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Steve Stewart-Williams

149 quotes

“Rather than being indicators of a sexist or oppressive society, sex differences may sometimes be indicators of the opposite: a comparatively free and fair one (emphasis on the “comparatively”).”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“First question: Do intersex individuals undermine the female-male distinction? First answer: No. On the contrary, it’s only possible to even describe intersex conditions if we assume the female-male distinction. Intersex conditions are, after all, defined as involving a mixture of female- and male-typical attributes.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If you treat a dog like a cat, it’ll still act like a dog. Maybe it’s the same with boys and girls.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A lot of people want to argue that “Homosexuality is natural; therefore, homosexuality is OK.” I agree that it’s OK, and I agree that it’s natural, but I don’t agree that it’s OK because it’s natural... Consenting adults don’t need a biological justification – or any kind of justification – for who they are or who they love.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In some frog species, females fake their own deaths to escape unwanted male attention; males, on the other hand, never fake theirs to escape female attention.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men corner the market on what evolutionary biologists call mate-choice failure, with documented cases involving everything from lampposts to trees to vacuum cleaners. We all make mistakes, I guess – but men more often than women.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The most violent category of human being is the toddler, and the only reason we don’t worry more about the epidemic of toddler violence is that toddlers are small and cute, and can’t do much damage with their tiny fists.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“On the rare occasions when women get into physical fights, it’s commonly triggered by one woman calling the other promiscuous, albeit usually in less polite terms. When men get into physical fights, on the other hand, it’s rarely triggered by one man calling the other promiscuous. It’s fair to say that such an insult would lack bite. In fact, yelling at a man that ‘You’ve slept with hundreds of women!’ probably wouldn’t be an insult at all.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The default assumption, in lieu of strong evidence to the contrary, should be that we’re continuous with the rest of the living world, and thus that the differences we see in our species have the same origin as those in every other: natural selection.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even in the healthiest of relationships, a spouse’s or lover’s happiness isn’t necessarily our own. It’s rarely the case, for example, that upon hearing about a partner’s infidelity, people say “Oh, that’s nice! I love my partner, and I’m sure they had fun – so this is great news!”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Even if toy makers and advertisers could conjure sex differences into existence on a whim, why would they? Toy makers would ideally want both sexes to covet their offerings, not just one or the other, as this would instantly double the size of their market.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We often view sexual victimization and partner abuse as women’s problems, rather than more-women-than-men problems. In doing so, however, we once again treat a statistical sex difference as a Mars-and-Venus difference. Ironically, the tendency to polarize sex differences in this domain is particularly common among gender-role progressives, who usually downplay female-male differences.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The fact that more members of group X than group Y suffer problem Z is a bad reason to act as if only members of group X suffer problem Z.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“I once spotted an article in The Daily Mail with the rather striking headline: “How did I raise such a girly girl? Feminist mother cringes at her three-year-old daughter’s love of princesses, frills and pink – and wishes she was into toy cars instead.” I remember thinking how strange it is that people who wish their daughters were less girly, and more like boys, are viewed as pro-female, rather than anti.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Although more men than women make it to the top, more men than women also sink to the bottom – and the overwhelming majority of men don’t end up at either the top or the bottom.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“It is true that women get fewer jobs in math-heavy STEM fields. But that’s only because fewer women apply for them. Those who do apply are generally more likely than men to be interviewed and more likely to get the job.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Gender-role traditionalists assume that sex differences are natural, and therefore that they’re good. Gender-role progressives assume that sex differences are bad, and therefore that they’re not natural – or they assume that the absence of sex differences is natural, and therefore that the absence of sex differences is good, and that that’s what we ought to strive for.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men are naturally more violent than women, and male violence is the cause of much needless suffering in the world. We therefore have every right to stifle it, in the process narrowing the sex difference. Again, though, the rationale for this isn’t that sex differences are bad; it’s that violence is bad. After all, another way to narrow the sex difference would be to ensure that women are as violent as men. But that wouldn’t make the world a better place; it’d make it a worse one.