“Boys will be boys” and “Girls will be girls” was not a welcome message at a university recently because, well, social-engineers will be social engineers. And since their business is engineering society out of common sense, a recent article a professor penned stating that women are less interested in computer science was labeled “gender harassment” and inspired “diversity training” — our day’s version of the re-education camp.
As American Thinker’s Rick Moran writes:
The story begins when UW [University of Washington]-Seattle Professor Stuart Reges published “Why Women Don’t Code” for Quillette last June. The title of the article was, as the professor admits, “hyperbolic.” He was simply pointing out the fact that women are less interested in computer science than men. The reasons are fundamental to their gender; “men tend to want to work alone and with numbers, while women are more people oriented.” Still, Reges has taught hundreds of women to code and was simply stating the facts in his article.
But since facts conflict with ideological fiction, complaints were made and the thought police sprang into action. PJ Media explains:
From now on, UW will provide “intersectional diversity and sexual harassment training to both [student employees] and [the professors who supervise them]” which all students and professors will be highly encouraged to attend.
Additionally, going forward, “a group of mostly senior faculty will review the introductory programming courses to ensure that they are inclusive of students from all backgrounds.”
… How will professors make coding classes more “inclusive of students from all backgrounds”? Will they mandate textbooks feature more racial and gender minorities?
When asked by PJ Media, UW spokesman Victor Balta said that nearly every aspect of 100-level computer science courses will be inspected to ensure they promote inclusivity. This includes “curriculum, organization, programming language and environment, teaching methods and techniques, new devices … as well as ensuring that our gateway courses are attractive and welcoming to the broadest group of students.”
As for Reges, he’s upset at the continual insinuation by students over the past months that his article constitutes “gender harassment” — and at his school for not even attempting to refute the charge.
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Of course, those taking issue with the article by Reges would say that rendering such statements reinforces sex stereotypes and helps make them self-fulfilling prophesies. This complaint was made in 1992, for example, with the Talking Barbie Doll that uttered the now verboten phrase “Math class is tough!” Feminist groups were livid, saying that Mattel’s creation could discourage girls from achieving in math.
Yet according to radio host Rush Limbaugh, the phrase was just one of many laments Mattel’s market research determined girls had. In other words, Barbie wasn’t going to put the idea that math is tough in the girls’ minds; it was the girls who put the idea in Barbie’s mouth.
This brings us to “stereotyping” warnings. Is it really true that girls behave in certain ways because we expect them to? Or do we expect them to because they behave in certain ways?
Moreover, what if “sex stereotyping” is just the recognition and augmenting of each sex’s characteristic strengths? Our open-minded betters never consider this possibility. Perhaps they should ponder the phenomenon known as “sexual dimorphism.”
But science isn’t on their side. As the excellent Norwegian documentary I often cite, The Gender Equality Paradox, points out (video below), sex differences manifest themselves immediately after birth.
In addition, the above documentary informs that, counterintuitively, women are more likely to pursue traditionally male fields in more patriarchal nations such as India than in egalitarian ones such as Norway. Explanation?
Necessity drives women in poorer countries to go where the money is: fields such as IT. In wealthy nations, women can afford to follow their hearts — which means indulging their feminine nature.
As for leftist nature, Reges told PJ Media that the complaining “students are claiming that by merely discussing ideas they dislike … I have committed gender harassment.” But this gets at the scary reality here: This dispute doesn’t involve disagreement over the truth.
It involves a burning, rage-driven desire to not hear the truth.
Interestingly, and secularists can view this metaphorically if they wish, this is what Christians would call satanic. Note that the Devil doesn’t deny that truth exists; he just dismisses it and wants his will to be supreme — just like these leftist social engineers.
The Devil would also want us to deny the sexes’ divinely-ordained natures (“Male and female He made them”) — just as these leftists are doing.
It’s sad this is even an issue. Do we really need to be arguing about things people have known for millennia? Do we need to, far from reinventing the wheel, incessantly debate with those who’d make it square because roundedness is anathema to the narrowest of minds?
It’s like forever arguing about whether 2+2=4, force=mass×acceleration, or triangulation can be used to calculate the distance of stars. How could we ever advance technologically if, instead of building on yesterday’s discoveries, we just spun our wheels debating whether they really are discoveries? Yet we do far worse in our social sphere, as we deny realities three-year-olds begin to perceive and regress into an infantile universe of unreality.
As for reality, sex differences hint at sex roles. It’s much as how we only understand the roles horses, cats, chickens, and dogs can fill for us because we perceive their different abilities and natures. In fact, if we did with animals what we’ve done with the sexes, we’d try using horses to catch mice, chickens to pull carriages, cats to herd sheep, and dogs to lay eggs.
Speaking of which, a long time ago we laid a rotten one — it’s called academia.
Image: scyther5 via iStock / Getty Images Plus
