University Challenge questions made more difficult so as not to offend anyone

PlaneSpeeking · 29-08-2018 10:35AM

sbsquarepants wrote: »

No some questions are obviously written by men, such as this one which featured on University Challenge only last week...

Question: What is the correct order in which a gentleman should ride little mix?

Answer: Start with the black one, then one who goes out with the Ox, then the other kinda blondie one and finally the one that looks like a cabbage patch doll.

(No, I do not know their names!)

I was advised by several chaps in my acquaintance that it's:

Black one
Fat One
Blonde One
Other One

But that's probably offensive somewhere!!

sbsquarepants · 29-08-2018 10:56AM

PlaneSpeeking wrote: »

I was advised by several chaps in my acquaintance that it's:

Black one
Fat One
Blonde One
Other One

But that's probably offensive somewhere!!

No no no!

Blonde and other are interchangeable I suppose, but you must start on black and end on fat - that much is set in stone!

PlaneSpeeking · 29-08-2018 11:01AM

sbsquarepants wrote: »

No no no!

Blonde and other are interchangeable I suppose, but you must start on black and end on fat - that much is set in stone!

One of them's done a One Directioner and a Liverpool player - even if she was my bag I'd swerve!!!!

sbsquarepants · 29-08-2018 11:08AM

PlaneSpeeking wrote: »

One of them's done a One Directioner and a Liverpool player - even if she was my bag I'd swerve!!!!

I'm a pool fan, and it's hard to meet anyone that one of the One Directioners (usually Harry;)) hasn't beat you to, so none of that would bother me too much!

xi5yvm0owc1s2b · 29-08-2018 11:11AM

Akrasia wrote: »

Hannah Arendt, Emma Goldman and Ayn Rand are the only 3 I can think of from the courses I studied in College

And you'd really have to stretch the definition of "philosopher" to include them.

Probably the greatest female philosopher (as in actual philosopher) was G. E. M. Anscombe, a student of Wittgenstein who produced significant work in ethics, the philosophy of mind, and other fields. Her 1957 book Intention is probably the single most important philosophical work written by a woman.

She is neglected by feminist academics, though, because she was a lifelong devout Catholic who supported the Church's stances on contraception and abortion.

keano_afc · 29-08-2018 11:19AM

Ah here. Now we're going to have people offended because other people are assuming the gender of questions.

PandaPoo · 29-08-2018 11:22AM

sbsquarepants wrote: »

I've never seen it, but I do like Victoria Coren, she's quite funny.
It's worth checking out you reckon?

Definitely. Takes some getting used to. Sometimes I'd think I know the answer but convince myself that's too out there, and it's right. The connecting walls are the best part. And I'm amazing at the missing vowels round, which is the easiest

xi5yvm0owc1s2b · 29-08-2018 11:27AM

professore wrote: »

Exactly. Most of the advanves throughout history have been driven by men. Trying to pretend otherwise for ideological reasons is just false.

Agreed. Trying to pretend that minor women writers are equivalent to Shakespeare and Milton is equally nonsensical. Harold Bloom has some brilliant diatribes on this.

Ironically a coupe of really influential women are rarely talked about: Elizabeth I, who laid the foundations for the British Empire, Margaret Thatcher and more recently Theresa May. For some reason they are taboo

Feminists don't "celebrate" Elizabeth I or Margaret Thatcher for the same reasons they don't celebrate the likes of G. E. M. Anscombe (above). In order to be worth "celebrating" or "reclaiming," the woman also needs to embody some progressive lefty agenda or cause. She certainly can't be known for laying the foundations of the British Empire (evil colonialist!) or for taking Britain out of the era of power cuts, strikes, and economic collapse and transforming it into a thriving modern market-driven state (evil right-winger!).

seamus · 29-08-2018 11:28AM

ITT: People who read the thread title and not the article.

