State of the Discussion

Putting this up, in hope that Grok might watch it and pass it on to Charles.

Grok analyzes the video.

"Adult stereotyping exists and can limit options—research consistently shows it. Yet children’s own preferences emerge early (by 18–24 months), show large effect sizes, and appear in primates, suggesting adults both respond to and reinforce existing inclinations. Effective parenting may involve offering a wide range while respecting individual interests rather than assuming all differences are imposed."

BBC Gender Toy Bias Experiment Analysis

OK, this is not up-to-date in any sense but I remember studies from my own time at school (so, mainly the 1980ies) from Germany that stated that girls behave differently, when a class is girls and boys mixed from when they are separated (talking about the same class but taking some lessons mixed some separated). If the boys are present the girls were far more reticent, would raise their hand less often and would not speak about personal experiences. In separated lessons their behavior was far less different from the boys, they were more active, would also bring in personal experiences etc. The behavior of boys in class in the absence of girls was iirc only slightly different. So, there was a bit more show of dominance by boys in the presence of girls than in their absence but it was visible only in direct comparison. It also depended on what lesson was on the menu. On topics that were traditionally connoted as male (math, physics, chemistry, less so biology) the boys displayed more dominant behavior than in 'neutral' areas (humanities, geography) and the behavior of the girls showed the greatest difference there too. This led to public discussions, whether classes should get separated occasionally in the former. Administratively that would not have been a problem since classes were often split for science anyway since experimental setups for full numbers were often difficult to obtain (=not enough material/devices in store) and one could have done so along gender lines.
There were a few attempts in that direction and those proved successful (for the girls at least) but the experiment was soon ended because of protests and reservations/suspicions that this would be used (by conservatives) as a tool to abolish coeducation again and also that the girls should have to learn to counter the male dominance behavior while still in school (the separation seen as a step backwards there). When I went to university, the gender gap in the 'hard' sciences had more or less disappeared, in some cases even reversed.
I think at the school I went to the differences were much smaller than in general, so there would not have been much of an effect in having non-coeducative lessons (PE excepted, where there was separation in secondary school from iirc 7th to 10th or 11th grade where the emphasis was on athletics, which put the girls at a disadvantage).
To-day, at least around here, the problem has re-arisen due to the steeply rising percentage of children with Middle Eastern background. Now it IS about inculcated ideas girls and boys bring back from home. While the girls with that background 'know how to behave correctly' (from the boys' POV) this is not true for the German girls which leads to increasing conflicts with the boys of that cultural background, who try to display dominance and can get angry or even violent, if the girls don't put up with it (even worse, if it's a girl from 'their' side that has gone native (=Western)).
I have to add that at my primary school the percentage of 'foreign' children was exceptionally high for the time but that problem did not exist because they all were German in all but looks and some had to learn their 'native' language in afternoon courses because they did not use it in their day-to-day lives except to play translators for elder relatives.

The version of Grok I’m using is 4.20 (Beta). It’s made up of four agents, one of whom fact-checks the results. The claim is that it reduces hallucinations by about two-thirds. So, progress is being made.

And what would you say if you were teaching a research class and one of your students told you that they had two friends helping them find sources and a fourth who was checking to make sure that none of the other three were making up quotes, and that the one in charge of checking was now able to find two out of every three references that one of the others had made up or misread?

I'd rather have a student who actually read his sources, understood them, synthesized them in productive ways, and could be relied upon to manage his attribution transparently, accurately, and ethically.

None of the four agents can do those things, and the research is built on the hope that at some point of scale that sort of thing will just emerge, spontaneously, out of scale and a momentary spark of genius. They think their agents are all little synthetic Hellen Kellers just waiting for their water pump moment.

But their agents are not beings. What is there that they hope will miraculously self-actualize?

Sorry, CharlesWT, but LLMs are incapable of doing research or of taking a critical perspective on the research that it is parsing, sampling, and remixing. At best it can assemble a preliminary reading list and gather a sampling of annotations for that list. It's potentially a powerful research tool in the hands of an expert, but can't be relied upon to summarize even a single text without hallucinating material and misrepresenting information.

It does, however, assemble very convincing imitations of scholarly research, for those who want to scratch an authority itch without having to go through any of the actual work of building expertise.

wjca: I don’t know about current practice. But when I was growing up, girls were socialized early on to not run around, yell, be generally disorderly, etc.

Say, rather, they have been taught not to behave like they are.

The research indicates that this is only a partial explanation.

nous: That’s a lot of qualifiers for that research (boys in 1) traditional 2) US 3) public 4) primary schools).

