A New Year’s resolution for Christmas

In the days before Christmas, I intended to write a post on gift-giving. Time flew by a little too fast, so let us call it a suggestion for a New Year’s resolution for Christmas and other gift-giving occasions.

This resolution would be: Reduce gift-giving to a minimum and make sure that each gift given actually counts.

I speak here of gifts between adults (children are a different issue altogether) were we today see unnecessary excesses that only bring benefit to various sellers and manufacturers: When a typical adult gives and receives gifts at a cost of hundreds, even thousands, of Euro or Dollar per year something is amiss—in particular, as a single hug often can bring more happiness.

In the following, I will argue based on three aspects of gift-giving, namely as a social act, as a transfer of material benefits, and as a providing of non-material benefits. I will conclude that a sensible person can reduce his own outlays very considerably while increasing the benefit for his counter-parts.

Let us start with material benefits—the most noticeable, but also least important, part:

First, if I want to give someone a material benefit, how do I best do this? There are some cases where an immediate material act can make sense, e.g. when two parents give the child moving into his first apartment some surplus items from the old home. Barring this, there seems to be three popular ways, namely giving newly bought items that cost money, giving various gift-certificates that cost money, and giving money outright.

But why should I give someone a specific item instead of the same amount of money? By buying the item, I unnecessarily restrict the recipients options with regard to what type of item to buy, of what brand and quality, and where to buy it. Further, the search for suitable items can consume quite a lot of time and energy—time and energy that could be spent better. Clearly, he would be better off with the money. (There may be instances where the intention is to direct him to a particular use, e.g., to insure that the child above has house-hold utensils—not an enlarged alcohol budget. This reasoning may be correct in some cases, but is usually off. In a worst case, the items are simply resold at a loss or gather dust without ever being used.)

The issue with gift-certificates is similar: They bind to a particular store or chain of stores, there is always the risk that the certificate runs out before it is used or that the store goes bankrupt, they do not bring any bank interest in the time leading up to the buy, and they often sell at a premium compared to cash. For instance, I have occasionally seen cinemas selling “gift tickets” redeemable for a real ticket to any show. At first look, a good gift for the movie lover, but with the severe hitch that they sell at the price of the most expensive shows—and if they are not used to visit one of these expensive shows, money is lost.

We then have the conclusion that money is (usually) the superior gift—and we end up with two adults swapping money… Obviously, these swaps do not make sense and the giving should cease or be reduced to the larger giver giving the resulting net-amount without receiving anything in return.

Second, why do we at all wish to transfer material benefits? Apart from reasons that I consider poor (e.g. the wish to impress the other party, a sense of obligation, or a wish for reactions of joy or gratitude) and that are mostly covered by the above discussion, we have the real wish to make their lives better. Here too, money is often the superior road. Where not, classical gift-giving is rarely a good solution—a better method is to make suggestions on how to improve something, inquire whether the counter-part would be interested in receiving a certain item, or proposing some kind of trade for a mutual gain (“I heard that you broke your fishing rod. Since I do not have time to go fishing anymore, we could make a swap: You take my rod, and I take your [whatever] in return.”). Obviously, there is no particular reason for such interactions to take place only around Christmas or birthdays—quite the contrary.

Let us next turn to gift-giving as a social act: It is not just a matter of things and money, but also about making a statement of appreciation, love, friendship, …

But how do we best make such a statement? Usually, things are better than money in this regard; however, if these things have to be plentiful or expensive, well, possibly the relationship needs to be reconsidered—or the princess recipient learn to re-prioritize… If things are in order, it will be the thought that counts—not the price tag. Notably, the gift need not even cost money, but may be a home-made sweater, a bag of home-baked cookies, a loving note, or possibly just a hug. (Here, obviously, it pays to know the recipient sufficiently well to make the right choice.)

As above, the conclusion is to buy fewer presents and to spend less money—there are better ways to reach the wanted effect. In the words of the Beatles: Money can’t buy me love.

