Tea at Trianon: Men and Women are Different

John Wilson Croker on Marie-Antoinette

"We have followed the history of Marie Antoinette with the greatest diligence and scrupulosity. We have lived in those times. We have talked with some of her friends and some of her enemies; we have read, certainly not all, but hundreds of the libels written against her; and we have, in short, examined her life with– if we may be allowed to say so of ourselves– something of the accuracy of contemporaries, the diligence of inquirers, and the impartiality of historians, all combined; and we feel it our duty to declare, in as a solemn a manner as literature admits of, our well-matured opinion that every reproach against the morals of the queen was a gross calumny– that she was, as we have said, one of the purest of human beings."

~from History of the Guillotine by John Wilson Croker, 1844

Edmund Burke on Marie-Antoinette

"It is now sixteen or seventeen years since I saw the queen of France, then dauphiness, at Versailles; and surely there never lighted on this orb, which she hardly seemed to touch, a more delightful vision. I saw her just above the horizon, decorating and cheering the elevated sphere she had just begun to move in, glittering like a morning star full of life and splendor and joy. Oh, what a revolution....Little did I dream that I should have lived to see such disasters fall upon her, in a nation of gallant men, in a nation of men of honor and of cavaliers! I thought ten thousand swords must have leaped from their scabbards, to avenge even a look which threatened her with insult. But the age of chivalry is gone; that of sophisters, economists, and calculators has succeeded...."

~Edmund Burke, October 1790

Tuesday, April 23, 2013

Men and Women are Different

Gender stereotypes have been confirmed as true. (Believe it or not.) To quote The Telegraph:

A new analysis of a survey of 10,000 people found that each sex has firmly entrenched characteristics, with women showing more sensitivity, warmth and apprehension than men. In contrast, emotional stability, dominance, rule-consciousness and vigilance are more typically male characteristics, experts said. Previous research has claimed that that average personality differences between men and women are small. But the new analysis published in the Public Library of Science One journal revealed that each sex shares a distinct set of characteristics, with just 18 per cent of men having a typically "female" set of traits or vice versa. Past studies have shown that men and women average similar scores on the 16PF5 – a well-known and frequently used measure of personality. (Read entire article.)

The North Coast said...: I will surely agree that men and women are very different.

But are men the more "stable" sex? REALLY? As a woman who has pretty much spent her life tip-toeing around volatile male tempers and humoring male obsessions, I will argue the point vigorously. Remember, anger is an EMOTION, and men seem to be much more prone to it than women. I am amazed that psychologists and other "schmexperts" can characterize the male sex as more emotionally stable. The violent crime rates would argue the opposite, and so would the rates of severe mental illness. In most tests, men are much more prone to anger and irritability, and the more testosterone they have in their system, the more anger-prone and violence-prone they are.

In every culture, women are expected to exercise more self-control in every area of life, and one brain scientist was quoted as saying "women have very little idea what a difficult time men have controlling themselves."

In any case, I would not trust to the "expertise" of a profession that has turned our justice system upside down and deprived parents of their self-confidence while turning half the country into therapy patients and fostering dependency on an array of powerful psychotropic drugs.; April 23, 2013 at 11:36:00 AM EDT
Brantigny said...: I read this article and could not find out who actually ciommisioned this paper. It probably cost billions of Pounds and I could have told them what has been obvious to the most casual observer, that men are different than women. That is why men are attracted to them, and they are attrated to men. C'est la vie, non?; April 25, 2013 at 5:13:00 PM EDT