Jessica Kennedy and Laura Kray, working out at UCLA Berkeley, are concerned about the underrepresentation of women in business schools and across corporate boardrooms in the US. This is a “problem” that must be “fixed”. Women don’t particularly want to be in biz school or stuck in a boardroom? Men would much rather be there? Too bad.
http://spp.sagepub.com/content/early/2013/03/28/1948550613482987.abstract
We need equality, folks! And the only acceptable definition of that term is girl-drones and boy-drones doing the EXACT SAME SHIT AT ALL TIMES EVERYWHERE. Your personal interests or inclinations are irrelevant. You will be assimilated.
Ok, all snarkiness aside, there IS a gender disparity in business, both schools and practice, and whether that is a problem that needs fixing or not, it’s always interesting to explore the reasons behind such disparities. So here is the hypothesis Jessica and Laura were testing:
Women don’t like business because they associate business with immorality and that’s unacceptable to their superior lady ethics.
Only when jobs involved making ethical compromises did women report less interest in the jobs than men. Women’s moral reservations mediated these effects. In Study 3, we found that women implicitly associated business with immorality more than men did.
Let’s start with the basic assumptions underlying the whole study:
Business = immoral
Men = business
Men = immoral
Or, in the alternate:
Women = moral
Woman ≠ business
Business ≠ moral
Either way, we begin with the assumption that WOMEN ARE MORE MORAL than men, and that this morality shows up in their reluctance to dirty their pretty little hands with the ickiness of business decision-making.
Well, the Decalog, Bushido, Mosiac, Buddist and Koranic codes were all written by women, no? Most of our laws and statutes governing morality and ethics were written by women, no? Most of the books and tracts and declarations and treatises on ethics and morality over the long history of our culture were written by women, no?
Oh, oops. No. No they weren’t. Which is not to say the ladies haven’t written some smoking books over the years. Hello, Jane Austen!
But women in general have not concerned themselves overly much with morality and ethics at the universal level. At the personal level? Oh hell yeah. Check out any junior high, anywhere, in any city, any country, anywhere on the planet.
Ladies be calling each other out on morals all the time! But codifying those morals into laws that apply equally to everyone, everywhere? Yeah, not so much.
But okay, let’s accept, just for shits and giggles, that women ARE more moral than men. According to Jessica and Laura, when women are confronted with tough decisions, like whether or not to make a cancer drug that contains a cheaper ingredient that will A) save a lot of people because it’s affordable and accessible; and, B) kill a few people because a cheaper ingredient was used, the ladies are incredibly reluctant to make the decision.
Because morality?
Bullshit.
Because RESPONSIBILITY.
http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2013/04/03/do_women_think_working_in_business_is_immoral.html
You see, at the end of the day, someone is going to have to make that decision, and when the chips fall, someone will also have to own that decision. A truly brilliant business leader will have the power to make decisions, and always have some starry-eyed lackey to blame afterwards.
Oh, boo hoo! That’s so unfair.
Welcome to life, cupcake. You don’t get what you deserve. You get what you negotiate.
Here’s another issue that sets the Moral Lady head aspinning: child labor. What if that shitty cancer drug is being made in a factory staffed largely by children? Another decision the ladies DO NOT WANT TO MAKE.
Now, having grown up on a farm where we produced virtually all of our own food, I have a very different take on the issue of child labor. You see, the way food works is that you mix some cow shit and dirt together and plant seeds and then water the little sproutlings and rip out all the bad little sproutlings that aren’t supposed to be there and the sproutlings grow into food and ripen under the sun and then ALL THE FOOD IS READY AT ONCE.
Seriously. It’s true. You have days and days and days with NO TOMATOES and then all the fucking tomatoes turn red on the same day and holy shit, what are we gonna do with all these tomatoes?
Pick them, cook them, puree them, can them.
There was no way my mom and dad could do all that by themselves, so we all pitched in. Yep, we were child laborers. All four of us. And not just us! Every kid in the county! That’s farm life, and although my parents were shitty and violent and stupid, the farming aspect of my childhood was absolutely wonderful. My fondest memories are of churning butter and baking bread and harvesting potatoes and there is nothing quite like the enormous satisfaction of knowing that you are living off the fruits of your own labor. Popping the lid off a jar of tomatoes YOU planted, YOU watered, YOU harvested, YOU cooked, YOU canned – there is nothing quite like it.
