Archive for the 'Junk Studies' Category

New study shows makeup is not optional

Published by Jill on October 14, 2011. 108 Comments

Well I hope you’re sitting down, because a cosmetics conglomerate has commissioned a study demonstrating that makeup makes people respect women who wear it.

Ha, I was joking about sitting down, because as you know there is nothing more predictable than a cosmetics conglomerate trying to prove with number 1 science information that their useless, demeaning products aren’t useless and demeaning. But before you die of ennui, digest for a moment that in this study, “snap judgements” were used to rate the trustworthiness, warmth, approachability, and competence of women wearing varying amounts of spackle. The spackle levels were “barefaced,” “natural,” “professional,” and “glamorous.”

Dude Nation translation: “lesbian,” “lazy,” “Patty Hewes,” and “slut.”

Apparently the more makeup you wear (and of course buy), the more awesome people think you are when making snap judgements about you. Snap judgements, as you know, are the main kind of judgment people make about women.

The New York Times article reporting on the study contains the following assertions made by an assortment of certified beauty experts:

Ev-psych:

“The pursuit of beauty is a biological as well as a cultural imperative.”

On my home planet, the planet Obstreperon, this statement translates as “Women are hardwired to align their appearance with pornographic fads as a reflection of their one true purpose as cosmetics consumers and sex toilets.”

Choice feminism:

“Women and feminists today see [wearing makeup] is their own choice, and it may be an effective tool.”

I don’t wax my eyebrows to appease people making snap judgements about me, I do it because I choose porn-compliant eyebrows. Choosing makes me a feminist. If porn-compliance happens appease to people making snap judgements, well, that’s entirely accidental.

The empowerfulized consumerist:

“There are times when you want to give a powerful ‘I’m in charge here’ kind of impression, and women shouldn’t be afraid to do that,” by, say, using a deeper lip color that could look shiny, increasing luminosity.

Ah, luminosity, luminosity. Who among us has not been afraid to go for just a little more luminosity, that most elusive of all the cosmetics industry’s mythic feminine attributes, the luminosity that will transform us from cold, unapproachable, incompetent slatterns to “I’m in charge here”?

Well, dudes, for one. When a dude wants to give an “I’m in charge here” kind of impression, he’s not reaching for a deeper lip color. How many straight dudes do you know who give a flip for luminosity? Dudes don’t yearn for beauty. Their yearnings are more realistic: they wish to be rock stars, astronauts, international playboys. Theirs is a world of action. Ours is a world of passive shininess.

Posted in Junk Studies and The Beauty Ultimatum. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt conducts junk study of dogs and restrooms

Published by Jill on March 2, 2011. 114 Comments

Yesterday the Spinster Junk Studies Department promised its own junk study, and here it is! You can view the original raw data here.

Blamers and Dogs

63% of responding blamers don’t know how their dog feels about them, either because they don’t have a dog, or they lack sufficient data to determine their dog’s views, or they are extremely unobservant.

18% say their dog loves them.

Of the respondents who say their dogs love them, 13% nevertheless “sort of agree” that it is wrong to keep pets. We conclude that this group is conflicted, has facets, is a little dippy, and therefore would be interesting to have a marg with.

100% of blamers who are loved by dogs are all for transwomen using the ladies room. Thus we conclude that people who think their dogs love them are nice.

Blamers and Public Cans

81% of responding blamers think that anyone should feel free to transition to whatever gender they please without fear of social repercussions. Yet only 73% think that transwomen should be able to use the ladies room. Thus we conclude that, mysteriously, 8% of blamers apparently feel that denial of public can access doesn’t count as a social repercussion.

Of the 8 respondents who strongly disagree that transwomen should be able to use the ladies room, 4 “strongly” and 4 “sort of” agree that “many scientific theories are suspect because they proceed from within a patriarchal framework.” 6 of the science-is-suspect respondents are willing, nevertheless, to concede that the science demonstrating a correlation between cigs and cancer is accurate. Thus we conclude that the science-is-suspect crowd doesn’t really know what science is.

None of the 8 thinks their dog loves them. Thus we conclude that blamers who don’t want transwomen in the ladies room are suspicious of science and dogs. From which we further infer that they are unhappy paranoids.

Method

Our junk study was based on the responses of 100 self-selected blamers submitted via the internet to a 3rd-party app called Polldaddy, with the integrity of which we have no direct experience. The survey was designed subsequent to the ingestion of a glass of wine and 15 minutes of intense contemplation. The data were coagulated by me, a world-renowned expert in internet survey analysis. Thanks to Nails for suggesting the project. A more better questionnaire suggesting more meaningless correlations is in the works.