Finally, we have my own favourite—the bringing of non-material benefits:

We have all made different experiences, taken different roads in life, read different books, learned different ways to approach problems or situations in life, whatnot.

Why then not let the other party benefit from these differences? There may be a book that has made a difference in the life or world-view of one person, a movie that was an eye-opener on a particular issue, a piece of music that impressed him, a particular activity that opened a new road to enjoyment, … What is more natural than to gift a copy of this book/movie/music to someone else or to take him to try this activity? To paraphrase the cheesy commercials: A pocket-edition of [x]—5 Euro. Wrapping paper—5 Cents. A new insight—priceless.

Finally, for those who have made it all the way here, a few Dilbert cartoons on related topics:

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/1993-12-24/^e

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2000-12-24/^e

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2009-12-25/^e

http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2010-12-25/^e

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Group characteristics vs. individual variation

In various discussions, in particular with the PC crowd, I have found at least two recurring errors concerning groups vs. individuals that are worthy of discussion:

Firstly, a highly naive conclusion (based on a correct premise): Individual variation is often greater than group differences (correct); ergo, group differences are irrelevant (very wrong), of marginal importance (very wrong), or only discussed by those who are sexist, racist, or similar (extremely wrong—and, frankly, a misstep that I find hard to comprehend).

To take a recent example from a Swedish discussion^e (for technical reasons, the means, but not the place, of emphasis have been altered):

I princip alla fysiologiska och psykologiska egenskaper och talanger är normalfördelade i populationen. Om man väljer att skikta det statistiska materialet utifrån kön kommer man att finna att normalfördelningskurvorna ofta skiljer sig åt mellan könen, men man kommer också att finna att de individuella variationerna är större än variationerna mellan könen.
M.a.o.: det är korkat att hävda att män är si och kvinnor så. Lika korkat som att hävda att ”män är långa och kvinnor korta”.
Vill ni tillhöra den korkade skaran kan ni förstås fortsätta att argumentera på detta vis.

(In principle, all physiological and psychological characteristics and talents follow a normal-distribution in the population. If one chooses to compare [original phrasing slightly ambiguous and not translatable] based on sex, one will find that the [distributions] are often different between the sexes, but one will also find that the individual variations are greater than the variations between the sexes.
In other words: it is stupid to claim that men are this and women that. Just as stupid as claiming that “men are tall and women short”.
If you want to belong to the stupid flock, you can obviously continue to argument like this.)

(Note here the strawman of using an unusually strong polarization: The far more typical opinions and statements would be of the type “men are taller than women”. In more detail, the claim is not correct that all characteristics follow a normal-distribution; however, very many do follow a distribution with similar characteristics—at least close to the average.)

Now, why is this line of argumentation, at best, specious? Broadly speaking, even when individual variations are large, the group variations can have a very considerable effect on group outcomes. This applies in particular when we look at groups which are dominated by individuals who (wrt at least some characteristics) belong to the upper or lower end of the distributions. Consider professors of mathematics, convicts, Olympic athletes, … However, even in daily life, the effects can be large. I strongly recommend reading The Bell Curve^w, which discusses how a great number of outcomes correlate with an implicit grouping by IQ and how groups (grouped by other criteria) with different average IQs have different outcomes. (Some of La Griffe du Lion’s writings^e are also quite good—and available online.) Notably, the more equal opportunity is, the more important group characteristics become for group outcome.

An additional hitch is that not all differences are dominated by individual variation. Notably, the mere existence of special cases does not imply that individual variation is the greater factor. There are many characteristics where the difference between two groups is so large that the group difference dominates. Consider the attribute height and the groups of 5 respectively 10 y.o. children for an uncontroversial example.