I specified traditional public schools since they're the schooling most kids experience, and most of them are of the "sit down, be still, be quiet, and pay attention" type.

How does that compare to boys in other countries?

"Evidence from international assessments and national studies indicates that the gender patterns observed in US primary schools—boys tending toward higher externalizing behaviors like restlessness, impulsivity, and disruption, while girls show stronger self-regulation, compliance, and prosocial engagement—largely hold across other Western countries, including the UK, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, and much of Western and Northern Europe."

Are their issues related to family socioeconomic status or socialization patterns rooted in those socioeconomic groups?

The research indicates that this is only a partial explanation.

And not specified – when were those studies done?

The dates listed for the key citations are 2010-2025.

Updated link to include information on other countries.

Gender Differences in US Primary School Behavior

Yes, Frum did indeed coin "the axis of evil", which is why I believed for many years that I would not be interested in his other views (and I was also influenced, later, by the fact that China and Russia seemed often to be included). But the emergence of Trump, and the abject surrender of most of the GOP, made me re-evaluate. The existence of the Never Trumpers has made me interested in the beliefs of what one might call "principled" conservatives, and I think that is worthwhile.

Regarding the appalling cost to the US of the Iraq war, I have to say I don't even think that is the worst consequence. Frum was wrong in his opinion, and he admits he was wrong. I don't think that renders his opinions worthless. In fact, when people are capable of admitting they were wrong it makes me take them more seriously.

Girls don’t get restless in class?

Less so than boys at the same age.

Say, rather, they have been taught not to behave like they are.

Girls don’t get restless in class?

Less so than boys at the same age.

"Research suggests that, on average, boys in traditional US public primary (elementary) schools exhibit more externalizing behaviors—such as higher activity levels, impulsivity, restlessness, and disruption—compared to girls, who tend to show greater self-regulation, compliance, and prosocial engagement."

Gender Differences in US Primary School Behavior

"And yet, in Western societies, boys are often expected to act like girls. Starting in school, where they’re expected to sit down, be still, be quiet, and pay attention. If they don’t, there’s something wrong with them."

Chiming in briefly to note that the underlying assumption in Charles' comment is that sitting still and paying attention are somehow feminine behaviors.

Girls don't get restless in class?

I'm going to be out most of today, so won't be able to comment on what Pro Bono and nous said til later. But I definitely will then!

Pro Bono - I'm not getting into your first diagreement since that was with GftNC's comment, and I'm not going to assume that I know all the particulars of her critical perspective and would rather not distort her position. But the other two...

It’s not exclusively about sex. But it’s a biological fact that, for a man, rape has to be partly about sex.

Standard warning I would give if this were a class in which the conversation turns to subjects that can be difficult for survivors of sexual violence to manage - mediate your engagement with this as necessary for your own wellbeing...

Rape, sexual assault, and sexual or gendered violence do not at all have to be about sexual desire on the part of the person perpetrating the violence. A heterosexual man can rape another male with an object and feel no sexual arousal. Likewise, rape during war often has less to do with any sexual desire than it does with "spoiling" the enemy's women, which is why, again, it can often involve inanimate objects. The purpose of such things is not the sexual pleasure of the attacker, but rather for the person subject to the violence to be penetrated against their will - preferably in front of witnesses - to demonstrate to them their powerlessness and lack of agency, to reduce them to the status of a woman if they are male, or to demonstrate to any males that the woman "belongs to" that they were powerless to protect their women from harm.

(Disclaimer - this conversation assumes a patriarchal society. People who do ethnography in matrilineal cultures say that the individuals in those cultures have a hard time making sense out of these attitudes because none of those assumptions about personal agency and dominance have a place in their worldview - and those societies have very little in the way of sexual violence. I've just read about this in the last couple days since this conversation came up.)

It's for these reasons that I said that rape was not about sex. Rape often has more in common with torture than it does with sexual desire gone rogue.

I don’t think that’s true of Epstein’s associates – those men had widely acknowledged power and status. Nor can it be true in the Pelicot case, where the rapes were largely secret, and the victim was unconscious.

If I had to try to make sense of the Pelicot case in relation to my points above, I'd posit that, yes, all of the men involved were feeling sexual desire, but that the attraction in that case was to be doing something secret about which the woman had no knowledge and over which the woman had no say. The men were demonstrating to each other their power and control over a woman who had been "shared" with them by the man to whom she belonged, and that sharing was a secret that was withheld from any of the women in their lives.

