Screen capture of Psychology Today page by Flickr user figleaf (hey that’s me!)
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So is Psychology Today an even remotely serious publication? The title of “Evolutionary Psychologist” Satoshi Kanazawa’s post is “Should brides take their husband’s last name?“ A link in the sidebar reading “Are Russian women more likely to be whores?“ points to… the same page. (The post ends with speculation for why Russian children’s names traditionally include the father’s first and last names. Evidently because… um… yeah, right.)
Meanwhile the guy wastes perfectly good electrons twiddling all manner of assumptions about why women and their families would “decide to let” children have their father’s last names without ever considering that maybe a) the mother has not choice because b) in many societies, not least Russia, women and children have the husband’s last name for the same reason cows, pigs, buggies, and farms have the husband’s last name: because they’re considered property of the husband.
I mean if I was going to practice “evolutionary psychology” I’d probably hypothesize that people survive better when they keep track of their stuff, and then pose an “experiment” where I tested whether people who put their name on all their stuff were better able to keep track of their stuff. And maybe I’d speculate that keeping track of your stuff is even more important to survival in really, really cold, frequently war-torn places. Then I can take one look at Russia and claim I’ve just “proved” that putting your name on personal property like livestock, farms, wives, children, and mittens must be an evolved behavior that increases the odds of surviving to reproduce. And boom, I get a PhD and Psychology Today column, right? Wrong! Because if I’m not proving that the recent gender status quo is actually timeless truth, and, I guess, that Russian women are whores(!?!?!?) Psychology Today couldn’t be bothered.
Seriously! There’s probably something to evolutionary psychology but dear sweet mother of pearl some of these guys ignore the obvious so thoroughly they could die of thirst standing in Lake Michigan.
Update: Looks like Kanazawa answers whether Psychology Today is a serious publication in the last paragraph of this post.
Submitted by 3200 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-09-13 21:12.
Lovely. And in the end they sum up the authority of the principals thusly: "Mr. Lal was trained in mechanical engineering and currently works as a software engineer. He does not have any background in psychology, let alone evolutionary psychology, and has not taken any biology class since high school. (But then again, neither have I.)"
Fuckin' a...
Submitted by 3200 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-09-13 21:46.
I wonder if this is one of those "No one was supposed to see that!" situations. I suspect that he or someone else put "Are Russian Women More Likely to be Whores?" there as a joke, intending to show it to someone, then delete it and replace it with something else, but forgot and it got posted.
I even more strongly suspect that by this time tomorrow, it'll be gone. As weak as some of the stuff published on PT is sometimes, I just cannot imagine that anyone on their editorial staff would even consider allowing that kind of language. I've never, ever seen anything like that there. I think someone is going to be issuing a very embarrassed apology in the next 24 hours.
I really, really hope so anyway. Otherwise PT will be joining Double X on the "Sites I Can Probably Do Without Ever Reading Again" list.
Submitted by 3200 (not verified) on Sun, 2009-09-13 22:06.
The reason that Russian kids get the last name and middle name from the father is because multi-generational names are a relatively recent thing in Russia. (I speak the language and have been to Russia.) Even now you formally address people not with anything like Mr./Ms, Senor/Senora, or Herr/Frau because there are no such words in the Russian language, but rather with their first and middle name. For example if you teacher's name is Pavel Vasilevitch Masgutov, you would use the address "Pavel Vasilevitch". The father would have been Vasil Masgutov. And if he had a sister named Elena her maiden name would be Elena Vasilyevna Masgutova. (Last names have masculine and feminine forms.) If she married a guy named Soslov her married name would be Elena Vasilyevna Soslova.
Basically for a long time you have your personal name and then were son/daughter of ...... Basically the ending "vitch" denotes "son of" and "evna/ovna" denotes "daughter of".
When they finally got family names instead of patronymics they just sort of tacked them onto the original system instead of getting rid of patronymics.
In all Scandinavian and Gaelic countries until fairly recently (mostly the 19th century!!) they rarely had family names and went by the patronymic system. And in both cases the son forms (-son in Scandinavia, and Mc/Mac in Gaelic cultures) was kept by the daughter forms (-dotir, and Ni-) were not. In the case of Scandinavia the change was heavily about "modernization. In Ireland it happened after the famine.
In all these patronymic societies (Russian, Gaelic, and Scandinavia) women the change was partly about clamping down on the relatively high status for women.
I don't buy that the double father's name is about proving paternity. Men aren't that stupid to think a name proves anything. I think that the patronymic system was largely about demonstrating the situation to the community, because a child's mother was usually more socially obvious even if the paternity wasn't really in doubt.
Submitted by 3200 (not verified) on Mon, 2009-09-14 06:33.
I think it is a joke. I have not read that mag in years but I would expect something better than that.
Submitted by 3200 (not verified) on Mon, 2009-09-14 15:19.
I used to read _Psychology Today_ fairly regularly as it was the only magazine in a waiting room where I had to wait. But I started carrying a paperback, because the magazine was making me so angry. No science in there: blatant disregard, in many articles, for even the most rudimentary "How do we know that? What is the evidence? Was it statistically significant?" Nothing but opinions. Not even a lot of attention paid to whether the person with the opinion had any solid basis for it.
[Yup. I remember when I was a kid it seemed like an ooh-gee-whiz magazine but that was a *very* long time ago. Cruising other links in on the site are pretty disheartening as well. Thanks, Mary Kaye. --fl]