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“We should treat individuals as individuals, rather than as instantiations of the statistical properties of the groups to which they belong. In other words, we should judge people by the content of their characters, not their sex chromosomes.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Around 13.8 billion years after the Big Bang, and almost four billion years since life first evolved, something strange began to happen: Tiny parts of the universe became conscious, and came to know something about themselves and the universe of which they are a part... Eventually, some of these tiny parts of the universe - the parts we call ‘scientists’ and ‘scientifically-informed laypeople’ - came to understand the Big Bang and the evolutionary process through which they had come to exist. After an eternity of unconsciousness, the universe now had some glimmering awareness that it existed and some understanding of where it had come from.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“If we decide – and this is our decision; it’s not imposed on us from above – if we decide that reducing the amount of suffering in the world is a good ethical principle to live by, then it becomes entirely unjustified and arbitrary to extend this principle to human beings but not also to extend it to other animals capable of suffering. Why should the suffering of nonhumans be less important than that of humans? Surely a universe with less suffering is better than one with more, regardless of whether the locus of suffering is a human being or not, a rational being or not, a member of the moral community or not. Suffering is suffering, and these other variables are morally irrelevant.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Several years ago, the Foundation for Biomedical Research ran an ad campaign in support of medical experimentation on nonhuman animals. The ad featured a photograph of a group of animal rights protestors under the caption: ‘Thanks to animal research, they’ll be able to protest 20.8 years longer.’ But imagine a parallel universe in which medical research is conducted on black people, and in which an equivalent foundation employs an equivalent argument: ‘Thanks to research on black people, these white protesters will be able to protest against experimentation on black people 20.8 years longer’! Would this justify experimentation on black people? Obviously not! We would immediately reject the argument as founded on a deeply racist assumption, namely, that the costs inflicted on ‘mere’ black people are justified by the benefits produced for whites. But the original argument is founded on an equivalently speciesist assumption: that the costs inflicted on ‘mere’ animals are justified by the benefits produced for us.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Some may find these conclusions frightening, and perhaps that's an appropriate reaction. But then again, maybe it’s not. For it is certainly possible to frame an ethic consistent with the Darwinian view of the world. Such an ethic might emphasize the virtue of being honest enough and courageous enough to acknowledge unflinchingly that there is probably no God, no afterlife, and no soul; that there is no objective basis to morality or higher purpose behind our suffering; that we are insignificant in a vast and impersonal cosmos; that existence is ultimately without purpose or meaning; and that the effects of our actions will ultimately fade away without trace. It is admirable to acknowledge these uncongenial truths, yet to struggle on as if life were meaningful and strive to make the world a better place anyway, without promise of eternal reward or hope of ultimate victory, and indeed for no good reason at all.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The pattern of sex differences found in our species mirrors that found in most mammals and in many other animals. As such, considerations of parsimony suggest that the best explanation for the human differences will invoke evolutionary forces common to many species, rather than social forces unique to our own. When we find the standard pattern of differences in other, less culture-bound creatures, we inevitably explain this in evolutionary terms. It seems highly dubious, when we find exactly the same pattern in human beings, to say that, in the case of this one primate species, we must explain it in terms of an entirely different set of causes — learning or cumulative culture — which coincidentally replicates the pattern found throughout the rest of the animal kingdom. Anyone who wishes to adopt this position has a formidable task in front of them. They must explain why, in the hominin lineage uniquely, the standard evolved psychological differences suddenly became maladaptive, and thus why natural selection “wiped the slate clean” of any biological contribution to these differences. They must explain why natural selection eliminated the psychological differences but left the correlated physical differences intact. And they must explain why natural selection would eliminate the psychological differences and leave it all to learning, when learning simply replicated the same sex differences anyway. How could natural selection favor extreme flexibility with respect to sex differences if that flexibility was never exercised and was therefore invisible to selection?”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“In some domains, women are more sexually selected than men; one could say in these cases that women have the larger “peacock’s tail.” An example can be found in the domain of physical attractiveness. Women are typically rated as better looking than men, by both men and women. The difference is plausibly a consequence of the fact that, although both sexes care about good looks in a mate, on average, men care somewhat more. This means that, since this sex difference first evolved, there has been a somewhat stronger selection pressure on women than men for physical attractiveness — the opposite of what we find in peacocks.