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Men Value Human Life More Than Women Do
I’ve been under the weather recently, and haven’t made the effort to write anything. But this article on PowerLine roused me from my recliner, forcing my hand. I still don’t feel like putting together a cogent thought, but I simply must share this.
The indispensable Steven Hayward found an article from Tulane University School of Public Health and Tropical Medicine which complained about men eating too much red meat. They attempted to break down this “problem” with the following paragraph (emphasis mine):
“Men are more likely to subscribe to the idea that human lives are more valuable than those of animals, and are more likely to associate meat with healthiness. Whatever the reasons, men are significantly less likely than women to consider reducing their meat consumption.”
Check out that bolded phrase. Men value human life more than women do. Ok. I would love to ask whoever wrote that if ze thinks that that is why men tend to oppose abortion. I wonder why ze thinks that women don’t value human life? I wonder if ze thinks that a female President might be more likely to start WWIII, since she doesn’t value human life as much as a man does.
In fact, I’d love to have a few drinks with whoever excreted this excrement. We’d have a great time. I would, at least.
People like this author control academia, where we used to send our children to learn about the world.
I wonder what this author would do for a living, if ze couldn’t work in education? What on earth would ze do? Probably develop a practical skill, stop complaining about others, and participate in reality, I suppose. But it’s hard to imagine, isn’t it?
I’m not going to read the news again until I’m feeling better. I’m too sick for bourbon right now, so I’m in no condition to read bitter stupidity right now.
Our educational industry is poison to our society. It’s no longer unhelpful. It’s poison.
I’m going back to bed.
Published in General
You only said things that any functioning man would say, or any functioning woman would agree with even if she worded them differently.
That doesn’t necessarily mean that men value human life more than women value human life. It could just mean that men value non-human animals less than women do.
I can see arguments about women valuing human life less than men, though, since it helps explain why so many women don’t seem to mind killing their unborn children. Or even their living children, since more children are abused and killed by women (mothers) than by men (fathers). That’s been true in crime statistics for a long time and I doubt it’s changed recently.
Maybe it’s because women have the “baby factory” right in them so having another is less of a challenge than for men.
I think xe might be onto something there.
OK. You called the main thesis “excrement.” I agree.
correct. The headline is improper.
Actually, ze might be on to something. Recent Gallup polling indicate that 40% of women favor legal abortion under ANY circumstances.
Vs 27% of men.
If I correctly read Dr. Bastiat’s article for the writer’s meaning, the Title was proper. He was quoting someone, and describing the idea expressed by the text as excrement.
But he seems to reflexively deny that possibility, despite some pretty strong evidence, and the reality that all of us here on Ricochet should by now be used to the distinct possibility that we may not be among the majority on pretty much any issue at all, really.
That’s a funny picture.
Gross, but funny.
Kedavis may have a point. How about this: “Men value human life more in comparison to the lives of animals than women do.” That may more accurately reflect the excrement intended by the author.
But I’m not sure that it changes the point I’m trying to make.
But if your point is to claim that women value human life equally to men or perhaps even more than men, and that any suggestion to the contrary is somehow ridiculous or perhaps even evil, don’t you need to explain why women are more willing to kill their unborn (and born, really) children than men are, which we have decades or even centuries of evidence to prove even beyond the issue of abortion?
Which, repeated a gazillion times if necessary, still DOESN’T mean that ANY WOMEN YOU KNOW might be that way. But it’s entirely possible that all the women you know are still in what could be a rather small minority of women. And you shouldn’t want it any other way.
Many women support abortion in the abstract because they can imagine a variety of situations in which they really, really do not want to have a child, and want to keep the options open. They will also be intensely protective of the child they want to have, investing in it the very things they wave away when the child is not wanted. IE, clump of cells or reason to redecorate the spare room. We are not supposed to draw any generalizations or conclusions from this.
I don’t think men “value human life over animal life” is the correct framing, or the first John Wick movie would’ve seemed odd. Most men who saw that movie wept over the death of the dog and regarded it as a perfectly good reason to shoot about 147 guys in the head. But most men do not regard animals as occupants of the same moral plane, for the simple reason that they are not, and only sentimental starry-hearted fools believe that an elderly chicken has the same worth as a two-year-old child. Left to their own devices, animals are murder machines. Your beloved Fido exults in the death scream of a baby rabbit.
This is not license to mistreat or exploit; our recognition of the difference requires an obligation to be – what’s the word? – humane, and regard animals as fellow inhabitants of the world who have the unfortunate quality of being delicious.