There is also nothing quite like a jar that wasn’t perfectly clean when you sealed it. The bacteria grows and grows and grows and then WHAM – the whole fucking jar explodes! Tomato grenade!
Child labor is, and has been, a fact of life for almost all of human history. Our own culture and economy evolved on the backs of child labor. Textile mills and coal pits and tanneries and chimney sweeps. We built our city with the help of kids.
The idea that childhood is a special time of life and that children should be protected from the adult world of production and labor is very, very new. And it doesn’t apply in most of the still developing world. Mr. JB and I spent our first year of married life in a rapidly developing city in China, and we have seen modern child labor up close.
Is it pretty? Not always. Lots of little shops and restaurants are family-owned businesses, and there is no question that the kids help out. While China has a technical “one-child” policy, the reality is that only people with bank accounts and tax returns can effectively be policed vis-à-vis that policy. The truly poor and the truly rich (who can pay the fines) very often have more than one child.
And those children work. Especially since only one of them, in the case of poor folks, can go to school. Is it fair? Nope. But it’s life. And that one kid who makes it through school and college and into the emerging middle class workforce takes the whole family along with him or her. The whole family rises, just as the whole family succeeded in North America, when they all worked together.
It’s the height of hypocrisy for the rich Western world to deny the developing world the same advantages they had while building their own economy. Our economy wouldn’t exist without the tremendous wealth and opportunity provided by agricultural sector. An abundance of FOOD is what made the Western world possible. It is the basis of all our success and it would not have happened without the labor of children.
Let’s go back to the idea that women are more concerned with making moral decisions in the business world. As you can see from Jessica and Laura’s work, women have no problem making decisions. They just don’t like making TOUGH decisions.
So, you’re an executive at a pharmaceutical company and you have a choice to make: produce a low-cost, accessible cancer drug that uses a cheaper ingredient that might actually kill some patients, OR produce a higher cost, less accessible drug that uses a more expensive ingredient, but that is UNLIKELY to kill any patients.
Except for all the patients who couldn’t afford the drug in the first place.
The executive has more than just one set of constraints. His first job is to ensure that the company (and by extension, all the workers) continue to exist. He needs to take care of his people. His second job is to make sure he is earning some PROFITS. That is HOW the company will survive. His third job is to produce a product that is safe, effective and sellable. And he needs to do all that with a pack of competitors snapping at his heels, ready to knock him off the top of the pile and take the lead market position.
It’s a tough call.
And that is where codified morals and ethics and laws come into play. If the FDA has approved the cheaper ingredient, then the executive would be foolish not to use it. If he doesn’t, someone else will. And that cheaper, more accessible drug will kick his more “ethical” drug onto the dirtpile of failed enterprise.
He will be out of a job and so will all his workers.
Sooner or later, someone will notice that, oh shit, that cheaper ingredient is actually KILLLING people, and the FDA will rescind its approval. Now EVERYONE has to use the more expensive ingredient. The playing field is levelled.
That’s how it works.
But knowing the rules of the game doesn’t make the game any easier to play. There is a distinct possibility that the executive will be held responsible for choosing the cheaper ingredient when he KNEW it could be lethal for some patients. He might have to face some music for that decision, and that’s where the ladies quaver.
Laura and Jessica aren’t terribly interested in the consequences of valuing morality and ethics more highly than good business decisions that keep people in their jobs and our whole society moving forward. Not surprising for some ivory tower eggheads who have probably never done a real day’s work in their lives. They would like to see some ethics training put into place, so that lady executives, when confronting the above situation, can actually refuse to use the cheaper ingredient.
And in doing so, run the risk that they destroy the whole business. Good plan.
But at least you won’t have to own your decision.
One promising conclusion from this research is that if more women do enter the business world, standards of ethics may evolve. “We need to see more women at the top,” Kray says. “I think that will change the culture of corporate America.”
Oh, you got that right. It will tie the hands of corporate North America. Boardrooms stuffed with chicken-shit ladies too afraid to make tough decisions and take responsibility for rational actions carried out in a context that has mechanisms to ensure, over time, that better and better decisions are made.
