Since form is a consequence of differential growth of tissues, and since different tissues grow at different rates, one of the ways evolution can shape morphology is through changes in growth rate, so changes in timing can produce very different forms. There are genes that affect specific tissues discretely; for instance, the gene ASPM regulates mitotic activity in regions of the brain, so mutations in it can produce smaller brains, or microcephaly. There are also global regulators of growth, and just changing the rate of maturation of the organism can produce changes in the proportion of different tissues, because of allometric variation in different regions.
So, for instance, if developmental maturation of the somatic tissues is slowed, while sexual maturation is maintained at the standard rate, individuals retain juvenile characters at reproductive age, a process called neoteny (similarly, you can get a similar effect by maintaining a standard rate of somatic growth, but accelerating the rate of sexual maturation, a process called progenesis.) Note that what’s key here is that different tissues are regulated differently; if you just slow the rate of development of both somatic and reproductive organs, you get individuals with the standard morphology, it just takes longer for them to get there. Everyone who knows anything about development and evolution understands that neoteny/progenesis requires independent regulation of different tissues.
One of the factors thought to play a role in human evolution is neoteny. Compared to other primates, adult humans retain a juvenile morphology: heads large in proportion to our bodies, larger eyes, smaller jaws, etc. This is not particularly controversial, although I’d really like to see more specific identification of the genes involved. Our shape could, after all, alternatively be explained by character by character changes in gene expression. The neoteny hypothesis implies that a large cranium and small jaw are correlated, that is, by changing one regulator of growth you get both effects. It would also be possible that they’re uncorrelated, that (as a simplified example) one gene that generates larger brains evolved, and that a second gene for reduced jaws evolved completely independently.
Neoteny can also be a mosaic process. Big head and small jaws are a retention of a juvenile character, but other features, like our bigger noses and ears as adults compared to babies (creepy visualization: imagine a baby with a nose as big in proportion to its head as an adult’s; all cuteness disappears). Even if the neoteny hypothesis is generally valid, it can’t explain all the features of an adult human, and does not imply that humans are all big babies in every respect. Donald Trump excepted.
That’s the background. Now for the pseudoscientific appropriation of a concept from development and evolution.
Over on the odious Red Pill subreddit, where having a tiny bit of knowledge is considered a virtue over having enough depth of understanding to reject their malignant philosophy, someone has declared that neoteny is the reason women are literally more like children. The author has apparently never actually talked to an adult woman to learn that they aren’t children. Instead, he has a preconception that women are like children; he has heard about this thing called “neoteny” (his source is a wikipedia article!) which, he thinks, makes people more like babies; therefore, his two assumptions magically fuel each other in a perfect perpetuum mobile, and in a rapid flurry of circular logic and vigorous hand motions, he declares victory.
In short, neoteny is the persistence of juvenile traits in adult individuals of a species. Amongst primates, humans exhibit a high degree of neoteny. Many stereotypical human traits – such as less body hair, higher foreheads, more delicate jawlines, and smaller brows are in fact neotenous traits. Neotenous traits have been selected for in human evolution, particularly in regards to sexual preferences of men. This includes the evolutionary psychology aspects of neoteny in humans (i.e. why women resemble children). More neotenous women are rated more attractive across all cultures.
He starts with a germ of truth and follows it into nonsense. Some human characters may be explained by the process of neoteny, but obviously not all. We are not all overgrown baby apes (again, Trump excepted), but also have unique characters that are not explained by retention of juvenile properties. It’s more complicated than that. It may also be the case that some human female characters — such as, on average, even smaller jaws and more diffuse subcutaneous body fact — are correlated products of changes in the pattern of expression of a small number of genes, but at this point I’d be reluctant to call it neoteny. Too many other features of men and women, such as body proportions, are too similar. It’s clearly not a global difference, but then, I suspect that neoteny is an oversold hypothesis that needs more specific details of correlated gene expression to be useful.
There are hypotheses floating around that one of the causes of overall human morphology was sexual selection for neotenic traits. I don’t know, though, that I buy this idea that it was all men doing the selecting for more child-like women (which is kind of creepy, actually; I personally don’t equate “child-like” with “sexy”, although the inhabitants of The Red Pill subreddit seem to have a different view), and it also seems to be an obliviously one-sided idea. Isn’t it just as likely that women were selecting for less brutish partners?