That makes it a moment of homosocial bonding in which they violate a societal taboo, and there is a type of in-group status that comes with that sort of secret violation, as many fraternity brothers might whisper to each other when in private.

----

That was unpleasant, but hopefully helpful for understanding the positions I've taken on both patriarchy and sexual violence. I don't necessarily want to discuss more, but I've had to put in the time to understand all this in my research on war and violence, and in all those classes where we read and discussed the history of feminist thought. I'm happy if any of this can move our collective understanding more towards the direction of those non-patriarchal cultures I mentioned above.

My question is: who are these real leftists? I don't mean college kids, or some online rando. I mean people who have some public voice, and some IRL feasible path to creating an actual outcome, and who also want to "smash bones".

I can think of - maybe - a handful. Thom Hartmann? Bill McKibben? Chomsky? And Hartmann primarily wants something like a restoration of republican self-governance, as opposed to oligarchy. And McKibben primarily wants us to stop burning the world up. So I'm not sure they acually qualify as folks who want to "tear down the institutions", unless "the institutions" are grossly unregulated capital.

Which, perhaps, they actually are at this point.

But I guess I'm looking for names here. Who the hell is Frum talking about? Black bloc kids? Portland anarchists? Are they a realistic example of effective political actors - people who actually might make substantive changes to anything at all?

"Resistance liberal" sounds like, basically, people like me. I understand, and in many cases agree with, the idea that we are ineffective and not quite what is needed at the moment. And it's definitely true that, for most of us, there is a limit to what we are willing to put at risk. It is, frankly, a lot easier to be bold and uncompromising when you have little to lose. So, there is all of that.

FWIW, my wife and I had a conversation a few years ago about the whole carbon economy thing. We both have - and at this point to a large extent live off of - our 401k's. I'm sure we have some holdings in carbon-based energy - oil companies or similar.

A huge amount of the book value of those companies is oil that is still in the ground. Were there to be any public action to prevent that oil (or similar) from being extracted, the value of those companies would probably collapse. At the time I did a sort of very rough back of envelope calculation and figured that, were that to actually happen, we - my wife and I - would take a significant haircut. I forget what the actual seat-of-the-pants number was, but it was a lot. Enough to make a difference in our daily lives, for the rest of our lives.

And we both agreed we'd take the hit if it was on offer.

Maybe we are extraordinarily exceptional, but I find that unlikely. I'm not seeing us as the root of the problem(s). And I really and truly do understand and appreciate that young people coming up now face challenges we did not, but the fact that we have a house and 401k's is not the root cause of all of that.

It is, frankly, not that big of a house. And we only have one.

The regulatory arms of the government have basically been crippled under Trump. The folks who are in a position to do something about that - primarily Congress, but also the freaking SCOTUS - have been captured and are beholden, not to me and people like me, but to the great big bags of money that keep them in office. And, FWIW, line their pockets, personally.

Maybe that's the problem, right there.

I've stood toe to toe with cops to exercise my "resistance liberalism". I didn't see Frum there that day. Maybe he could try it on before he dismisses it.

cleek - I agree with what you are saying. It's a problem. The one thing I want to make sure doesn't get lost in the great evening out of "none ouf us are main characters" is that the beltway media people, donors, and political analysts are the gatekeepers between those politicians and the precariat, and they are going to pass on the voices of the resistance liberals and explain away the voices of the precariat as having no beliefs because the gatekeepers work for the billionaires.

I'd love for the resistance liberals and the bonesmashers to start talking to, and listening to, each other. The reports I am getting from places like Minnesota are that they are - mostly as they end up in the same place at the same time engaged in active resistance.

I'm not sure that Frum and Miller are aware, though, because their own participation is much more mediated.

They sure aren't listening to the precariat, or they'd know better than to decide that those people have no beliefs.

Isn't curious, though, that the likes of Elon Musk, currently the richest person in the world - which I have to think makes him the richest person in all of human history - seems intent on upending the system of institutions in which he became so obscenely rich. (Or at least that's how it looked to me when he was out DOGEing for Dear Leader.)

I guess in his mind the system was holding him back. Ketamine, anyone?

Ha, nous, I was hoping you'd be our informant on the cool leftist kids! I considered directly asking you. Hugely reducing (or eliminating) the existence of the precariat and the policies which produced them is necessary, and fairly fast. "Making ICE do more training" is nothing near what is necessary.

