“A man and his young son were apprehended in a robbery. The father was shot during the struggle and the son, in handcuffs was rushed to the police station. As the police pulled the struggling boy into the station, the mayor, who had
been called to the scene, looked up and said “My God, it’s my son!” ”
– From Foundations Of Psychology (1989) 2nd Edition quoting from a Study by
Eakins and Eakins (1978).
I’m sure that we’ve all seen riddles like the one above. The task for the reader is to guess what the relationship is between the robber and the mayor. It has already been established that robber and his son are male. So, who is the mayor? The answer is that the mayor is the boy’s mother. You’re supposed to stumble because when most people think of a mayor, they think of a man in that role. Most mayors in films are men, for example. You remember, they always refuse to accept the inevitable until it’s too late in disaster films.
Here’s an example from a “Sherlock Holmes” quiz on the Internet
[http://www.sherlock-holmes.co.uk/quiz.html]
“A father and son were involved in a car accident and both were taken to hospital. The father died immediately on arrival, but the son survived, so he was taken to the operating theatre for an emergency operation. The surgeon said: “I can’t operate on this boy because he’s my son”. ”
If you didn’t guess the first one, you’ll probably get the second one: the surgeon is a woman. In the UK, the majority of new doctors are women, but some specialisms such as surgery continue to attract more men.
Seem like conclusive evidence that women are being oppressed by language? Try this one paragraph story that I wrote:
“Police in Cambridge apprehended a notorious and prolific local burglar today. The arrest was the end product of a nearly year-long investigation. However, the operation has drawn a great deal of interest from both the press and the general public as it was carried out by the burglar’s son. When questioned, the police officer remarked, “It was my duty to carry out the investigation. It might seem strange to other people, but this was a person who once stole from my own father. My family will be resting easier from now on.””
Most people are stumped by this one. As with the other stories, a common guess is that two homosexual men have, through adoption, both become the father of a single male individual. When I specify that the men in the story are not homosexual, the next guess is often that the story contains a mistake. If you haven’t come up with the answer by now, you’ll kick yourself when I give you
the solution: the burglar is a woman.
The way that all of these stories work is that they rely on cultural assumptions about gender roles. Other tests work on a similar principle. For example, a study was carried out in which young children were asked to draw a picture of people in various positive career roles such as surgeon or a police officer, and in the majority of cases, the children drew pictures of men.
However, studies like this are dishonest. Naturally, the kids were not asked to draw a picture of a positive, female-dominated role such as a social worker or a teacher or a negative role, such as a criminal.
Things could have gone very differently. I’ve no doubt that if they were asked to draw a picture of a car thief, nearly all of the kids would have drawn a man. However, many of the kids would have lived in areas in which a lot of the crime is carried out by ethnic minorities. It’s not a racist assumption, the tragedy is that seventy percent of prisoners in the United States are non-
white. My guess is that as the children began to reach for the brown crayon, the (probably left-wing and white) teachers and researchers would decide that it was time for an early recess.
Many of the children would think of men in some, but not all, aspirational career roles, and that’s OK because it’s all the proof that feminist researchers need that women are being oppressed. The kids would tend to think of a criminal as man, and that’s OK too. Their first guess is that a criminal would be non-white? That’s politically unpalatable.
Going back to the textual conundrums, they rely on a formula, and I’ll show you how to concoct a story that proves that “men are being oppressed.”
Create the following three characters:
Character A
A male or female. It helps things along if his or her role is one that is normally associated with people of that gender.
Character B
A person of the opposite gender to character A. This person should be cast in a role that is less commonly associated with people of his or her gender.
Character C
A person who has a relationship with characters A and B that would be defined by their gender, for example, their son.
Having created the characters, now utilise them in a one or two paragraph narrative:
• Avoid using pronouns that refer to character B. This is to avoid giving away the gender of that character. However, the sex of character A must be specified.
• End the story with character B making a reference to his or her relationship with character C without mentioning the reciprocal relationship.
Voila! Instant proof that gender A/B is being oppressed by language. Here’s another one:
“Walking home one evening, a young nurse was attacked by a gang of youths. Fortunately, two police officers happened to be passing, and their sudden appearance frightened off the attackers. Following proper procedure, the policemen took the nurse back to the police station so that they could take a statement.