Secondly, the equally naive conclusion (or evil strawman?) that those who claim that group X is Q also believe that all individual members of X are Q—or that those who claim that group X is more/less Q than group Y also believe that all individual members of X are more/less Q than all individual members of Y. There is nothing wrong with statements like “Men are taller than women.” or “Ashkenazi are intelligent.”—even if there are great individual variations: The speaker will almost certainly take the existence of exceptions for granted, assume that the reader is intelligent and informed enough to also take them for granted, and consider it a given that the statement refers to group characteristics that need not apply to any specific individual. (The rare exceptions will almost always be clear from context.)

As an aside, a principally different error with very similar consequences is to assume “all quantification” where “existence quantification” (or a middle step) was intended. During my readings of relationship forums a few years ago, e.g., I saw a great number of cases where a male poster wrote something which most likely was a “some”, on the outside a “most”, e.g. “Why do women like a-holes?”—only to be met with a barrage of “Stop generalizing! We are not all like that, you misogynist!”. The point is that an unspecified quantification is not necessarily an “all” (or even a “most”), that it is highly presumptuous to assume an “all” where it is not actually stated, and that great attention to the context must be paid before raising accusations.

Muslim Creationists lacking in intellectual honesty

I recently commented on a Muslim blog claiming to have rational evidence for the existence of God^e. (They did not, not even close.) I left a brief comment there—this comment, and those of others, appear to be censored in a grossly intellectually dishonest way.

I quote from what the blog owners say in their own comment:

Es fehlt uns die Zeit allen, welche bei diesem Thema einen Kommentar hinterlassen haben (es sind ca.10), zu antworten.

(We do not have the time to answer everyone (there are about 10) who has left a comment to this topic.)

There is no need to individually answer all comments and not being able to answer is no excuse for not publishing—on the contrary, it is far worse than publishing an unanswered comment. I further note that there is not an excessive amount of work per head involved for several people to answer ten comments (should they see the need). For that matter, why was the solution not chosen to pick a smaller number of comments and reply specifically to these.

The true reason, then, is in all likelihood the suppression of dissent.

Bei allen Kommentaren haben wir gemerkt, dass man gar nicht auf die Punkte eingegangen ist. Eher hat man mit anderen Punkten abgelenkt und lediglich behauptet, dass die Punkte, die erwähnt wurden, nicht stimmen. Bewiesen hat man es jedoch nicht.

(With all comments, we have noticed that no-one has discussed our points. Rather, they have distracted with other points and only claimed that the points that were mentioned were incorrect. Nothing was proved, however.)

Firstly, it is who he makes a claim who has to prove it—not those skeptical of the claim. Further, no-one prevented the blog owners from starting a dialog in the comments, requesting/allowing evidence. Secondly, if the points (all two of them) are wrong, there is no reason to discuss their contents before there correctness has been discussed. Thirdly, even a discussion of the correctness is a discussion and not a distraction. Fourthly, bringing in other points is not wrong (as long as they are reasonably on topic). Fifthly, if all commenters were unanimously in agreement that the points were wrong, then that should be cause to stop and reconsider: Could we be wrong? Have we explained ourselves too poorly?

Wir zwingen keinen daran zu glauben. Doch wer ein offenes Herz an, erkennt die Wahrheit.

(We force no-one to believe this. But who has an open heart, will realize the truth.)

The blog entry alleged to give rational proof. This having convinced no-one, the issue is suddenly made a matter of faith. Further, the reader is insulted through the implication that his heart would not be open.

Wrong-headed belief in claimed expertise

During my journeys in the blogosphere, I am often confronted with a wrong-headed belief in alleged experts on this and that. Gender-studies (and other variations of PC studies) is a particularly strong source of examples; others include homeopathy, parapsychology, and various charlatans. Typical examples include e.g. “X has spent 20 years doing Y and must know what he is talking about—who cares that scientists claim that he is wrong!”, “It is presumptuous of people from without the field to make judgments about the field or its practitioners.” (see an excellent Swedish example^e; I have a longer piece on this in mind, but never seem to get around to writing it), “Those who have not studied gender-science lack the tools to think about issues around gender/sex [men and women, the male role, whatnot].”.