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Think about some of the highest status men in modern societies: sports stars, rock stars, politicians. At first glance, it might seem that these individuals provide further proof of men’s polygynous nature: They are often notorious for their sexual antics and infidelities (the famous scandal with Tiger Woods is a case in point)... However, the picture is not so simple. Many of these men are in the position where they have essentially an unlimited supply of potential sexual partners. Do all of them or even most of them eschew long-term relationships and opt instead for as many one-night stands and brief love affairs as possible? Sometimes, perhaps, but often they do not. These men — the most eligible bachelors, the highest status males in our species — often do what male chimpanzees never do: They fall in love and form long-term pair bonds.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The idea that women are the choosier sex is one of the best-known claims associated with EP [evolutionary psychology]. Ironically, another of the best-known claims associated with EP is an exception to this rule: On average, men are choosier than women when it comes to the physical attractiveness of a prospective mate. Even if we put this counterexample aside, though, the statement “females are choosier than males,” although true of many species, does not apply easily to our own. It is true that men may sometimes be more willing than women to lower their standards for a casual sexual partner. However, when it comes to the most important mating decisions of a man’s life — who he will marry, who he will have children with — the difference in choosiness is much smaller and maybe nonexistent. This fact of human life is even implicit in everyday folk psychology; the stereotype is that men will “sleep with anything that moves,” not that they will marry or have children with anything that moves. In long-term, committed relationships, men are about as choosy as women.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Language, intelligence, and humor, along with art, generosity, and musical ability, are often described as human equivalents of the peacock’s tail. However, peacocks afford a poor analogy for the role of courtship displays in humans. Other animal models offer a better fit. In a number of nonhuman species — species as diverse as sea dragons and grebes — males and females engage in a mutual courtship “dance,” in which the two partners mirror one another’s movements. In Clark’s grebes and Western grebes, for instance, the pair bond ritual culminates in the famous courtship rush: The male and female swim side by side along the top of the water, with their wings back and their heads and necks in a stereotyped posture. If we want a nonhuman analogue for the role of creative intelligence or humor in human courtship, we should think not of ornamented peacocks displaying while drab females evaluate them. We should think instead of grebes engaged in their mating rush or sea dragons engaged in their synchronized mirror dance. Once we have one of these alternative images fixed in our minds, we can then add the proviso that there is a slight skew such that, in the early stages of courtship, men tend to display more vigorously and women tend to be choosier. However, this should be seen as a qualification to the primary message that intelligence, humor, and other forms of sexual display are part of the mutual courtship process in our species.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Just as our tools evolved culturally to fit our hands, so too our social roles evolved culturally to fit persisting aspects of the human mind. Roles that jar too violently with human nature are unlikely to persist for long, at least without the application of significant social force. If this is correct, it raises the possibility that some social roles might have evolved culturally to fit traits that, although found in both sexes, are more common in one than the other. This is emphatically not to say that there are some male roles and some female roles. But it is to suggest that there might be some social roles that suit more men than women, and others that suit more women than men — not just because of evolved physical differences but because of evolved psychological differences as well.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Imagine that a zoologist from Mars was sent to Earth to study elephants, and that it had never seen one before. Its initial observation upon seeing a herd of elephants for the first time would presumably not be: “Wow! On average, the males are somewhat larger than the females!” It would be: “Wow! Those are large animals!” A follow-up observation would be the average sex difference in size. However, this would be a qualification to the initial observation — a peripheral rather than a central claim about the morphology of elephants. If, in its subsequent report, the Martian zoologist began by highlighting the sex difference and barely mentioned that elephants are, first and foremost, large animals, we should not be surprised if other Martians got the wrong idea.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The distinction between central and peripheral claims is applicable to many aspects of human sexuality. Consider, for instance, the emotion of jealousy. Evolutionary psychologists place a strong emphasis on sex differences in this domain. The standard claim is that men are more worried by a partner’s sexual infidelity than emotional infidelity, whereas women are more worried by a partner’s emotional infidelity... [However] the overwhelming trend is that most men and most women are extremely upset by both sexual and emotional infidelity. This suggests that the central EP claim regarding jealousy should be “Human beings evolved to experience jealousy in romantic relationships” rather than “Men and women evolved different patterns of jealousy.” The latter statement is true but should be considered a qualification to the former: a peripheral rather than a central claim. To stress the sex difference alone would be like observing that male elephants are bigger than females while steadfastly neglecting to mention that all adult elephants are large compared to most terrestrial animals. It would almost certainly foster an inaccurate view.