Posted in Junk Studies and Number 1 Science Information. Bite me, Chad.

Pop psych mag cites evolutionary evidence for female fickleness

Published by Jill on December 9, 2010. 137 Comments

Few pseudo-entities spook the spinster butt-boils like pseudoscience, and few pseudosciences are as a hot spork in a spinster’s obstreperal lobe like evolutionary psychology.

Evolutionary psychology rests on the shaky (often enpornulated) hypothesis that modern human social behaviors are actually species-preserving adaptations. Because evolutionary psychology, like all psuedoscience, is administered by jackasses who are heavily invested in patriarchy, the behaviors in question just happen to be the very same behaviors commonly observed to be beloved of patriarchyists. And also of sexists, misogynists, horndogs, militarists, straight people, politicians, consumers of pornography, consumers of “beauty,” racists, godbags, liberal men, Hollywoodists, homophobes, matrimonialists, and other cogs in the megatheocorporatocratic machine. Everybody who loves the current world order loves the romantic myth that it is the result of the random interaction of mindless genes, or biological “design.” Sadly, the world order is actually the result of something way more sinister: the completely arbitrary social construct of the culture of domination and submission.

Here are some of the modern human social behaviors explained by evolutionary psychology as the result of natural impulses that apparently evolved around the ancestral campfire: rape, heterosexuality, shooting innocent Texas Hill Country deer with crossbows and consuming the meat at tailgate parties conducted in parking lots at football games, femininity, etc.

By invoking no less an indomitable and popular force of nature than evolution itself, evolutionary psychology confers upon itself the gravitas of scientific holy writ. And for sheer gravitas, you can’t beat the American periodical Psychology Today.* Check out this illustration accompanying a Psychology Today article on the effects of women’s menstrual cycles on their hotness:

Nothing says “take this research seriously” like photos of pornulated women gettin it on with giant plushies.

Like many articles in popular magazines, the aforementioned “The Double Life of Women” by Annie Murphy Paul** unlocks for the pornsick psychology buff the sexy mysteries of those ineffable bizarros, women. Annie Murphy Paul uses revelations facilitated by evolutionary psychology to make the (tired old) case that women are pretty much prisoners of biology, or, more specifically, of the menstrual cycle. Her apparent thesis: ovulating women are constrained by biological impulse to go to bars, wear tight dresses, and emit musical, magical laughter, whereupon they become attracted to male lantern-jawed superheroes. Non-ovulating women, on the other hand, are practically a different species. They are drab and dull and fail to effervesce or mate, and prefer pansy-ass dudes.***

Paul cites research conducted, unfortunately, by psychologists and “dating advisers,” since who else would know from this shit? One researcher dude juxtaposed menstrual cycle data with the nightly revenues of (a whopping) 18 lap dancers. Awesome.

Research dude: Hmm. I wonder where we could conduct some research on ovulating women?

Grad student dude: How about a strip club? We can totally multitask by working and abusing the sex class at the same time.

Research dude: It’s pure genius! I’ll take full credit.

In this case research dude concluded that not only do strip club clientele discern whether lap dancers are ovulating, but that pervs lavish more cash on ovulating lap dancers than they do on dull old non-ovulating ones. Paul calls this “one of the most arresting studies of male responses to female fertility cues.”

Female fertility cues! Apparently women who work in strip clubs are not, contrary to what spinster aunts have maintained through the ages, just trying to make the best of their fucked-up sex class status by working themselves through law school or a drug habit or a musician boyfriend. These hotsy-totsy babes are in fact sending their slavering clients “female fertility cues.” Furthermore, strippers who take birth control pills are “’shooting [themselves] in the foot,’ since [they'll] miss out on the bountiful tips garnered by women in estrus.” That’s right. Sexploitation isn’t about male domination, it’s about human reproduction. Human reproduction is natural. Natural is good. Therefore sexploitation is good.

And that, young onions, is how ev-psych shills for patriarchy.

Meanwhile, so strong is the ovulating human female’s instinct for total sexiness, it turns out, that its expression is involuntary and entirely automated by evolutionary design. Even if she does not wish to advertise her ovulational status, apparently the truth will out. Ovulating women sparkle, they physically morph into hotter versions of themselves, and they take “social risks.”

