Are women more beautiful than men?

In ancient thought, it was often assumed that the male of our species is more beautiful than the female. Certainly this was the assumption in Greece, and Plato’s dialogues reflect a virtual cult of male beauty. However, I think I have theological proof to confirm my longstanding suspicion that woman are more beautiful than men. See what you make of it.

According to John Paul II’s theology of the body, discussed in the latest issue of Second Spring, the real source and meaning of gender lies in the Trinity. The Trinity is love, which means self-gift. Love includes within it both activity and receptivity, and it is an act that necessarily involves three Persons. We might say the Father is the divine nature as Giver, the Son is that same divine nature as Receiver (and then, as Receiver, in turn a Giver, since he is the perfect image of the Father), and the Holy Spirit is the divine nature as Gift. (John Paul II names the Holy Spirit in his encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem “Person-Gift”.) Thus the Spirit is Gift, both given and received, and unites Father and Son in the act of giving.

In the creation, Woman is brought to Man precisely as “gift”, crowning the gift of creation in general, which has been made for him. Woman is brought to man not just as wife but as friend, sister and eventually mother as well, all rolled into one in a way that will never again be the case until the advent of the Virgin Mary, who will form with her Son the new beginning of the human race. (In fact the original gift of Woman could be said to include – obscurely and distantly – the gift of Christ himself, who will descend from her in the fullness of time.) Here in this moment of creation Adam represents the Son, the Receiver of the Father’s Gift, and Eve the Holy Spirit, or that which the Father gives. (Perhaps this is why St Maximilian Kolbe describes Mary, the Second Eve, as a "quasi-incarnation" of the Holy Spirit.) She is the breath of life, the living essence of the man, taken out of him and returned in the one form in which he can find himself in his own solitude – that is, in the form of another person to whom he can give himself.

The nature of Woman, then, the deepest meaning of her gender, is to be Gift for Man, to manifest the Spirit, just as the deepest nature of Man is to be the Receiver of the Gift, and to manifest the Son to her. Thus femininity in its totality, at its deepest level, is the essence of humanity made visible to itself as the definitive beauty and glory of creation. (Similarly the essence of masculinity consists in the loving response to this gift which awakens Woman to her own self.)

Adam and Eve fresco by Masolino da Panicale, 1424.

Are women more beautiful than men?

In ancient thought, it was often assumed that the male of our species is more beautiful than the female. Certainly this was the assumption in Greece, and Plato’s dialogues reflect a virtual cult of male beauty. However, I think I have theological proof to confirm my longstanding suspicion that woman are more beautiful than men. See what you make of it.

According to John Paul II’s theology of the body, discussed in the latest issue of Second Spring, the real source and meaning of gender lies in the Trinity. The Trinity is love, which means self-gift. Love includes within it both activity and receptivity, and it is an act that necessarily involves three Persons. We might say the Father is the divine nature as Giver, the Son is that same divine nature as Receiver (and then, as Receiver, in turn a Giver, since he is the perfect image of the Father), and the Holy Spirit is the divine nature as Gift. (John Paul II names the Holy Spirit in his encyclical Dominum et Vivificantem “Person-Gift”.) Thus the Spirit is Gift, both given and received, and unites Father and Son in the act of giving.

In the creation, Woman is brought to Man precisely as “gift”, crowning the gift of creation in general, which has been made for him. Woman is brought to man not just as wife but as friend, sister and eventually mother as well, all rolled into one in a way that will never again be the case until the advent of the Virgin Mary, who will form with her Son the new beginning of the human race. (In fact the original gift of Woman could be said to include – obscurely and distantly – the gift of Christ himself, who will descend from her in the fullness of time.) Here in this moment of creation Adam represents the Son, the Receiver of the Father’s Gift, and Eve the Holy Spirit, or that which the Father gives. (Perhaps this is why St Maximilian Kolbe describes Mary, the Second Eve, as a "quasi-incarnation" of the Holy Spirit.) She is the breath of life, the living essence of the man, taken out of him and returned in the one form in which he can find himself in his own solitude – that is, in the form of another person to whom he can give himself.

The nature of Woman, then, the deepest meaning of her gender, is to be Gift for Man, to manifest the Spirit, just as the deepest nature of Man is to be the Receiver of the Gift, and to manifest the Son to her. Thus femininity in its totality, at its deepest level, is the essence of humanity made visible to itself as the definitive beauty and glory of creation. (Similarly the essence of masculinity consists in the loving response to this gift which awakens Woman to her own self.)

Adam and Eve fresco by Masolino da Panicale, 1424.