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“When it comes to the traits we consider most important in a long-term mate, human beings are largely monomorphic. This is one of the most significant findings of these studies; however, it is easily overlooked when the discussion becomes fixated on traits that people consider less important but where sex differences are found. By shining a spotlight on these traits, we may create an inaccurate picture of our species, even though the differences are real. Our picture of human nature may be built on a foundation of exceptions to the rule. The rule — the fact that males and females in our species are surprisingly similar in many ways — may be relegated to the background. By taking genuine differences and then exaggerating their importance, our picture of our evolved nature may become a caricature: It may contain a recognizable grain of truth but distort its object.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A danger in emphasizing mean values for each sex is that these values may be projected onto all or most normally developing men and women. The mean may be treated as a description of the typical group member, despite the fact that the majority of individuals fall above or below it. Psychologists do make some effort to stress that means cannot be attributed to all members of any group, as evidenced by the fact that we often append the phrase “on average” to our descriptions of mean differences. But is this enough? Consider again the robust sex difference in willingness to engage in casual sex: The mean SO [sociosexuality] score for men is higher than that for women. What does this tell us, though, about individual men and women? It clearly does not tell us that all men are interested in casual sex and that all women are not. However, given the degree of overlap between the male and female distributions, it also does not tell us that a large majority of men are more interested in casual sex than a large majority of women. That is, it is not accurate to say even that “men are typically more interested in casual sex than women, but there are of course exceptions.” Here is what the data that the means are drawn from actually tell us:”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“This is especially important when addressing less statistically savvy audiences. Such audiences could perhaps be encouraged to think of two normal distributions, one representing males and the other females. Instead of imagining that natural selection creates two distinct psychological types — a male type and a female type, described by the mean values for each group — they could be encouraged to imagine that natural selection pushes the male and female distributions closer together or further apart. This simple expedient may help people to visualize the effects of natural selection on average sex differences without at the same time losing sight of the variation within each sex.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Seen through a Darwinian lens, men’s stronger interest in a partner’s looks is initially quite mysterious. In most species, it’s the females that care more about looks. Among peacocks, for instance, peahens will only mate with the males with the sexiest tails; males, in contrast, are less shallow and will mate with any female who’ll have them. If peacocks had pornography, it would be the females, not the males, that would spend their time staring at images of the other sex, and the males that would complain about being treated as sex objects. And what’s true of peacocks is true as well of most animals. In our species, however, it’s the other way around. Why?”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[This] paper has two main aims. The first is to examine the evidence that factors other than workplace discrimination contribute to the gender gaps in STEM. These include relatively large average sex differences in career and lifestyle preferences, and relatively small average differences in cognitive aptitudes – some favouring males, others favouring females – which are associated with progressively larger differences the further above the average one looks. The second aim is to examine the evidence suggesting that these sex differences are not purely a product of social factors but also have a substantial biological (i.e. inherited) component.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“First, the claim is not that men perform better than women in every cognitive domain. On the contrary, men perform better in some domains whereas women perform better in others. The best-known examples are that men score higher than women on most tests of spatial ability, whereas women score higher than men on most tests of language ability, including verbal comprehension, reading, and writing... Second, even in areas where men do perform better, the claim is not that all men – or even most – perform better than all or most women. As with occupational preferences, members of both sexes vary enormously in every cognitive aptitude, and the distribution for men overlaps almost entirely with that for women. However, for some aptitudes, the distribution for one sex is shifted somewhat to the right of that for the other, such that the average score for the former is somewhat higher. In saying this, it’s worth stressing that the average score does not describe all members of the group, or even the typical member, but merely represents the central tendency within a broad array of scores. Most people fall above or below the average. Third, the claim is not that these cognitive sex differences are especially large. On the contrary, at the centre of the distribution, they tend to be quite small. The only reason they matter at all is that even small differences at the mean are associated with progressively larger differences the further from the mean one looks... Fourth, the claim is not that women lack the cognitive talents to make it in STEM. Most people lack the cognitive talents, and of those who do possess them, some are men and some are women.