His claim that neotenous women are rated more attractive across all cultures
is also his only claim backed up by a source other than wikipedia. It is your typical evo-psych wankerism: take 100 college students (the only unusual nod to breaking the standard pattern is that half the subjects are Japanese, half American), show them pictures of people that have been digitally altered by combining male and female faces to produce different gradations of feminization/masculinization, and then ask them which photos they like better. They tend to like more feminized faces. Therefore,
The preferences found here indicate a selection pressure on the evolution of face shape that acts against pronounced differences between males and females and, as more-feminine face shapes are perceived as younger, the preferences would encourage a youthful, neotonous appearance in the species generally.
How these shallow and highly artificial tests of a small number of modern young adults demonstrate a “selection pressure” is a mystery to me, but heck, it got published in Nature, so it must be true. Of course, what it points out is that a hypothetical pressure for juvenilization of females will produce a population that is more juvenilized as a whole. Because everyone has a mother who contributes half their genes. And everyone’s mother is a biological female.
I know, that’s kind of obvious, but one does have to point out the obvious to MRAs.
In short, we know for a fact that human females are more neotenous than males. That is a scientifically established fact. We at TRP are simply stating the obvious corollary to that: that evolutionary selection of greater neoteny in females has affected them both physically and psychologically. Cause evolution affects the brain too. They act more like children, cause they are more like children. It’s not fucking rocket science.
No. This is not a fact. The whole idea that humans in general are neotenous apes is a hypothesis, nothing more. The morphology is compatible with the hypothesis to a large part, I’d even go so far as to say it is suggestive of neoteny, but it’s a long way from established scientific fact. Show me the underlying molecular mechanisms behind the shift in timing; show me with comparative data from other apes that these genes were modified in evolution; then we can talk. Right now, I have a tough time distinguishing modifications in timing from general modifications of interactions in coordinated gene networks.
And the idea that women are more neotenous than men is just plain weird, as well as invalid — it’s treating the whole of an individual as the product of neoteny. It’s just not that simple. Humans are the product of multiple evolutionary changes. There are broad areas of human morphology that one could imagine are produced by simple processes that generate integrated changes in a large array of patterned gene expression, but there were also other specific changes that countered that. We could hypothesize that a relatively small change in the rate of growth produced ancestors with the proportionally larger brain to body size ratio of babies, but there had to also be normal maturation of those big brains to functional adulthood. We do not have the brains of infants. Likewise, even if women were slightly more neotenous in some unspecified way than men, that does not imply that the brains of adult women are less functionally complete. This whole idea that neoteny means people are behaviorally babyish is simply wrong.
This guy doesn’t even understand the implications of what he is saying. If he believes neoteny is the simple secret to converting a hairy, low-browed ape to a human, and if he believes that women are more neotenous than men, doesn’t that imply that women have evolved farther from their ancestral form than men have? They aren’t infantile, they have transcended even more from our lowly beginnings than men have!
(No, I don’t believe that. Men and women have co-evolved, we share the same genes, it is silly to talk about one sex being more or less evolved than the other.)
But he is right about one thing. It is not fucking rocket science. It’s more complex than mere rockets, and he doesn’t understand any of it.
But beyond the assertively stupid pseudoscience of the Reddit post, there are…the comments. How they could be worse is beyond my understanding, but they are. Here’s one example, but be warned: most of the comments seem to be absorbed with arguing about how young a girl has to be before sexual attraction counts as pedophilia, because of course this is the Redpill Subreddit, one of the cesspits of the internet. But before they started salivating over nubile young children, this comment is representative:
Excellently written and I absolutely agree.
Arguing with feminists or blue pillers about evo-psych feels strangely like arguing with creationists about evolution.
Fucking this. Feminism and creationism are identical theories. They’re both creation stories and it’s not interesting to me whether the creator is God or the Patriarchy or whether the creation is how we were created or how anything interesting about us was made. Women are children. Forget red pill theory or any of that. All it takes to know that women are children is to talk to one for a few minutes outside of a formal area, including politeness among strangers. They love the little girl style smiling and to look cute. They love to play stupid little games and all that shit. They are children.