Also, cleek and I cross posted. You're not all in it together, cleek. The billionaires aren't in it with you. They're building their compounds in order to be self-sufficient in New Zealand while the world burns. Reversing the policies which have made them richer and richer while making working people's salaries stagnant does not have to threaten the life savings of the lower X%. (X% because obviously the calculation will be difficult - 80%? 90%?)

Never let Frum and Miller be your translators for what the cool leftist kids are saying.

But the other thing that seems to be going on, to the extent that this is a real phenomenon I’m describing, is a feeling that simply having beliefs is, in itself, a sign of lameness and that the cool thing is not to have any.

It's not that The Activist Kids (which, again, seems to include Millennials who are in their 40s) have no beliefs and think that Resistance Liberals are cringe. What they really feel is that they are not being seen or listened to by the politicians, the donors, and the media. They have plenty of beliefs, they just don't see that a return to the politics of the Clinton, or Obama, or Reagan years (since this is Frum trying to square the kid's circle) is going to fix any of the specifics of their lives that keep them trapped in the precariat.

The "bonesmashers" are not nihilists or deluded Marxist idealists; what the "bonesmashers" are actually feeling and thinking is something more like what Spanish Civil War anarchist Buenaventura Durruti was talking about when he told The Toronto Daily Star:

We have always lived in slums and holes in the wall. We will know how to accommodate ourselves for a while. For you must not forget that we can also build. It is we who built these palaces and cities, here in Spain and America and everywhere. We, the workers. We can build others to take their place. And better ones. We are not in the least afraid of ruins. We are going to inherit the earth; there is not the slightest doubt about that. The bourgeoisie might blast and ruin its own world before it leaves the stage of history. We carry a new world here, in our hearts. That world is growing in this minute.

The heart of this clash of worldviews is not so much about whether or not the status quo should be obliterated, but about whether or not the institutions who are trying to guide the resistance are willing to give up their own privilege and comfort in order to build a more just future for those who have been harmed by the institutions that the resistance liberals are trying to preserve.

The resistance liberals 401(k)'s are built on the bones that keep the bonesmashers paying off predatory student loans, and that keep a runaway carbon cycle heading for collapse within the bonebreakers' lifetimes.

The sort of institutional reform they need is going to take more than just making ICE go through more training. Real reform is going to feel dangerous to the resistance liberals because they profit from many of the structures that are harming the precariat.

And, as part of my continuing mission to bring various diverse but interesting voices to ObWi, including those of Never Trump Republicans, this is David Frum on last night's SOTU (which I actually watched, for my sins). It was a) embarrassing, and b) the ultimate illustration of what it looks like to be in a completely post-truth world:

https://www.theatlantic.com/ideas/2026/02/trumps-childish-state-of-the-union/686133/?gift=cx0iluuWx4Cg7JjlT8ugCatXRzFLbHu8MkuaA3ijO-A&utm_source=copy-link&utm_medium=social&utm_campaign=share

I have not yet watched the Dem rebuttal, that treat awaits.

Grok clearly doesn't search out all the sources
https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC2438589/

Research suggests that rates of sexual victimization in prison may be as high as 41% or as low as less than 1%.12 A recent meta-analysis estimates a conservative “average” prevalence estimate of prison sexual assault at 1.9%. While the estimated rate of victimization varies significantly across studies, the characteristics of the victims reported in these studies are more similar. First, rates of sexual coercion are higher than rates of sexual assault or rape, independent of gender. More specifically, unwanted and sexually suggestive touching of breasts, genitals, or buttocks is more typical inside prison than the act of rape itself. Second, in the vast majority of studies, male facilities have been found to have higher rates of sexual assault compared to female facilities. Yet the perpetrators of sexual assaults against female inmates, compared to male inmates, are less likely to involve staff. Third, younger inmates are at greater risk of sexual victimization, particularly if they are new arrivals to a facility and are serving their first convictions. This may explain in part why rates of sexual victimizations vary across facilities within the same prison system. Facilities with a younger population would be expected to have higher rates of victimization than those facilities with a more mature and acculturated prison population. Fourth, inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization has an interracial bias, with victims most likely being White and sexual aggressors most likely being Black. This interracial pattern of victimization has been attributed to revenge for historical oppression and the reversal of racial dominance inside prison.

I also looked at your Grok summary and your takeaway seems to be remarkably narrowly focussed. I'll leave it to others to point out how your takeaway points are misleading.

An all-male prison is, by that way of figuring, still a patriarchal society, as is an all-female prison because the larger society in which they exist is patriarchal in structure.