“It’s difficult for women to fully conceal all signs of fertility — some of them inevitably leak out. [...] We call this ‘leaky cues hypothesis’.”

Ovulating women are not in control of their cues! They simply cannot resist the primal urge to exude pornulated dudefantasy. They are hardwired for hustling! That’s why you see so many drunk women in bars, their fertility cues puddling up at their feet.

“With her tight clothes, alluring scent, and seductive waist-hip ratio, a woman in estrus is sending out a signal not unlike the chimp or the cat in heat.”

It will amuse the patriarchy blamer to note that Paul here reprises one of her earlier remarks, wherein she alluded to the “genitalia of female chimps” which “swell and turn a dramatic shade of pink”. It is a fact — documented by the Spinstitute for the Study of EvPsych Clichés — that no author contriving an antifeminist paean to evolutionary psychology can ever resist comparing sexxed-up women to the dramatically pink butts of chimpanzees. The yowling feline trope, tired and moldy though it is, is a pure bonus track.

So, to recap: women are completely at the mercy of the menstrual cycle, which makes them awesome sexbots one day, and spineless mice the next.

But isn’t this just a reiteration of the hysterical women stereotype? Not at all, says one of the kindly dude researchers.

“The traditional and rather patronizing male view was that women are fickle, that their preferences are random and arbitrary. Now it turns out that what looks like fickleness is actually deeply adaptive and is shared with the females of most animal species.”

OK, let’s get this out of the way first: does Dude even realize that ‘most animal species’ are either arthropods or nematodes, depending on which geek you’re talking to? Together they number in the millions. As in, millions of species. Here at Spinster HQ we were unable to locate any research on, for example, the fickleness of female flatworms. Maybe they like to sport around in spandex when it’s that time of the month, but published studies omit to mention it. So this guy, in his attempt to science-ize an enormously detrimental sexist stereotype, grossly mischaracterizes the scope of the planet’s animalian diversity to further his own anthrocentric worldview.

And also, do not speak to me, dude, of “the rather patronizing male view.” How fucking patronizing is it to argue that ‘fickleness’ is a fucking adaptation shared by all females everywhere? That women’s behavior is, in fact, irrational, only now this irrationality has scientifically proven reasons? This dude is killin’ me!

Oh, and you’ll love this: the helpful suggestion that women can keep themselves out of harm’s way by not “drinking too much at a bar or party at that time of the month.” I’m not even kidding. Dudes cannot resist violating fertile females, so lock yourself away from life’s rich pageant when you’re ovulating or you’re just askin’ for it.

Thus we see that evolutionary psychology attempts to rationalize the worst aspects of humanity by asserting, essentially, this:

Boys will be boys.

______________________
* I found my copy of Psychology Today in the checkout lane at Whole Foods. Pop psychology is apparently a good fit with $27 apples and biohealthy yeast-o-matic colon-cleansing pills. The instances of heteronormative dudecentricity exhibited by this magazine cover are too numerous to list. Help me out!

** Paul, Annie Murphy. “The Double Life of Women.” Psychology Today Dec. 2010: 72-79. Print.

***Naturally, because evolutionary psychology cannot satisfactorily explain homosexuality, no mention is made of the randy double lives of ovulating lesbians, even though they are women. After a fashion.

Photo: Miller, Greg. “The Double Life of Women.” Psychology Today Dec. 2010: 77. Detail. Print.

Posted in Junk Studies, Knobjectivism, Mass Media, Men Hate You, Number 1 Science Information, Sexploitation and The Spinster's Finger on the Pulse of Today. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt registers lack of surprise

Published by Jill on June 12, 2010. 29 Comments

I knew it!

We acknowledge that systematic meat sharing by male chimpanzees in expectation of, or in return for, immediate copulations might be discovered in future studies. However, current data indicate that such exchanges are so rare, and so different in nature from exchanges among humans, that with respect to chimpanzees, sexual bartering in humans should be regarded as a derived trait with no known antecedents in the behavior of wild chimpanzees. [cite]

Thanks a buttload, SelinaK!

Posted in Junk Studies, Number 1 Science Information and Sexploitation. Bite me, Chad.

Science dudes declare porn good, support claim with Danish graphs, flawed reasoning

Published by Jill on June 7, 2010. 177 Comments

The extent to which dudes just don’t get it fucking blows my lobe.

While readin’ along over at the Scienceblogs, I encountered an essay entitled Just How Bad Is Porn, Anyway? Try to contain your surprise; it was authored by a dude.

