POLL: Dating Ages

PC and euphemisms are used to cover a wide variety of things that we know are more or less true, usually to lessen the impact of throwing such a blunt statement into someone's face, or to prevent the overgeneralizing effect. I could come up with dozens of generalizations for women that most males would certainly consider true (from their own personal experience, not based on some obscure stereotypes), but most women wouldn't, just on the principle that these days such things aren't valid any more. Whether that would be true or the side-effect of denial caused by feminist philosophy is a matter for another debate.

So saying in general, without any info backing it up, that males tend to mature slower is just about as accurate as saying that women tend to be more sentimental than men, and cry more often. True in real life? I won't say yes or no because that'd be going off topic here. I can say without much thinking though, that most modern women would disagree with that statement. Whether research proved it to be true or not. The most commonly used objection is that men are just as sentimental, but that they just bury their feelings instead of letting them out. Excuses like that abound for practically any female generalization you can think of.

So, you see, PC is a curious issue, and a very interesting topic for discussion. If anyone wants to take it into another thread, please do, but let's keep this thread focused on the intended topic.

(Btw, this was more of an expansion on my original post than a direct reply to Amon-Ra. My point there was not really whether it's scientifically proven or not. PC hardly ever takes that into account.)

 

Well, you're building your whole argument on the point that I said hardly matters as far as PC is concerned (and no, I'm not defending it, just telling it as it is), so I can't really argue with you. You're talking about something entirely different. But ok, let me start talking about vaguely the same thing as you are. Scientific findings change quite often, so calling something like that a general truth is a bit near-sighted.

And those examples of yours are hardly valid. Going from "Men can't birth children" right to "women's brains develop faster than men's"... I mean, come on. The first is an obvious general truth, as are the rest of your examples, up to the last one which clearly doesn't fit. I think it'll be quite a few more years (and much more research on the subject) before you can bunch up statements like "women's brains develop faster than men's" along with general truths. How old is that scientific research you're basing your claims on, anyway? How many people have tried to prove it wrong and failed? Something doesn't become true just because one research comes up with findings that support it. It takes years of flawed attempts to disprove it before that happens.

And finally, how do you prove an actual connection between fusing of frontal lobe neurons and a concept as wide as maturity, which depends on about a million other factors besides the actual cell structures?

[ October 08, 2002, 00:26: Message edited by: Taluntain ]