Big ideas.
Once a week.
Subscribe to our weekly newsletter.
Women fear violence. Men? Ridicule.
In her new Netflix special, Amy Schumer gets real about fear.

Jemal Countess / Stringer (Getty Images)
- In Growing, Amy Schumer says women fear violence most, while for men it's ridicule.
- She points to grade school, when boys being violent to girls is supposed to represent courting.
- About 91 percent of rape victims are women, creating a fear in women that men rarely have to endure.
A recent photo series on the Instagram feed, historycoolkids, features Mexican actress Maty Huitrón walking through Mexico City in 1953. First your eyes spot the stunning thespian, followed immediately by the framing: leering, gawking, even violent expressions by men of the streets.
One commenter noted this shoot was a sociological exposé for Siempre! magazine to shame catcallers. Scroll down to notice a recurring sentiment among dozens of women: been there, done that, it never feels good.
Fast forward 66 years. During her new Netflix special, Growing, Amy Schumer discusses the makeshift brass knuckle she makes with a car key when walking alone through a parking lot. The joke: it would never work. Yet, the sentiment is a humorless skit millions of women endure every day.
Ninety-one percent of rape and sexual assault victims are women. One in five women will be raped in their lives; for men, one in seventy-one. Eighty percent of the time the victim knows the perpetrator, though that does not make the fear of dark streets and late nights less pressing.
But, you know, "boys will be boys."
Precautionary measures often mean missing out. This list details a number of activities women purposefully skip in fear of sexual assault: running alone at night; getting drunk or leaving their drink at the bar so they're not drugged; meeting a stranger without informing friends of their whereabouts; wearing a ponytail (easier to grab) or high heels (slows them down if chased); smiling at someone, which in many men's minds, apparently, signals consent.
The comments below the list are split between agreement and disdain. We arrive at empathy: you might not have lived through such experiences, just don't discount this aggression. I too wrote off similar sentiments as irrational until I met my wife, who is catcalled on a daily basis in downtown Los Angeles, an experience shared by her co-workers.
Hint to dudes claiming that it's flattering: It's not.
Amy Schumer: Growing | Official Trailer [HD] | Netflix
Rape is a tragic bug in the human operating system. Sexual assault creates distrust and traumatizes the victim. Even seemingly "innocent" gestures made by men is inappropriate, including my favorite: asking a woman out, then yelling at her when she denies you. The public focus is often on the woman instead of male psychology, which, in stories like this, is all too fragile.
Back to Schumer, who begins the skit by claiming ignorance of her pending baby's gender. She hopes it's a girl, "but really, just because it's such a scary time for men." (Laughter.) She reminds the crowd, "I don't know if men know how scared we are as women all of the time." (No laughter.) She informs everyone that many women run home, "not for the cardio." (Laughter, less comfortable.)
Schumer then mentions a study that claims what women fear most is violence while men most fear ridicule.
"Oh, yeah, God. I'm so sorry. I didn't know you guys were going through that. It must be so hard for you. Do you guys run home? Because someone's telling a little jokey about you?"
This sentiment is not new. In a 1982 lecture at the University of Waterloo, the author Margaret Atwood came to the same conclusion, worth quoting at length:
"'Why do men feel threatened by women?' I asked a male friend of mine. (I love that wonderful rhetorical device, "a male friend of mine." It's often used by female journalists when they want to say something particularly bitchy but don't want to be held responsible for it themselves. It also lets people know that you do have male friends, that you aren't one of those fire-breathing mythical monsters, The Radical Feminists, who walk around with little pairs of scissors and kick men in the shins if they open doors for you. "A male friend of mine" also gives — let us admit it — a certain weight to the opinions expressed.)"
Activists participate in the 2018 #MeToo March on November 10, 2018 in Hollywood, California. (Photo by Sarah Morris/Getty Images)
Atwood states that men are generally bigger and stronger with access to more power and money. Yet this male friend says his peers most fear laughter, the audacity of a woman that would dare to undercut their world view. Her female students responded that they most fear being killed by a man. Not so subtle, this difference.
Speaking of students, Schumer points to grade school as a breeding ground for sexism. Six-year-old boys are told not to cry, to toughen up. They're rewarded for meanness, as it implies that they like girls. The girls are told that boys knocking them down is a sign of affection, one that persists throughout their lives — and might explain, partly, why some women remain in abusive relationships.