First of all, no, feminism is not a creation myth, and most of the feminists I know are more familiar with basic evolutionary theory than the maroons of this subreddit (although, admittedly, that is a very low bar to clear). That we reject their cartoon version of evolution, or the equally cartoonish nonsense of evolutionary psychology, does not imply that we are creationists.
But also, this guy does offer a practical exercise. Have a conversation with women. I’m thinking of my colleagues at work, half of whom are women, and they don’t fit his prediction at all. “Little girl smiling”? “Look cute”? “Stupid little games”? What? My colleagues are accomplished, intelligent, hard working women — they are not children at all.
I also consider my students, who are just barely beyond their childhood. There are many different personalities among them, but all of them are ambitious and intelligent. They are taking upper level science courses at a university, after all, and what’s going on behind their eyes isn’t this baby stereotype this jerk is imagining.
I’d also suggest that the women reading this right now are not the puerile caricatures reddit MRAs like to imagine, but they can speak for themselves in the comments.
I’ll be the first to put in (over)text, the obvious subtext.
This MRA nonsense seems to be a (ir)rationalization for pedophilia. Esentially saying “it is only _natural_, to want to have sex with girls” (instead of fully grown women). Reading about neoteny as part of our evolutionary ancestry has given them the idea they are driven by evolutionary pressure to seek out little girls instead of women.
ugh maybe I’m reading too much into it, out of perpetual disgust at MRA speak. ugh
Actually, I can imagine women talking exactly like this, to men who are basically saying “Women stupid! Me want sex! Ughhh!” I can also imagine them patting such men condescendingly on the head and glancing pityingly at them as they walk away.
PZ, I suspect that charmer you quoted probably only talks to women “outside of a formal area” in bars and other places you might expect someone like him to try to pick up women. Places where you would expect to encounter women who behave in ways that might be considered flirting, like smiling in a certain way, and dressing to look attractive. And I suspect he self selects for a certain kind of woman to hit on.
Snrrk!
So last night, after following a youtube link on the Missing the #ReasonRally thread, my SIWOTI acted up and forced me to respond to an MRA/anti-fem nonsensemonger.
Him:
Me:
Him (the post isn’t showing up on the youtubes, but it’s there in my email):
I giggled. Woah, yeah, it’s almost as if aspects of culture are somehow cultural. Duuuude!
Honestly… yeah, I can see the “arguing with creationists” thing. Just not in the direction they’re claiming. Granted, these’re two different topics, and one individual being proudly clueless isn’t a pattern but, uh… glass houses.
I don’t even understand what’s being communicated here. Little girl style smiling and to look cute? I can’t say I know any women who engage in little girl smiling and to look cute. And what’s this about “outside of a formal area”? Is this just about the fact that most people, even people with super-serious jobs that require straight faces and no smiling enjoy fun things?
I’ve spent most of today playing Crusader Kings 2. Does that make me a child?
Err… don’t answer that.
Also, ‘stupid little games’ is totally a gendered thing. Witness how something like ‘collecting dolls’ is considered juvenile, while ‘collecting
male dollsaction figurescomics memorabilia’ is not. Fashion is ‘dress up’, while enjoying sports is totally distinct from little league. Quilting is weird and old fashioned, while restoring old cars is not. (Then add in that straight enjoyment of masculine-coded things has to be for the ulterior motive of male attention, not because the woman in question finds science or comic books or sports enjoyable (and if they do, or, *gasp* don’t want male sexual attention, there’s something wrong with them). )Basically, ‘my hobbies are legitimate pursuits, while yours are not (either because they are stupid, or because you are lying about your interest in them)’.
But Tchump isn’t a big baby in every respect. He sure isn’t cute & adorable. (But I’ll give you that he does stink.)
Most of the women I know think men are immature.
But I think Becca #5 hit the nail on the head.
Whined the little boy from his No Girls with Cooties Allowed club.
@5 Becca:
Everything you said was right on. However I suspect from context that the reddit person was talking about “mind games” and not hobbies. Like, “she was just messing with your head, bro.”
