Intellectual Cage Match: Ben Radford vs a 4-year old
It was almost exactly one year ago that I discovered my fellow skeptic Ben Radford misrepresenting research in order to write contrarian articles on the impact of marketing on women, and yet, here we are again. In this year’s effort, Ben takes on Riley, the adorable 4-year old girl who became an Internet sensation for her righteous rant about toy marketers and retailers reinforcing gender roles for little boys and girls.
“Banal.”
–Ben Radford
There’s so much that is face-palmingly wrong about Ben’s article that I hardly know where to start, and Julia Lavarnway does a fairly good dissection following his piece. I’ll just highlight a few of the things that Ben had to say about Riley:
The problem is that Riley is wrong: Girls don’t have to buy princesses, and boys don’t have to buy superheroes.
It takes a lot to strawman a 4-year old, but Ben’s done it. For starters, most of his takedown involves literally taking the 4-year old’s words at face value instead of comprehending what she’s saying with her limited vocabulary. But amazingly, Ben even manages to screw up listening to Riley’s literal words. From the video:
[DAD] But you can buy either, right? And boys can buy either, if boys want to buy pink, they can buy pink, right? [RILEY] YES!
Oh, glad we got that taken care of.
Ben goes on to guess at why society has decided that pink is for girls and blue is for boys. One of his guesses is that girls’ toys are pink because their dolls’ skin is pink. Like in this scene, advertised in Walmart’s toys section:
[EDIT: I forgot to mention this completely beside-the-point issue that I do find interesting, which is that white baby dolls tend to be dressed in pink while black dolls get green or yellow and Asian get purple or green. Seriously, check it out, it’s creepy.]
Or as you can clearly see in the background of Riley’s video (I’ve circled the dolls’ skin so you can see better):
Uh-huh. Look at all that pink skin!
Just to prove my point here, I used the eyedropper tool to pick up the color of the dolls’ skin to show you what the scene would look like if Ben’s ridiculous fantasy story were true:
Crap, I missed a shoe! Oh well.
[EDIT: I’m sorry, this is my second major edit but sometimes when I rant I forget to include some important points. Like this: Ben’s idiotic idea that girl toys are pink because of their dolls’ skin ignores all the dolls for boys that are Caucasian, like GI Joe, which are still packaged in blue or camo. Also, his point ignores the central issue: why are baby dolls “girl toys” in the first place? ARG SHUT UP]
Here’s another reason Ben made up for why girl toys are pink:
Pink is also the most popular color for girls’ items for the same reason that white is the most popular color for new cars: that’s what most people prefer.
Get it? Popular things are popular because they’re popular. Pink things are popular because people prefer them. Why is Two and a Half Men popular? Because a lot of people watch it! Why is meth popular? Because a lot of people smoke it!
Or because some people smoke a lot of it, I guess. Whatever.
I think a more interesting and productive discussion would be to ask Riley, “What makes you think that you can’t or shouldn’t buy a superhero, or a non-pink toy?” Where did she get that idea in the first place? It’s bizarre. She’s free to pick up a princess or a superhero, a pink toy or a blue one… It’s not like anyone cares.
This is the point in Ben’s article where I had to put down the laptop, walk to my PS3, and kill things for half an hour before returning. It is one of the most incurious, ignorant statements I’ve ever read. It’s clear at this point that Ben has no idea that he lives in a society with fairly well-defined gender roles, where from a very young age we are taught that there are consequences for not fitting into those roles.
Girls who don’t dress up or wear make-up are called dykes or unfuckable prudes. Boys who wear skirts are called fags or treated for mental instability. Riley understands this, but apparently Ben does not, and that is very, very sad.
Ben ends his article with some truly disgusting (bordering on libelous) hypothesizing on Riley’s dad’s motivations for putting his daughter’s rant on YouTube. Apparently there’s no way that it could have been because he was proud that he was raising a strong, skeptical feminist who at the age of four is able to understand the manipulations of marketers.
I’ve skipped over a key section of Ben’s article because I wanted to finish with it, in the hopes that it will still be seen even by those of you who are scanning this already too-long response:
As long as we’re discussing the media and marketing, there’s another aspect to this video that has been overlooked: why is Riley so popular? Could it have anything to do with the fact that she’s an attractive, a cute-as-a-button precocious White girl?
…Numerous studies have shown that the news media tend to focus on photogenic darlings. Missing persons are far more to get the media’s attention if they are young, attractive, and preferably blonde.
…Research shows that we tend to trust attractive people, and their words have a halo of undeserved truth to them.
I quote that not because I disagree with Ben – I suspect that Riley would have still been very popular online regardless of her race or attractiveness (I guess Ben is saying that there are unattractive 4 year olds out there? Maybe I don’t know enough kids because I thought they were all pretty cute) but I agree that the mainstream media does pay a much greater amount of attention to pretty white girls than to any person of color. No, I only bring it up because I also just read this article on the same website, also by Ben. In his response to Julia Burke’s many valid criticisms, Ben writes (ED: taking her out of context):
Why do you claim that “a girl’s value as a human being, as a contributor to this world, is based on her attractiveness and her attractiveness alone?” Do you have any evidence that this is true, or that most people believe it’s true? Where did this come from? And if this is such a widely-accepted belief, how do you explain the fact that most girls in this survey reject it?
When confronted with Julia’s point that girls are taught that our value is in our physical looks, Ben rejects it without thought. Yet, within the same week he has the gumption to lecture us on the fact that if it weren’t for Riley’s physical appearance, no one would listen to her.
HEAD
ASPLODE
So anyway, winner of the cage match: Riley the 4-year old. Well done Riley! Word of caution, though: this probably won’t be the last time you get lectured by a man on the Internet who knows less than you.
Yeah. Julia also covered this on “We Are SkeptiXX” with a good reply. I also posted briefly about it on my own blog. His “takedown” of 4 year old Riley is full of ad-hoc hypothesis, strawmen and outright untruths. I am confident Riley herself could debate him and win.
http://weareskeptixx.wordpress.com/2011/12/31/whats-small-and-cute-and-pink-all-over/
Oops, saw you already referred to that post :)
I must have scrolled past that point in your text. Sowwy.