If you think we've grown out of such mindsets as adults, think again. A few months ago Gillette became a target for ridiculed men when daring to claim that toxic masculinity is problematic. Earlier this week, Tucker Carlson commented that every man would be like Chris Hayes if feminists had absolute power. Even minor criticisms are branded as ridicule. As Schumer and Atwood (and millions of women) know, men are too incompetent to handle the slightest slight.
The familiar pretense — "It's our biology!" — is a convenient avoidance technique. Our social and technological evolutions would be impossible without emotional maturity. Dunbar's number was the law of all lands for most of time. Then we figured out how to communicate on a global scale. Sort of. To say we can't be better men because of DNA is nonsense. It's simply an excuse for not having the will power to become a kinder and more thoughtful human being.
What women most fear — violence — is more than the result of bad habits. They face a perpetual existential dilemma. For men, the dilemma is "saving face," resulting in (surprise!) aggression and violence when questioned. Until men are mature enough to face that fact, this imbalance will remain. Imagination is destiny, but sometimes, so is laziness.
--
- It's not just a joke: The ethics of mocking someone's appearance ... ›
- Men most fear ridicule; for women, it's violence - Big Think ›
‘Designer baby’ book trilogy explores the moral dilemmas humans may soon create
How would the ability to genetically customize children change society? Sci-fi author Eugene Clark explores the future on our horizon in Volume I of the "Genetic Pressure" series.
- A new sci-fi book series called "Genetic Pressure" explores the scientific and moral implications of a world with a burgeoning designer baby industry.
- It's currently illegal to implant genetically edited human embryos in most nations, but designer babies may someday become widespread.
- While gene-editing technology could help humans eliminate genetic diseases, some in the scientific community fear it may also usher in a new era of eugenics.
Tribalism and discrimination
<p>One question the "Genetic Pressure" series explores: What would tribalism and discrimination look like in a world with designer babies? As designer babies grow up, they could be noticeably different from other people, potentially being smarter, more attractive and healthier. This could breed resentment between the groups—as it does in the series.</p><p>"[Designer babies] slowly find that 'everyone else,' and even their own parents, becomes less and less tolerable," author Eugene Clark told Big Think. "Meanwhile, everyone else slowly feels threatened by the designer babies."</p><p>For example, one character in the series who was born a designer baby faces discrimination and harassment from "normal people"—they call her "soulless" and say she was "made in a factory," a "consumer product." </p><p>Would such divisions emerge in the real world? The answer may depend on who's able to afford designer baby services. If it's only the ultra-wealthy, then it's easy to imagine how being a designer baby could be seen by society as a kind of hyper-privilege, which designer babies would have to reckon with. </p><p>Even if people from all socioeconomic backgrounds can someday afford designer babies, people born designer babies may struggle with tough existential questions: Can they ever take full credit for things they achieve, or were they born with an unfair advantage? To what extent should they spend their lives helping the less fortunate? </p>Sexuality dilemmas
<p>Sexuality presents another set of thorny questions. If a designer baby industry someday allows people to optimize humans for attractiveness, designer babies could grow up to find themselves surrounded by ultra-attractive people. That may not sound like a big problem.</p><p>But consider that, if designer babies someday become the standard way to have children, there'd necessarily be a years-long gap in which only some people are having designer babies. Meanwhile, the rest of society would be having children the old-fashioned way. So, in terms of attractiveness, society could see increasingly apparent disparities in physical appearances between the two groups. "Normal people" could begin to seem increasingly ugly.</p><p>But ultra-attractive people who were born designer babies could face problems, too. One could be the loss of body image. </p><p>When designer babies grow up in the "Genetic Pressure" series, men look like all the other men, and women look like all the other women. This homogeneity of physical appearance occurs because parents of designer babies start following trends, all choosing similar traits for their children: tall, athletic build, olive skin, etc. </p><p>Sure, facial traits remain relatively unique, but everyone's more or less equally attractive. And this causes strange changes to sexual preferences.</p><p>"In a society of sexual equals, they start looking for other differentiators," he said, noting that violet-colored eyes become a rare trait that genetically engineered humans find especially attractive in the series.</p><p>But what about sexual relationships between genetically engineered humans and "normal" people? In the "Genetic Pressure" series, many "normal" people want to have kids with (or at least have sex with) genetically engineered humans. But a minority of engineered humans oppose breeding with "normal" people, and this leads to an ideology that considers engineered humans to be racially supreme. </p>Regulating designer babies