Well, that’s true. It certainly isn’t rocket science. It isn’t even science. And, to paraphrase a well-known quote, It isn’t even wrong.
slithey tove (twas brillig (stevem)) @ 1;
I think we have a winner – the MRA’s don’t even really try to hide what is really a very transparent excuse for sexually predatory behaviour toward underage girls. I also think they are trying to cover their bases ahead of time, adding an excuse of ‘evolution made me do it’ alongside the old standbys ‘she said she was eighteen, honest’ and ‘dressed like that, it’s not as though she is innocent’.
MRAs – just when you think they couldn’t sink any lower, they work extra hard to surprise you.
Not at all. It seems to me all you are doing is reasonably applying the bitter fruits of nauseating experience of just how evil these sick monsters really are.
Maybe playing stupid little games means that one could be more highly evolved away from those who only know how to play thuggish dominance games.
How could attraction to “girlish” characteristics be evolutionarily viable? Adolescent females are less fertile and they suffer a higher maternal death rate than fully grown women. There is no evolutionary future for Humbert Humbert.
Hbomberguy, who might be one of my favourite youtubers, routinely runs into this kind of stuff when he makes fun of MRA videos. His latest one about the whole Ghostbuster thing is amazeballs <3
This came up on my facebook feed this morning . Kind of relates to what Dave Futrelle was talking about yesterday, vis a vis Trump supporters and pickup artists.
Hope I’m not threadjacking. I didn’t get much sleep last night.
@timgueguen, you make one great assumption that is a bit of a reach.
You assume that the idiot is old enough to be allowed into a bar.
Honestly, I think that you’re being overly generous as to both the age and maturity level of that individual.
Personally, I firmly believe that the individual in question is the village idiot of a village full of idiots. Under that supposition, what would one call such an individual?
that statement could be made about all subjects these reactionary types engage with.
the one thing that is consistent is the narrowness the pinched simplistic self serving view of reality they struggle retain.
to think that because they are attracted to young girls (immature?) and try to talk to them in informal settings that they would in by their own definition “girlish” ways.
It is their attachment to the simplistic answers that I find interesting.
Ken Ham and his god. Trump and the trumpites fucking wall, Libertarians and whole republican base and these redpill fools
Dam come on! Just look around in any direction you chose it is always more complicated
the idea that things might be more complicated is not a new idea
Hamlet commented to Horatio on that idea in the graveyard
There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,
Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.
– Hamlet (1.5.167-8), Hamlet to Horatio
uncle frogy
MRAs on the other hand, love the uneducated brute style smirking and to look revolting. They love to play beer-burp and expectoration and all that crap. They are primitives.
trump?
Right. Women like to dress up and play games. Half the guys around here are either dressed up like cowboys, or are wearing sports-team logos, the other half are playing video games. As for women playing mind games, well, there’s the whole pick-up artist phenomenon amongst guys like the complainer there.
If women have more-neotonous brains, they have bigger brains. Claiming that those brains are less mature needs better backup evidence than a bro’s flirting experience. My experience as a fairly smart guy is that women are generally slightly smarter overall, but they get pushed down a lot (like this guy is trying to do).
This is nothing new, or even MRA specific. I would estimate that the majority of men over 50 tend to speak to me as if I were a child while speaking to men around me as equals. MRAs just made up some pseudo scientific explanation to excuse this cultural bias.
I also wonder if there is an actual genetic basis for assigning the absence of traditionally male secondary sex characteristics as neoteny while ignoring traditionally female secondary sex characteristics. Can the absence of female breasts or wide hips also be considered neoteny? I’m seriously asking because I don’t know, but my body also has changed during puberty in ways that cis dudes’ didn’t.
Why would the research study use American and Japanese students only? From every angle this will skew your results towards the ‘girly’ if not adolescent by a massive margin. It’s ridiculous. Japan is, if not an entirely an outlier, at one extreme in terms of their perception of female beauty, and the US, if using only college students, isn’t exactly likely to provide a balanced view. I doubt I could support that scientifically (as if a survey of 100 students is), but the observation is solid enough based on a couple of more global non-scientific surveys I have seen.
Why didn’t they survey a bunch of Nigerian, Mexican, Brazilian, and anywhere other than Japan and the US students. Blergh.
This shit pisses me off because it’s personal, and not just because this is a transparent attempt to rationalize one’s personal problems with desperate grasping at science in progress. Not even an attempt at lining up cognitive features with developmental psychology rendering their “childish” utterly empty of all meaning but that which lets them ignore their flawed character and reasoning ability.
