1) it's clearly not for Ellen alone. It's the 21st century equivalent of the open letter. It's meant to have mass appeal so Ellen will see it. Somehow I doubt Ellen watches every video she's sent and even if she just sent it privately...

2) that's no excuse for the condescending tone and the poorly presented argument. Ellen is no doubt a busy woman and will only ever hear a summary of this anyway.

3) Ellen is not a complete idiot. I'm sure she's aware of the criticisms against psychics. So that means she either a) believes in psychics, b) doesn't put any stock in the criticisms or c) knows they're frauds, but figures they get good ratings.

And yes, it would be fantastic if this worked. If it does, I will publicly stand up and applaud skepchick. But I really wish she'd done a better job of this. For someone who makes a living doing this kinda thing, it's just really poorly done IMO.

edit: And just for the record, I didn't realise it was Watson when I first watched it.

Nice reply. Thanks Gwiz.

At the moment I am doing honours in ethics looking at gender reassignment surgery. The science behind it all is extremely subjective and there seems to be a lot of cherry picking of factors and studies where a certain result is desired. There are a few scientific findings that have consensus and they mainly involve how little difference there is between men and women. Lots of the differences we see are at the extreme end of the scale, aka sports analogies. In every capacities men and women are capable of doing pretty much the same thing. Some extreme cases will involve things that only men can do due to the outright strength involved but other things we may think to be too physical women have done and are doing in other 3rd world nations all the time. Women can be conditioned to be very strong and very tough. We just don't value that or pursue that in the West.

The Elevatorgate and other examples should simply be ignored. They are immediately identifiable as being ridiculous and threaten to undermine to the entire project of a meritocracy that seems to be at the core of the liberal tradition (liberal in the post enlightenment sense, not the Fox news "All liberals are evil" sense).

You are right that society is probably not consciously trying to keep women down. THis is one of the major criticisms that feminism brings forth. It is that we do it tacitly and automatically. When we see an all women rock band we say "That's an all womens rock band" but when we see an all male rock band they are simply "A rock band". Simple and largely harmless example but it extends to every facet of society. Look at CEO's. When a women makes CEO of a huge multinational it is noteworthy. There are certain assumptions made that she's a ball breaker or a tough business woman. All things we associate with masculinity. Its as if there is no role for femininity in powerful roles either from women or men.

Ramble ramble too. Running out of stuff to add without writing a HUGE thesis.

>> ^westy:
to me this woman is sinister. along with the vast majority of celebrates she has on the show.


I'd call her a *master* business-woman.

She was amazing as Scully.

God, that smart business woman look she had, it had my pulse racing each week.

I hear she's excellent as Lady Dedlock in Bleak House.