Hi there!
W00!!*
* ooh, total CotW material right there …
Obviously, pink is for girls and blue is for boys, which is why those colour schemes have been 100% consistent across time and cultures since the beginning for human civilisation.
At least he didn’t go for the “girls had to pick berries and shit” evo psych line, I suppose.
It’s always interesting to look into the history behind pink & blue in terms of gender in the western world at least. I think I vaguely remember reading something to the effect that pink used to be considered a boys color.
I recall something recent as well, but in searching found a Straight Dope article from 2008…
http://www.straightdope.com/columns/read/2831/was-pink-originally-the-color-for-boys-and-blue-for-girls
Yeah, I think I saw that too. Largely it seems that there probably wasn’t a consensus.
That should read: probably wasn’t as much of a consensus as there is now.
And what would you bet that maybe, there have been different schemes of colors for male/female in various societies which have changed throughout history.
People assume (as Ben is doing) that today’s customs have been around forever and that they’re somehow genetically bred behavior.
And that’s a poor basis for a scientific argument.
Yes, before 1940 I believe. Need to look it up to confirm. But red was the masculine colour. Oink is just the cheap version of red, less dye :)
Hah, I said “oink”, well, pigs are pink too …
Even before 1940.
In a version of Radford’s response to Riley that went up on DiscoveryNews last week (http://news.discovery.com/human/riley-four-year-old-feminist-111229.html), he cites a Time Magazine article that throws in the berries thing:
“[Researchers] speculate that the color preference and women’s ability to better discriminate red from green could have evolved due to sex-specific divisions of labor: while men hunted, women gathered, and they had to be able to spot ripe berries and fruits.”
Aha! I thought I read that little nugget of evo-psych BS, but when I didn’t see it in this article (which Ben on Facebook promised would be longer and more in depth) I assumed I had read it in one of his other articles.
I thought that the whole “men hunted and women gathered” thing was a bit contested anyway.
From Wikipedia:
“A vast amount of ethnographic and archaeological evidence demonstrates that the sexual division of labor in which men hunt and women gather wild fruits and vegetables is an uncommon phenomenon among hunter-gatherers worldwide. Although most of the gathering is usually done by women, a society in which men completely abstained from gathering easily available plants has yet to be found.”
Yeah, we don’t even really call them hunter-gatherers in anthropology anymore (though some old-school people still do). We use the term “foragers” now.
And there is also evidence that suggests that language shapes color perception (there’s a good example here: http://youtu.be/4b71rT9fU-I), which is conveniently ignored by that “hypothesis.”
I actually typed up a longer comment about colour perception as I saw that documentary recently. The experiment in Africa with that tribe that had different colour categories and thus perceived colour quite differently from us in our culture is very fascinating.
I though the comment was a bit off topic so didn’t post it but …
MOTHERF******
Besides, hunters would usually have to track wounded animals because I can’t imagine how often people would get “one-hit-kills” back in the early days of human development. What? Animal blood was blue back then?
What’s notable now is that it’s absolutely not just “pink for girls and blue for boys” right now. It’s overwhelmingly any pink, most purples, pastel yellow, pastel blue, some mint or lime green, and white for girls, and black, dark green, dark red, dark blue, brown, gray, and very rarely dark midnight purple for boys. This isn’t just toys; it carries over into the men’s and women’s clothing section, the automotive section, the workout/exercise section, the crafting section, and to some extent even groceries. Go to a big box store or a sporting goods store. The small weights next to the aerobics DVDs and the gimmicky pilates and yoga equipment is all in “girl colors” and the sports equipment and heavier weights are all in “boy colors.” It’s conveniently color-coded so you know which section of the store is for your gender.
I hate pastels. I like the colors that are considered “for men,” so I have to shop for men’s clothes and alter them to fit. I like more tough-looking, punky stuff, so other than some studded Miley Cyrus brand clothes in the juniors section that are too embarrassing to buy, I’m pretty much going to have to shop in the young men’s section, because skulls and things that I guess must be considered aggressive-looking can only be found there. The gender divide is so deeply ingrained that at times I get embarrassed to be seen buying men’s clothes, and I’ve been tempted to explain that I’m buying them for someone else. I hate that. I have to fight the tendency in myself, but I hate that it’s been ingrained in me.
pink, most purples, pastel yellow, pastel blue, some mint or lime green, and white
That’s funny, I believe I had a Miami Vice style sport coat in each of those colors back in the 80s with matching shoelaces for my black Chuck Taylors. (ohh yeah, I was cool)
This too may pass. Still kinda sucks though.
Right. It changes a little every generation, although even though those particular rules of gendered colors hadn’t reached adult items in the 1980s, they’re definitely the colors I was socialized to see as girl or boy colors in the toy aisle during that time. All my Barbie clothes and My Little Ponies were those pinks and pastel colors, and all my cousins’ Ninja Turtles and Transformers were the darker color scheme. Those color schemes grew up with my generation.
That’s actually one reason I don’t mind the current hipster-explosion. For all their pretentious attitude, the vast majority of that subculture’s fashion pushes boundaries of what is men’s or women’s clothes. Hipster men can wear tight female-style pants and pink shirts and be entirely accepted (granted, just within their subculture, but… eh) and hipster women can wear black and other dark colours in more masculine styles and be likewise accepted. It’s a start, at least…
You know, it just occurred to me that the colors that are supposed to be for girls are also typically “baby colors”. Sometimes they’re brighter and more neon, but the girls’ toy aisle is about half nursery colors, as opposed to the boys’ aisle, which has none. Infantilization, anyone?
INITIATE RANT:
So with this berries “hypothesis,” has anyone stopped to really think about it?
If there’s a selection pressure on women to find berries better, shouldn’t the selection pressure be on the entire species (i.e. BOTH sexes)? Does it hurt men to be able to find berries better? Unless there’s a specific reason for gender specificity in the trait, doesn’t it seem, I dunno, TOTALLY FUCKING ABSURD that in a very short period of evolutionary time, human genders would end up with differing color preferences hard wired at the genetic level?! If it was really this easy for natural selection to operate on one gender independently of the other, why do men still have nipples?
