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Spanish researchers assert that men should feel more random guilt-- just like women do
Submitted by Matt on Thu, 2010-03-11 21:20
If it gets any more ridiculous, I will be forced to fall off my chair. Read the inanity here. Excerpt:
'Kim Moldofsky can feel guilt over just about anything — her children, stray cats, her work, her husband. “I am easily guilted,” she told me, laughing.
Meanwhile, her husband, Brad, 41, remains blissfully guilt-free. “He is kind and caring but he can be more detached,” said Moldofsky, a 41-year-old “mom blogger” and social media strategist near Chicago. “Sometimes I want him to get caught up in the emotion.”
So, apparently, does a team of Spanish psychological researchers. In a reversal of Professor Henry Higgins’ plaintive cry “Why can’t a woman be more like a man?,” it suggested that when it comes to guilt, men should be more like women.
Men are guilt-deficient, suggests the study, which was published in a recent issue of The Spanish Journal of Psychology. We lack “interpersonal sensitivity,” while women suffer from destructive guilt largely imposed by society.
So women need support, while men need fixing. “This study highlights the need for educational practices and socializing agents to reduce the tendency towards anxious-aggressive guilt in women, and to promote interpersonal sensitivity in men,” write the authors of the study, which was led by Dr. Itziar Extebarria of the Unversity of the Basque Country in Spain.
...
“Empathy is wonderful,” she continued. “We can share emotions. We can feel someone else’s pain. But that comes at a cost, and that cost is the higher preponderance of anxiety and depressive disorders” in women.
On the other hand, men generally feel guilt less intensely, partly because we have a huge testosterone payload. It makes us take more chances, be more a little more callous about our actions, not spend time worrying about our decisions once they’re made. This is good, argued Sommers*. “Men may be more stoical and that may be adaptive for society. We need to have 25-30 year old men not ruminating” but building, sometimes even fighting.'
("...sometimes even fighting." Well, can't say I agree with her on that.)
Anyway, this is like saying that to make life easier for people who are bound to wheelchairs, everyone else who can walk should likewise be bound to them. Then things would be much better for everyone.
I think Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. wrote a novel that had this as a theme-- that society would in future find ways to hobble individuals based on their strengths so as to "even out" society. Those who were physically strong would have weights attached to their limbs to make them less capable of doing things, so that they were more like "everyone else". People with high IQs would have higher standards to pass to get the same jobs or would be forced to take IQ-inhibiting drugs, etc., to make them "more like other people" in the brains department, etc., etc.
Can't remember the name, but this story reminds me of that book.
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*That's Christina Hoff Sommers they are referring to.
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Comments
What a waste of taxpayer's dollars
To think...the amount of tax dollars that could have been saved and applied towards a young man's college education. Instead used for some bullshit study to appease lesbians. I just don't get it. Just trying to figure out how much more will it take for men to just rise up and go for the jugular and end this misandry once and for all.
Just plain evil
When one considers that negative emotions like guilt (in this context, unearned guilt), fear, depressive states (if we can include those), grief, etc., all detract from happiness, a primary goal according to many for enjoying a satisfying, fulfilling, constructive human life, then that anyone tending to seek an *increase* in the human population of negative feelings is, for lack of a better word for it, just plain evil.
"Today I think I will get up and seek to spread more negative emotions and try to get people to feel worse than they did yesterday. I will do this in the name of gender equity* as well, just for good measure."
If that isn't evil, I don't know what is.
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* whatever the hell that is supposed to mean to these people
Harrison Bergeron
I think Kurt Vonnegut, Jr. wrote a novel that had this as a theme-- that society would in future find ways to hobble individuals based on their strengths so as to "even out" society. Those who were physically strong would have weights attached to their limbs to make them less capable of doing things, so that they were more like "everyone else". People with high IQs would have higher standards to pass to get the same jobs or would be forced to take IQ-inhibiting drugs, etc., to make them "more like other people" in the brains department, etc., etc.
Can't remember the name, but this story reminds me of that book.
Vonnegut's short story is called Harrison Bergeron.
It's set in the year 2081 and government action has finally made everyone equal. Harrison is a 14 year old athletic genius who rebels against the requirement that he wear his designated handicaps. He must wear headphones that transmit ear-splitting noises and heavy weights, all to prevent his intelligence and physical prowess from giving him an advantage.
The first line of the story reads "The year was 2081, and everybody was finally equal."
Good story (but the movie was pretty bad). It's in a collection of Vonnegut's short stories called Welcome to the Monkey House.
Thanks
Looks like Mr. V was prophetic in this arena, perhaps in some others as well. In Orwell's case, he got the idea right but the year wrong. 2081 though is not such a bad guess for when we'll find ourselves in the monkey house at the rate things are going.
I have to wonder: if the gov't at the time still sees men as being "advantaged" over women, what sorts of oddball stuff would they try to make men wear or do to "level" men to women? A bizarre world indeed. But honestly, by then, I am not sure what the political landscape will be. Clearly it is changing here in N. America as well as Europe. By 2081, things could look a lot different in many ways, and undoubtedly will.
manonthestreet God knows
manonthestreet
God knows that with all the stress, anxiety and despair that has been my life's constant companion all I need now is to feel guilt.
As time goes by if I am anything to go by, what is left of a man's feeling at the end is terrible regret at the waste of his life.
the one who cries must be right?!?
I remember seeing this article on a science blog. The subjects were assessed by asking them what situations made them feel guilty most often and by a questionnaire on interpersonal guilt.
In other words all the data was self reported by the subjects. The brilliant scientists thought that if women said there more guilt ridden they must be... LOL. Their conclusion is that men and women are different but both represent themselves in exactly the same manner, contradiction?!? That is, both sexes have the same definitions and men don't downplay anything and women don't exaggerate anything. I remember a study showing that the women in the study reported having less (sleep?) than their husbands even though the opposite was true.
The whole interpersonal growth argument is somewhat mute to me. If there are any differences I would say that men are the ones who reflect more honestly about themselves, and give themselves less excuses if they did something that might be wrong.
As said above the very notion of trying to make men more like women is abserd
The Spanish Journal of Psychology
Hey, if the The Spanish Journal of Psychology says this is so then who are we to argue? If it is printed in the Spanish Journal of Psychology then it must be true.
guilt?
I think all of feminism is an attempt to get men to feel guilt for what women are feeling. That's how I grew up entrenched in it at least: The "dead white men" caused all the wars and made everyone unhappy, especially women.
And men subconsciously oppress women all the time, don't you see? By looking at them wrong, by talking with them wrong, by talking about them wrong, by thinking about them wrong. "Men, you are wrong and you should realize that, feel guilty, and give us things to make up for it." - every feminist ever.
and trying to guilt feminists won't be that productive either, as far as I see it.
Michael