Tourette’s Syndrome and ADHD are classified as neurodevelopmental disorders and there are appeals to “delayed maturation” in some of the literature. But since we have not really defined “normal” in our species in a way that accurately characterizes interpersonal differences and diversity people like me are just as likely to be perfectly natural ways that humans can develop (hundreds of genes related, consistent rate of appearance across the world, non-genetic inheritance, I know where I’m putting my money). Neoteny is likely to be involved in interpersonal differences. Just because something is present in human adults that is not in our relatives does not mean that it’s “childish”, it could be a key to what makes us unique.
I want to be able to freely speculate about these things and have discussions without worrying that someone with garbage for morals for take the wrong thing from it. These people are holding us back. Creationists indeed.
It’s just as likely that a neotenous feature of mental development that lasts longer or is preserved in humans is involved in the advancement of our species. For example a cognitive phase of development that let us learn in a certain way for longer. You can bet that if it turned out that a neotenous feature was responsible for some cognitive feature that was more present in male people than female people by one of those small margins they make a big deal about that the talk would be about women being “throwbacks” or some other dreck they use to justify being assholes.
One of the commentators even bring up the Russian experiments that bred foxes to be like dogs who are more “puppy-like”. Just as PZ pointed out though, both sexes of fox were more puppy-like. Half of one’s DNA comes from Mom.
Babymen are calling women babies. You show can show an IMAX movie with that sorta projection.
To slithey tove (#1) and Gregory Greenwood (#11): Not only justification of pedophilia. Years ago I read someone using somewhat similar justification to claim that no woman’s consent matters and rape can’t exist. Because women are children, and as such can’t know what is good for them, and it is up to manly men like him to decide when they will be fucked and when not.
Hey wait
If the people on this subreddit are right…
It would explain why they act childish, too.
That doesn’t even get the fox experiment right. They were bred to be docile and human friendly. Becoming more dog or puppy-like was an unexpected side effect or bunch of side effects since there were several changes involved.
When your only research tool is internet porn. /
This is like arguing that women and Africans of both sexes are more evolved than European men because European men have more facial hair, like apes.
Trump’s wall always reminds me of the anti-Kaiju wall in Pacific Rim:
http://pacificrim.wikia.com/wiki/Anti-Kaiju_Wall
It definitely didn’t keep out the kaiju, but this could be what Trump has in mind. (Pardon the overstatement there.)
Oops, too many tabs open, too little brain working. That comment responds to another post.
@anat, 26
But hold on… if women are incapable of consenting, due to being children and unable to know what’s good for them, surely that means that, rather than rape being impossible, every single sex act involving a woman is rape? See, this is why knowing what you’re talking about should always be the starting point. In attempting to “well actually” their way out of being guilty of a crime, they’ve made it so that even instances when the act isn’t criminal count as criminal. If they weren’t such vicious shits, and if they weren’t trying to justify heinousness , that’d be hilarious.
Much more than that, just ask Gaston: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VuJTqmpBnI0&feature=youtu.be&t=2m8s
slithey tove
Yep.
If you physically and mentally equate an adult woman and a teen, then there’s no such thing as “age of consent based on maturity”.
Of course, everybody who regularly works with teens of any gender knows how desperately they’re trying to be “adult” and how miserably they’re failing.
+++
Funny, if us women folks have been selected for being juvenile, how come we’re seen as too old so soon?
33.
Of course not. They should be severely punished. After all, when a girl is intentionally kept ignorant about the birds and the bees, is she not guilty of getting pregnant anyway, a filthy whore, a sorry excuse for a human?
[disclaimer]1. That is not my opinion, only a rendition of what seems to be the opinion of American relinuts.
2. I am not responsible for someone’s lack of humour, intentional or not.[/disclaimer]
@33:
The argument carries the assumption that sex with children is alright.
37.
My parents sent me to Catholic schools, and while we were never explicitly told that sex of adults with children was alright, we were told on several occasions that paedophilia (more specifically, male adults with young boys) could be “a beautiful thing”. Much of the nonsense floating around in the Catholic Church comes from ancient Greek customs/traditions. That’s where this claim came from.
Bart @38, what?! Totally out-of-topic, but I call bullshit on what you were purportedly told. That is most certainly not Catholic.