Honestly, I can’t hate these “researchers” enough. This is a grade school, cartoonish understanding of evolutionary biology. If they can’t propose an actual biological mechanism by which sex specific selection has taken place (And maybe actually get off their asses find some evidence for it, since we’ve got terabytes of publicly available human sequence data these days.) WHY IN GODS NAME ARE THEY TELLING THE PUBLIC ABOUT IT?!
If there’s a selection pressure on women to find berries better, shouldn’t the selection pressure be on the entire species (i.e. BOTH sexes)?
Yes, yes it should. All those special genes for berry-finding and the much-vaunted spatial reasoning that is supposedly better in men–they would be passed down to daughters and sons both.
Evo-psych: still stupid.
The hypothesis is worse than that. It not that women have evolved better color perception AT ALL. Instead the genes that control photo-receptors are on the X chromosome (meaning the defective genes are passed through the maternal line). It’s the equivalent of saying that women evolved better blood clotting because men are the ones prone to hemophilia.
BTW, in the US people of African and Asian decent have about half the prevalence of color blindness than those of European decent which implies that they are relatively recent mutations (if it was from before humans spread out from Africa it likely would be more evenly distributed).
Good point. I just face palmed so hard, I think I might have brain damage.
Ah yes, the old fruit picking argument. You know what I always say when I hear that one coming up again? Blueberries. They’re berries… and they’re blue!
Gurrrr. That is so facepalmingly head asplodingly AWFUL.
People have such an amazing ability to rationalize this shit. I have a friend who is an intelligent, strong woman who says “girls just naturally gravitate towards that stuff.” Yeah, after years of seeing commercials, having every relative give them toys in the “correct” colors and themes starting from BEFORE THEY WERE FREAKING BORN, and constantly having their assigned gender role reinforced every second of their lives by sometimes unwitting adults. How can you witness dads rough-housing with their baby boys and treating their baby girls like they are made of glass, or hear ladies in the store tell toddler girls how pretty they are and boys how big and smart they are, and think that these messages are not being driven into kids’ heads at every turn?
On a bit of a tangent, last night I listened to the year end SGU, where the guys went on about how popular that stupid peeing segment with George Hrab was. Have any of them admitted how stupid, wrong, and unscientific their dumb evolutionary psychology idea about how boys are naturally competitive and girls aren’t because they play games when they pee? Because I haven’t heard them acknowledge that at all.
Re: The SGU episode.
I haven’t listened to the episode yet, but could that have been the gotcha in their new “segment” where one or more of them talks about something like this (known BS) and listeners are to find it and write in?
I thought that was a joke, because Jay and Rebecca had accidentally done it a few times. Plus, wouldn’t they reveal it. This was George Hrab relating a story about trying to open the bottom of an airport toilet by peeing on it, and the guys all started telling stories about doing things like that when they were kids, and Hrab decided it was the reason why men are all competitive and women are all naturally placid and not competitive. The guys all went along with it. Rebecca argued against it pretty well, but she was outnumbered and they all dismissed her objections, even Steve. It was terribly disappointing. They revisitited it last week to talk about how hilarious it was, but not how wrong their “theory” was.
Yeah, sadly, it wasn’t a joke. It was very frustrating for me at the time, to suddenly have to unpack the total collected gender beliefs of five men without preparation live in front of a small audience and being recorded. Not one of my personal favorite moments and it wasn’t the time to go into it again during the wrap-up episode.
Sigh. Baby steps.
At least you’ve got the platform to speak up about it, Rebecca. Maybe it’s frustrating, but at least you’re helping helping people take baby steps in the right direction.
It was a guess… and incorrect.
That episode was so FRUSTRATING! I kept shouting at my iPod that “I’ve done that!” or whatever correction they needed to hear but couldn’t. Not a single one of them was aware of the study where they took mothers and toddlers of crawling age, and gave the mothers a remote that controlled the incline of a ramp. First they asked mothers to rate how steep they thought the ramp could go before the kids couldn’t do it. Then they had the mothers adjust the ramp to what they thought the kids’ level of ability was. Then the researchers adjusted the ramps so that each kid got to try it at every level.
In every single case, the mothers underestimated their daughters’ abilities and overestimated their sons’ abilities. Every. Single. Case. When the researchers controlled the incline, they found no difference among the genders as to ability to climb or level of fearlessness/fearfulness at the effort. (I’m not at home so I’ll have to cite my source later when I can get back to my own stuff).
Ben’s also wrong when he states: “The choice of blue for infants has its roots in superstition. In ancient times the color blue (long associated with the heavens) was thought to ward off evil spirits, and the color distinction between the two genders dates back millennia.”
From http://www.brainpickings.org/index.php/2009/12/11/pink-and-blue-project/ : “Pink was once a color associated with masculinity, considered to be a watered down red and held the power associated with that color. In 1914, The Sunday Sentinel, an American newspaper, advised mothers to ‘use pink for the boy and blue for the girl, if you are a follower of convention.’ The change to pink for girls and blue for boys happened in America and elsewhere only after World War II.”
QI:
http://www.comedy.co.uk/guide/tv/qi/episodes/7/7/
“The people who were traditionally dressed in pink and called girls were boys. Pink was considered the traditional colour for boys and blue for girls in the 19th century. In 1927, there was a report about Princess Astrid of Belgium who had decorated her son’s room pink, only for her to give birth to a daughter. Part of the reason why blue may be seen as the traditional colour for girls is because the Virgin Mary is dressed in blue. Right until the mid-15th century, all children were referred to as girls, boys were called “knave girls” and girls were called “gay girls”. The word “boy” originally meant “servant”.”
To throw in a little confusion, in the seventeeth and eighteeth centuries (and maybe earlier), it wasn’t uncommon to disguise young boys as girls, at least among the rich. Kidnapping children for ransom was a real problem, and of course you could get more for a boy than a girl. So if the gangs figured your son was a daughter, they may not bother.
I’m a little unclear on what the fuck is wrong with someone that they’re so damn protective of hideous gendered marketing of toys? Is he that afraid that a 4-year-old girl might end up knowing more about Transformers than him?