<p>On a policy level, there are many open questions about how governments might legislate a world with designer babies. But it's not totally new territory, considering the West's dark history of eugenics experiments.</p><p>In the 20th century, the U.S. conducted multiple eugenics programs, including immigration restrictions based on genetic inferiority and forced sterilizations. In 1927, for example, the Supreme Court ruled that forcibly sterilizing the mentally handicapped didn't violate the Constitution. Supreme Court Justice Oliver Wendall Holmes wrote, "… three generations of imbeciles are enough." </p><p>After the Holocaust, eugenics programs became increasingly taboo and regulated in the U.S. (though some states continued forced sterilizations <a href="https://www.uvm.edu/~lkaelber/eugenics/" target="_blank">into the 1970s</a>). In recent years, some policymakers and scientists have expressed concerns about how gene-editing technologies could reanimate the eugenics nightmares of the 20th century. </p><p>Currently, the U.S. doesn't explicitly ban human germline genetic editing on the federal level, but a combination of laws effectively render it <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">illegal to implant a genetically modified embryo</a>. Part of the reason is that scientists still aren't sure of the unintended consequences of new gene-editing technologies. </p><p>But there are also concerns that these technologies could usher in a new era of eugenics. After all, the function of a designer baby industry, like the one in the "Genetic Pressure" series, wouldn't necessarily be limited to eliminating genetic diseases; it could also work to increase the occurrence of "desirable" traits. </p><p>If the industry did that, it'd effectively signal that the <em>opposites of those traits are undesirable. </em>As the International Bioethics Committee <a href="https://academic.oup.com/jlb/advance-article/doi/10.1093/jlb/lsaa006/5841599#204481018" target="_blank" rel="noopener noreferrer">wrote</a>, this would "jeopardize the inherent and therefore equal dignity of all human beings and renew eugenics, disguised as the fulfillment of the wish for a better, improved life."</p><p><em>"Genetic Pressure Volume I: Baby Steps"</em><em> by Eugene Clark is <a href="http://bigth.ink/38VhJn3" target="_blank">available now.</a></em></p>The mystery of the Bermuda Triangle may finally be solved
Meteorologists propose a stunning new explanation for the mysterious events in the Bermuda Triangle.
One of life's great mysteries, the Bermuda Triangle might have finally found an explanation. This strange region, that lies in the North Atlantic Ocean between Bermuda, Miami and San Juan, Puerto Rico, has been the presumed cause of dozens and dozens of mind-boggling disappearances of ships and planes.
Astrophysicists find unique "hot Jupiter" planet without clouds
A unique exoplanet without clouds or haze was found by astrophysicists from Harvard and Smithsonian.
Illustration of WASP-62b, the Jupiter-like planet without clouds or haze in its atmosphere.
- Astronomers from Harvard and Smithsonian find a very rare "hot Jupiter" exoplanet without clouds or haze.
- Such planets were formed differently from others and offer unique research opportunities.
- Only one other such exoplanet was found previously.
Munazza Alam – a graduate student at the Center for Astrophysics | Harvard & Smithsonian.
Credit: Jackie Faherty
Jupiter's Colorful Cloud Bands Studied by Spacecraft
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="8a72dfe5b407b584cf867852c36211dc"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/GzUzCesfVuw?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>Lair of giant predator worms from 20 million years ago found
Scientists discover burrows of giant predator worms that lived on the seafloor 20 million years ago.
Bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois)
- Scientists in Taiwan find the lair of giant predator worms that inhabited the seafloor 20 million years ago.
- The worm is possibly related to the modern bobbit worm (Eunice aphroditois).
- The creatures can reach several meters in length and famously ambush their pray.
A three-dimensional model of the feeding behavior of Bobbit worms and the proposed formation of Pennichnus formosae.
Credit: Scientific Reports
Beware the Bobbit Worm!
<span style="display:block;position:relative;padding-top:56.25%;" class="rm-shortcode" data-rm-shortcode-id="1f9918e77851242c91382369581d3aac"><iframe type="lazy-iframe" data-runner-src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/_As1pHhyDHY?rel=0" width="100%" height="auto" frameborder="0" scrolling="no" style="position:absolute;top:0;left:0;width:100%;height:100%;"></iframe></span>FOSTA-SESTA: Have controversial sex trafficking acts done more harm than good?
The idea behind the law was simple: make it more difficult for online sex traffickers to find victims.