There are at least three major issues involved:

1. The claimed knowledge is often not what it should be: Too many “experts” do not actually know much about the field. Too many others draw their knowledge from faulty sources, e.g. by learning about the stars from books on astrology rather than astronomy.

2. Raw knowledge is rarely enough for true expertise: Understanding is also needed—and all too many ostensible experts lack the intelligence too develop a true understanding. Indeed, it is not uncommon that a new-comer with a better mind can spot errors, misunderstandings, whatnot, after having been exposed to the matter for a small fraction of the time. (Also note that an outsider’s perspective can often be valuable even to true experts.)

3. Similarly, even understanding is not always enough, but can have its value severely limited if the expert lacks the intelligence to actually apply the expertise in a correct manner, draw correct conclusions when confronted with new situations, understand basic reasoning about various results, and so on.

With some over-simplification, it could be said that expertise consists of two components—intelligence and knowledge. The problem then is that the naive correctly conclude that intelligence alone is not enough, but fail to realize that neither is knowledge alone. Further, as said above, the intelligent new-comer can often outdo the unintelligent veteran in at least some areas. This, obviously, is a reason for why those lacking in intelligence tend to go with arguments by authority, while those with more intelligence tend to wish for actual proofs, explanations, and (ad rem) arguments—a true expert would not need to refer to his expertise, but would actually be willing and able to explain why he thinks he is right.

To take two specific example:

1. The claim that women earn 77 cents on the dollar when compared to men:

   The point is not whether this claim is true or not—but whether it gives the right picture. (As discussed in the linked-to page, it does not.) It does not matter whether there are even one hundred scientific (let alone ideologically motivated “scientific”) investigations showing the uninterpreted numbers to be correct. It does not matter how many people with a degree in gender-studies who claim that this claim gives the right picture. What matters is that simple thinking, combined with some additional facts, shows the claim to be misleading. If the “true believers” fail to do this simple thinking, or reject the result for ideological reasons, then they only discredit themselves—not the thinking.

2. The claim that homeopathy works:

   Even a layman can soon gather enough knowledge to make some basic observations that are highly troublesome for homeopaths—including that there is no known mechanism by which homeopathy could have a medical effect; that the higher the quality of the study, the lower the measured value of homeopathy; and that there are a number of mechanisms (placebo effect, better “human” treatment of patients, co-incidence, …) by which homeopathy can seem to work, while having no medical value, which make anecdotal evidence and trials with weak methodology near useless.

   The above is not enough to rule out that homeopathy works, but it is enough even for a layman to reject at least some pro-homeopathy arguments, to remain highly skeptical, and to lay the burden of proof solidly on the homeopaths.

   (Of course, those who dig even deeper see even more reason to remain skeptical—to the point that homeopathy almost certainly can be considered nonsense.)

Finally, it pays to bear in mind that even the true experts, the best of the best, with the knowledge, the understanding, and the intelligence, are still only human. They are not infallible gods, they are often wrong when it comes to details or new areas of investigation, and they are, themselves, well aware of this.

Blogroll update

During my searches for the last entry, I found one very interesting post titled Rape Laws: dismantling of due process explained step by step^e.

Going through the rest of the blog, aptly named after its topics, Human Stupidity^e, I have found a large number of other entries of value, including on e.g.:

Feminist hypocrisy^e and one-sided “equality”, which ties in well with with many of my own writings, including on Anna Ardin and Reversing the accusation.

PC abuse of language^e, specifically redefinition of rape. See also my entries on e.g. racism.

Critique of feminist anti-prostitution arguments^e. This post also makes a point that I have speculated on for some time, namely that the true motivation for the anti-porn/-prostitution movement among feminists (or, possibly, women in general) is the building of a sex monopoly, where men are dependent on having and sucking-up to a girl-friend or wife. See also my article on Sex and power.

Pedophile witchhunts^e. Also discussed by me on several occasions (at least [1], [2]).

By the FIFO principle, Ethics Alarms^e is removed. That blog was first described here.