I suspect it’s a typical skeptical pitfall of going against conventional wisdom for the sake of going against conventional wisdom, then digging in and becoming very unskeptical for all the same reasons anyone ever holds on to a bad idea in the face of evidence to the contrary. We all need to be careful of doing that. Radford just picked a truly infuriating sacred cow.
Agreed. I think it’s a combination of ignorance and a desire to be contrarian. I can actually forgive him more for the ignorance of this article compared to the blatant misrepresentation in his previous article.
Ben is right. There are some absolutely hideous looking 4 year olds. You should see some of the mutant munters my son plays with at pre-school. It’s enough to put you off your PB&J. Oh, but he’s wrong about chicks and stuff.
Rebecca 1, Riley 1, Ben 0.
It’s worth mentioning, also, that Ben’s only discernible response (first on http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/poll_holds_surprises_about_teen_self-image_reality_tv_effects/ and then on http://weareskeptixx.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/reality-tvs-effects-on-teenage-girls/) to my numerous criticisms:
“Why do you claim that ‘a girl’s value as a human being, as a contributor to this world, is based on her attractiveness and her attractiveness alone?’ Do you have any evidence that this is true, or that most people believe it’s true?”
was an egregious case of quote-mining. Here’s my full comment, in my original response to his statement that 28 percent of teen girls believing that “a girl’s value is based on how she looks” is “good news”:
“A girl’s value is based on how she looks. A girl’s value as a human being, as a contributor to this world, is based on her attractiveness and her attractiveness alone. Twenty-eight percent of young girls surveyed believe this. If that isn’t alarming by itself, I don’t suppose I can convince you that it is. I will say that a statistic that twenty-eight percent of teens believed that the Earth was flat would not, I believe, procure such a glass-half-full reaction.”
Dishonesty is only one of our concerns here, as Rebecca shows with all the ferocity deserved. But I did want to point this out as it smacks of the same cherry-picking and quote-mining that Ben has shown in this piece and throughout the one to which I responded.
You’re completely right about Radford’s dishonesty, juliagulia – I thought Rebecca was being pretty generous calling it ‘ignorance’! I bet he thinks millions of people just coincidentally love the Gap too…
Well done Riley! Word of caution, though: this probably won’t be the last time you get lectured by a man on the Internet who knows less than you.
Best line I’ve read all week.
Very nice post. Thank you for smacking down a bunch of male privilege and adult privilege nonsense.
There is a reason for the saying “Out of the mouths of babes oft time come gems.” Before children have been socialized into the social hierarchy they often speak the truth before they have learned to censor their speech and their thinking.
If I ever say something like that, please smack me down too.
I just wanted to ad an addendum.
There is a reason that skeptics never argue from authority, because authorities can be wrong. Arguing that a 4 year old doesn’t know something because they are 4 years old is an argument from authority. Wrong when an adult does it, wrong when a male does it, wrong when anyone does it, especially wrong when a self-proclaimed skeptic does it.
It really reduces someone’s skeptical cred to do so.
I think I love you. That eyedropper bit takes the cake! I have to say I’m also feeling a little validated in that I had an issue with Ben’s article about midwifery earlier this year, and I was feeling sheepish about questioning a big name in the skeptical community. You’ve sure reminded me that there’s no need to be sheepish, regardless of who you’re addressing, if their ideas are dumb!
Yeah speak up, the more the better!
It is indeed laughable that gender stereotypes aren’t enforced every single day.
Outside of the realm of toys, I tutor math and science on the side of my day-job. When tutoring teen & pre-teen girls, I hear the girls often say “I get criticized in my physics/math/chem class when I ask questions” and in group settings I often see the boys criticizing mistakes they make and poking fun at them. Not always meanly mind you, a lot of it is flirting, but they can’t go through a single stem class without being made fun of or flirted with. And frankly, I see that it often makes them aggrivated/uncomfortable, and reluctant to seek help on difficult material. When they feel this way day-day, stem can really feel like an uncomfortable and unwelcoming place for them. So on top of the fact that society already says “stem science is for boys”, they have to deal with a mountain of social beratement if they do choose it. Sucks.
So yes, while Riley can make any choice she wants, the social fallout from peers and even adults she may get when she gets a boy toy becomes an implicit form of gender stereotyping.
And let’s not forget about the boys too. When boys are taught that girls do certain things and boys do other things, this is how sexism begins, so boys AND girls should be taught that it’s okay to deviate from antiquated roles.
Solution here I think: Lots of counter-media and education that promotes that girls and boys can do anything they want :).
My favorite part is when he tries to blame pink gender-coding on an intrinsic, biologically dictated preference for pink in girls.
So, why are baby girls also dressed in pink and given pink things? Is he honestly suggesting that parents do this in response to observed color preferences in their newborn infants?
Oh, and why are so many adult men mortified at the thought of wearing pink or having pink things? It can’t be hunter-gatherer related, or it would keep them from benefiting from the gatherer’s work.
It requires at least three separate hypothetical models to explain this single phenomenon the Ben Radford way.
Ben? William of Occam wants to have a word with you.
Radford has just been alerted to this blog. :)
There once was a time when I cared about Ben’s response to criticism. Not after seeing article after article like this, and then seeing his behavior on weareskeptixx.
I work in a big box store and the idea that kids are able to choose whatever toys they want regardless of what gender they’re “for” is ridiculous. Hardly a day goes by when I don’t see a kid grab a toy off the shelf, show it to their parent(s), and get told “You don’t want that toy, that’s for -gender-. How about something like this instead?.”
Worse than that are the various extended family members looking to buy gifts for a kid they don’t know very well asking things like “I need a girl’s toy, for an 8 year old.”
The idea that kids can just grab what they want and gender roles aren’t being enforced by adults really is absurd….
EXACTLY. In the library, I’ve seen kids ask for books for the “wrong” gender (BOOKS! FOR THE WRONG GENDER! SERIOUSLY!) and parents tell them no. “No, you can’t have Dora the Explorer. Dora is for girls. Get Diego.”
Hardly a day goes by when I don’t see a kid grab a toy off the shelf, show it to their parent(s), and get told “You don’t want that toy, that’s for -gender-. How about something like this instead?.”