I too was brought up Catholic (even spent years in Jesuit Catholic boarding schools as a child), and the message was perfectly clear: sexual activity outside marriage — which is a Sacrament between a man and a woman in that mythos — is sinful. Period.
In Catholic terms, it’s hardly beautiful, but rather an abomination; not only is it sex outside of marriage, but it’s homosexual to boot.
(Obviously, I refer to doctrine, not to practice)
39.
I’d disagree. Your comment is not out-of-topic at all. It is spot on, given the original comment about sex with children.
Same here.
Read more: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/06/05/mras-dont-understand-evolution-or-development/#ixzz4AnHjzZ94
I got that, and I unambiguously agree. Never have I heard any Catholic say such a thing was doctrine. However, I have heard some of them (as “priests teaching our class”) say that “knapenliefde” (Dutch for “love of boys”) *could* be a “beautiful thing”. There is no mistake here, I wish there were.
This was in Flanders, 40 years ago, give or take a year. It happened. The likelihood of a ‘false memory’, while never zero, is – I think – extremely remote.
39.
Don’t forget that Catholics are somewhat ambivalent about homosexuality. I was always taught that there was nothing wrong about being a homosexual, and that homosexual priests were entirely welcome. What was not welcome (to be mild) was having homosexual sex. And that teaching was in line with what the Bible says.
Bart:
Wrong; they’re most definitive about it: http://www.vatican.va/archive/ccc_css/archive/catechism/p3s2c2a6.htm
From the Catechism:
Nah, MRAs in general would describe themselves as contrary to religion. The argument is “since women are children, sex with them is not rape”, which is only a valid conclusion if you accept the implicit premise that having sex with children is not rape.
There’s an interesting take on racism with regards to noeteny, which might be relevant.
I recall reading (I’d have to look up the source) that at one point in accepted anthropology, black people were considered more neotenous than whites. This was seized upon in certain circles as proof positive that whites were superior – blacks are more child-like, less adult and must therefore be developmentally inferior don’tchasee!
Once the theory that neoteny was quite possibly the significant difference between humans and the other great apes, all of a sudden the racist thinking reversed: whites were now more neotenous than blacks, blacks were more ape-like, therefore developmentally inferior don’tchasee!
Every time I look at sexism, I can easily find parallel structures in racism.
I have trouble imagining this is a coincidence.
42.
Actually, if read very carefully, you will see that your source does not condemn homosexuality. It condemns homosexual acts, which is exactly what I tried to make clear. You could conceivably argue this is a mere oversight, but you should then be able to show that Catholics condemn, not only homosexual acts, but (platonic) homosexual love/attraction. However, I also realise that this is a point I *can* substantiate, there is no intrinsic unprovability here. So, I will. It might take some time, but I feel it is worth the effort, because it is a frequent point of contention. I should have saved the reference a long time ago.
42.
John, I thought it would take me a lot longer, but I remembered something, and here is a nice Jesuit response: https://youtu.be/-j6rN33hqf4?t=30m38s
There are better references, but I will have to wait to look for them until I have delivered the project I am working on. In any case, this Jesuit is completely in line with the type of explanation I remember.
FFS, Bart.
It is not bleedingly obvious to you that, though Catholicism doesn’t condemn the predilection, it’s seen as an objectively disordered inclination contrary to natural law which calls the good Catholic to self-mastery and which, if acted upon, is a grave depravity?
Yeah, it’s considered a “difficult condition” which should be treated with compassion and sensitivity, but which under no circumstances can be approved — not a fucking “beautiful thing”.
I can accept your priests were perverted (the worst I personally saw was having a kiddie drop his pants and be spanked on the bum for a minor infraction whilst surrounded by his classmates), but to claim there is any ambivalence about homosexuality or that it’s seen as “a beautiful thing” by Catholicism is utter, utter bullshit.
(And all that is leaving aside what you ignored, that being that sex is supposedly only permissible within the Sacrament of marriage, and specifically for the purposes of procreation)
47.
Of course it is. What you are describing now, is exactly what I was attempting to communicate. I realise full well this type of discussion is in splitting-hairs territory, but don’t forget that this is exactly what theologians are paid to do and if atheists are unable to make those distinctions, religionists will always have genuine arguments to claim that atheists are shallow and don’t know what they are talking about. Many atheists demand that religionists be precise and clear. Should atheists not apply those same demands to themselves, i.e. lead by example?
