Governing Blunders - Part 1 (page 3)

richard

Thats very funny, but a little sad. Got me to wondering how many young witness girls lives were ruined because of that one paragraph

How about non-witness young girls of that generation?

logansrun

Well, to be honest, there is a small kernel of truth to that paragraph...

I have to say, that I am often astonished at the naiveté of many XJW?s who are often still content to search the dustbin of educational drop-outs for obscure and half-baked references to support obscure and half-baked philosophies.

I never said that everything in the Society's paragraph was correct, far from it. No woman "likes to be bossed", for example, as far as I can tell! Nonetheless, I still say there is *some* truth (no I was not kidding) to the notion that, generally speaking, women tend to be a bit more emotionally minded then men. This is not a liability, contrary to what the unnamed psychologist quoted in the paragraph said. In fact, it seems that this is to women's advantage.

I think you're reaction to the source I quoted is unfair, HS. The doctor in the reference I gave is not an "educational drop-out" nor is what he said "obscure" in any way. The Meyers-Briggs personality indicator test is very popular and respected, although it is not without it's critics. Stating that half the population are thinkers (1/3 of which are women) and the other half feelers (1/3 of which are men) generally are the figures I have seen in the personality typesetting literature. I will grant that this might not have the statistical weight to be adament about those numbers.

If you know anything about personality typesetting, particularly the Meyers Briggs method, you will know that no one is totally one way or the other (thinkers/feelers, introvert/extrovert) but for simplicity sake people are categorized as being predominately thinking or feeling.

Really HS, I believe you are over-reacting to my statement (and my sources) quite tremendously.

Bradley

logansrun

HS,

More info for you to ponder:

From:

	Why Women Make Better Networkers
	By D ouglas B . R ichardson

Where Rapport Comes From

Social scientists have long observed patterns in how people respond to others. They've identified personality and temperamental categories that predict how people react and relate to each other.

Many kinds of personal preferences and tendencies are gender-neutral, with women and men wired similarly. In some crucial dimensions, however, the differences between the sexes are clear and fundamental.

For example, the Myers-Briggs Type Indicator, perhaps the most widely used tool for measuring individual style and preferences, distinguishes between "thinking" and "feeling" styles of making decisions and communicating them to others. Thinkers insist that the best decisions are rational, logical and dispassionate. They believe the universe and everything in it are governed by objective, consistent rules of cause and effect. To thinkers, there are absolute rights and wrongs, and you can't change the rules to fit a situation. They believe that emotions can distort and diminish the quality of decisions.

Feelers, on the other hand, place a high premium on the value of emotion when making and acting on decisions. They have a subjective and humanistic frame of reference. In their view, a sound decision makes everyone involved feel as good as possible under the circumstances. To feelers, there are no absolute rights and wrongs. The most effective way to behave is to accommodate all styles. It's an approach that's sensitive to emotion and unconcerned about whether everything makes perfect sense.

Not surprisingly, two-thirds of all men who take the Myers-Briggs exercise score highly as thinkers, and two-thirds of all women as feelers. This difference is the premise behind such best-selling books as "You Just Don't Understand" by Deborah Tannen (1990, William Morrow & Co.) and "Men Are From Mars, Women Are From Venus" by John Gray (1992, Harper Collins).

DanTheMan

How wholesome an arrangement it is

LOL!

What fine fruitage blah blah blah make it your aim blah blah blah spiritually upbuilding blah blah blah theocratic arrangement blah blah blah

logansrun

One last one...

http://www.abcnews.go.com/sections/scitech/DailyNews/brainstudy020722.html

My point is not that the Society is correct, but that they simply took an idea which has a kernel of truth, and "ran with it" into obviously sexist and long-disproven notions. Other examples of this type of reasoning by the Society are legion.

Bradley

wasasister

I think (feel?) Meyers-Briggs is full of crap. I've taken it several times when interviewing for jobs, at seminars, etc. Each time I was able to make the test come out to get me hired (or whatever.) Some of the popular tests have a graph based on which of four traits dominate. I never did find a graph to fit my results.

My young daughters used to giggle aloud when this sort of thing was mentioned at meetings. They knew, even from a tender age, that their mom was the logical one in the family.

Like good and evil (as we have so thoroughly discussed recently) "logic" and "feeling" exist in everyone. Good training helps sales-people switch customers to the "feeling" side of the brain in order to make a sale. If women seem more in touch with "feelings" it is likely repetative reinforcement, rather than a natural gender inclination.

Big Tex

Wasa, I feel that was a well thought out post.

hillary_step

Bradley,

No-one is casting doubt on the fact that women may percieve emotions in a different, perhaps more enhanced way than men. I can accept this, but cannot accept any of the statements by a 'female psycholgist', or a man who claims that you can divide the population of the world into two camps, the 'thinkers' and the 'feelers'.

How much of all this is a self-fulfilling sterotype is yet to be assessed, but that is not the thrust of the WTS reason for quoting a 'female psychologist'. She was quoted to reinforce a desperate Biblical cliche that women are inferior in emotional capability than are men. A *very* Augustine perception, and one that is patently untrue and innacurate. That Dr Boeree bought into this classic notion from a lateral position means nothing.

It should not escape the grasp of your intellectual reasoning to conclude that women are throughly capable of both thinking and feeling and that stereotypes are just that, a ham-fisted attempt at creating statistical melting pots.

Myers-Briggs can be a very useful measuring tool when used within confined boundaries, when it is used to assess half the planets population it has obvious flaws. Just ask Dr. Boeree, he seems to be one of them.

All I can do is ask you Brad to explain this statement :

I still say there is *some* truth (no I was not kidding) to the notion that, generally speaking, women tend to be a bit more emotionally minded then men.

Might I ask how you know that "generally speaking" women tend to be more 'emotionally minded" than men. Are you sure that perhaps your perceptions are not based on a middle-class Western perception and the occasional rebuke from your girlfriend for being a trifle dense at times? Do Myers-Briggs operate in Italy, or Argentina where men have been known to cry and kill their neighbours for scratching their new Alfa's?

Best regards - HS

hillary_step

Wasasister,

I still smile on occasion at your comment of a few years ago that you used to prepare your husbands talks for the Ministry School, and yet he was appointed as an MS, just 'because he had a penis - such as it was'....lol

That statement still makes me cross my legs very rapidly.

Best regards - HS

VM44

Basically, women like to work under a ceiling of authority, provided that
it is exercised properly. This is the way Jehovah God created them.

The Watchtower must like the above words, as they have used in them the references for three of their Public Talk outlines.

Specifically:

Public Talk 037, "Decide Now for Divine Rulership."

Public Talk 048, "Meeting the Test of Christian Loyalty,"

Public Talk 075, "Do You Recognize Jehovah's Sovereignty?"

It would be interesting to know who the psychologist was that made the orignal statement "Basically, women like to work under a ceiling of authority." Is it indeed a scientific statement, or just her personal opinion?

--VM44

Governing Blunders - Part 1

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