Yep. Furthermore, there is actual scientific research backing up that observation, yet Radford didn’t bother to look–he just knows that “nobody cares” what kind of toys these totally-free-to-choose kids pick up.
Pardon me if I’m skeptical of the very idea that this fellow is a skeptic.
Maybe we all start buying the younglings telescopes and microscopes instead of Barbies and GI Joes this stuff starts to go away – and we maybe get more scientists out of the deal to boot.
There is an excellent article about the adverse effects of peer pressure.
http://www.creativitypost.com/science/how_not_to_get_absorbed_in_someone_elses_abdomen
This is what peer-pressure does, it compels social conformity and the loss of the ability to think independently. If you can’t think independently, then you are not thinking.
This is why even we skeptics still have a long way to go in dealing with misogyny. Living in a misogynist society will pull for misogyny. As Nietzsche said:
“Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.”
To recognize a monster in the abyss, you need to have pattern recognition for monsters instantiated in your neuroanatomy. If you run that pattern recognition ‘native’, you run the risk of becoming a monster yourself. When you run things ‘native’ in your neuroanatomy, the output is feelings.
To ensure that your system does not become corrupted, you need to run monster pattern recognition as an emulation, using facts and logic where the output is the logical argument of why this idea is monstrous.
I don’t really understand what you meant when you were writing about dealing with the monster in the abyss.
Ooh, I do.
That is exactly how I felt the first time I saw 4chan.
The same quote went through my mind at the time.
How in the hell does he reconcile this little bit of racist bullshit…
“It could also be that the preference for pink is evolutionary, as a sign of health. Jaundice, fever, and anemia, for example, produce unhealthy skin tones. It could be that preferring pink, in some small way, is hard-wired into us.” (from the comments on the original article)
with this little bit of what I can only imagine is feigned anti-racist discourse…
“why is Riley so popular? Could it have anything to do with the fact that she’s an attractive, a cute-as-a-button precocious White girl?”
Seriously? You propose that early human ancestors had pink skin as a sign of health (talk about un-scientific!), and then you have the audacity to criticize her popularity based on being an “attractive” (what the fuck? she’s four) white girl?
This person is seriously considered a skeptic??
His article was painful to read.
Whoa, I look “jaundiced” and “unhealthy” because of evolution…I didn’t realize *sob*.
Seriously, Radford needs to look at yellow skin against those Purple settings Rebecca was talking about it for Asian dolls…it makes my Asian sallow, anemic, diseased looking skin really pop.
I loled.
He doesn’t reconcile it, he doesn’t even think about it in any measure.
That statement reminds me of an episode of Startalk a couple months back on cosmetics. The person being interviewed used the term “flesh tone” to describe one of the colors, and Dr. Tyson smacked him – “Who’s flesh?” and then talked about growing up with “flesh tone” crayons that didn’t look like him.
To bad the bozo who wrote this article didn’t have a person of anything other than white male to proof his work.
That sounds wintastic. Link?
I know there are worse things about going to the fast food drive through than damaging my kids’ gender concepts, but it really pisses me off when they ask, “girl or boy toy?” Especially because my kids hear it and it adds to the pile of sexist crap they’re deluged with.
I had a friend who wanted to know what the toys were first. They said “we’re not allowed to tell you until you pick girl or boy.” She said she wouldn’t pick until they told her what the toys were, thinking her girls might prefer a Shrek finger puppet to a miniature Barbie with style-able hair. They refused to tell her. She refused to eat there.
Simpson’s yellow is a healthy skin color, even for white people? WTF?
But he can’t explain away “bronies”. Game. Set. Match.
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2011/06/bronies-my-little-ponys/
Even worse, the video was uploaded in May. The first post I saw about this girl said she was 3 years old.
http://unicornbooty.com/blog/2011/12/26/3-year-old-girl-rails-against-gender-specific-marketing-in-toy-store-video/
Riley wins by a TKO.
This circular reasoning is so beyond perfect that it is perfectly perfect!
“Pink is also the most popular color for girls’ items for the same reason that white is the most popular color for new cars: that’s what most people prefer.”
Most people prefer white cars because they are more visible on the road. They have an actual practical reason to prefer the color. Pls don’t anyone tell him that.
This depends on where you live, white isn’t as popular in places where there is snow on the ground half the year because it makes you less visible. It’s a good illustration that what is popular is often affected by things other than what people like.
Circular is generous, it is an immaculately textbook example of a tautology. Things are popular because people like them. His reasoning is painful because it hurts.
“this probably won’t be the last time you get lectured by a man on the Internet who knows less than you.” That’s for damn sure. The definitive word on this, and not just on the net, is Rebecca Solnit’s brilliant Men Who Explain Things: Facts Don’t Get It Their Way. http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/174918 (Scroll down a little past the intro for an expose on how all this posturing is not in any way based on reason or knowledge base.
“Where did she get that idea in the first place?” Oh, I don’t know, how about we ask Katie, the girl who made a splash when her mother blogged about her being ostracized for liking Star Wars? Maybe she can tell us.
Or maybe Bradford could read up on the last 40 or so years of research on how gender roles develop in children. Three to four years old is exactly the time when awareness of “appropriate” play really comes into being. If he’s only going to read one study on the topic, which would apparently be an improvement, I recommend this one:
Self-Regulatory Mechanisms Governing Gender Development
This study tested predictions about development of gender-related thought and action from social cognitive theory. Children at 4 levels of gender constancy were assessed for their gender knowledge, personal gender standards, and gender-linked behavior under different situational conditions. Irrespective of gender constancy level, all children engaged in more same-sex than cross-sex typed behavior. Younger children reacted in a gender stereotypic manner to peers’ gender-linked behavior but did not regulate their own behavior on the basis of personal gender standards. Older children exhibited substantial self-regulatory guidance based on personal standards. They expressed anticipatory self-approval for same-sex typed behavior and self-criticism for cross-sex typed behavior. Their anticipatory self-sanctions, in turn, predicted their actual gender-linked behavior. Neither gender knowledge nor gender constancy predicted gender-linked behavior. These results lend support to social cognitive theory that evaluation and regulation of gender-linked conduct shifts developmentally from anticipatory social sanctions to anticipatory self-sanctions rooted in personal standards.