Rape statistics

Due to the (in my impression so far) absurd arrest of Julian Assange, I have seen a number of recent threads around the topic of rape. There are several oft repeated faulty claims made that I wish to address here, based on a stereotypical comment. Unfortunately, the post and the comment thread^e appear to have been deleted in the mean time, but to summarize from memory:

1. Only 2 % of all rape charges are false. [Very, very incorrect.]

2. Only one in five of all rapes are reported. [Impossible to know, but very likely an exaggerated claim.]

3. Only 10 % of all reports lead to a conviction. [Semi-true, but highly misleading.]

4. Rape accusers are treated worse than the alleged rapist, have problems through not being believed, or similar. [Very incorrect and/or misleading.]

My original reply (translated to English):

The “2 %” claim is no longer taken seriously and there is reason to believe that it simply is made up (cf. the links below). Even the claim that only one in five rapes is reported is very far from being a consensus number, and could very well be something that feminists babble about for rhetorical purposes.

A quick search for “false rape charges” gave, among others, the following links:

http://www.falserape.net/false-rape.htm^e

http://www.falserape.net/falserapeafa.htm^e

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,194032,00.html^e

http://lawprofessors.typepad.com/crimprof_blog/2004/12/2_false_rape_st.html^e

http://www.billoblog.com/?p=134^e

(In addition, I recommend http://falserapearchives.blogspot.com/2010/01/false-rape-primer.html^e as a source for further links.)

To dig a little deeper:

1. Claims about false reports and under-reporting:

   The true rate of false reports is at a minimum 20 % and may be as high as 60–70 % based on the above links. To note, however, is that a false accusation is not always made deliberately, but (depending on the definitions used in any particular piece of research) can include mistakes of identity made in good faith. This distinction is of low relevance when it comes to “innocent until proved guilty”, but is important to bear in mind in other contexts—e.g. when some feminist commenter starts a rant about how misogynistic it would be to claim that half of all rape accusers are liars.

   The “one in five” is possibly caused by feminist mis-definitions of “rape” to include things that the law, a sensible person, and the alleged victim herself, do not consider anything of the kind. Notably, it is not uncommon for such mis-definitions to artificially inflate the number of claimed rapes to several times its true size.

   An interesting perspective is provided by a post that I encountered a few months ago, which contained roughly the following line of discussion (I apologize for not being able to give due credit):

   If the probability of a man committing a rape is p-rape and the likelihood that a woman will raise a false accusation is p-false, and further assuming that the two factoids of 2 % and one in five are true, then the number of reported rapes per male (or female) citizen is roughly 0.2 * p-rape + p-false. Further, by assumption, the quotient (0.2 * p-rape) / p-false would be 0.98 / 0.02 = 49. By implication, p-rape = 245 * p-false. In other words, men would have to be 245 (!!!) times more likely to commit rapes than women to make a false accusation—a claim that is so patently absurd and misandristic that the mind boggles.

   Even running through this calculation with a non-false report rate of 50 % (instead of 20 %) and a false report rate of 20 % (the minimum from serious investigations, instead of 2 %), we land at p-rape = 8 * f-false. In other words, men would still need to be eight times more prone to commit rapes than women to commit false accusations. Based on my experiences with men and women to date, I find this extremely hard to believe, and am correspondingly inclined to assume that the rate of false accusations is noticeably higher than 20 % (and possibly that the report rate is noticeably above 50 %—under no reasonable circumstances can it be the lowly 20 % claimed by some feminist propagandists). Here, however, it can make a difference whether deliberate false accusation or false accusations in general are discussed (cf. above).