The end result of the PETA equation – a baby is a dog is a pig is a chicken is a rat – does not elevate the rat, it just furnishes the mental space for justifying the elimination of the baby.
Well for most of human existence, men got meat from animals, and women got that meat from men. A difference in attitudes about the relative value of animal lives is certainly not ruled out. And with the difference being relative value, the bolded sentence can still be true. Silly by phrasing and sounds like an agenda; but not necessarily false.
Hope you’re feeling better soon, Doc.
I tend toward the view that this is the very point of tension that explains most of our current cultural conflicts. I have written about this on my own blog (https://www.keithlowery.com/humans-have-privilege/)
I’m already getting better, thanks. Just tired and run down now. On the mend.
Yeah, that’s a good point.
A narcissistic small minded teenage boy who just wants to get laid – ok, I can sort of see how he would support abortion.
A woman who supports abortion is a mystery to me. Especially a woman who has been pregnant before. Amazing.
Google tells me that women are twice as likely to be vegetarian than men. I am not surprised. However, I am surprised these days, when someone “discovers” that men and women are different in some way. Duh.
A meme that I saw circulating somewhere:
Exactly. Anti-humanism manifests itself in myriad ways, but it’s rooted in the view that human beings are merely one of numerous species competing for survival, and without any particular claims to preeminence.
Anecdotes are not data. Neither my daughter nor my daughter-in-law are vegetarian. But, my daughter (who cooks a number of meats enthusiastically) has said that only because she did not see the face of the animal that became the meat. She’d be a vegetarian if she had to look at the face of the animal before it was butchered. Our son has raised rabbits for meat, and is now trying to raise sheep for the same purpose. He has no trouble looking at the animals and telling them, “your purpose is to provide nutrition for me and others, so now you are on your way to fulfilling your purpose.” He has to do this out of sight of his wife, though, as she keeps finding excuses not to butcher the animals.
Doc, I am really sorry for you. Too sick for bourbon! That is really sick. Please get well soon. As far as the Man from academia, or whoever it is, just like most of them, their heads are way up into the wrong area.
If you disappear down the rabbit hole long enough and far enough, you’ll eventually find the source article for this idiocy. It’s “published” in the magazine Nutrients, an “Open Access Journal,” and its title is “Demographic and Socioeconomic Correlates of Disproportionate Beef Consumption among US Adults in an age of Global Warming.” It’s part of the series on Adherence to Healthy and Sustainable Diets: Challenges and Perspectives.
No agenda there.
Here are the first few lines from the abstract (emphasis mine):
I don’t understand why any rational person would give these loons the time of day, let alone try and rationalize their conclusions.
The most revealing paragraph in the entire thing is this one, part of which is quoted in the OP (emphasis mine):
(One of the endnotes in support of this theory expressed in the first part of the paragraph links to an article titled Valuing Humans over Animals–Gender Differences in Meat-Eating Behavior and the Role of the Dark Triad, in a journal called Appetite. This appears to be where the authors got their idea of the relative value placed on human life by men and women.)
Here’s the abstract for that one (emphasis mine):
So this (short form: Men eat more meat as a consequence of their Machiavellianism) is one of the underpinnings of this latest “study.”
As a female who supports, without guilt or shame, “meat-eating justification” and who demonstrates a fairly robust degree of “meat-eating behavior” myself, I call BS on the entire house of cards.
And since I can generally see through flimflammery, I’m not falling for an argument which states an inflammatory, headline-grabbing, conclusion (which seems to have worked pretty well):
and then immediately follows up, in the same paragraph with a sentence that starts out:
Clearly, these people are throwing excrement at the walls to see what sticks, and they don’t have a bloody clue what the actual reasons are, or even if there are reasons.
My own endnote: I suppose I should dish out mad props to these people for at least speaking in terms of manhood and [implied] womanhood. It could be worse.
Whenever someone talks about “saving the planet” ya gotta ask “saving the planet from what?”
The answer, when you drill down past the usual bromides about climate change or overheating or “extreme weather events,” . . . is humans. And this gives one pretext for eliminating those humans in the required numbers to save the planet.
Worse than that, they believe humans actually louse things up for all the other species.
Try some chicken soup. I understand it’s healthy for you.
It couldn’t hurt.
Funny thing though, the humans that require elimination never includes themselves…
In fairness, they do have more skin in the game.
Drink well soon!