There’s even a pdf available so he doesn’t have to look it up: http://des.emory.edu/mfp/Bandura1992CD.pdf
This is the point in Ben’s article where I had to put down the laptop, walk to my PS3, and kill things for half an hour before returning.
WIN.
Seriously, I had the same reaction to reading this tripe. I made some town guards take an arrow to the knee. (*Dodges incoming rotten tomatoes*)
So, this guy is a big name in the skeptical community?
Yeah, and people wonder why we say the skeptical community has a sexism problem.
BEN RADFORD RESPONDS: http://www.centerforinquiry.net/blogs/entry/rebecca_and_riley_tempest_in_a_dolls_tea_party/
It’s cute how he thinks he deserves a sober, thorough response, or anything less than “WTF”.
I know I thought this at this time last year, but: yep. 100% of my respect for him and his “research” is gone.
Well, he’s been saying for years that we all must “respect his authoriTIE”, between him and Joe Nickell I’m not sure which has the higher opinion of themself.
Wow, and it’s even more tedious and condescending than the original article. Put down the shovel Ben, you’re in deep enough already.
The comments are painful. I wish I hadn’t read them. :/
Miranda Celeste Hale’s comment of:
“This is a fantastic, thorough, classy, and spot-on response, Ben.”
To any of us who have any decent sense of critical thinking, this rebuttle comes more across as vacuous, tedious, patronizing and way off base. Ugh!
I spent the better part of the last two hours making a reply. His self-righteousness is astounding. He is so, so, so wrong. And I have little hope that he will realize the errors in his thinking. He’s digging in his heals in the least skeptical way possible.
Your effort shows. Perhaps we should call you “Watson’s bulldog”?
Not only was my comment deleted, but my login information is no longer in the database.
Way to go, Ben! The truly skeptical thing to do! Delete people who *actually* take you up on calling out all of your points!
See, this is why I just buy kids books about dinosaurs.
Yeah when I was little I wanted to play with spiderman toys and the little green army men. I had dolls but I didn’t like them, hated barbies (they looked weird to me). I really didn’t understand the whole, you’re a girl so you will (not might) have baby someday, so now I have to play with one? I got in trouble at daycares for playing with boy toys, got punished for playing video games (straight As no issues with not doing homework or anything), got in trouble for not dressing pretty, I refused to wear anything but jeans and a tshirt. When I got in high school and still hadn’t found a boyfriend, because somehow I had to have one to be considered worthwhile by my mom–her and my little sister started calling me a dyke and making fun of me. This caused me to get a boyfriend just to get one so they would STFU, who stole about $100 bucks of stuff from me and apparently was “cheating” on me.
Yeah, gender roles aren’t enforced at all. Oh yeah, and of course I never got any toys or games or books I wanted because those were boy things (yeah even the scifi books, got grounded from those a couple times).
So yeah… /RAGE
I have the same level of resentment because I never got marbles. I wanted fucking marbles, and got a My Little Pony instead. I think I ended up cutting off its head.
This is an interesting topic. It reminds me of a situation I observed growing up. My grandmother was good friends with a very devote Christian family. One of their daughters had a somewhat boyish/unfeminine appearance. She was a nice person and not-unlike myself, somewhat shy.
Because of her looks which didn’t quite match the norms of the bi-modal male/female distribution, she endured some very cruel name calling in middle school and high school.
I knew her father pretty well and I remember that he once remarked about her working on her problem with Tom-boyishness. Although he didn’t say it explicitly, I got the feeling from his tone that she was being pressured by him and his wife to adhere more closely to a feminine gender template.
She went on to marry and have children and is doing missionary work abroad and is seemingly happy, but I have often wondered if she would have taken a different path had her parents been more accepting of her innate tendencies.
\BCT
Infighting is so productive! I’m sure glad that homeopathy, antivax, and Michele Bachmann are battles that are over and done with, so that the skeptical feminists can focus on what REALLY matters.
Seriously, Rebecca, as you gain feminist supporters (and I’m sure you are, so congratulations on that), the skeptical followers you have who still see ourselves as a too-small voice in the world are slowly edging away from you. People like me. Me. I’m not saying that this tack isn’t the right one for you, but you should be aware of what the cost of this ugly bickering is.
If you believe that, then you weren’t really skeptical to begin with. /shrug
Thanks for that well thought out, insightful, not at all canned response, utakata, but I was speaking to Rebecca.
I agree. This sort of analysis-free, screechy attack is tedious. I’ve learned nothing.
“Screechy”?? What the fuck? How is “/shrug” screechy? And what the fuck is your username supposed to mean?
I guess we should totally have expected the tone trolls to come and play, especially after recently disturbing the proverbial hornet’s nest.
Good god, calm down. I was referring to the original post. But thanks for going straight to calling me a troll. That’s all I need to know about the level of -your- discussion.
Oh, sorry, I didn’t realize that you were calling Rebecca “screechy.” That means my previous comments about you being a tone troll are irrele….oh, wait, no it’s not. It’s still fucking tone trolling.
And I still want to know what the hell is up with your screenname.
If you want to direct a message just at Rebecca, then e-mail her personally. However, since you made this odious critique public here at Skepchic, then I’m afraid all priveledge you assumed you had for Rebecca only replies are off the table. Deal with it.
Oh snap! scribe999 had already beaten me to it. :(
Because making the skeptical community a welcoming place for women isn’t at all important. Neither is calling someone out on bad research and erroneous beliefs. If Rebecca had called Radford out on multiple bad posts on another topic, would you be here attacking her on driving skeptics “like you” away? Because without people like Rebecca to temper this bullshit, Radford and his ilk would be driving skeptics like me away. But skeptics like you are more important to the movement, apparently.
The answer to your question, MarianLibrarian, is “yes”, but again, I was speaking to Rebecca.
Oh, OK, good to know where you stand. You are the most important skeptic. Other skeptics who have been in the movement a long time and felt the sting of sexism do not matter, because it’s YOUR movement. How dare these yucky girls mess it up by being in it. Also good to know that Rebecca’s opinion is so important to you that no one else can possibly answer you. I agree, she has a lot of insightful things to say.
That interpretation of what I said isn’t even wrong.