2. Conviction rates:

   I have been unable to find Swedish statistics (the alleged 10 % was with reference to Sweden) on short notice; however, I did find a very interesting article on the British situation^e, where alleged numbers of just 10 % and 6.5 % are discussed. In a nut-shell: The true rate of conviction, after removing e.g. instances ruled as “no crime”, is roughly 50 %. The 10 % number is here referred to as “rate of attrition”, to which the article gives the following numbers for murder, rape, and “violence against the person”: 14 %, 6.5 %, and 4 %. Correspondingly, the rate is by no means remarkable. When considering the higher rate of false accusations for rape, the greater practical problems to provide proof that a crime has at all taken place, the possibility that a conviction is made for a lesser crime (cf. snoozeofreason’s comment to the article), whatnot, my subjective impression is that the rate for rape is higher than it should be when using other crimes as a baseline. I strongly recommend reading the linked-to article.

   The greatest error here, however, is to make the a priori assumption that almost all accused are guilty and to claim that a conviction/attrition rate of 10 % would imply that the justice system is defect. Notably, it is equally possible to turn the situation around and see the low conviction/attrition rate as a proof of many false accusations.

   More generally, a high conviction/attrition rate is only good when “false positives” can be kept down: Achieving a “perfect” conviction rate would not be hard, but doing so would fill the prisons with innocent people. Making convictions is not an end in it self—what matters is sentencing so many guilty as possible without putting innocent people in prison.

3. Treatment of the accusers and the accused:

   Frankly, this sounds mostly like yet another case of feminists claiming the exact opposite of the truth with the philosophy that if a lie is repeated often enough, it is eventually taken to be the truth. (For a discussion of some other common examples, see an earlier post. Note also my recent post on Reversing the accusation, which deals with a similar subject.)

   There may, obviously, be great variations from country to country, but in Sweden and the US (cf. e.g. the Duke Lacrosse case^e) the opposite problem of presumption of guilt, lack of due process, findings of guilt based solely on the accusers claims, and similar appear to be more common. Notably, in some countries, rape-shield laws and similar mechanisms can even make an inequality in front of the law (to the disadvantage of men) near unavoidable.

   It is important to note that the alleged “poor treatment” is often nothing more than normal investigative techniques used against anyone raising an accusation of crime: The police, the DA, the defense, must all be entitled to ask questions to probe for contradictions and implausible statements in order to get to the truth—and this must be so for all crimes or the justice system will fail as innocent people are jailed and deliberate false accusations rise. Rape cannot and must not be an exception to this.

   (Indeed, I have even repeatedly heard complaints that use of the word “alleged”, non-use of the words “victim” and “offender”, and similar, would constitute mistreatment—claims that themselves are a horrifying neglect of the legal principle of “innocent until proved guilty”, intellectual honesty, and, frankly, basic human decency.)

   The fact that (in Sweden) 38 % of all judges, 48 % of all prosecutors, and two thirds of all legal students are women makes the claim that rape accusers would be poorly treated even harder to defend—unless we assume that this mistreatement would largely stem from other women… (Numbers from 2008^e; the current numbers are likely to be even higher.)

Remark: Note that it is very important to be cautious when interpreting various surveys, statistics, etc., concerning crimes. Not only do we have the problem of feminist distortions, but also one of different criteria and definitions, uncritical handling of sources, and similar. A particular important factor is time: The number (both absolute and relative) of horse and cattle thieves in the “Wild West” is likely to be considerably lower today than two hundred years ago. Similarly, any other statistic that is not reasonably recent must be re-investigated before being brought in as a hard fact—including crime rates, report rates, speculations on unreported crime, etc., from even just a few decades ago.

Reversing the accusation

Something that has occurred to me again and again in discussions with feminists, creationists, and similar groups, is that they like to accuse others of exactly the errors they themselves excel in making. Often (but not always) their accusations are also unfounded or very exaggerated. In at least some cases, they even try to reverse criticism in an odd manner. Below, I will give some recent examples by the Swedish commenter “Tuggmotstånd” (“Chewing resistance”), all made on a blog that tries to counter-act the disproportionate emphasis on women’s issue and women’s perspective in Swedish society, when compared to men’s.

From http://genusnytt.wordpress.com/2010/11/26/genusperspektiv-pa-en-jarnbalk/^e:

[…] men det känns också som att du frånser förhållanden som många kvinnor lever/har levt under när du anlägger dina sk. ”genusperspektiv”.

