Quickies
Quickies: Why are women more religious, monarch butterflies, and healthy eating
- Why are women more religious than men? – “Those are basically your two choices as a woman: Become a feminist and accept the bleak fact that your hard work can only improve but never really fix things in your lifetime or decide you’re going to accept the status quo, which is less work but means accepting a definition of yourself as inherently inferior.”
- Genes reveal answers to monarch butterfly migration mystery – Via Bug Girl.
- Why judging people for eating unhealthy food is classist – From Zarra.
- Sense of smell may predict longevity – “The researchers believe that the decline in the ability to smell is an indicator of some other age-related degeneration, and is not itself a cause of death.” From Amy.
Interesting, on the “Why women are more religious” front. My impression, from being raised Catholic, was that religion was drilled into little girls’ heads a lot harder than little boys’.
The goal, there, is obvious: religion is seen as a talisman against sexuality, and we all know it’s WAY more important to keep the girlfolk away from The Sex while the boyfolk can just just, haha, y’know, don’t get caught, teehee.
That’s clearly the way it was when I was growing up.
No, it goes beyond that. Of the “conversion junkies” I have met–find a new religion to convert to, preferably one with a lot of rules to follow, but the buzz wears off after awhile and they have to find a new religion to convert to–all have been women. One interesting case: a lackluster, semi-observant Jewish guy marries a gentile, and she not only converts to Judaism but dives into keeping a kosher home in a big way, dragging him along with her. The common element being that these women sought out a religion stricter than, and often in contradiction to, the one they were raised in.