Whenever I see a science dude begin to muse on the philosophic value of pornography, my lobe starts to tingle. What are the odds the guy can stop himself from making with the wink-wink/nudge-nudge? I immediately begin shuffling through my desk drawer for the blamehammer. It’s a foregone conclusion that I’ll be needing it in short order.

In the afore-referenced essay, Scienceblogger Jason G Goldman of The Thoughtful Animal, who files the piece under “Sexual Behavior and Mating,” takes it upon himself to summarize the findings of a few studies on the effects of pornography on human happiness. He does this in response to troubling news that an anti-porn group is convening in Boston to discuss an action plan for dismantling porn culture.

Weeeelll, it isn’t long before Goldman says

So clearly this is a complicated issue. What’s a responsible scientist to do? An experiment, of course. I know: I’ll watch a TON of porn, and then see if I become sexist or racist, or feel any more aggressive than baseline.

Hahaha! An experiment where you have to watch tons of porn! That’s a funny joke! It reminds me of real sexology experiments. Like the ones where subjects are naked and “invasive probes and electrodes” are inserted into their vaginas. Those researchers are, of course, totally objective professionals when it comes to getting grant money to make porn right in their own labs.

But back to Goldman and his objective overview of porn studies:

Let’s make a few things clear: I am not taking sides in the issue of whether or not pornography should be censored or restricted (but most forms of censorship make me very uncomfortable). This is meant to review some of the research that’s been conducted on whether or not there is a reliable causal relationship between pornography and various Bad Things. [boldface Goldman's]

Translation: “I totally think pornography should not be censored or restricted. Let’s look at some studies that don’t prove anything bad about porn.”

Goldman presents some Danish research showing that there are more Danes who love porn than Danes who don’t love porn, and some research showing that porn has a positive impact on sexual satisfaction with Croatian vanillas but not on that of kinky Croatians, and some American research showing that dudes who use a lot of porn aren’t necessarily all that violent, unless they were fucked up already.

You know, the usual. Pornography is “free speech.” Pornography is only harmful to the user when he is a deviant perv to begin with. Male aggression is associated with buttloads of porn use only in a select few previously-messed-up douchebags. ‘Normal’ porn consumers, i.e. ‘most’ men (fully 98% of all men, apparently, and 80% of all women), are happy, healthy, well-adjusted, and brimming with contentment. It’s the kook-and-psychopath minority out there who get all compulsive on your ass, or who act out all rapey, giving well-adjusted exploiters a bad name.

Goldman cites no research on the effects of pornography on the pornulated women themselves, or of porn culture on women’s status within the sexbot continuum.

In fact, he seems to suggest that there are but two possible stances on porn. You’re either for it, or you’re for banning it. He omits to consider other, more elegant schemes. Such as the solution we advocate here on Savage Death Island, wherein pornography is made, not illegal, but obsolete, via elimination of the sex class, which may be accomplished by feminist revolt. There is a difference between banning porn and eradicating the demand for porn, a delicate nuance that no dude ever seems able to contemplate. A life without porn is not to be borne! Any feminist who suggests otherwise is an irrational kook.

Like all men who claim to have a bunch of sex-poz feminist BFFs and who consider that access to porn is guaranteed under the Global Accords Governing Fair Use of Women, Goldman doesn’t appear to grasp that patriarchy — a social order predicated on the oppression of women as a sex class — is actually real, and that as such, ours is a culture of domination wherein the ‘art form’ known as pornography is the graphic representation of rape.

The comments on Goldman’s post, proceeding from enlightened science-minds, exhibit the usual unsophisticated grasp of women’s oppression.*

– Why all the fuss about porn? Anti-porn activists should redirect their anti-porn energy to fixing the BP oil leak.
– Porn is noble “sex work.”
– Sex work isn’t exploitation because women make a shit-ton of money doing it.
– Porn stars are famous, and famous is good.
– If porn is so bad, how do you explain Celebrity Porn Star X, who has her own production company and is rich?
– Porn is an important “safety valve” that allows everyman’s inner rapist to get off, no harm no foul, thus preventing real rapes.
– If we de-stigmatized “sex work,” we could keep porn available
– If we regulated prostitution, we could keep hookers available

These are all textbook patriarchy-denier dillies, to be sure (I look forward to reading the counter-arguments in the Blame-a-teria). However, my favorite comments in the series are by one cs shelton. Here is a mansplainer of the first water. How breathtakingly predictable, how automatically autocratic he is when he informs feminist commenter Skeptifem that she is “emotional” and therefore “doesn’t reflect reality or practicality or human rights or even feminism in a reasonable way.” What did Skeptifem say to incur this scolding?