([…] but it feels like you neglect the circumstance that many women live/have lived under when you apply your so called “gender perspectives”.)

The blog entry (to which this was a reply) was obviously ironical and pointing to how Swedish feminists apply gender-perspectives and come to the conclusion that women are poor victims. Between the lines, the blog entry said “Feminist gender-perspectives tend to overlook that men have problems too.”, while her explicit reply amounted to “You overlook that women have problems too.”—making the reply almost surreal.

Note: It appears to me, from the sum of her comments, that Tuggmotstånd has not in any way understood the intents and contents of the blog entry.

Jo, men just nu känns det som att Ström söker intensivt med lykta efter saker att haka upp sig på.

(Yes, but now it feels like Ström [the blogger] is intensively searching [original idiom both misformulated and untranslatable] for things to get hanged up on.)

He does not: He picks from the many and easily found examples that illustrate how Swedish feminists, gender “scientists”, politicians, newspapers, whatnot, behave—including how feminists seem to be deliberately searching for things to get hanged up on… (Indeed, in the form of gender-glasses^e, this search borders on an official recommendation.)

Jag blir frustrerad över att någon som inte har verktygen och perspektiven hänger sig åt denna blogg, men lämnar alla problem orörda på ytan. Det är synd om män bara, men ni vill helst inte ha några svar på varför.

(I become frustrated over that someone who does not have the tools [read: is involved in gender-studies] and perspectives [read: the women’s/feminists’/gender-glassed perspectives, or similar] dedicates himself to this blog, but leaves all problems untouched on the surface. Men are just to be pitied [in her view of the message of the blog], but you do not like to know why.)

One of the main criticisms of gender-feminism is exactly that it paints a picture where women are to be pitied, but an attempt to explain why is often missing (or only filled by a cliche or an unsupported claim). Similarly, one of the main criticisms of gender studies is that its “researchers” are lacking in tools (including scientific methods and critical thinking) and perspectives (other than their own, personal, perspective or that of women as a group—respectively, what they perceive to be the perspective of women as a group).

From http://genusnytt.wordpress.com/2010/11/20/las-juristens-svar-till-genusnytt/^e:

Jag har en fråga till er:

Skulle ni ställa er lika negativa till en positiv särbehandling för män inom yrkesgrupper där män är underrepresenterade?

(I have a question for you:

Would you be as negative to affirmative action for men in professions where men are underrepresented?)

This comment was made on a post that discussed the hypocritical treatment of men and women were affirmative action is concerned: When women are underrepresented, affirmative action is seen as positive; when men are, affirmative action is suddenly an inacceptable injustice. (Specifically, this case dealt with an affirmative action program to increase the number of female professors; and should be seen in the light of an affirmative action program to increase the number of male psychology students being struck down earlier in the year—with considerable complaints about unfairness against women.)

In effect, the blogger says “Feminists and the like have a double-standard where affirmative action is concerned.”—and her reply is to imply that the blogger and the majority of the commenters only are upset because men were disadvantaged in this particular instance (i.e. that they have a double-standard). (As with the previously discussed post, I strongly suspect that Tuggmotstånd simply did not understand the message. Notably, she otherwise appears to misinterpret a very significant proportion of the statements others make.)

Detsamma. Mer otrevlig person har jag sällan mött på.

(Ditto. A more unpleasant person I have rarely encountered.)

Her reply to my statement that I would likely leave further comments by her unanswered—after she from go and without any reasonable excuse had used personal attacks and expletives, distorted my statements, and committed a number of gross errors of reasoning. (While my own tone certainly adapted to her behaviour, I did remain factual and ad rem, except as answer to a preceding ad hominem attack.)

Generally, Tuggmotstånd is herself very prone to personal attacks, displays of ignorance, unfounded claims of superior knowledge, errors of reasoning, etc.—and equally prone to accuse others of exactly these errors. In this, she is a muster example for this post.