Men better than women?

Well OP you seem to be missing the fact that men are genetically physically superior, in general (and would have been much more so the case when mankind first began). So obviously, men just literally and physically took the dominant role. There should indeed be a gender equality in today's society, but please it really really pisses me off when people even try to argue then men are not physically dominant, which is obviously the cause for it.

Yes, women are disadvantaged from the moment they are born, yet how does this devalue my claims? We're not handing out sympathy votes here. I'm simply stating observed realities. The causes and effects are pretty irrelevant for the sake of this discussion.

Doing well in GCSE exams =/= capable of rational thought. It's slightly worrying having to state this.

No doubt. Though it doesn't explain why the best in pretty much every field is always a male. This is actually pretty irrelevant though as the topic was that of rational and objective thought, not of intellectual ability. I hope I don't have to explain to you how these are two very different things.

For the record, getting onto a medicine course isn't difficult. As for your question, who knows? Maybe girls are more hungry for money. Maybe they get a kick out of 'helping others'. Maybe it's because, god-forbid, all clever people choose to do medicine courses.

Again, who knows? Maybe the feminist brigade has them by the throat. Maybe the marketing team ran out of space in the 'intellectual achievements' section so they added this little snippet of self-promotion.

I understand how it's hard to believe if you are to apply precedent to the masses. I guess you'll just have to take my word for it when I say I actually am.

This doesn't come into it. Besides, men are only attracted physically to women; they certainly won't care how 'competitive' she is.

Yeah next time I'll be sure to factor in the role that cavemen have played in the oppression of women so that I can justify my being a rational person. Damn those hairy f*ckers for not letting the women participate in their hunting endeavors. I think you'll find that history is irrelevant here as men and women are given EXACTLY THE SAME opportunities in this day and age. Obviously there will be some minor excepetions to this but please don't be foolish enough to bring any of these up as counters.

You are interested in taking the underperformance and faults that you notice in many of the women you encounter as evidence that women are inferior. I am interested in taking those same problems, unpicking the causes that underpin them, and discussing how to address them so that the potential of half of the human race can be utilised more effectively.

If you accept, as you appear to have done here, that women's supposed 'inferiority' is explained primarily by the roles that society has created for them and cultural expectations of their behaviour, it stands to reason that this inferiority is transient and artifical, not fixed and inevitable.

It can be removed by encouraging women to overcome these barriers, by inspiring them to aim higher and by dismantling gender stereotypes. Unfortunately you are doing exactly the opposite. Interesting.

You seem to be suggesting that people are either capable of rational thought or not. Let me suggest something else to you. Everyone is capable of rational thought to some degree. The depth and quality of their thought, the extent to which they deliberately cultivate reason and their relationships with their emotions are the things that differ. GCSEs and A Levels may not be challenging in comparison with Higher Education work but they do demand some evidence of reason. Let's not be too glib about their signficence - especially as a vast proportion of the population never progresses beyond this level of qualification.

Being at the top of a profession usually demands years of progression, promotion and training, so it's hardly surprising that professions that have only been opened up fully to women relatively recently are still dominated by men at the top. In fields that have been more women-friendly for longer, women are indeed frequently at the top. When this is combined with obvious problems - the fact that a combination of biological and cultural factors make pregnancy disruptive to many women's careers, for instance, and the well-known fact that they tend to have lower expectations and ambitions for promotion - your observation becomes even less surprising. But really all this should be obvious to you. Once again your 'objective' and 'rational' mind seems to be displaying something that suspiciously resembles gross negligence. Oops.

Ah, so when men dominate their fields and excel at what they do, this is clearly a reflection of their talents. When women succeed, this is a reflection of their financial greed or wishy-washy 'caring' principles. I see.

I certainly haven't noticed any discrepancy between the capacity of men and women for rational thought at undergraduate or graduate level. I'm not interested in promoting myself, as I hope my blank TSR profile demonstrates, but I can assure you that I should know. I frequently socialise with some of the world's leading experts in my field, and they haven't noticed that discrepancy either.

A lack of objectivity is hardly the preserve of the 'masses', as you so contemptuously call them. Why else would leaders in their fields disagree over so many things? And as no human being is free from emotional impulses, prejudices, mental habits and asspumtions, describing yourself as 'objective' looks rather silly. Anyone who has the arrogance to believe in their own objectivity is in pretty serious trouble.