Often pornography IS violence against women, so asking if porn causes that is a silly question. Normalizing that situation is horrible. Paying for a luxury item with such an immense human cost is deplorable. No porn is worth it, and I don’t think people should be free to buy something that causes the rape of women. What is crazy is that the rape of a woman can become speech if someone takes a picture. People act like the rape of women in porn isn’t enough, that it has to spread to other women for it to matter.

Yup, that Skeptifem sure is in denial about reality and human rights and feminism, there. Good thing old cs shelton, feminism expert and pornoisseur, is on hand to set her straight. But it gets even better. Dude goes on to categorically assert, based exclusively on his personal experience as a pornsick horndog teen, that “the paleolithic venus was NOT a goddess figure. She was a masturbation aid.”

He alludes, apparently, to the Venus of Willendorf, the XXX-rated statuette believed to have once adorned the dashboard of Fred Flintstone’s Rockmobile.

cs shelton, who lives furtively in his mom’s basement on Norman Rockwell Street in a TV version of 1953, goes on to make the astonishing assertion that “porn is barely tolerated in the USA.”

Whaaa?

But the best is yet to come. Behold cs shelton’s final arguments in support of the Pornography Preservationists of America. They are the old moldy classics.

– he is a feminist, so he is exempt from accusations of sexism
– anti-porn is the same as “sex negative”, and sex-negativity is a “subjugator of women”
– because the demand for porn is “so overpowering,” any attempt to eradicate it would be “insane” and also “BAD FOR WOMEN”
– his girlfriend likes porn

and, finally, I kid you not,

I invented porn with no outside influence (same as masturbation) when I was 11. I drew naked people. I figured out what felt good. It came to me naturally, and to trash porn as inherently evil or anti-woman is to say that a natural part of who I am sexually is bad and horrible. So no, I ain’t having it.

Oh dear; cs shelton’s reasoning is an unfortunate mis-application of a No. 1 Math Property, the dear old Transitive Property of Equality.** It works great when you’re talking conditionally about objective values represented by letters of the alphabet, but not so much when applied to questions of ethics, human oppression, and male entitlement. To wit:

Porn is who he is, and who he is is good, therefore porn is good.

Also, he personally and spontaneously created porn, and anything he crapped out at the age of 11 is natural and holy, therefore porn is natural and holy.

You can’t make this shit up.

Kill me now.

_________________
*Except for one or two comments like Zuska’s, who excellently remarks with a curled lip,

“Oh, porn is awesome. Soooooo empowerful! I’ll bet every d00d dreams of being the hot chick lying there on the floor/desk/couch/bed/whatever, waiting for the money shot to splatter all over one’s face. No?”

** Join me as I harken back to 4th grade: If a=b, and b=c, then a=c

Venus of Willendorf photo: Wikipedia. < http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d1/VenusWillendorf.jpg >

Posted in Blogulation, Junk Studies, Knobjectivism, Lobe-blowing, Men Hate You, Number 1 Science Information, Rape Culture and Sexploitation. Bite me, Chad.

Primate week continues: the origins of prostitution

Published by Twisty on April 8, 2009. 62 Comments

Yipes, that dang-ole BBC news feed! As mentioned yesterday, the thing infests the Twisty mainframe with a resilience matched only by the Great “Law & Order” Marathon of ‘03.

I allude to a dark interlude wherein my formerly happy-go-lucky keister became inexplicably fused to my lime green recliner while, according to a rigorous schedule, I consumed tubs of Cool Whip and continuous “Law & Order” episodes. Hideous, but mesmerizing. Amazingly, considering the depth and saturation of my exposure to patriarchal narrative norms, I didn’t morph into a Liberal Dude. I was one of the lucky ones; one frabjous day I was scratching my head absently, whereupon I accidently discovered the Patriarchal Messaging Unit, a brain implant of alien technology commonly employed by a secret government agency to control spinster aunts. I pried it out of my lobe toot-sweet, and I’ve been Law & Order-free ever since.

But I digress.

The blamer will certainly enjoy today’s Beeb piece, for it summarizes a study and contains our phrase-of-the-week, “sexual swellings,” with regard to non-human primates! This is not just any old study, either. This is exciting evidence, based on observations of Ivory Coast chimpanzees, that the patriarchal social order is hardwired.