But hey, let’s not let the world’s most successful society and economy, the one that has delivered untold riches to the entire planet, keep on trucking. Let’s make everything pleasant and kind and fair and maybe put some special troughs out in the parking lot to feed our unicorns their sparkle dust.
Just be careful not to step in a big steaming pile of unicorn shit on your way to the corner office ladies.
Your superior moral decisions already stink. No need to make it worse.
Lots of love,
JB
judgybitch 
I think it’s funny that the “researchers” came up with their findings based on the fact that the women didn’t want to make the decisions at all, not that they chose the more “moral” decision. It’s almost like *GASP* they came up with the results they wanted first and then crammed data in to fit it.
The worst part is, that as a woman, I know I’m an awful decision maker. My husband does all the hard stuff because I get so cought up in whether I made the “right” decision. He just does it and sticks with it. It’s wonderful to have him in my life, I would have changed my major six times instead of two at this point.
I think that these more “moral” women are just a bit shocked when they get into the real world, because unlike childhood and college, things aren’t necessarily “good” and “evil” or black and white. You have to choose between the lesser of two evils most of the time.
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Responsibility for decision making is another reason why women have no place in combat, especially combat leadership. Combat leadership requires the officers to literally determine who lives and dies. A Platoon Leader (2st LT) usually has 3-4 squads under his leadership. Each squad has 3-5 guys on it. The PL may need to send squad Alpha into a shitstorm of death in order that squads Bravo, Charlie and Delta can make it out with the crucial prisoners and intel. He may have to call in an artillery strike that is Danger Close to the platoon’s posistion, and as a result some of them might get hit.
He has to be able to make these decisions instantly dehydrated, not slept or eaten for 48hours with bullets whizzing past his head and a few of the best men he’s ever known dying gruesomely at his feet.
If females agonize over decisions on which test method for a drug that may kill a few people is best, how on Earth are they supposed to be capable of the above?
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Yeah, as one of those immoral males, I find myself amused that “discomfort” apparently equals morality. That test didn’t have anything to do with morality, but with squeamishness.
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you would think having the cheaper ingredient going public would be what women would choose, instead of keeping it expensive and letting exponential amounts of people die compared to the relative few that would die because of it. which, by the way, is the moral and ethical decision.
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it’s a good thing horror houses/movies aren’t female dominated then
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Yes, I made the same mental connection.
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I’ve also found that women are backstabbers – from a distance, where they think you can’t get to them.
I’ve worked for women in the past. I will never do it again.
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“Well, the Decalog, Bushido, Mosiac, Buddist and Koranic codes were all written by women, no?”
I should hope not. Some of those codes are downright inhumane.
“Most of our laws and statutes governing morality and ethics were written by women, no? Most of the books and tracts and declarations and treatises on ethics and morality over the long history of our culture were written by women, no?”
Go through so called moral and ethical codes throughout history and many of them are horrific.
I agree with you about child labor with a caveat that it should be instituted right here in the so called “developed world” where kids don’t value education. Put ’em to work! That’ll teach ’em. At the same time the kids in developing countries who are eager to learn can go to school. They’re going to be our future scientists and inventors anyway so might as well get them started now.
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His FIRST job is ensuring there are profits. The purpose of ANY business is to generate profits. Otherwise, good post.
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Those moral and ethical codes are only ‘inhumane’ by the standards of our comfortable, well-to-do, ‘bourgeois’ society. People can complain all they want about the oppressiveness of, say, medieval or baroque society, but it looks fairly good compared to what came before: rampant murder, rape, pillaging, and anarchy as Vandals, Vikings, Goths, an Slavs trampled through Europe with the Huns at their heels. Our moral codes were stringent, severe, and often cruel because they had to be; we had to start somewhere, after all, to have any chance at get to the ‘polite society’ we have today. What most modern people call morality (when speaking about previous ages especially) they are really just describing a system of standards that only became possible in the well-off societies of the late 20th century. Societies built by the sacrifices of out ‘inhumane’ ancestors. You have far less right to criticize them for their inability to meet you 21st century bourgeois standards than you think.
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Agreed. Sorry it wasn’t clear. Making profits is HOW the executive takes care of his people.
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Feminists can start talking about the moral superiority of women when as many women are risking or sacrificing their lives and well-being as men. Until then, they have no right to make such claims.