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[Sociocultural] explanations are vulnerable to a number of criticisms. To begin with, it is unclear to what extent current social influences actually point in the direction these explanations presuppose. According to one study, by four years of age, girls tend to assume that boys are academically inferior, and by seven, boys assume the same thing. Similarly, teachers tend to view their female students as superior at maths and reading, even when aptitude tests indicate that the boys are doing better. Popular culture often mirrors these trends, with girls depicted as academically superior to boys (consider, for instance, Bart and Lisa from The Simpsons, and Ron and Hermione from the Harry Potter series.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[A] large meta-analysis by Xu et al. (N = 254,231) concluded that gay men tend to have spatial and linguistic abilities comparable to those of straight women, whereas lesbians tend to have spatial abilities comparable to those of straight men (but female-typical linguistic abilities)... Gay men were presumably subject to essentially the same gender-specific social forces as straight men, and lesbians the same gender-specific social forces as straight women. As such, the near-reversal of the usual spatial vs. language pattern is hard to reconcile with the claim that this pattern is due largely to social forces.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A growing body of work suggests that, in nations with greater wealth and higher levels of gender equality, sex differences are often larger than they are in less wealthy, less equal nations... [R]ather than being products of a sexist or oppressive society, these differences may be indicators of the opposite: a comparatively free and fair one. If so, this casts society’s efforts to minimize the sex differences in an entirely new light. Rather than furthering gender equality, such efforts may involve attacking a positive symptom of gender equality. By mistaking the fruits of our freedom for evidence of oppression, we may institute policies that, at best, burn up time and resources in a futile effort to cure a “disease” that isn’t actually a disease, and at worst actively limit people’s freedom to pursue their own interests and ambitions on a fair and level playing field.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Based on the foregoing discussion, we suggest that the approach that would be most conducive to maximizing individual happiness and autonomy would be to strive for equality of opportunity, but then to respect men and women’s decisions regarding their own lives and careers, even if this does not result in gender parity across all fields. Approaches that focus instead on equality of outcomes – including quotas and financial inducements – may exact a toll in terms of individual happiness. To the extent that these policies override people’s preferences, they effectively place the goal of equalizing the statistical properties of groups above the happiness and autonomy of the individuals within those groups.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Sex differences in various psychological traits – in particular, average differences in career-related interests – contribute more to STEM gender gaps than is often assumed. These differences are not due solely to learning, but have a biological component as well... Certainly, the evidence for a biological contribution is not beyond criticism. We suggest, however, that the totality of the evidence renders the Nurture-Only view considerably less plausible than the Nature-Plus-Nurture alternative. The evidence we find most compelling includes the stubbornness of the sex differences over time, even despite efforts to eradicate them; the cross-cultural consistency of the differences; the early appearance of some differences during development; evidence linking the traits in question to prenatal hormonal exposure; and in some cases, comparable differences in evolutionarily relevant nonhuman animals. Each of these findings would be more surprising if the relevant sex differences were due solely to culture than if biology were also involved. And although alternative explanations for any particular finding are always possible, the convergence of these very different lines of evidence adds up to a strong prima facie case for a non-trivial biological contribution.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“[A]lthough we agree that caution should be exercised in discussing biological explanations, we would argue that this is a specific instance of a more general truth, namely that caution should be exercised in discussing any explanations. It is not only biological explanations that can undergird harmful practices. Environmental theories of left-handedness and same-sex sexual orientation, for instance, have been associated with cruel and unnecessary interventions designed to eradicate these innocuous traits. Environmental theories of human sex differences, if taken to extremes, could potentially produce comparable harms. For example, if we assume that sex differences in career choice are necessarily evidence of bias and barriers, and never products of the freely made choices of those best-placed to make them, we may pathologise the decisions of individuals who take a gender-typical path, and enact progressively more coercive practices to eliminate the remaining gaps. Like earlier efforts to force people into the mould of traditional gender stereotypes, such practices may mean that some people are funnelled into careers that do not align well with their interests and inclinations.”