Chimpanzees enter into “deals” whereby they exchange meat for sex, according to researchers.

It goes without saying, since “male” is always the default, that by “chimpanzees” the article means male chimpanzees, and that by “sex” it means “copulation.” Female chimpanzees do not, apparently, exchange meat for sex. Their role is not active. The females passively accept meat from males whereupon they are adjudged to be under an obligation put out over the long term. The article portrays them as recipients of male largesse and as receptacles.

The words “sex slavery” spring to mind, but for some reason are conspicuously absent from the article.

Gee, I wonder if the researchers will draw any conclusions about human behavior based on these patriarchy-informed observations of an isolated primate population belonging to a totally different genus?

“This has got me really interested in humans,” [said researcher/chimp voyeur Cristina Gomes]. “I’m thinking of moving on to working with hunter-gatherers.”

Chimps are pimps, so obviously there are enormous ramifications for our understanding of modern human relationships, which clearly ought to be viewed entirely in terms of male troglodyte copulation skills.

I swear, no more BBC. Well, maybe just one more. I mean, I can quit anytime I want. Maybe tomorrow.

Posted in Junk Studies, Keep your bias off my gender, Mass Media, Men Hate You and Number 1 Science Information. Bite me, Chad.

Post number 1867

Published by Twisty on April 2, 2009. 30 Comments

proboscismonkey1

Your views may differ, but here at Spinster HQ the day just doesn’t feel complete unless we meditate on a study conducted by sexperts explaining patriarchy in unassailable scientific terms. In fact, we’re collecting evidence in support of the theory that sexperts — there appears to be a nearly inexhaustible supply of’em — are actually cybernetic minionbots engineered by a secret cabal of overlords to ceaselessly pursue a sacred quest: proof that H. sapiens is actually two distinct species, Homo masculomacho, (“regular guys”), and Monachus gluteus rosus, (alternatively known as “uteropods”).

But that’s another post!

Today’s boys-and-girls-are-different-species study finds that if you are a team of evolutionary psychologists, and you superscientifically “quiz” 571 young adults about whether they have a “positive outlook,” and then present the results of the quiz at the British Psychological Society in Brighton, the BBC will post an article in its “Health” section entitled “Sisters ‘make people happy’.”

Whereas — you guessed it — “brothers breed distress.”

According to Professor Tony Cassidy of the University of Ulster, families with boys need extra care.

“We may have to think carefully about the way we deal with families with lots of boys.”

Then again, we may not. Because fortunately, female offspring, with their specialized cohesion, communication, happiness, and emotional openness lobes, can be utilized to stabilize the psychological health of otherwise crummy families. Girls, it turns out, are built-in family therapists!

[Professor Tony Cassidy] said many of the participants had been brought up in families where parents had split and the impact of sisters was even more marked in these circumstances.

So if you’ve got some sisters, and your family is still dysfunctional (dad’s a stinking drunk, mom lies in bed all day weeping, junior is amassing firearms for a school shooting, etc) it can only mean one thing: the girls aren’t doing their jobs. Most likely they’re hanging around coffee shops with dog-eared Rimbaud paperbacks, scribbling self-absorbed poetry. These slackers must be urged to put their shoulders to the wheel. I suggest grounding them and taking away their cell phones until the fam is once again purring along like a well-controlled Basic Patriarchal Unit.

Posted in Junk Studies, Keep your bias off my gender and Mass Media. Bite me, Chad.

Psychologists conduct studies, or, The Boothroyd Show

Published by Twisty on March 30, 2009. 80 Comments

It strains the lobe to contemplate what passes, in mainstream media, for women’s health reportage. BBC News, for example, has a passel of crap in the “Health” section on how women attract men, how women select men, and how women’s behavior is a function of our essential receptacality with respect to men. Check this sexist, heteronormative shit out [*]:

Everybody knows women are crazy. We constantly run amok on psycho shopping sprees. Do we stock up on wool socks or books of poetry? Hell no! We buy buttloads of “jewellery, make-up and high heels.” Well, you know why? Because it’s that time of the month! Just ask some psychologists who did a study. Menstruation is a health problem causing unbridled extravagance.

Psychologists believe shopping could be a way for premenstrual women to deal with the negative emotions created by their hormonal changes.

Blowing dough on makeup has nothing to do with the Femininity Industrial Complex.