The policemen were sympathetic because they were aware of traumatic effects often experienced by victims of violent crime. Upon starting to recover, the nurse suddenly remarked, “My son! I must go home to look after my young son. He will be wondering where I am.”. The police officer was quick to remark, “Don’t worry, we have informed the child’s mother, and she has returned from work and is with him now.””
The answer to that one is that the nurse is a man. The story plays on a societal myth that is reinforced by television drama: that women are the most common victims of violent crime. In fact, I was careful to include the word victim. Actually, in the UK, men are victims of 77% of all violent crime committed by a stranger. The idea that the nurse is female is further reinforced by casting him in a paternal role.
It’s a shame that feminists have hijacked methods such as this, because they are a useful approach for exploring cultural assumptions about things like race, gender and social class. However, certain groups would rather self-nominate themselves as a victim-class than apply a technique broadly and inclusively.
Tags: Language, Michael Reed
1 Posts in Total 
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Jared White:
Codebuster:
napocapo69:
Rper1959:
quolls:
ThoughtCriminal:
What I don’t get is how anyone could claim to do a scientific study without using any controls?
If you would ask questions regarding DV or rape, against women then why not flip it and ask questions about DV/Rape against men?
science should be about finding the truth and never about being Politically Correct
Is there no more scientific integrity?
no!
“A father and his daughter were involved in a car accident and both were taken to hospital. The father died immediately on arrival, but the daughter survived, so he was taken to the operating theatre for an emergency operation. The surgeon said: “I can’t operate on this girl because she is my daughter.”
This version is much easier to figure out, because the son is substituted for a daughter.
Certainly, there are gender stereotypes. However, the experiment also exploits a glitch in the way the Human mind works. When we are given partial information, the mind attempts to fill in the partial information with provided information (son/daughter) and with stereotypes (male surgeon).
I love smoke and mirrors when necessary, but in the case of presumption of male guilt, there is no need. For example, there are thousands of concrete examples of wrongfully accused men to draw upon. For example, I have been fighting with the wiki editors to add some truth to the Central Park Jogger story.
i was still lviving in NYC when that happened and I dont think the jogger lady ever fully recovered. She was a succesful exectuive or lawyer at the time and she was beaten so badly that she was left for dead and it took her months to recover. So, somebody DID do that to her, and someone needs to pay for it. Wasnt it like 1 guy instead of 10 kids? I ama MRA supporter, but if youre going to let EVERYONE off the hook for murder rape and violence simply because theyre male, then thats just as screwed up as extreme feminism
Payback is hell baby!
It was one guy instead of 5 kids.
The chief prosecutor was Linda Farstein, a hard line feminist who re-wrote the book on sexual assault so that the accused had very limited opportunities to contest their guilt.
The five innocent boys were convicted based on confessions that were obtained under threat of death, after 18 hours of brutal interrogation. Twelve years later, a single adult male was found to be the sole contributor of the semen recovered from the victims body and from the victims clothes. The DNA tests excluded the five youths to a certainty of 1 in 6 billion. The five youths were exonerated, but their lives are ruined to this day.
Farstein used the publicity from the conviction of the five youths to build a career as a crime novelist, including multiple New York times best sellers. She is a multi millionaire who owns properties all over the world, including on Long Island where I live. She never apologized to the five innocent boys whose lives she destroyed in order to make her own dreams come true.
Over the past few months I have worked hard to re-write Farstein’s wikipedia page to include some of the more glaring cases of prosecutorial misconduct, but she has a HUGE following and every edit becomes a major wiki war.
If there is a face for opportunistic, unrepentent, hate-fueled feminism, it is Farstein.
Giselle,
Your gut reaction to leap away from Antz’ desire to seek justice for five ruined men and leap towards a random lynching on behalf of one ruined woman suggests that you think the former is not at least five times more important than the latter, and is not deserving of five times more support from everyone in the world. Your suggestion that someone needs to pay, rather than the attacker puts fairly and squarely in enemy territory. If that’s truly your gut response, which I hope it isn’t, I’m calling you out as a misandrist.
“I can’t operate on him, he is my son!”
A. The surgeon is a woman.
B. The surgeon is a man and has cuckolded the boy’s father.
C. The culture has morphed into a feministic nightmare where every man is responsible for any woman’s child and is therefore considered the “father”.
