http://artofmanliness.com/about-2/
It's a gender-specific blog. A good one, too.
It's a gender-specific blog. A good one, too.
The blog overall, from a brief skim, seems about 50% sexist nonsense, and 50% obsessed-with-old-accoutrements-of-masculinity hipsters (I expect to find some fancy moustaches and pipes). If it matters, I'm a man, and I find this kind of stuff trying to tell me what it means to be a "real man" pretty offensive, backwards crap.
edit: http://artofmanliness.com/faq/
"1. What makes you experts on manliness?
We’ve never said we’re experts. In fact, the idea that there’s such a thing as an “expert in manliness” is sort of silly. We’re just two people who are passionate about helping men become better men. We want to provide an alternative men’s magazine for men who are tired of the crap that’s put out for men by most media outlets. We see our role as researchers and writers who try to dig up the best information out there and make that info available to readers. I’m learning right along with everyone else."
Secondly, just because it's popular today to think of men differently than the "old-fashioned way" doesn't mean that modern thought is "more correct" as to what defines a man, nor does it mean that people who disagree with the modern idea are "wrong" (I'm not suggesting that the "old-fashioned way" is in anyway correct either, but still people have different opinions - and the popular modern idea is just one more).
But I digress, the blog is quite self-aware and I've always read it with a sort of tongue-in-cheek sense of humor; the "gratuitously" throwing in of "man" and "manliness" is part of the writing style.
I would love to see any evidence that the usage of 'he' somehow harms females, and I would support any evidence-supported solution that is suggested (for one thing, I wouldn't want it to harm my wife and daughters), but so far this whole issue seems to be completely locked in the realm of hypothesis, and it's without the feeblest suggestion of evidence.
The pronoun thing is probably a minor issue in the gender wars, though. That "he" is the default pronoun isn't a problem so much as, say, that the vast majority of scientists are men, which sends the message to young girls that science is not for them.
There's some interesting studies and anecdotes in this page: http://people.mills.edu/spertus/Gender/pap/node6.html
Usually when this is called a problem it is done along with making the implicit or explicit suggestion that men in scientific fields are sexist and somehow discriminate against women. But I, like most men in science, would severely reprimand anyone who treats women unfairly. Therefore I find it extremely unwarranted and unfair that feminists think it is OK to accuse us of sexism without evidence. And I find it saddening that not more men have the courage to speak up against these accusations.
I'm sure there have been cases of discrimination against women in science, but this in no way proves that it's widespread, or that it's affecting the number of women in science.
[* The logic goes that since men and women are identical, there should be just as many women in science as there are men. But this conclusion is unwarranted because the premise is unsupported by evidence.]
If you change the gender of a name and leave everything else constant on an academic CV, acceptance rates go down from 70% to 45%. http://dimer.tamu.edu/simplog/archive.php?blogid=3&pid=1...
If it were actually the case women were inherently less interested in science, sure, I wouldn't care, but discrimination exists. Much more subtly than it used to, but it's still there, and hence still a problem.