Eve - I think a bias against heterosexual people makes perfect sense (Guiliani, Britney). I think you should nurture it.

I took the test you linked to, and it was about republicans, democrats, chinese characters, etc. Not the same test. But I did find out that I have a hard time identifying a smiling Condoleeza Rice as a Republican, at least in the speed round. Which shows I'm a profiling, horrible person.  Sorry, world.  I'll work on it.

Eve, you used 'whinging,' the Anglo-Australian form of the word 'whining.'  From where to you hail?  Or is this another example like 'no worries' of how we yanks are taking on more and more language from our Commonwealth brothers?

Whoops.  I see that you were quoting Michelle Cottle, so I guess I should be asking from where does she hail?

I don't know much about Eve Fairbanks but from what I gather she is, like my own daughter, a mere whippersnapper.

Now, I am proudly biased against whippersnappers regardless of their sexual, chromosomal, pigmental, ethnicaliptic, or religiousiastarian orientations.  But it's okay for me to be biased against whippersnappers because in days of yore I was, in fact, a whippersnapper, i.e., a moron. Not that there's anything wrong with that.  We all have to be morons before we can emerge (cue the choir) into the brilliance of Latter Day Williamyardness or whatever your local chapter calls itself. In addition, whippersnappers, unlike I, unfairly possess functioning livers, stamina, and mostly not yet too obese bodies, making it more likely they can get drunk and screw, which is the only thing most of us really want to do, now, isn't it?

[sigh]

So, where were we? Oh yeah, bias. It goes away, with time and the nurturing serendipity of experience.  Chicks, blacks, gays, Shriners--they were all aliens from another galaxy until I had spent enough time living and working amongst them, giving me time to learn that the percentages of saints and assholes within each subset is roughly equivalent to that of the collective population, unless you count lawyers, which skews the whole thing downward.

So, little morons, I wouldn't worry too much about whatever vestiges of bigotry you have yet to leave behind, because you likely will.  Rejoice in this knowledge, along with the reasonable assumption that y'all are in general less moronic than fogies like me were at your age (evolution is like that), and that, by the time you are my age and I'm long gone, Wal-Mart will be selling shrink-wrapped replacement livers, which from where I sit is, frankly, a dirty rotten shame.

That site was awesome.  Like when I used to kill time at hotornot.com, but now instead of really wasting time, I'm kind of helping people with research, right?  

Also, I'm apparently really against Native Americans.  who knew?  

You know what, maybe we all damn well protest too much.  I sometimes think we'd be healthier going back to our natural biases, misguided though they may be.

Have them.  Express them.  And, if somebody kicks you in a sensitive place because of it, well fine.

All this neurotic second guessing and apologizing, and wimpfest guilt trips are just pathetic.

It all rings of Alfred Profrock-- do I dare to hate a peach?  Do I dare to utter that women can't carry a machine gun in combat and white guys can't jump as high as black ones.

You know what, human beings are tribal.  Our tribalist instincts are crude, perhaps, but they are also the survival instincts that created group identities and caused people to take care of their own.  

Mother birds throw the baby out of the nest if it's been handled by humans, right?  (I actually don't know if that's right.  But they told you so as a kid.)

I'm not saying to go back to our ugliest practices.  But, why don't we just work around our inbred biases honestly and stop denying them disingenuously.

There is very likely a reason for biases.  Better that we honestly explore that rather than staying in permanent denial or permanent weak-kneed guilt.

Billy yard, I impulsively submitted my post without reading everyone above.  I see you hitting a similar theme but from your own always original perspective.

A tip of the glass as always.

Sexism in today's world?  Like using a phrase like "big boys"?  Perish the thought!

Eve, I couldn't find it. I kept being funneled into the same test as before and I never saw anything that said "Gender-Career" - could you provide a link to that very test? Thanks!

Is it okay to dislike, and plan not to vote for (at least in the primary), Senator Clinton because of what she is, if that identifier has nothing to do with her gender, just her last name?  I find that I balk at voting for her because an entire generation has grown up not knowing anybody else but either a Bush or a Clinton in the White House, and I cannot imagine adding to that particular ledger.  

She may actually be the most qualified, but I still will have a hard time voting for her, if she makes to the general election, because I have a (probably painfully distorted) desire to see a new face in the White House, bringing new ideas and new people into the inner circles of power.  

This all vaguely feels like the papacy during the 9th and 10th centuries when a few Roman families traded the papal see back and forth.  Each time one died (naturally or not: most often not, this was a rather brutal time) the other family would waltz into power, tear apart everything that the previous Pope had accomplished, and start anew.  But it was never new, it simply became an ugly revolving door.  It grew to its most bizarre and nonsensical with Pope Formosus I.  In 897 Pope Stephen VII presided over a disturbingly macbre case, wherein the former pope, our good man Formosus, who had passed away (much to the consternation of Stephen and his family), was put on trial for a variety of charges.  The now seven months dead pope was dressed in full papal vestments, and subjected to a trial, wherein a young deacon had to stand behind him and speak for him.  Stephen ranted and raved like the wingnuttiest of the blogosphere. Formosus was convicted of grave error, three fingers (those which were used to pronounce blessings and make the sign of the cross for ordinands) were cut off, he was stripped of his vestments, and the body was first reburied in a common grave, then unceremoniously thrown into the Tiber.  A rather brave monk fished the body out of the river to give it a proper burial.  Stephen was hounded out of office and later strangled.  Three months later, the corpse of Formosus was exhumed (again), dressed in papal vestments (again), and brought to St. John Lateran in procession, this time to be rehabilited and then properly buried with all due honors.

Yes, I know, it hasn't quite gotten that bad, but it has a feel for this kind of knavish foolishness.  A possible 28 years with the same two families in charge, with the possibility of a Jeb Bush candidacy after that?  Yeesh.

So, I ask again:  Can I dislike Senator Clinton on that basis and not be perceived as somehow engaging in passive or active sexism?

kgrant, of course you can, because it has nothing to do with her gender.  

Your hand actually shook? It was "physically hard?" That's a little melodramatic, even for a chick.

P.S. JOKING people, sheesh take a breath

P.P.S. Not joking about it being melodramatic though. Eve if that's true you've got bigger problems...

If anyone esle finds out how to take that test, put it here. And dumb it down, because I couldn't find it from the link she provided. Thanks. I want to find out I'm even horribler than I already know I am.

eve, did the test with fat thin people, it showed I had a strong preference to thin people, but i noticed that they presented that thin-good words at the end, at which time I really got the hang of doing the test, I knew as I did it that is what the result would be so the order of the tests shows a bias itself. they had the fat people good words more at the beginning when I was much slower at doing it, so I am unsure of its methodology when in the midst of the test I knew what the results were going to be.

eve, did the gender one came up with: Your data suggest a moderate association of Female with Career and Male with Family compared to Male with Career and Female with Family.

i did the best I could but again, the order of the test determined how well I did, for some reason this time when I got to the male part i just go fatigued because I did two tests in a row and by then i started to get frazzled and made a lot more mistakes. honestly, I know there is no way i compare female with career more than the honest, and I did not try to game the system.

THank you very much Eve - perfect directions!

My result was predictable, except that apparently I think [repeateldy] that Michelle is a man's name.