A wait, I forgot which part I phrased as a question and which part I phrased as sarcasm. So my response should have been to your apparent belief that Ben Radford is above criticism no matter what he says, because “infighting is bad.” Also good to know.
Infighting is not the same as criticism, of course. But thanks for reminding me why I keep saying that I’m speaking to Rebecca.
I have said my piece until Rebecca replies.
Right. “Infighting” is apparently valid criticism of people you agree with by people you don’t like.
Then send a private message…this is a comments section. For the community. Where we comment on the post AND on each others comments. So, expect feedback from people other than the target of your stalking.
Presumptuous, grandstanding for a private audience can be done via the Skepchick “Contact” form.
Man, Beleth must think s/he’s some hot shit if s/he deserves a thoughtful response to that comment, when Ben Radford got “WTF.” Truly, the most important skeptic has arrived.
Um. You’re only speaking to Rebecca? Sure, I believe ya~!
You made a ridiculous comment in a public forum and now you’re getting called out on it, and instead of responding, you’re claiming you’re “only talking to Rebecca” … probably so you don’t have to take responsibility for your ridiculous comments;
Maybe next time… don’t make a public comment in a public comment section if you don’t want replies. Smart, yeah?
Keeping personal conversations private is NOT Beleth’s strong suit, by the way…
So, I have a few issues with your comment.
First, infighting can be very productive because it keeps our communities from becoming what we most despise, which is unquestioning sheep following the voices of a few. Of course, your use of the loaded word “infighting” I’m sure is meant to distinguish what Rebecca is doing with feminist skepticism from what you deem “appropriate” skeptical topics (which you would label, what, “debate”? “Discussion”?).
Second, skeptical and feminist supporters are not mutually exclusive, so your assertion that she’s gaining feminist supporters but losing skeptical ones is horseshit.
Three, this is typical tone trolling. You’ve said absolutely zero about the content of the post. All you’ve commented on is how “ugly” her tone is. Would it be acceptable to you if this post was aimed at someone who was not a skeptic but perhaps a religious leader? Are you actually annoyed because the post is directed at someone within our community?
Four, as a self-identified skeptic, does it not irritate you that someone who is (apparently) a well-known skeptic is spewing completely unscientific nonsense under the guise of critical thinking? Even if you did not care about the gender aspect of this, you should at least care about that.
Five, your answer to MarianLibrarian’s question leads me to believe that you feel skeptics should never vehemently disagree with each other. Is this correct? If Rebecca had pointed out that his positions on homeopathy, anti-vax, or Michelle Bachman (why?) were based on opinion and speculation and were in no way scientific, you still think that would be bad??
I guess what I’m trying to get at is that your position seems completely UNLIKE skepticism. But perhaps I am misunderstanding your point. Would you care to elaborate, or have the angry wimmins scared you away already?
I don’t remember, were there calls of this “harmful infighting” over Randi’s climate change cluelessness? Over Bill Maher’s anti-medicine lunacy? Or does it only show up when feminism or atheism are the skeptical topics du jour?
IIRC there were a very small number of calls for people to give Randi some slack, none for Maher though, most jumped on with both feet there.
Might have something to do with Randi being likable and open to criticism and Maher acting like the south end of a northbound horse.
Also, Randi eventually admitted he was wrong and said he’d changed his mind based on the evidence. Maher slightly watered down his argument and pretended he’d never said some of the things he said about medicine, even though it was on TV for anyone to see, and stuck fast to some of his other beliefs. Maher acted like his critics were crazy and Randi acted like his legitimate critics had something to say worth considering. So a lot of people have forgotten that Randi ever was a global warming skeptic (a true skeptic as opposed to a denier), but most people still laugh at the idea of Bill Maher receiving skeptical activism awards. I don’t know how much “infighting” came out of those events, though. I’ve seen a lot more in regards to “tone” when Christopher Hitchens or Richard Dawkins would say something that religious groups took offense to. Which is a perfectly legitimate debate with a much less clear right and wrong than this debate, but it has caused a big rift.
The argument of the form “we can’t worry about x, because problem y is bigger” is an odd choice considering you’re part of the skeptical community. That’s an accusation skeptics often have to deal with in the first place. It’s a false choice.
And as far as gaining supporters or losing, you don’t point to anything other than yourself as an anecdote to support your claim that it’s doing the movement harm, so here’s my anecdote. I’m more interested and invigorated as a skeptic than ever before, because these are interesting topics, and it’s skepticism being pointed at itself. I’ve been challenged by the controversies and realized I was very often on the wrong side of them, and didn’t even know it. That’s skepticism at it’s best, and like science, it’s a contentious, critical, and noisy process.
Good. Go away. Go play with the people who upvote comments about raping a 15-year-old on Reddit.
I sure will be happy when people realize that multitasking within a movement is in fact possible. Some of us can focus on homeopathy, others can focus on cryptozoology, others can hammer away at religion. That’s the beauty of having lots of people with lots of different areas of expertise!
That beauty is lessened if the movement isn’t actually welcoming to new people. Or to existing members. Particularly those members who happen to make up about half of the general population. In fact, it seems like alienating half of the potential skeptical population with bad science and fallacious arguments structured around preserving privilege might be a smidge more problematic than “infighting.”
The whole notion of the skeptical community should be a willingness to ask and answer tough, biting questions, so that no belief goes undoubted and no claim untested. If you or Ben Radford can’t take that, because oh dear, someone might have used some harsh words, then maybe it’s better that you do find some nicer places to patronize.
Exactly, and I would suggest that Mr. Radford stick to cryptozoology; his thinking tends to get sloppy when he strays from the subject.
Ironic considering how many time he has stated that people should speak only to their areas of expertise.
You call it infighting, I call it a valid and necessary criticism of a self-proclaimed skeptic who used shoddy logic (among other things) to dismiss a 4-yr old girl’s criticism of a toy store. Besides using circular logic to support the idea that girls like pink because it’s the color of dolls, Radford also makes appeals to popularity (girls like pink, so it’s popular) and appeals to antiquity (it’s been this way for centuries!*). And I’m still not sure that Radford has ever heard of psychology, even though he seems to advocate dubious evolutionary psychology and just-so stories that arise from it.