Initial attraction is physical. The decision to enter a relationship with someone is based on more than that. And of course it 'comes into it'. Women and men generally want to be happy, to be liked and appreciated by those around them and to be successful by whatever standards they internalise. Not only is a woman's ability to achieve these ends sometimes constrained by a refusal to exhibit what is expected of her (often vulnerability and emotionalism), but the very standards of happiness that she absorbs are likely to be influenced by gender expectations.

It's more socially acceptable for a woman to display her emotions than for a man to do so. Women who hide their emotions or appear unaffected by them are often accused of unnaturalness and coldness, which holds them back at work and in their personal relationships.

Men and women's opportunities cannot be defined by quotas and anti-discrimination legislation. They begin to be formed the moment a child is born. They are shaped by the way in which gender is defined and played out in their family lives, their schools, on the tv shows they watch, in the books and magazines and newspapers that they read. It is a matter of expectations and beliefs as much as a matter of the physical availabiliy of jobs. Your failure to acknowledge this is absolutely laughable.

If you tell women that they are irrational and weak, bombard them with images of females as victims with frequent emotional outbursts, tell them that it's natural, ok and even necessary for them to behave like this and encourage them to be suspicious of rationality from an early age... can you really be surprised that the average woman appears more influenced by her emotions than the average man? No. Can you change this? Yes. That's what I'm trying to do.

Certainly true to an extent, but as I've already stated, women are born at a disadvantage not solely due to contextual influences. We are also talking in biological terms here as I think we can both agree that women are more likely to appeal to emotion as a 'natural' function. I seems you are agreeing with me, overall, but whether the notions of these contextual influences are subject to change is relatively arbitrary as I am dealing with the present (not 2050's utopia). I'm merely stating facts here, not the imposed rationality behind them and their claims to moral legitimacy.

All of your claims rest on 3 things. The first is your hypothetical example of the woman who cries about the loss of a child whilst her partner seeks to avert further danger. This carries no weight whatsoever because since you have no evidence of a situation like this actually occurring, I can only conclude that this represents your own assumptions about behaviour - no doubt fed by books and films that you have familiarity with.

If you want to trade in stereotypes and infantile hyperthetical examples, I could perhaps offer some that are grounded more firmly in commonplace experience. Where exactly is the 'rationality' of the man who refuses to help out his wife with childcare and housework, even if her career is more luctrative and high-flying than this, because he believes that his male pride as the 'breadwinner' is more important than the financial wellbeing of his family? I have known this to happen.

Where is the rationality of the wifebeater who (in what suspiciously resembles an emotional outburst) chooses to assault his pregnant wife?

The second consists of your 'brutally honest' observations. You have noticed that the majority of women around you appear more emotional and less rational than men. This is perfectly common and understandable observation. However, you have assumed on the basis of this observation that women ARE more emotional and are generally incapable of 'rational and objective' thought - effectively not looking below the surface to try to understand what you are seeing. I have sought to show you that people's appearances and actions do not reflect their actual capabilities. Women are just as capable of rational thought as men and so are not inherently inferior (after all, just because men generally appear less 'emotional' than women does not lessen their capacity to feel emotions, even if they seem less likely to act on them).

Finally, your argument really seems to boil down to your assertion that you are a rational and objective person, and that your observations and conclusions therefore cannot be besmirched. I, on the other hand - a person you do not know in the slightest - have been accused of only expressing the views that I do because I've been 'brainwashed'. Effectively you've settled this argument in your own mind by designating yourself the role of rational champion and designating me the role of emotional, irrational moron.

When I brought up the topic of world-class academics who do not think there is any difference between the potentials of their male and female students, you even accused them of simply not having noticed.

It's not likely though, and since I don't know you any more than you know me, I'm afraid you can't expect me to 'take your word' for it.

A final word, perhaps, is needed on why this whole conversation has been important. To treat emotions as the natural domain of women and rationality as the natural domain of men is to equate culture with biology. It's a common error made by many women as well as men (which feeds into the fact that, as you've rightly picked up, women often help to collaberate in their own disadvantage). This is the kind of thinking that explains why male emotional and mental health problems are so neglected - with disastrous consequences (the rise in male eating disorders, for instance). It helps to explain why women have not made as much progress towards equality of financial independence and workplace power as their formal opportunities would appear to permit. The mistake you've made is an understandable one, but it's one that we have to stop making if we want to stop perpetuating a monumental waste of female talent and male emotional wellbeing.

Anyway, this tirade has become ridiculously long. I would apologise, but then if you don't want to be ranted at you should take more care not to come across as a complete and utter prat.