New Thoughts on the Innate Differences Dust-Up

I've now talked to three extremely intelligent and reasonable females of my acquaintance, including the extraordinarily reasonable Johnny Quest, about Summers's comments. All three conversations went roughly the same way, to wit: initial annoyance (note: not "offence") at the comments, then genuine curiosity about the data, then an almost embarrassed admission that they found the comments angrifying even if they turned out to be true.

Given my large chunk of respect for all three of these double-X-chromosome types, I'm now more sympathetic with (but still unconvinced by) the anti-Summers position.

It does seem to be true that there are some truths that one has a moral obligation not to speak under some circumstances. For example, one shouldn't go up to someone with a sever physical deformity and say, e.g., "Hey, you are deformed. Most people find such deformities gruesome."

Hmm... However, there are some places in which anything true and relevant should be assertable, and scholarly conferences are the paradigm example. In fact, I read somewhere that the no transcripts rule at this conference was instituted specifically in order to facilitate the free expression of ideas. Making the innate differences hypothesis sound like a hypothesis that we aren't supposed to discuss ever, under any conditions, even the most ideal. And that's clearly wrong.

I will admit this: this is a harder problem than I first thought.