Comments on: Changing Sexual Relations at Harvard

By: ginger

ginger — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 16:21:48 +0000

Are stats and “objective assessments” the only thing that matters in schools? I thought schools were also places for education. And, god forbid!, socialisation… I can assure you, it’s not healthy for a young girl to spend so many hours only in the company of other females. You have no idea of the bitchiness that can ensue. Boys act as mediators in class, if you remove them, you’re going to raise a posse of women vampires, I tell you. The problem is boys do worse in single-sex environments than in co-ed environments There you go. Theory of objective advantages of separate-sex education is clearly flawed. ;)

By: Matt Weiner

Matt Weiner — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 16:20:43 +0000

Are the final clubs at Harvard still all all-male? Cos then male undergrads have a place where they can go to be away from the crippling presence of women—and if you could’ve got into and afforded Harvard in 1953, you can probably get into and afford a final club today. (This is intended as an insult to final clubs—that may not have been entirely clear.)

By: David Salmanson

David Salmanson — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 16:07:04 +0000

I work at an all-girls K-12 and the stats don’t lie, girls who go to all girls schools do better on objective assessments than girls who go to coed schools (corrected for things like wealth, parents education level etc.) The problem is boys do worse in single-sex environments than in co-ed environments. Obviously this does not necessarily carry over to college, and even in my school coeducation in some classes begins in 9th grade and we are completely coeducational by 11th grade. The girls at my school are not noticeably more or less romantic than the popular culture at large so perhaps coeducation is not responsible for the decline of romance.

By: ginger

ginger — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 07:54:58 +0000

Would you be as dismissive towards a feminist advocating single-sex all-female colleges? Of course, why, what would be the difference? Single-sex schools are not healthy, either way, female or male only, it’s always an artificial separation. No matter what motivations are given to support them. I’d find the same argument as ridiculous even if it was specular, ie. with “women ruined by the presence of men”. I’m kind of shocked anyone would come up with such ideas at all. Anyone but religious fundamentalists, that is…

By: J. Ellenberg

J. Ellenberg — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 05:14:45 +0000

If they advocated that Harvard become one, yes.

By: Mike

Mike — Mon, 23 Feb 2004 04:47:05 +0000

You might as well say that segregation allowed blacks and whites to be “more themselves” because they were kept apart. Blacks and Whites are still pretty much segregated socially. That experiment hasn’t been done, except maybe in the military. For those who are so dismissive of Mansfield’s arguments: Would you be as dismissive towards a feminist advocating single-sex all-female colleges?

By: emjaybee

emjaybee — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 21:20:46 +0000

Articles like this one always make the writer look sad and pathetic, though, don’t they? I mean, are he and his fellow-men so weak-willed that the increased presence of women in their lives will water down their essential manly personalities? This is just another example of the “masculinity is fragile and thus in danger from women” element of sexism. A pretty weak and qualified example, but still. You might as well say that segregation allowed blacks and whites to be “more themselves” because they were kept apart.

By: J. Ellenberg

J. Ellenberg — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 20:15:15 +0000

Can it really be possible that, for Mansfield, the salient feature of being a husband is the state of being “always in fear of making fools of themselves before women?” What a peculiar and sad belief to hold, if so. But to give this publication credit where it’s due, Brendan Conway has a nice article on p.15 pointing out that our big-government bureaucrats are much better than the ones in Zimbabwe, and directing conservatives to take note of this fact and give the regulators a little love.

By: ginger

ginger — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 17:21:32 +0000

Matt mcg: but the thing is, he’s not just pointing out a simple fact like “men tend to behave differently when in the presence of women”. (Digression – Which I also think is often true, but then again, women can also behave differently and talk of different things when they’re only among women rather than in the presence of men. That’s not so strange, really, and I don’t view that difference in terms of “pressure” or faking or embarassment etc. or anything negative. It’s just, there are topics – especially personal ones – about which men often will talk only to other men, and ditto for women. Or, there’s activities that men prefer to be left out of entirely – ie. shopping for hours – and viceversa for women – watching football. It’s a cliché, but like all cliché, often has a grain of truth to it. Then, you have to know where the cliché ends and reality begins, because there are also many people who feel comfortable talking about anything and doing anything with both women and men. ) It’s not just a simple observation. The blame is there, because he is complaining that the higher presence of women and more frequent interaction with them in college is actively ruining men. Turning them into spineless “premature husbands”. Isn’t that precisely whining and moaning and blaming it all on women (and considering men like idiots to boot)? I thought it came across very clearly.

By: wsm

wsm — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 01:56:12 +0000

20 years out of college, what I find is most striking is how artificial was the environment there compared to what most Harvard (actually, I went to Yale, but it’s the same) students will face in later life. Most of the male students will be in business, finance, law, politics etc. and will spend their time in surroundings that are 90% male. (Non-peers, such as secretaries, don’t count for this purpose.) Most of the women will either become matrons or professionals in some female ghetto (nonprofit housing, or some such) and spend their time in surroundings 90% female. To me, that is the big difference between my college time and life in my 40s, in terms of relations between the sexes.

