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Comment by davemp | Hacker News Reader

If you need "men" defined for you, you're going to have trouble participating in useful communication. Use a bit of intuition.

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It's absurd to group half the population into one group, and then try to work out what makes that group as a whole tick.

Why?

From a sociological standpoint: Because you're doing bad social science. When you're talking about values/cultures, those things are inherently rooted in a culture. Saying "all men X" is almost entirely useless because there's almost always going to be a culture or subculture that makes it "most men" instead.

This specific article was based off a study conducted in Austria with mean ages of men/women involved in their 20s. IDK what this says about world cultures as a whole, or even the culture of Austria as a whole. I would assume that the possibility of people late stages of life might have different feelings on the matter exists and they don't mention it as a variable they accounted for. Never mind all the other variables that one could suggest might affect this matter that aren't specifically mentioned in the abstract. And, in fact, they mention that this paper they're presenting is the first to really delve into the subject of ex-partner feelings, so their results might be completely disproved as more people look into the matter.

Thanks for explaining in more detail. This is not my area of expertise at all. Would it not be possible to draw strong conclusions about “men’s” behavior broadly in the same way we do for male Chimpanzees for example?

It makes a lot of sense however, to separate people based on a criterion and find out how the resulting groups differ from each other.

I believe the criteria needs to be more nuanced that 'man' and 'woman' to be able to elicit anything valuable about society.

It's enough for the criterion to be real in order to be of interest. And this one is definitely real.

Okay, this is where I leave you I'm afraid.

You are essentially arguing that all gender studies are useless because there is parity among individuals in each gender. It's true there is parity, but the scientific division between male and female is very clear. It seems VERY useful to study the differences. To throw them away because all men and women aren't identical feels to me like a terribly short sighted perspective.

I'm saying I believe the premise and criteria should be more nuanced. Men vs. women suggests comparison of two binary absolutes.

That's besides my point. My reply was directed at OP's statement. Just crack open Webster's and pick the definition that fits in the context. We don't need to make English any harder.

If you believe the original point was questioning the dictionary definition, I'll leave you to ponder what else they could have been trying to say.

Personally, I think grouping all men together isn't constructive a lot of the time.

Sexuality and gender attributes aren't binary. Most attributes can be defined on a scale. I think this was the nub of the OP's argument.

doctor_m's question is legitimate though. "Men" is a very large group (obviously), and subgroups may have very different behaviors on this topic; hence asking for "which men?" (although they badly phrased it)

And it's worth noting that the study only focus on heterosexual people, so a more accurate title would be "Heterosexual men hold more positive attitudes towards ex-partners than heterosexual women do"

> And it's worth noting that the study only focus on heterosexual people, so a more accurate title would be "Heterosexual men hold more positive attitudes towards ex-partners than heterosexual women do"

At some point you're just going to have to read the paper if you want full accuracy.

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