The Decline of the Masculine

I've had some time to mull over the big study that was released about a month ago that suggested that children raised by same-sex parents are just as well off as those raised by heterosexual parents.  A former student of mine kindly directed me to the article, and after reading it some red flags went up immediately.  But before I comment on a disturbing presupposition I found within the study (a synopsis of which can be found here), let me say a few things.

First, I'm not a statistician and my observations will not be a mathematical critique of how the study was conducted.  Second, I've tried very hard not to let my own a priori presuppositions, however commonsensical they may be (you know, things like children, even biologically speaking, should have a mother and a father present in their lives) impact my criticisms.  

If you perused the results of the study and read any commentary on it, it seems rather harmless until you get to the description of the traits of children raised by lesbian parents in particular.  Just before this, the article relates that there may  be some advantages to being raised by same sex parents - clearly the guarded tone is rhetorical, as is evidenced by what comes next.  The study then tells us that children of lesbian couples are "less aggressive" "more empathic" "more tolerant" and less likely to adhere to traditional gender roles (to varying extremes).  I shouldn't have to spell out what's really being said here: with the absence of a male, children do not demonstrate certain masculine characteristics, and this is a largely positive thing.  How else could you describe it?  Aggressiveness is bad, empathy is good; intolerance is the new F-word, and tolerance is the new summum bonum; gender roles are archaic and oppressive, and gender freedom is progress.

Thanks to my background in philosophy I immediately look for clear terms within arguments because use the of ambiguous terms is usually the first place premises go awry.  And I can't help but find words like "tolerance" to be completely useless and completely loaded - it gives us this warm, fuzzy feeling of openness, but it's so vague that it could mean many things, some of which are negative.  Does tolerance mean a decrease in harsh judgment of others, or does it mean a lax acceptance of anyone else's behavior?  For tolerance is useless if it ultimately empowers people to pervade in wicked behavior or peddle evil ideologies.  Or what about "aggressiveness?"  By this do they mean the propensity toward serious violence or a mere tendency toward physical and assertive solutions to certain problems?  If the latter, aggression can actually be a positive trait if channeled to something like a protective impulse (I sure wouldn't want our soldiers lacking in necessary aggression).

I also can't help but see people logically begging the question here - it is merely assumed that these very ambiguously described traits are beneficial without any critical analysis.  And, frighteningly enough, the very traits the conductors of this study seem to have an a priori disdain for are traditional masculine traits.  We're not only getting an apologetic for same-sex parenting here - what we are seeing is a very carefully worded indictment of masculinity.  I'm not so cynical that I think these people consciously made an effort to denigrate the masculine, but I do think these presuppositions typical of radical feminism are fairly common among left-wing social scientists.  What's so discouraging about this is in the article the surveyors disparage other studies for being loaded from the start with conservative bias while their own work reeks of uncritical acceptance of highly questionable principles.  And it is studies like this that will sway popular and judicial opinion on the issue of same-sex parenting - full of bias, whether homophobic on some fronts, or anti-masculine on another.



Source: http://ad-profundum.blogspot.com/2010/08/decline-of-masculine.html