By: cafl

cafl — Sun, 22 Feb 2004 01:21:36 +0000

I remember at Stanford in the late 1960s when the dorms became coed. There was a big decrease in damage in the formerly male dorms, as the male students stopped “being themselves” and became “less spirited”, thus reducing the number of times they punched through the sheetrock, broke furniture, etc. Too bad, less happiness I’m sure. Does husbandly behavior perhaps mean civilized behavior?

By: Matt McG

Matt McG — Sat, 21 Feb 2004 20:27:46 +0000

“Some old fogeys really, really miss the good old times of women not even being allowed in universities. Let them moan and whine. As long as that’s all they do, who cares. It’s funny though, cos by blaming women for everything he sees wrong with men, he’s showing a really poor consideration of men too. Like they were brainless puppets, brainwashed by girls who, even if they go to college, are thinking of nothing else but enslaving the male and turning him into a domesticated animal known as “husband”. Cos that’s all a woman is after, the bitch.” I don’t think he was saying this at all. While I may not agree with him, it seems to me that he is saying that men behave differently around women – because of the desire to impress the opposite sex, fear of failure, whatver… – and that they way they behave in all male groups is different. [And it doesn’t seem utterly unreasonable to think that a lot of men – even men with large circles of female friends and who are totally comfortable with the company of women – do behave differently when women aren’t around… ] Presumably he thinks that in the second situation men are more likely to take risks, dare to fail, etc. etc. I don’t think that there’s any blame being apportioned to women here. As it happens I don’t think he’s right. I don’t think men are being any more ‘themselves’ in the company of men only than they are in mixed groups. Men’s fear of failing to conform to the norms set by other men is just as strong as their fear of appearing stupid and/or weak in front of women. And one might argue that the way men sometimes behave in all male groups can be a bad thing… BUT it doesn’t seem to me to be a straightforward case of some ageing fuddy duddy blaming women for everything that’s wrong.

By: ginger

ginger — Sat, 21 Feb 2004 19:05:55 +0000

But “less spirited”? “premature husbands”? I really have no idea what he is trying to get at. You know it already… and you said it already: … he needs something to balance the manifest increase in social justice of allowing women to control their own sexuality. Some old fogeys really, really miss the good old times of women not even being allowed in universities. Let them moan and whine. As long as that’s all they do, who cares. It’s funny though, cos by blaming women for everything he sees wrong with men, he’s showing a really poor consideration of men too. Like they were brainless puppets, brainwashed by girls who, even if they go to college, are thinking of nothing else but enslaving the male and turning him into a domesticated animal known as “husband”. Cos that’s all a woman is after, the bitch. Ok, I can think of a few situations where that’s exactly what happens, heh, but still…

By: Maynard Handley

Maynard Handley — Sat, 21 Feb 2004 17:45:31 +0000

More to the point, I think, the argument is largely bunk on a scientific basis. Last week’s Economist’s science section had an article describing a neurochemical breakdown of “love” into three components: lust, “romance—-essentially a medium-term infatuation with some-one else, characterized by obsessive and irrational behavior”, and the warm glow of long-term companionship. So what we apparently have now is more lust, less romance, and no comment on the long-term companionship issue. This seems like a perfectly reasonable tradeoff, especially since the lust is fun and the romance can often be pretty unbearable. The real issue is the extent to which more lust and less romance while one is in one’s twenties increases or decreases one’s chances later in life of finding a suitable long-term companion. This is presumably an empirical matter, though my intuition would be that it’s a good idea. More lust indulged in means less marrying purely on the basis of lust and more experience with a variety of people, meaning you have a better chance of knowing what sort of person makes you happy; while anything that postpones marriage a few years from the lunacy of one’s early twenties seems like it would also be a good idea. The nays would presumably claim that something about the romance stage lays the foundation for a deep and (reasonably) enduring relationship, but they’re going to have to flesh the argument out quite a bit to have a hope of convincing me.

By: Cryptic Ned

Cryptic Ned — Sat, 21 Feb 2004 06:40:59 +0000

This reminds me of the articles that complain about the pathetically low standards of US college graduates nowadays by comparison with US college graduates in 1850, without pointing out that back then maybe the thousand wealthiest people in the country went to college, whereas now 1/3 of the population goes to college (numbers plucked directly from the air). “Sure, for the majority of people, their opportunities have gone from zero to pretty good. But for the people who actually engaged in these activities back then, their opportunities would be less nowadays. To be sure, the downgrading of standards in geometry, oratory, and Latin has been affected by the great increase in college admissions, but one sheds a tear for the days when if you met a fellow college graduate you knew the same things as him.”