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“[W]e should strive to eliminate bias and barriers of every kind... What we would argue, though, is that even if this were achieved, STEM gender gaps would be unlikely to disappear given persistent sex differences in interests and other STEM-relevant traits – differences plausibly due in part to biological causes. The question, then, is: Would this necessarily be a problem? In our view, as long as unjust impediments are removed, and everyone is invited, it would not be. On the contrary, it would be unfortunate if, for all the talk of celebrating differences and diversity, we ultimately came to insist that justice requires sameness.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“According to an old joke, everyone knows that men and women are different… except social scientists. Plenty of research reveals the truth in the jest. One study, for example, found that social scientists are more likely than civilians to chalk up sex differences to nurture rather than nature, and that this even extends to differences between hens and roosters. As we’ll see later, even when it comes to humans, the evidence sides with the civilians, making this one area where laypeople have a firmer grasp on reality than many alleged experts – and one area where academia seems to impair people’s understanding of the world rather than improving it.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“A vocal minority see positing sex differences as more than a mere faux pas or difference of opinion, and view it instead as a moral transgression. For individuals in this camp, the idea that the sexes are naturally identical has become a sacred belief. Disagreement is seen not as an honest mistake or interesting challenge to be evaluated, but as sacrilege. And the typical response to sacrilege isn’t a tolerant appreciation of the wonderful diversity of human lifeways: “Well, I’m not personally into sacrilege, but if other people are, who am I to judge?” Instead, the typical response is to censor, to silence, to cancel, punish, and shun.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Many argue that it’s sexist to say, for instance, that women are more parental than men, or that women are more interested in working with people and less interested in working with things. But the accusation can be turned on its head. The idea that such claims are sexist only makes sense if we tacitly assume that the female-typical tendencies are inferior. Why else would it be disparaging to women to say that more women than men exhibit these tendencies? But if women really are more parental than men, or if they really are more interested in working with people, then we’re taking a negative view of traits that are more characteristic of women than men. That’s sexist!”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Men are more willing than women to take risks. Almost by definition, this means a higher chance of great success, but also a higher chance of catastrophic failure. One study found that when an attractive woman was watching, male skateboarders started trying riskier moves on their boards, which led to more impressive stunts and more wipeouts. This is a good illustration of a pervasive pattern, which applies as well to the workplace. According to one study, for example, part of the reason that men start more new businesses than women – and therefore that they succeed and fail more than women – is that more men than women are overconfident.”
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“Strictly speaking, the goal of these efforts isn’t a 50:50 sex ratio in every field. If that were the case, policymakers and activists would be just as worried that more women than men go into the social sciences, health sciences, and humanities as they are that more men than women go into computer science, engineering, and physics – and they’d be just as worried that more men than women work as garbage collectors as they are that more men than women are CEOs. Clearly, they’re not nearly as worried. This tells us that the implicit goal isn’t 50% men and 50% women in every field; it’s at least 50% women in every desirable field.”
Steve Stewart-Williams (born 1971) wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source