*if by centuries you mean since about WWII.
Well, on the other hand Beleth, RW and the gang here has opened my eyes on many things and I have joined the cause, so it’s a wash.
And you can add me to that column. What kind of skeptic runs away from uncomfortable truths?
FOR ZOD’S SAKE, SOMEBODY DO SOMETHING! BELETH’S ABOUT TO LOSE FAITH IN US!!!
HOW COULD WE SURVIVE SUCH A DISASTER?!!!!!111
And a few days ago you were asking us how you can help making the community more accepting of women and undo the problem?
Well… dismissing the validity of attempts to address the problem is NOT a good way to go about doing that, Beleth.
You appear to have accidentally addressed this to me instead of Ben. Weird! But yeah, he’s the one who is polluting your beautiful skepticism by attempting to discuss marketing and girls. I’m the one who responded to him. Easy mistake to make.
Yeah! Who cares about sexism and faux-skepticism within our community? We should just take it; we should just ignore it; because there are other things to worry about, and we can’t focus on more than one thing! That’s unpossible, amiright?
Re: “When confronted with Julia’s point that girls are taught that our value is in our physical looks, Ben rejects it without thought. Yet, within the same week he has the gumption to lecture us on the fact that if it weren’t for Riley’s physical appearance, no one would listen to her.”
It’s significant to acknowledge the difference between “us,” i.e. society, and “the media.” I’m not suggesting these things aren’t linked, but it seems to me Radford is making two different references in those two commentaries. That matters.
Indeed he was referring to a study about reality TV in the post on which I commented, but he’s talking about us/society here:
“I honestly don’t know anyone who thinks that a girl’s value is based on her appearance.” (his response to my response, here: http://weareskeptixx.wordpress.com/2011/12/23/reality-tvs-effects-on-teenage-girls/)
and here:
“why is Riley so popular? Could it have anything to do with the fact that she’s an attractive, a cute-as-a-button precocious White girl?”
so I find the comparison valid. You acknowledge that “society” and “the media” are not separate entities, and I agree; just as toy stores try to sell what society wants to buy, the media tries to present what society wants to hear.
As a parent, I would be SO PROUD of any child of mine who is able to voice such well-formed opinions.
“Where did she get that idea in the first place? It’s bizarre. She’s free to pick up a princess or a superhero, a pink toy or a blue one… It’s not like anyone cares.”
Not knowing Riley, I’ll just have to answer this myself.
I got this idea when I was 4 and asked for Hot Wheels and was told “those are boy’s toys, wouldn’t you like a nice babydoll instead?” When I listed a microscope on my Christmas letter to Santa every year, I was told “that’s not for girls, you should have a pretty doll or how about a nice makeup kit?”. When I asked for Legos, action heroes, cars, tools, jeans and sneakers, anything at all that I was actually interested in, I was told by my mother, by my grandparents, by Santa at the mall, by my teachers, that girls play with dolls and pretend kitchens and wear pretty pink dresses but boys get all the cool stuff and get to wear pants and sneakers.
When I was 12, my mother bought me some girlie item of clothing that I didn’t like (and by this time I had long given up telling her that I didn’t like them because I was lectured at every Christmas and birthday to just say “thank you” and not express displeasure at unwanted gifts), I said “thanks” and went back to practicing my piano. My mom got pissed at my lukewarm reception & pestered me to admit that I didn’t like them until I finally told her that I didn’t. To which she started screaming about how ungrateful I was. At that point, my father came home and yelled at us both to shut up because he could hear us from the sidewalk. My mom complained that I didn’t like her gift, so my dad said “then stop fucking buying her stuff!” My mom, thinking it was a threat, said “fine, I won’t buy you any more clothes then!” With a great sigh of relief, I gave her a genuine “thank you” and went back to my piano.
Fast forward 8 years, when I was dressing in jeans and men’s BDUs and “wife-beater” men’s tank tops and men’s Converse shoes or steel-toe boots. My mom sat me down to ask if I was a lesbian. I said no (which was true) and asked why she thought so. She said it was because of how I dressed and that I had only male friends, no female friends. I had to explain to her that clothing style has nothing to do with sexual orientation, and to think about it for a minute … all male friends and no female friends … it’s really hard to be a lesbian when you don’t get along with girls but you surround yourself with hot guys.
So, Ben, the short answer to “Where did she get that idea in the first place? It’s bizarre. She’s free to pick up a princess or a superhero, a pink toy or a blue one… It’s not like anyone cares.” is that I got that idea from every single adult family member and every TV commercial I ever saw, that I was absolutely NOT free to pick up the toy I wanted because I was a kid and subject to parental control, and it absolutely is like everyone fucking cares.
I’m in my 30s now, I’d really like it if people would stop telling me to dress pretty or learn to be more feminine or that I shouldn’t have such an awesome tool collection because it intimidates men that my tools are better than theirs and I’ll never find a husband that way (I’ve got news for those morons – I have, in fact, found men willing to be my husband and not in spite of my unfeminine nature, but because of it, and why is it such a problem that I don’t want to get married anyway?).
My 4 year old daughter was teased at school last term because she has a Doctor Who lunchbox. Doctor Who, she was told by children of both sexes, is for boys.
‘No it isn’t!’ she told them.
Apart from anything else, the current incarnation of Doctor Who (and the Sarah Jane Adventures spin-off) has consistantly featured strong female characters. It’s one of the reasons I’m happy for her to watch the show. She can see women showing that they’re every bit as clever and capable as the male characters.
For Christmas, she got Doctor Who stuff *and* dolls, because she likes (and asked for) both.
I don’t always get it right, but having two daughters has made me much more aware of sexism and gender stereotyping. I do think things are overall moving in the right direction, but when you come across such obvious stupidity as evidenced in Radford’s article, it does make you head desk.
@Baldy..right on. Myself, my wife, 10yr old daughter and 22 mos. son all Dr. Who fanatics. When the 22 mos. old gets grumpy and starts throwing his fries at people in the next booth at the restaurant we play him the youtube vid below on our cells to keep him occupied. Thought I’d share, thanks for the space.
http://youtu.be/6J_3rsEwYVE
Right then, back to pink and stuff