Blogosphere falls over itself to be politically correct

Yesterday I wrote about Charlotte Allen's post about women being stupid. I do not think that the premise of the piece is correct but it did raise an interesting point; that women and men are mentally different. Off course that part of the article was not addressed by the blogosphere:

Steve Benen in a post on Crooks and Liars:

Her foolish attack on women is easy to dismiss as petty nonsense, best suited for a He-Man Woman-Hater’s Club blog.

Ezra Klein on his blog says:

They should be ashamed of publishing an article of such poor quality.

Jessica at feministing had this to say:

she's just spouting misogyny for a patriarchal head-pat and a paycheck

But only hilzoy at Obsidian Wings had anything really useful to say:

A few more particular points. First, talking about what "we" women (or we liberals/conservatives, or whatever) is almost always just intellectual laziness. Unless the claim is obviously true (e.g., "we human beings are mammals"), the appropriate response is: what do you mean "we", white man?

Second, romance novels* (update below the fold) are not "books", as that word is normally used. They are either tools for relaxation or the female equivalent of porn. They should therefore be compared not to War and Peace, but to either Ultimate Sudoku or the Hustler centerfold. Personally, I think they come out fine in either comparison, but that's probably because I'm just a dumb woman.

Third, the idea that brain size has anything to do with intelligence was disproven ages ago (at least, if we're talking about the normal variation in human brain size, as opposed to the difference between human and planarian brains.)

Fourth: doesn't the Post have editors whose job is to prevent this sort of trainwreck? If so, the editor responsible for allowing this column to waste perfectly good space in the Washington Post should be fired.

The first is nothing but semantic nitpicking. The question is if there are differences in intelligence between the genders. What the word 'we' means in the phrase 'we women' is rather pointless.

The second doesn't make much sence either. Comparing men and women by the kind of entertainment they enjoy isn't going to teach us much about their intelligence. And of course the research is very hard to control. I.e. when is something entertainment? how do you control for spare time? how do you rate the 'intelligence' of different forms of entertainment? etc.

The third point is fair, but false. A simple google search shows that there definately is a correlation between brain size and intelligence. [1], [2], [3]

And the fourth, well, I guess you can disagree on whether to print this article.