That’s what I thought – that the Mayor had cuckolded with the man’s (robber’s) wife…
Maybe browsing these blogs is rotting my mind.
I don’t know, I’d hazard to guess there’s a whole hell of a lot more “desperate housewives” than there are female surgeons.
It’s simple probability.
Criminy. The mayor is the other gay father of the adopted boy.
Sheesh!
Damn. I hadn’t read the whole essay before posting that. Guess that idea was covered. Ah well, back to work.
That’s rediculous Anti Idiocy. Everyone knows gay men are hairdressers
No your confused Stu……..all hairdressers are gay …………unless their a woman.
“I’ve no doubt that if they were asked to draw a picture of a car thief, nearly all of the kids would have drawn a man. …My guess is that as the children began to reach for the brown crayon, the (probably left-wing and white) teachers and researchers would decide that it was time for an early recess.”
Unless of course they were asked to draw a picture of a serial killer or serial rapist. If they watch any television at all, they would believe these men to be White. I enjoy watching crime shows like Criminal Minds where the investigators delve into the psychology of criminals. A few days ago, my granddaughter who occasionally stops to watch for a few moments asked me if “only boys” commit crimes. In her limited experience with watching these shows, she had never seen one with a female criminal. Oddly, the very next evening there was an episode with a female serial killer. She was working in conjunctiion with a male. She managed to fool the profilers into believing she was his victim and had been abused into cooperating with the man. She nearly escaped as they let her go. The agents were so focused on the profile that serial killers are always men that they overlooked the real villain.
TDOM
I have often bristled at how the media bandies about the word “gunman” with no outrage from feminists, but if anyone mentions mailman, or fireman etc there’s hell to pay.
The reply from feminists is that the vast majority of gun wielders in crimes are men, but I reply that it’s either/or. Either each situation is taken alone, thereby allowing gender-specific terms, or all gender-specific labeling is outlawed.
Congrats, dude. You just shot DVD sized holes in an entire social science field.
The example that you started with is in books from the following classes:
Psyc 101
Introductory Social Psyc.
Educational Psyc.
Human Development
Sometimes Research Methods in Social Sciences
And certainly Psych of Gender texts.
At a conservative guess, you’ve made probably 220 text book authors, that have published books over the last 25 years…look like dumb-asses.
Which they are…if they actually used something like this as an example of sexism.
This is none gender based, same idea or execution. Try it! out loud!
Whats 6+1……1+6
5+2……2+5
4+3……3+4
7+0……0+7
Spell SHOP! (out loud)
What do you do when you come to a green light?
(is this cultural assumption also?)
You mean…
Everyone doesn’t STOP at green lights??
frack, I’m doing it all wrong…
So, who is the mayor?
My thoughts had been that the mayor was the grandfather to the boy and father of the man who had been shot.
Oddly enough I knew a male hairdresser who PRETENDED to be gay & let his wealthy female clients convert him! That man got more sex….
Excellent.
In the absence of complete information, the mind will fill in missing details. These details are based on one’s view of the world around them. Why is normal human behavior considered bad? Is it wrong to make educated guesses?
What is the percentage of male mayors vs female mayors? Based on that, why is it wrong to assume a mayor is male unless given evidence to suggest otherwise?
Actually, let me leave that up there, but it just clicked with me because I’ve had similar discussions with others on what I think the true root of this topic is.
I’ll say one word: Mayor.
Is the major male/female? White/Black/Hispanic/Asian/Other? Tall/short? What color is the mayor’s eyes?
These “language games” rarely work on me. I just remembered an old discussion where I think a lot of these problems come from. I think perhaps I do it better than others because I’ve done a lot of database work and know how to deal with null values
So given this assumption of what a Mayor is… now let me give you some information that is contradictory to whatever your first assumption was. For some reason, a lot of people fill in the holes with their assumptions and then think of those assumptions as some fact, rather than as an assumption. When I read these stories, I make the same assumptions but I remember that they were assumptions which can be dismissed by contradictory information.
The discussion was a matter of where I was trying to get someone to let go of their previous assumption based on evidence to the contrary as the thread progressed… and for some reason they just couldn’t. Once the assumption was made, it was “fact” along with all the other words the first poster wrote.
Now I’m curious as to why.
Thanks for the kind comments, guys
I love the mathy style. Keep up the good work.