This surprised me: "Inmate-on-inmate sexual victimization: 4% men vs. 21% women (mostly abusive sexual contact)."

"Research suggests male prisons in the US tend to feature more rigid, hierarchical gangs focused on protection, status, and black-market governance, while female prisons more commonly involve pseudo-family or kinship-style groups that emphasize emotional support and relational bonds."

Gendered Social Dynamics in US Prisons

CharlesWT recited, from his gonadal reserve:

"And yet, in Western societies, boys are often expected to act like girls. Starting in school, where they’re expected to sit down, be still, be quiet, and pay attention. If they don’t, there’s something wrong with them."

Boys and girls alike are also expected to leave the guns and ammo at home in this western society, where they can used against the neighbors and Census workers, as God the Gunrunner intended, rather than bringing them into the schools to shoot teachers and fellow students dead.

Yet, only one of those sexual persuasions* seem to ignore that rule, along with those other shut-up-and-learn inconveniences mentioned heretofore.

A libertarian on these very pages years ago, in a fit of drollery, once said that what really bothered him about weaponry near at hand was how bothersomely noisy gunfire can be to innocent bystanders; it hurts HIS ears!

Which seems kind of feminine in its delicacy, ya know, in the generalizing course of things. I would think your normal Texas hombre would wave off hails of deafening gunfire like Colonel Kilgore on the beach in 'Apocalypse Now' unflinchingly, but wistfully citing his love of the smell of Napalm in the morning as ordnance goes Ka-plow! mere yards from him and his surfboard.**

And, is a little like the Yiddish lady complaining about the atrociously bland food served in her nursing home ..... "AND, such small portions!"

*OK, in the abiding interests of both sides do it, I concede there are way too many MAGA conservative Mar-A-Lago-faced gunslinging, gorgons and harridans like the Greenes, the Boeberts, with big swinging testicles who do not demur at a little fully automatic gunfire in the school cafeteria or the U.S. Capitol or even in an otherwise peaceful Minneapolis neighborhood.

** I must mention I personally witnessed that scene being filmed while "performing" as a movie extra (army ranger grunt) in the Philippines while temporarily on "leave" from the Peace Corps there back in the late 1970's.

It was a movie being filmed, but in that and other scenes, it was as deafening, disorienting and dangerously violent as one might imagine real war to be. The ordnance was real and way to close. If not for the blanks in my M-16, I'd have shot most of fellow extras and maybe a star or two. If not for Coppola yelling "Cut", I'd have spent some time in a VA wing stateside entitled "Ward for The Cinematically Shell-Shocked"

Back to Lurking.

nous --  I’m trying to understand where you draw the line between patriarchy and “men seeking status and dominance.”

My (attempted) point is that rape isn't just about men showing how they are more powerful / higher status than women. (Which is my understanding of how patriarchy is being used.) It's about an individual showing that relative to another individual. Gender isn't really a necessary component.

also, yep, it’s not about sex, but rather about status and power and hierarchy within the patriarchal structure.

This I think, speaks (unconsciously?) to the root of the problem of rape. It's not patriarchy per se; that's just a particularly prevalent environment for it. It occurs when someone (the rapist) feels the need to demonstrate his power and status. Often to others, both the victim and the audience. But also sometimes just to himself.**

For a test case, consider prisons. Rape among inmates is pretty much never about sex. It about establishing and demonstrating who is more powerful.

Getting rid of patriarchy, while desirable in itself, won't address the problem of rape. At most, it will shift the mix of who gets raped.

To actually deal with the problem of rape, we need to consider how to reduce the enormous pressure to achieve status and dominance. Or change the way status and dominance are demonstrated. Get us to the point where the reaction of people who know a rapist is "What a pathetic loser! Can't even [however status is demonstrated in that culture]."

** "himself" because most rapists are male. How much of that is because men are more often in higher status/more powerful positions in our culture, and how much is simply mechanical, is a different discussion.

Ah yes, those halcyon days of my youth, when boys were allowed to run wild in the classroom, fidget, yell, and ignore the teacher.

But remember to also leave room for "Kids these days have no discipline and teachers need to crack down on these spoiled brats."

...and also "How dare these teachers present any material to my child that is not pre-authorized by me, the parent."

"Ah, yes, masculinity – that North Star our society hands men that says the worst thing you can do isn’t cruelty, the worst thing you can do is act like a girl."

And yet, in Western societies, boys are often expected to act like girls. Starting in school, where they're expected to sit down, be still, be quiet, and pay attention. If they don't, there's something wrong with them.