Writing at the Master’s Table

Teri McMurtry-Chubb, a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Educational Controversy, has published an article in a recent law review that we believe our readers will want to check out. Teri uses Critical Race Theory and Critical Race Feminism to examine possible causes, problems and solutions concerning the low numbers of women of color among legal writing professors, a field that is dominated by women. As a lawyer and law professor, Teri has brought an important legal perspective to our editorial board that reviews papers coming from all disciplinary areas. She provides a brief summary of the article below.

By Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb

"Writing at the Master's Table: Reflections on Theft, Criminality and Otherness in the Legal Writing Profession" by Teri A. McMurtry-Chubb is now available in the online version of the Drexel Law Review (Fall 2009). You may access the article using the following link: http://www.drexel.edu/law/lawreview/current.aspx


This article considers the convergence of race and gender marginalizations in the legal writing profession, a profession comprised almost entirely of women. Prior to its publication, scholarship on the marginalization of women in legal writing was written only about and from the perspective of white women. The content of this article seeks to deepen the discussion introduced by Kimberlé Crenshaw in her seminal work on race and gender intersections, which argues that a single-axis framework of analysis that examines race and gender discrimination separately is insufficient to deal with the overlapping oppressions women of color face. Thus far, the literature on how legal writing programs discriminate against women lacks this intersectional dimension. The article draws on the narrative traditions of Critical Race Theory and Critical Race Feminism to examine issues of race, gender, and status three-dimensionally within the racialized, gendered, and elitist structure that is the legal academy. The theoretical framework is provided by Adrien K. Wing’s multiplicative theory and praxis of being, in which Wing describes women of color as indivisible persons with multiple race and gender consciousnesses. The author examines the multiple race, gender, and status consciousnesses of women of color who are legal writing professionals.

Part I of the article highlights the precarious position of women of color in the legal academy and in the legal writing profession. Part II examines the characteristics of LRW programs that deter women of color from seriously considering legal writing instruction as a profession. Part III explores how the low number of LRW faculty of color affects how all law students are taught legal writing and reasoning skills. Finally, Part IV proposes some solutions.

Girls Good, Boys Bad? Revisiting the Old Arguments About Single Sex Education

Whenever I hear people arguing that "progressive" social scientists really just find what their "liberal" biases lead them to find, I think about single-sex education. There has long been a sense, more of a "gut feeling" among some, that girls that exclude boys provide girls with a better educational experience for a wide range of reasons. Perhaps the most compelling idea is that with boys out of the classroom, girls will have a chance to shine that they don't otherwise have in our male-oriented and dominated society.

But evidence that single-sex schools are better for girls has been extremely difficult to find, even by those who really want to find it. I'm no expert on this, but the last time I looked, a few years ago, I believe that the general conclusion in the literature was that single sex schools didn't seem to lead to any significant difference in outcomes for girls. (I know much less about the literature around single-sex environments for boys.)

Slate.com now cites a recently published study (the complete study is here) giving evidence that boys are corrosive on classroom environments. The study looked at nearly half a million students in Israel's education system, with large numbers of observations.

As the authors note in their abstract:

Our results suggest that an increase in the proportion of girls leads to a significant improvement in students’ cognitive outcomes. The estimated effects are of similar magnitude for boys and girls. As important mechanisms, we find that a higher proportion of female peers lowers the level of classroom disruption and violence, improves inter-student and student-teacher relationships as well as students’ overall satisfaction in school, and lessens teachers’ fatigue. We find, however, no effect on individual behavior of boys or girls, which suggests that the positive peer effects of girls on classroom environment are due mostly to compositional change, namely due to having more girls in the classroom and not due to improved behavior of peers.

Their conclusions include the following:

An examination of the underlying mechanisms of the gender peer effects shows that a higher proportion of girls in the classroom lowers the level of classroom disruption and violence, and improves inter-student and teacher-student relationships as well as students’ satisfaction with school. It also significantly alters teaching methods and lessens teachers’ fatigue and feelings of burnout, . . . although it does not affect their overall work satisfaction. On the other hand, we find no evidence that having more girls in a class leads to clearer and more enforceable disciplinary rules at school.

Interestingly,

The estimates of the effect of the proportion of girls on student’s (self-reported) violent behavior, disciplinary problems, and study effort show no systematic or significant relationship, suggesting that much of the improvement in the classroom environment associated with a higher proportion of girls is due to a change in classroom gender composition and not to changes in individual student behavior.