Also, it doesn’t appear to me that women have an qualms at all about business ethics. They are mostly perfectly comfortable living off of the revenues men generate from their ‘evil’ business practices. They benefit from unethical behavior as much as men; they even often selectively mate with men who are willing to put morals aside to make more money. They just don’t want to get their hands dirty. Do the authors of this article seriously think Lady Macbeth is an iota morally superior to her husband?
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Another moral choice to add to the pile: aircraft safety. You could produce a perfect safety record at any airline…. for ten times the maintenance costs.
We’ve all heard it: “But if it saves one life, it’s worth it.”
Is it? Air travel is safe. Really safe. All other methods of travel pale in comparison. And for every increase in airline tickets, a number of people turn to those less-safe methods of travel, and some number of those people die; people who wouldn’t have died if they had taken a plane. That’s why the FAA makes sure it balances safety vs. cost – they don’t strive for perfect safety. Perfect safety kills.
The FAA and the airlines don’t advertize that fact, of course, because they would be instantly pilloried for it.
Some economists worked out the exact numbers of people that would die for a given increase in ticket price, but I have long since forgotten them. But here’s a great video by a great man, Dr. Thomas Sowell that discusses the same concept:
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Sweet pea, welcome to the conversation. Have you had a chance to look at our back catalogue? (Aka archives?) PPP
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However, it’s in the drug testing markets. Remember when the first 3 month trials of the pill injection came out? All that testing was done in the Philippians , back in the early 90’s. it was all good to go, until surveys discovered all those women, who YES didn’t get pregnant, then were dying from cancer.
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Because morality?
Bullshit.
Because RESPONSIBILITY.
Bingo! We have a winner!
Feminism is all about women not taking responsibility for the consequences of their actions (because Patriarchy!). Of course they can’t come out and say this, so they’ll couch it as higher morals or ethics. So naturally women have a much more difficult time making tough business decisions because tough business decisions have consequences…
Good takedown, JB.
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hah! I remember the end of summer Tomato Conundrum. We didn’t own a farm but even our small veggie garden produced freakin’ bushels of tomatoes. Zucchini too.
Coming from an Italian family, I love my tomatoes…..but even I was sick of them after the 14th night in a row of “tomatoes and/or zucchini for dinner.” Then my mom started canning them, and all was right in the world. Now in my teeny 1BR apartment, with not even a south-facing window so I can grow herbs, I should’ve hoarded those tomatoes while the getting was good.
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JB, when are you going to get picked up by one of the major media outlets to write for them? No idea the the thought process you go through to come up with these ideas but well done.
To the child labor theme–I lived on a farm for two years in Latin America. Wayyyy out in the boondocks. Dirt roads. When it rained we didn’t have school. And you know what? My little 6 year old host brother could wield a machete better than I could. At the elementary school I taught at, you know how we cut the grass/other overgrowth?
We told the 5th and 6th grade boys to bring their parents’ machetes to school the next day. And they DID WORK on that overbrush. Can you IMAGINE if a principal just through that directive out in today’s day and age? They’d be out of a job.
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Mark, “Those moral and ethical codes are only ‘inhumane’ by the standards of our comfortable, well-to-do, ‘bourgeois’ society.”
And by the standards of ancient Hindu cultures which were primarily based on transcendent, life-affirming Yogic values and which is the standard I compare everything to, past, present and future.
Most everything comes up pretty dismal in comparison. But then at least 22 Vedic Rishis (see-ers/sages) were women, so maybe that had something to do with it.
The Mahabharat delves into how Queen Kunti, though having had several injustices meted out against herself and her family, exercised caution when asked what she thought would be a just punishment for the main perpetrator. She deliberated carefully and decided that although death would be perfectly just according to the cultural ethos of her time, she preferred to keep the perpetrator living because she knew first hand the pain a parent, particularly in her case a mother, experiences upon the loss of her child. She did not want the mother of the perpetrator, whom she personally knew as a good and noble woman, to experience such grief. Therefore she suggested a punishment which while not ending the perpetrator’s life, would render him “lifeless” in a sense to the society from which he came.
Many commenters on the text, both modern and pre-modern, have suggested that this particular perspective was representative of a general positive trend in feminine values, if not for all time, at least for that time.
