your post, but your last paragraph is brilliant. Should be hung over every woman’s desk, sink, dashboard, workbench or operating table.

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