“Race realists” are pretty much the most ridiculous group of people. For one thing, there’s the name. At some point, you just need to own that you’re a racist. If you’ve used the world “Mongoloid” in cold blood, you are past that point. Think of it as a reclaiming thing!
On Twitter I stumbled across this debunking of a “race realist” (oh god that name) argument that black men have larger penises than white men, while Asian men have the shortest. (It is unknown how long the author believes the penises of Native Americans or Australian Aboriginals are, possibly because continents discovered after the fall of the Roman Empire don’t exist.) The article covers how reliable the study is (not very) and how good the theory the article is based on is (not at all), so if you’re interested in the actual science you may go over there.
The conclusion of the article seems very puzzled about why racis– uh, I mean race realists would be interested in men’s penis size anyway. Penis size is a fairly trivial issue, not particularly correlated to anything of interest. Shouldn’t they be trying to prove that black people are less intelligent or conscientious or more physically strong or something?
At which point I was like: oooh, I know that!
I’m not super-comfortable with talking about this, because I’m white and still pretty definitely in the learning stage of my anti-racist education (feel free to correct me in the comments!), but on the other hand this is also about asshole white dudes, and if there’s one thing I’m an expert on it’s asshole white dudes.
An asshole white dude surveys the world of gender and race. “Well, there are all these black men,” he says to himself. “Black men are all beasts, hyper-sexual and violent and probably commit criminals. They have no ability to control their impulses, which is why they steal things and take drugs and rape women and assault men. In fact, they have too much masculinity!
“On the other hand,” he continues, “look at those Asian men! Terribly effete, they are. All weak and intellectual and sissy. All those Japanese men that stay at home watching anime and playing video games and jerking it to hentai! The Mysterious Chinese People that are going to take us over with some kind of economics stuff I don’t really understand because they don’t have the balls to invade! In fact, they have too much femininity.
“On the other hand, as a white man, I am a Proper Man. I have just the right amount of masculinity! Go me! Now I don’t have to feel bad about not accomplishing anything in my life!”
And the penis thing is pretty much just a manifestation of that. Large penises are manly! Black men are super-extra-masculine, so they have REALLY big cocks, while Asian men are kinda feminine, so they have small cocks. White men have normal cocks because they’re normal right-thinking adults.
What you said is a pretty accurate description of racist propaganda. The black men have big dicks and asian men have small ones stereotype is pretty much an extension of the black men are hyper sexual beast and asian men are effete asexual robots stereotypes. The only thing you missed is the racist pseudo scientific propaganda that associates penis size with I.Q. The basic idea is that big dicks equal less intelligence and since black men supposedly have huge dicks they must be dumb, while the reverse is true for Asian men. Which is probably what racist are probably trying to imply with these types of “studies”.
Oh, my. You’ve just got me imagining some sort of Goldilocks-like groups sex scene. “No, this penis is too big! No, this penis is too small! Ah, this penis is just right!” It would terrible in so many ways. Possibly all the ways.
But otherwise, yeah I think you’re dead on.
There are interesting real differences between races.
For example, almost everyone in Africa has an efficient electron transport chain. The electron transport chain converts the energy from food into ATP and a proton gradient. Caucasian populations in Europe, and northern latitudes, have mutated electron transport chain genes which are less efficient at making the proton gradient, but produce a lot of heat. Then in south american populations, the electron transport chain genes are efficient again. DNA is a degenerate code, so you can show that south american electron transport chain genes evolved from the inefficient European electron transport chain genes, and not the efficient African ones.
So as people spread from Africa to Asia and Europe, then america, their genes changed as they adapted to their environment.
There are other examples with things like lactose tolerance, and capillary structure. As far as I know penis size and IQ do not correlate with race.
Also usually, culturally defined races do not match up with with race as defined by genetic distance between individuals. Here is an interesting paper, and I will let the data speak for itself. http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v466/n7303/abs/nature09103.html
Ozy’s analysis rings true, though I’m going to disagree if the attempt is made to say that every individual racist proceeds through the aforementioned logic (sic) process.
I have, as a rule, a very low opinion of people who attempt this sort pseudo-correlation, and am willing to doubt that any one individual who repeats it to me came up with it themselves.
“For example, almost everyone in Africa has an efficient electron transport chain. The electron transport chain converts the energy from food into ATP and a proton gradient. Caucasian populations in Europe, and northern latitudes, have mutated electron transport chain genes which are less efficient at making the proton gradient, but produce a lot of heat. Then in south american populations, the electron transport chain genes are efficient again.” -> it sounds like it correlates with the weather, the colder it is outside, the less heat counts as an useless side-effect (like in an electrically heated room, an “inefficient”, old-style lightbulb which transforms most of the electricity it uses into heat, wouldn’t mean a waste of money, because you need the heating anyway? But I didn’t understand half the words up there, so I don’t pretend that this is a very serious idea.
Joe: Of course not! There are lots of different kinds of racist and racist beliefs (and that system doesn’t even begin to touch on women and racialized misogyny!). But Hyper-Masculine Black Dude/Effeminate Asian Dude/Ideally Masculine White Dude is a *really* common trifecta.
SRB, what Mike is presenting is the way that our bodies break down food into fuel. ATP is the bodies universal energy. Some people are really good at producing heat because (presumably from this single research paper) they were in colder temperatures and needed more body heat than fuel. Your weather hypothesis is what Mike was talking about with the adapting to their environment. Does this help explain it a little bit better?
Srb, you are exactly right.