The warriors responsible for meting out the punishment decided that they would go with Queen Kunti’s suggestion because it balanced the need for justice with the broader picture. Justice was served, the perpetrator was for all intents and purposes “dead” to his society while his mother was spared the agony of seeing her beloved son physically die before her eyes.
A further chapter in the same Mahabharat epic, which has become the famous philosophical treatise known as the Bhagavad Gita, says, “Among women I am fame, fortune, fine speech, memory, intelligence, steadfastness and patience.”
These are considered feminine virtues in my culture.
This is my cultural standard.
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The point was (unless I’m mistaken) that the writers of those laws were willing to step up and take responsibility; make a choice; establish a standard. The content of the laws was secondary. (And I suspect there was, at the time, very little difference in the opinions of those laws between males and females.)
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“And by the standards of ancient Hindu cultures which were primarily based on transcendent, life-affirming Yogic values and which is the standard I compare everything to, past, present and future.”
Have you read the entire Bhagavad-Gita? The moral code it promotes (especially with reference to war) is not remotely in accord with what most people today would consider a peace-like, civilized society. Heinrich Himmler carried a copy of it with him in his pocket, which is telling.
Your chauvinistic assertion of your culture’s superiority are most likely the result of selection bias. I assure you, Indian (Hindu) culture is as riddled with violence and injustice as any other. The era of the Middle Kingdoms was a peaceful egalitarian utopia? Please.
And your examples of exceptionally moral aphorisms do have their match in other ancient cultures. Read, for example, about Socrates’s discussion with Thrasymachus.; or Boethius’s ‘Consolation of Philosophy.’ Lao Tzu and Confucius; Maimonides amongst Jews, or Avicenna and Avarroes among the Islamic philosophers. Our preference for them is, of course, more an indicator our own presentism (imposition of present values on past ages), more than such examples are themselves epitomes of their times, rather than exceptions.
You seem to have some preference for ‘feminine virtues.’ Though each gender may seem to have proclivities to different virtues (most societies have known for as long as they’ve existed), I do not believe in this notion of gender superiority. Sometimes it takes “masculine” stoicism to turn the other cheek even when every instinct (in both men and women) screams not to. The “masculine” application of ‘rigid’ systems of logic is quite life-affirming, in that the science, medicine, and technology gave, extended, and improved life for billions (including so many ungrateful ones who decry it such “masculine” virtues even as they exploit them). Note than I use quotes because such virtues are not really inherently masculine; their masculinity is an artifact of circumstance.
Meanwhile femininity has its downside.. The Greeks noted the personality type called the ‘great mother,’ overbearing and narcissistic, who dominated, stifled, and ultimately destroyed her children. The vicariously power-hungry wife of Lady Macbeth. Your notion of femininity is thoroughly romanticized, simply put. Try considering a more balanced view.
I am really about as tired of this ‘masculinity-bad, femininity-good’ drivel as I am of all the cultural or ethnic superiority complexes that occupy so many people’s minds.
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Haha, this very same cultural standard forms my own heritage, so I can speak authoritatively here – lets not paint something like that in black & white terms. From where the same Upanishads, Puranas & Gita came, extremely harsh codes like Manusmriti arrived. Manusmriti is one of the things that both the feminists & OBC/SC people point out time & again when trying to reign in the nationalistic flavour. And lets not forget that Atharvaveda provided Ayurveda & Abichara in the same breath, noone likes to mention about Abichara while they extol Ayurveda.
Even Arthashastra has a harsh view of women. Inspite of Chanakya engineering the rise of Mauryan dynasty & preceding Machiavelli by close to 2000 years in political brilliance, he speaks of women negatively – maybe it might be because he was an avowed celibate ;). So there are texts which speak positively like the ones you mentioned (and let’s not forget Kamasutra ;), shame it’s just the summary of the encyclopaedic Kamashastra….. the original is still missing! 😉 ) & those that speak negatively, in sum there is nothing to be proud of or even ashamed of in our culture – it is what it is, and let us accept it with all of its blemish & brilliance.