I have a number of questions about this study, of course (which, it is important to note, is a "working paper" and not a peer-reviewed publication). For example, the focus on "girls" in one particular (collection) of cultural context(s) makes me wonder about how much of the effect, if it is accurate, results from a particular way of raising boys and girls (and of responding to them in the classroom) than from being "boys" in some absolute sense. What does it mean to be a "boy" absent a culture? What exactly does it "mean" that the driving "mechanism" is gender writ large as opposed to changes in individual student behavior? As usual with statistical studies like this, the findings are really not findings at all. They simply raise questions. What exactly leads to these results, to the extent that they are accurate? What are the interactive mechanisms on the ground that produce the responses on the surveys they analyze? Etc.

There are also wider issues about how one presents data like this, and what effect this paper may have on quite contentious discussions going on about the relative achievement levels of boys and girls in school (and their later success) across different groups.

In any case, if these conclusions hold up, I think they are significant and important for us to think about.

Let me conclude with the usual qualifications. Gender and schooling is not my area of focus, so I hope others more studied in this area will correct any failings. Also I have not attempted to wade through the extensive justifications and sub-arguments of this paper (and I'm not really equipped to do so with respect to the statistical aspects). Others may want to look more closely. As usual, I raise this for discussion.

Girls Good, Boys Bad? Revisiting the Old Arguments About Single Sex Education

Whenever I hear people arguing that "progressive" social scientists really just find what their "liberal" biases lead them to find, I think about single-sex education. There has long been a sense, more of a "gut feeling" among some, that girls that exclude boys provide girls with a better educational experience for a wide range of reasons. Perhaps the most compelling idea is that with boys out of the classroom, girls will have a chance to shine that they don't otherwise have in our male-oriented and dominated society.

But evidence that single-sex schools are better for girls has been extremely difficult to find, even by those who really want to find it. I'm no expert on this, but the last time I looked, a few years ago, I believe that the general conclusion in the literature was that single sex schools didn't seem to lead to any significant difference in outcomes for girls. (I know much less about the literature around single-sex environments for boys.)

Slate.com now cites a recently published study (the complete study is here) giving evidence that boys are corrosive on classroom environments. The study looked at nearly half a million students in Israel's education system, with large numbers of observations.

As the authors note in their abstract:

Our results suggest that an increase in the proportion of girls leads to a significant improvement in students’ cognitive outcomes. The estimated effects are of similar magnitude for boys and girls. As important mechanisms, we find that a higher proportion of female peers lowers the level of classroom disruption and violence, improves inter-student and student-teacher relationships as well as students’ overall satisfaction in school, and lessens teachers’ fatigue. We find, however, no effect on individual behavior of boys or girls, which suggests that the positive peer effects of girls on classroom environment are due mostly to compositional change, namely due to having more girls in the classroom and not due to improved behavior of peers.

Their conclusions include the following:

An examination of the underlying mechanisms of the gender peer effects shows that a higher proportion of girls in the classroom lowers the level of classroom disruption and violence, and improves inter-student and teacher-student relationships as well as students’ satisfaction with school. It also significantly alters teaching methods and lessens teachers’ fatigue and feelings of burnout, . . . although it does not affect their overall work satisfaction. On the other hand, we find no evidence that having more girls in a class leads to clearer and more enforceable disciplinary rules at school.

Interestingly,

The estimates of the effect of the proportion of girls on student’s (self-reported) violent behavior, disciplinary problems, and study effort show no systematic or significant relationship, suggesting that much of the improvement in the classroom environment associated with a higher proportion of girls is due to a change in classroom gender composition and not to changes in individual student behavior.

I have a number of questions about this study, of course (which, it is important to note, is a "working paper" and not a peer-reviewed publication). For example, the focus on "girls" in one particular (collection) of cultural context(s) makes me wonder about how much of the effect, if it is accurate, results from a particular way of raising boys and girls (and of responding to them in the classroom) than from being "boys" in some absolute sense. What does it mean to be a "boy" absent a culture? What exactly does it "mean" that the driving "mechanism" is gender writ large as opposed to changes in individual student behavior? As usual with statistical studies like this, the findings are really not findings at all. They simply raise questions. What exactly leads to these results, to the extent that they are accurate? What are the interactive mechanisms on the ground that produce the responses on the surveys they analyze? Etc.

There are also wider issues about how one presents data like this, and what effect this paper may have on quite contentious discussions going on about the relative achievement levels of boys and girls in school (and their later success) across different groups.

In any case, if these conclusions hold up, I think they are significant and important for us to think about.

Let me conclude with the usual qualifications. Gender and schooling is not my area of focus, so I hope others more studied in this area will correct any failings. Also I have not attempted to wade through the extensive justifications and sub-arguments of this paper (and I'm not really equipped to do so with respect to the statistical aspects). Others may want to look more closely. As usual, I raise this for discussion.