The menstruation shopping spree article linked to this one, which reveals a handy tip for getting men to pry open the old money clip for you. Obviously, anyone interested in blaming reproductive functions for their credit card debt would probably also be interested in “boosting [their] attractiveness” to men. So guess what. Psychologists did a study. It turns out that the color red totally unlocks the dudely wallet. “[M]en said they would spend more money on a woman pictured in red, compared with the same woman wearing a blue shirt.” It’s easy to guess why. That’s right:

[A] lot of female monkeys have bright red sexual swellings, which show that they are around the time of ovulation.

Ergo, human men are hardwired to spend more cash on a woman who resembles a monkey butt. Duh!

But wait, there’s plenty more where that came from. Psychologists — ever eager to unlock the secrets swelling in the luscious red subconscious of Unknowable Woman — did another study. This one, which I consider to be particularly relevant to women’s health, showed that women with high testosterone levels want to bone a movie star named Daniel Craig.

But wait, there’s even more. Psychologists — they just can’t help themselves — did another study. Women select men who look like their fathers. This is because [gross-out warning] Daddy “imprints” his sexual attractiveness on Baby-Girl. Step off, Freud! “[S]imilarity makes people more fertile” is today’s hep psychosexual mantra. Or so saith Dr Lynda Boothroyd of the University of Durham.

Dr Lynda Boothroyd of the University of Durham really has her finger on the pulse of the Feminine Subconscious of Today, because here she is again in 2008 with another momentous piece of health information. This time it’s “the secret to successful flirting.” Stop wasting your valuable time macking on dudes who wouldn’t fuck you with some other guy’s dick; it is crucial, for the sake of dating efficiency, that you learn your “level of attractiveness.” In other words, if you’re butt-ugly, don’t bother hitting on Daniel Craig.

Oh, and “smile.”

Dating efficiency is apparently a most exigent health issue. It was discussed in 2007 as well, when another study with almost precisely the same findings as the above appeared in the health section of the BBC website. Do not, cautions the article, avert your eyes when you’re trying to hook up with some dude, according to this other bunch of studying psychologists. Also, have a symmetrical face and “healthy” skin. Taking these steps will prevent you “wasting energy on pointless courtships.”

Mating effort is a finite resource that should be allocated judiciously, and preferences for direct gaze in opposite-sex faces would increase the likelihood of allocating mating effort to potential mates who are most likely to reciprocate.”

Good to know!

It may not surprise you to learn that psychologists did another study. I admire their tenacity, but shit, don’t these people have jobs? And once again, our old pal Dr Lynda Boothroyd appears to be the instigator. It turns out that you can tell from a person’s face whether they are “promiscuous.”

Boothroyd said it, I believe it, and that settles it!

______________________
* Note that I have not read any of the studies. For all I know their actual findings concern the nesting habits of the red-bellied woodpecker. I critique only what appears on the BBC website.

Posted in Femininity, Junk Studies, Knobjectivism, Mass Media and The Beauty Ultimatum. Bite me, Chad.

UK shrinks suffer case of double-barbaria

Published by Twisty on March 26, 2009. 87 Comments

Lobe been blown yet today? In the UK 17% of psychiatrists surveyed said they “had agreed to help at least one patient ‘reduce’ their gay or lesbian feelings when asked to do so.”

Hey, UK psychiatrists! Enough already with the Dr Frankenstein crap. This “cure” shit is fraying the Twisty neurons.

Many straight people in the US — home of the Jesus-cure boot camp — have already established that godbags have their head up their ass with this fundamentalist brainwashing crap. After decades of protesting and consciousness-raising and Pride parades and we’re-here-we’re-queer, pesky gays have forced straight people to grudgingly accept that homosexuality is not quite a form of insanity. Some straight people even admit that gay people are human, albeit (they are quick to point out with their anti-gay legislation and heteronormative mass media) in a different way than normal people. But the point is, anyone who has bothered to answer the clue phone has had to acknowledge that the Jesus-cures don’t work.

And why should they work? Why should they even exist? The problem is not with being gay. The problem is the aforementioned straight people and their institutionalized homophobia. Homos freak them out, so they want to get rid of the homos. Stupid straight people. It never occurs to them to just stop being freaked out. If they’d simply ditch their neurotic fucked-up social mores, their freak-out lobes would be happily unaffected by homos, and we could all go home and play Scrabble. What doesn’t work is pretending that neurotic, fucked-up social mores are right and natural by inflicting even more neurosis on marginalized individuals. It not only doesn’t work, it’s barbaric.

And if it’s barbaric for godbags to do it, it’s double-barbaric for health professionals to do it. These are people who have supposedly had some exposure to, you know, science.