As for Kunti, yes I know she was a regal woman who did a lot of positives and suffered a lot. But this is the very same woman who cast away her eldest son just after birth. Maybe at that time she was justified but later on she kept silent though she witnessed with her own eyes what he went through without knowing of his lineage. Karna was more honourable than all the Pandavas put together and did his mother ever acknowledge him?? And she finally met him and said the truth ONLY before the actual war AND because knowingly or unknowingly he was in the opposite camp & was a formidable threat to his own brothers. He refused to call her mother and he rightfully claimed that his adoptive mother was the only true one he has. And she shamelessly went onto secure that no-weapon-reuse boon from him to save her “acknowledged” sons inspite of her having NO RIGHT whatsoever of claiming motherhood or any boon arising out of it. And this very BOON sealed his own death. After all is said and done, Kunti is just human with positives and negative like our scriptures – let’s not conveniently forget one aspect for the other…
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I’ve always thought:
Women – more compassionate
Men – more honourable
Another area where men and women seem to compliment each other rather well I’d say.
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“Have you read the entire Bhagavad-Gita?”
Its sitting next to me right now.
“The moral code it promotes (especially with reference to war) is not remotely in accord with what most people today would consider a peace-like, civilized society.”
Which particular “moral code” are you referring to? Chapter? Verse? Let’s discuss.
“Heinrich Himmler carried a copy of it with him in his pocket, which is telling.”
Telling indeed. It tells about the long history of “orientalism” in Europe. Given to much misinterpretation and cultural misappropriation. Two glaring examples are Hitler’s inversion of the Hindu Swastika and his bastardization of the term “arya”.
Your chauvinistic assertion of your culture’s superiority are most likely the result of selection bias. I assure you, Indian (Hindu) culture is as riddled with violence and injustice as any other. The era of the Middle Kingdoms was a peaceful egalitarian utopia? Please.
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“Have you read the entire Bhagavad-Gita?”
It right here next to me as I type.
“The moral code it promotes (especially with reference to war) is not remotely in accord with what most people today would consider a peace-like, civilized society.”
Which particular “moral code” are you referring to? Chapter? Verse?
“Heinrich Himmler carried a copy of it with him in his pocket, which is telling.”
Telling indeed. It tells about the long history of “orientalism” in Europe with all of its gross misinterpretations and tack cultural misappropriations. Two glaring examples are Hitlers inversion of the Hindu Swastika and his bastardization of the term “arya”.
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“Well, the Decalog, Bushido, Mosiac, Buddist and Koranic codes were all written by women, no?”
Koranic? What the right hand possesses?
After watching her father, husband and sons get mercilessly murdered she lawfully and immediately became “what the right hand possess” of the Muslim man who killed them. That means in the eyes of “Allah” it is perfectly “moral” for that Muslim to kidnap her, keep her captive and rape her. In fact its not even considered rape in the Quran but a perfectly halal relationship!
Some moral code that!
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Enough of all this religious clap-trap. Seriously. Do we need to even mention the Partition?
Seriously. I was going to put a stop to this yesterday. This is not happy clappy god trap woman goddess hour.
So enough, before i put all this into moderation, permanently.
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We (me, aka JB’s PPP) won’t tolerate that kind of shit from the Christians, so the Hindus, Shiva’s and wonderful Elephant head man must also give it a rest.
Seriously. or find another forum. If i wanted to learn more about religion I would either move into my parents basement or go read some
more Joseph Campbell.
Thanks for the comments, just lets keep religion out of it. thanks.
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Bhai,
What Mark was actually referring to was that there is no need to speak as if Indian culture has only positives in it. Now I don’t say that you explicitly said this but this was the tone that as a reader I inferred from it just like him, that’s why I replied to you in kind earlier.
Both of us know that it has both ambrosia & poison in equal amounts. Your words do appear chauvinistic atleast to me. You could have presented your views in a much more sublime form – as it currently exists, it looks like RSS-Hindutva rhetoric.
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Thank you Xayadvara for understanding my point. And articulated better than I would be able to, given my admittedly limited kniwledge of Indian culture.
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I belive int he balance of feminine and masculine values, the balance of yin and yang. In the public sphere and in areas like business masculine values should and need to have preference. In politics you have to make the universal rules averyone has to abide by and make the hard compromises that women don`t want to do. Letting ones more subjective empathy for individual cases color policy is bad. Same thing in business. Our value systems are appropriate for certain spheres. Womens values should have more preference in the personal sphere.
