Wingnut Daily - The Vox Day Edition

I made the mistake of wandering through Wingnut Daily's columns today. Bad, bad mistake. I tripped over a column that oozed its way out of the fetid imagination of Vox Day (yes, for those who understand a bit of latin his pen name is a bad pun).

His column, entitled The real assault on science descends below the depths of irrationality I thought were reserved for Michael Coren.

First of Vox Day blathers on about how the "primarily Christian" United States produces "more science" than a lot of other secular nations. Well, true enough - sort of. What Day is likely unaware of is how much ground the US has lost in the 'science and innovation' department in the last few years - especially as the rabid religious groups have been horrendously disruptive in a number of key areas of the biosciences (and we won't ignore the other export of Christian Wingnuttia - "Intelligent Design".

After blithely claiming that religion doesn't stand in the way of science at all (a statement written more in hubris than any sense of reality), he then turns to what he thinks is truly a threat to science - feminism:

But this is not to say there is not a genuine threat to all three aspects of science today. Unsurprisingly, it comes from the same force that is the primary threat to the survival of Western civilization: female equalitarianism.

Okay...let's see where Vox derives that from, shall we?

despite the fact that women already earn 57 percent of bachelor's degrees, 59 percent of master's degrees and a majority of doctorates.

I see - so women are becoming more educated, and somehow this is a threat to science?

The bizarre propositions of equalitarianism always sound harmless and amusing at first because they are so absurd. What the rational observer often fails to understand, however, is that these propositions don't sound the least bit absurd to the equalitarian proponent because the average equalitarian is fundamentally an intellectual cave-dweller with no more interest in reason or capacity for logical thought than a hungry kitten.

So, first off he wants you to dismiss the notions of what he misnames "equalitarianism" because he thinks that the advocates for it are largely irrational. Classic - you can't address the actual arguments, so you attack whoever is putting the argument forward. It's usually a good clue that what follows next will be filled with assertions that are jaw-droppingly ridiculous - and Vox doesn't let us down...

The idea of biology classes being taught by lesbian professors who believe that heterosexual procreation is a myth or calculus courses being taught by women who can't do long division may sound impossible today

Since I'm quite sure that there are plenty of lesbians in the biological sciences, and I very much doubt that any of them question the science of procreation, I'd suggest Vox's first claim is crap. The second claim is built up on the utterly bogus social stereotype that women find maths hard to deal with. But, I don't you to entirely reject Vox's hypothesis on the basis of two silly assertions.

but tell that to any software developer, and he'll be able to provide you with plenty of current examples of computer science engineers, some with advanced CS degrees, who have no idea how to even begin writing a computer program.

Oh please. Every software engineer out there thinks that they have a lock on "the correct" way to write software - and that all other developers are idiots. Of course, Day wants to infer that in particular women are exceptionally bad at it. The reality is that women are just as capable in that field as men are.

Women love education; it's the actual application they don't particularly like. Whereas the first thought of a woman who enjoys the idea of painting is to take an art appreciation class, a similarly interested man is more likely to just pick up a paintbrush and paint something – usually a naked woman.

Ummm...wow. I don't even know where to begin with this. I'm tempted to hand that claim around the office here and see just what is said. This is a variation on the rather silly claim that because there are more men labelled "genius" than there are women that women are somehow less creative. Of course, anyone who has travelled through either the arts or the sciences will have long ago realized that men have no lock on creativity, wisdom or genius.

Between 1988 and 2004, Title IX caused the elimination of 239 NCAA Division One men's teams and the addition of 682 women's teams.

Ah, so sports is a barometer for intellectual success? Not. Oh wait, that's not Vox's point - he's really complaining because a system that was set up on 19th century assumptions is being changed to reflect modern realities - in short Vox doesn't like the fact that women are demanding to be treated as social equals.

Because they are the intellectual driving force of humanity, men will be fine.

That's quite a bold assertion - one that is rooted in a misunderstanding of history. Vox is no doubt looking through history and claiming that all of the "great discoveries" were made by men. While credit for those discoveries may well lie with men, we have to reflect on the cold hard reality that most of recorded history comes from patriarchy-based social structures, and the "credit" for a lot of discoveries may rest with men, but in doing so we ignore the fact that women were often held in subjugation until fairly recently, or that men simply assumed ownership of any contributions women made.

It is written that "women ruin everything"; having destroyed the liberal arts, the classics and the pseudo-sciences, it is now abundantly clear that the more rigorous sciences are next on the equalitarians' destructive agenda.

I don't even know where to go with that little bit of utter stupidity. It's pure assertion, derived from other assertions. I can only imagine that if Mr. Beale is in fact married that his wife is living in a new kind of hell - fortunately, I can't find any evidence that he is married - and few enough women would want anything to do with a clod who is so obviously misogynistic.