I think that Catholic condemnation of ‘the homosexual act’ is horrifying enough, I feel no need to accuse them of something they do not actually claim.
47.
That’s not what I intended to convey, and I don’t think I did. I only said that we (as in those who were taught by these Jesuits) were told that. I also did not say, nor intended to suggest that these priests were perverts. I have no reason to think they were.
It is the difference of opinion I am interested in, not the agreement. I didn’t ignore it. I agree with it. I saw no need to confirm it.
Read more: http://freethoughtblogs.com/pharyngula/2016/06/05/mras-dont-understand-evolution-or-development/#ixzz4Anhhod9I
[Sorry, PZ. I desist now]
Why do threads with Bart turn into threads about what Bart does or does not know about a particular tangent to the topic of the OP?
51.
Perhaps because Bart tries to be precise, whether or not he is right, as opposed to singing the expected song of the choir, whether or not it is right and hopefully learn something in the process. Bart has always been under the impression that this is what discussions are about. Maybe Bart is wrong.
Anri
Yet nowadays black children are regularly classified as older, more mature and more responsible (and there fore punished harder) than white kids.
You are being criticized for throwing out stupid shit and pretending to be asking innocent questions when you already knew the answer just to get a rise out of people. That is called trolling around here. You aren’t being precise, just obnoxious.
Bingo.
If human evolution is towards neoteny, then what will be more beneficial: loss of body hair, or the ability to shave?
Anri @ 44
I’m not sure if you’ve read exactly the same sources I have, but there’s a chapter in Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man that discusses neoteny and recapitulation as closely-following, mutually contradictory theories of scientific racism. I have the book on my shelf right now; I can reproduce a few snippets from it here:
Claiming to know what is going on in my head when there is not a shred of evidence this is possible, I am sinking to the ground on my knees in admiration in the face of such delightful humility.
More trolling. Why not show your maturity and stop doing it. It has been requested of you to do so.
But did the article end with ‘Now make me a sammich.’??
Enquiring minds and all that….
(Please forgive me if this is a double post – I submitted this comment earlier, but the site appears to have eaten it: perhaps it interpreted some of the old-fashioned language in the blockquote as a slur?)
Anri @ 44
I’m not sure if you’ve read exactly the same sources I have, but there’s a chapter in Stephen Jay Gould’s The Mismeasure of Man that discusses neoteny and recapitulation as closely-following, mutually contradictory theories of scientific racism. I have the book on my shelf right now; I can reproduce a few snippets from it here:
*he used a different word beginning with the letter ‘r’, with the literal meaning ‘slowed, delayed.’ (I think this word may be flagged in the comment system.)
anat @ 26;
That doesn’t surprise me one bit, being as it is just another variant on the long established misogynist trope that women are somehow incapable of knowing what they really want or need, and so teh menz must make those decisions for them, though usually the pseudo-justification deployed is that society has imposed ‘prudishness’ on women that prevents them achieving sexual gratification in their lives until they are ‘rescued’ by a brave penis-haver… er… ‘courageous’ enough to interpret ‘no’ through a lens that renders it into a ‘yes’. Or something like that, MRAs make so little sense it is hard to tell what is going through their testosterone poisoned little minds half the time. This is the first time I have encountered this form of the argument though, and its incredibly creepy attempt to liken women to a class of sexualised child.
anat @26:
When I was young, I was ‘mentored’ by a man who tried to train me up to be just like him. His guiding philosophy was there were two kinds of humans — men and children. He included all women and about 1/2 of men under the category of children. And children existed to give men pleasure. And if they said no, he could take his pleasure anyway. He saw his job as a cub scout leader as teaching us to be men. And his method of teaching was to show us why we didn’t want to be children.
The more I read of MRAs, the more I think that this asshole’s philosophy of life was either full-on MRA, or, at least (given that this was in the mid-1970s) proto-MRA based. The internet didn’t exist back then and we lived in the middle of nowhere, so I wonder where he learned and absorbed it?
@ogvorbis:
Men’s Rights Activism is just a relabeling of the same noxious ideas that have been around for a while.