As for romanticism of the past have investigated the claims about goddess societies and such before and found that every single presentation of them I had read by a new ager, a woman or anyone lauding the preferred feminine values was uttrely deluded and had no understanding of what the evidence showed the societies to actually be like.
This research is relevant:
http://heartiste.wordpress.com/2011/11/16/women-are-less-principled-than-men/
As is this:
I have elaborated on my views in the comment field here:
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And how good the queens decision was can be legitmately questioned. By reducing the harshness of the punishment she reduces the incentive to avoid commiting similar crimes in the future. Sometimes reducing harshness is the better choice, sometimes it is not. To uphold this as some sort of superior wise deceision I don`t agree with. It depends.
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Cheers mate,
I feel we have to address negativity as it is from our own people, lest the others think bad of us – as it is we already have enough flak from the world, no need to further it…
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“Women-more compassionate”
Hahahaha. Really?
Divorced men say otherwise.
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“I am really about as tired of this ‘masculinity-bad, femininity-good’ drivel as I am of all the cultural or ethnic superiority complexes that occupy so many people’s minds.”
Nowhere did I suggest femininity is all good and masculinity all bad. Not even close.
Rather JudgyBitch suggests women are not ethical in this piece (sorry if I interpreted it wrongly JB but that’s how it comes across).
Moreover I am by no means an ethnic-cultural supremist, quite the opposite in fact. I have rejected my own culture of birth and breeding for one I found to be more congruent with my personal internal values system.
And nowhere have I suggested that India as a whole or Indian people in general are representative of what I called here “Yogic values”.
I’d still like to know what specific moral code in Gita you take issue with however.
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“As for romanticism of the past”
Wudang, I don’t romanticise the past. Actually the present, right now, is probably the best time on a global scale that anyone has ever lived. That is why I continue to be bemused by the idealization of 1950s America by some people in this country. Jim Crow laws were in full swing during that era and Americans did not have the access to other religions, philosophies, traditions, practices and lifestyles that we do now. For us, the future, not the past, is what is bright. That is why I promote yogic values.
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Wudang, You would have to familiarize yourself with the story and the culture from which it came. In the ancient text itself her decision was considered one which balanced worldly justice with transcendent yogic values of detachment, equanimity and compassion.
Yin and yang, wu and dang.
😉
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“Enough of all this religious clap-trap.”
Religious? I’m not religious nor do I follow any religion.
“This is not happy clappy god trap woman goddess hour.”
Nowhere did I mention god.
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“What Mark was actually referring to was that there is no need to speak as if Indian culture has only positives in it. ”
First of all I am not Indian. Secondly I was not talking about “Indian culture”.
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“And by the standards of ancient Hindu cultures which were primarily based on transcendent, life-affirming Yogic values and which is the standard I compare everything to, past, present and future.”
I stand corrected on the fact that I assumed you were Indian and having addressed your words from that assumption. From your own words, you speak as if “ancient Hindu culture” is based on these mega-positive values. As a Hindu, I know very well that you are not only wrong, you are wrong by a huge margin.
I don’t know from where you got your instruction or initiation or if it was self-discovery. Whatever it is, please understand that “this standard” you are comparing to has negative characteristics too – it is just that they are now ignored or shushed. Just because you know a lot about certain strains of Hinduism, because they are positive, doesn’t mean they alone represent this.
I also think PPP is right, this is not the venue to discuss these subjects especially when they are not desired, you can drop me a line at herenearvik@gmail.com – if you want indepth clarification…
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Xayadvara, if you think I’m a naive gora with rose colored glasses on for India and Indian people whom you need to disavow of all idealized notions, think again. I’ve lived in India. I’m married to an Indian. Rest assured mate, I know exactly how f*cked up India and Indians can be.
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They’re not compassionate towards men, don’t be silly.
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“In Study 3, we found that women implicitly associated business with immorality more than men did.”
Maybe this is so because women base their commerce on the trading of sexual favors,whereas men base their economics on the trading of relatively innocuous things like wood,sheep,goats,chickens,cattle,pigs,metals-precious or otherwise,stones-precious or otherwise,and so on.
They don’t call prostitution “the world’s oldest profession” for nothing.
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