But, says the BBC report, one in six Brit shrinks has tried to cure homosexuality. And get this: their “intentions” are good. Well, that makes their paternalistic, homophobic delusions all right, then!

Apparently there actually exist whole organizations of well-intentioned sadistic morons whose sole purpose is to “campaign both for an individual’s right to seek treatment and a professional’s right to offer it.” They’ve heard about a study conducted in 2001 by some asshole American shrink saying “Yes, you can force a depressed, disenfranchised Christian queer to switch sexual orientations.”*

So what are these UK “researchers” doing? Because none exist anywhere else, they’re looking for “stories” from India, South America, and China, “where little is known about the prevalence of ['reparative' therapy],” that will confirm the efficacy of therapeutic assimilation brainwashing.

There can be little doubt that they will succeed in finding their “stories” in those three well-known hotbeds of tolerance and enlightenment.

Earth. What a rotten place to be gay.

____________________
* The shrink was Robert Spitzer. His self-selected sample of reformed homos were all evangelical Christians.

Posted in Godbagism, Junk Studies, Keep your bias off my gender and The megatheocorporatocracy. Bite me, Chad.

Spinster aunt conducts own damn survey

Published by Twisty on March 4, 2009. 76 Comments

The Twisty Institute for the Study of Heterofemininity (TISH) invites women with boyfriends, husbands, and/or fathers to answer the following questions as honestly as possible. The raw data will be tabulated, collated, analyzed, duplicated, dipilated, notated, submitted, cited, misinterpreted, misquoted, and thrown away next week.

On special occasions, or when he’s seeking your approval, does your boyfriend or husband dance provocatively in lacy satin lingerie and a pair of Christian Louboutin pumps, the price of which would shock you?

In school, were most of the assigned books written by poor women of color?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father spend a lot of time and money on beauty?

Are some women sluts?

When you go deer hunting, does your boyfriend or husband visit the spa for an herbal wrap, a facial, and a pedi?

Is your boyfriend, husband, or father afraid to walk alone at night?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father yearn for shiny hair with “luscious volume”?

Would your boyfriend or husband continue to raise your kids and keep house for you if you stopped putting out?

After the presidential inauguration, when your boyfriend, husband, or father had a light lunch with the girls, did the subject of Michelle Obama’s outfit come up?

Is there a fair representation of women in authoritative positions in government, organized religion, media, or business?

When you see a professional sports event, are the athletes usually women?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father take steps to eliminate his “feminine odor”?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father ever try to appease you by tilting his head and giggling?

Is your boyfriend, husband, or father expected to wear makeup and heels to work?

Are the bosses at your job mostly women?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father think it would be good to have “glowing skin”?

Does your boyfriend or husband constantly nag you to leave the seat down?

When it’s time to buy a new car, are you the one who negotiates with the salesman because you’ll get a better deal?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father carry a can of pepper spray in his purse?

Does your husband thank you for babysitting?

When your boyfriend or husband buys a cute new bag, is he crestfallen when you fail to notice?

Do your fiance and his father eagerly look forward to planning your wedding?

For Valentine’s Day, do you give your boyfriend or husband a sexy nightie and a box of chocolates? Or, if you forget, does he feel hurt?

Has your boyfriend, husband, or father undergone breast augmentation surgery? Tummy tuck? Liposuction?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father accept with a resigned sigh that the women in his office are usually given higher salaries and better promotions than the men?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father wait tables at Hooters?

Are you OK with it if your boyfriend or husband gains a little weight, because curvy men turn you on?

When your boyfriend or husband would rather just cuddle, do you pick a fight?

Does your boyfriend, husband, or father clean the toilets with harsh chemicals?

Do you love the way heels make his legs look longer and sexier?

When dudes on the street whistle or make suggestive comments to your boyfriend, husband, or father, does he photograph them and send the pictures to HollaBack?

Is your boyfriend, husband, or father a primary school teacher, a nanny, a maid, or a stay-at-home mom because he finds it so gratifying to make personal sacrifices for others that he doesn’t mind the low or non-existent pay?

Do you send your boyfriend, husband, or father email forwards describing rape avoidance techniques?

Does lipstick scientifically formulated with ginkgo biloba, licorice, and tea tree oil give your boyfriend’s or husband’s lips a fuller, plumper, more kissable look?

Posted in Femininity, Junk Studies and The Beauty Ultimatum. Bite me, Chad.