Rebekah, as for the single research paper comment. The key point is not number of papers, but the effect size, and amount of statistical power that is required to detect the effect. For example the mutation that causes sickle cell anaemia has a huge effect size. Everyone who is homozygous for the gene gets sickle cell, no-one who is heterozygous or not a carrier gets the disease. You can be pretty confident that you have discovered something real by sampling 20 people.
Trying to work weather or not gender and other risk factors affect the probability of getting raped needs a lot of statistical power. This is because only a small portion of people get raped. This means that a small study has a reasonable probability of giving the wrong answer. This probability can be calculated, and I think it should be displayed along with the percentages. A big study has a much much lower probability of being wrong by chance, as it has a lot more statistical power.
A study like The National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey is very big, 19,000 people, and “trumps” any smaller studies. This is because it has more statistical power. So even though it is just one study, it is much more likely to be right, because it is big.
Also several small studies can be added together into a big study, by doing a meta analysis, but this gets complicated quickly.
Sorry Mike, I’m just extremely skeptical by nature and I’ve seen studies which either get misrepresented (often) or are just badly researched (fairly rare). I don’t take a single study at face value and I neither care enough nor have the time to do research about that specific topic. I wasn’t trying to offend you and say the research you’re presenting wasn’t true, just that I don’t have the time to devote to tracking down whether I find it convincing or not.
There are other examples with things like lactose tolerance
Lactose tolerance has to do with Northern European ancestry, not “race”. (My husband and I are both white, but I probably have fewer common ancestors with him than I do with Barack Obama.) Race isn’t even a meaningful biological category. A hundred and fifty years ago, Jews and Italians were not “white”. Two people who have the exact same ethnic ancestry can be classified as different races based on their skin color. Certainly there’s value in looking at populations, genetic drift and adaptations, like the development and spread of lactose tolerance – but that is not the “race realism” Ozy is talking about. “Race realists” do a half-assed job of talking about population genetics in order to say that tired old stereotypes about racial groups are totally true.
BTW, in the Middle Ages it was Jews who were believed to be sexually rapacious and well-hung.
@mythago: Yup, the actual genetic population differences have nothing to do with “race”.
I don’t have anything to add on the subject, but since you don’t seem to run the “open threads” anymore, I just wanted to share this piece of information:
I just heard a piece about Bronies on the (Swedish national) radio, and they had a story about a guy who had legally changed his last name to Brony Fluttershy.
@Mike:
That’s a very good point about statistical power, but statistical power is only one variable. Another is the extent to which a given phenomenon can be narrowed down to a small number of falsifiable causative agents.
For example: cancer. Causative agents that contribute to the development of cancer (don’t get me started on what type of cancer) include: genetic predisposition and inherited susceptibility; environmental factors (such as toxins, radiation, nutrition, etc.); bodily breakdown over time as we age; and, probably, other factors of which we are unaware. So, any study that says, “X group is likely to get cancer” has to account for all of those causative agents, and somehow isolate those causative agents that carry the most weight under any given circumstance. To do this effectively, you’d have to study a truly humongous number of people, from all walks of life and multiple genetic backgrounds, using the most elaborate, exact, and biologically unobtrusive observations conceived by science — and you’d have to do this for their whole lives and more, starting prior to conception. In fact, a multi-generational study would be best, to observe the presence of aggregate environmental and nutritional factors. You’d have to have multiple layers of controls, too.
Note also that correlation doesn’t imply causation — though people in the are of Chernobyl face a much higher risk of cancer, someone who gets cancer after being in the area of Chernobyl didn’t automatically suffer radiation damage from Chernobyl. God does play dice when it comes to radiation: the higher the radiation density, the greater chance of a radioactive particle doing damage to you, but it’s always a matter of odds.
My point is this: the more complex the system you’re studying statistically, the more elaborate a study must be.
I thought that part of the racist premise about black men’s penis size is that white women prefer sex with black men. It isn’t just about rape.
@Giaus
You are absolutely right, I am sure that we could both give a series of lectures on the subject. The problem is that there are so many tools in a scientist’s arsenal, and they can’t be explained from first principle in a blog reply. These tools need to be taught in schools.
At the moment the general population is not equipped to analyse evidence and think for themselves, and this causes a lot of problems in our society.
@mythago
I did say “Also usually, culturally defined races do not match up with with race as defined by genetic distance between individuals”, and I agree, This is totally different to the race realism that Ozy was talking about.
I just came across this after writing my own blog on the subject, lol. I will have to say that in my experience men of the races I have had sex with or seen naked have all been sufficient as far as dick size, for me. I’ve seen plenty of black men with average-ish size penises and white guys with biggish ones too. My only experience with an Asian guy he was average sized. Still my personal (ahem) “research” on the subject does not contradict the studies that say on average black men are SLIGHTLY bigger. ON AVERAGE..That leaves a whole heck of a lot of room for black men to come in all sizes, as well as white guys and others.
lifeofalovergirl: Good thing we have actual scientific research, which says that there’s no difference.
I skimmed the article and I understand that they are trying to debunk something that is seen as a stepping stone towards racist attitudes. Still, sometimes we only have to see for ourselves that there is SOME truth in a statement. My personal experience is not scientific research but its a fair sample and I’ve seen the same pattern…black men that are slightly larger than white ones. White guys don’t like to hear that sometimes but it doesn’t make it any less true. I do not believe this should be used against any one in any way, its simply observation. Lots of average sized guys of all races, and big as well but maybe more “big” black men than white.
I would not be surprised to find that black men with average or small penises feel a greater degree of inadequacy because they’re “supposed” to have big ones, and thus became more sexually inhibited, thus reinforcing the outside image. No proof, though, just idle speculation.