All seems pretty reasonable tbh, I don't know why people are getting so offended about a programme tweaking their questions to provide a level playing field.

Badly Drunk Boy · 29-08-2018 11:45AM

seamus wrote: »

All seems pretty reasonable tbh, I don't know why people are getting so offended about a programme tweaking their questions to provide a level playing field.

That's the thing though...it implies that males only know/want to know about males in history/science/whatever and females only want to know about females. Women didn't have the same opportunities as men in centuries gone by, therefore it's expected that there should be more questions about men.

I like University Challenge and usually get a good few answers, even if some of them are only educated guesses. The thing that annoys me most about it though, are the long-winded, rambling questions where at the end you're asking yourself "At the start, did he want to name of a person, a place or a variety of apple?".

I like Only Connect and Mastermind too. I always like to get at least one of the Mastermind specialist questions right, even if I've never heard of the subject of the questions. I'm not mad about John Humphreys but I think Victoria Coren is great.

Grayson · 29-08-2018 11:49AM

Lorenzo Bumpy Rake wrote: »

And you'd really have to stretch the definition of "philosopher" to include them.

Probably the greatest female philosopher (as in actual philosopher) was G. E. M. Anscombe, a student of Wittgenstein who produced significant work in ethics, the philosophy of mind, and other fields. Her 1957 book Intention is probably the single most important philosophical work written by a woman.

She is neglected by feminist academics, though, because she was a lifelong devout Catholic who supported the Church's stances on contraception and abortion.

But on the other hand you have philosophers like Stein who are widely studied. Stein was a jewish woman who converted to catholicism, became a nun and was killed by the Nazi's in a gas chamber. She's now a saint and is one of the 6 co-saints of europe.

I even studied St. Hildegard in college.

BTW, Arendt was definitely a philosopher although she hated being called that because she felt that philosophers were pontificating men who did not engage with the world. That might come from her teacher Heidegger. He had an affair with her, a jew, but later became of of the nazi's most emphatic flag wavers.
Arendt wrote extensively on phenomenology and later on ethics, especially totalitarianism and the nature of evil.

As for Ayn Rand, jesus what a pile of crap. Her work is essentially a celebration of egoism and selfishness. I would describe her work as a work in philosophy but I would say that the admiration it gets from the right is greatly undeserved.

There are essentially two types of philosophers and even I guess two type of readers. Those who start with an idea and build and argument to prove it, and those that start with evidence and build a hypothesis from it. Rand is definitely the former.

jmayo · 29-08-2018 11:50AM

Sardonicat wrote: »

Where does it say that the questions have been made more difficult so as not to offend anyone?

I see an effort to introduce a bit of balance by not ignoring the academic and cultural contributions of women prominent in their fields. The contestants' inability to answer them is more a reflection of the content of courses they are studying.

What the feck is this shyte?

If you use that mullarkey then you can probably rule out asking questions about great artists or a huge chunk of classical music, all because there weren't many if any women prominent in either up to a certain point in more recent history.

And you can probably rule out most of military history as well.
Of course that would suit some of the modern hug-em brigade.

seamus wrote: »

ITT: People who read the thread title and not the article.

All seems pretty reasonable tbh, I don't know why people are getting so offended about a programme tweaking their questions to provide a level playing field.

Level playing field ?
Are you surmising that women can only answer questions about women ?

Because that is really patronising I would say.

professore wrote: »

Exactly. Most of the advanves throughout history have been driven by men. Trying to pretend otherwise for ideological reasons is just false.

Shhh you can't say that.
Besides all those men were probably misogynists.

professore wrote: »

Ironically a coupe of really influential women are rarely talked about: Elizabeth I, who laid the foundations for the British Empire, Margaret Thatcher and more recently Theresa May. For some reason they are taboo

That is probably the only time May is going to be included in a list with the other two.
May is more likely to appear on a list with Chamberlain.

ohnonotgmail · 29-08-2018 11:55AM

sbsquarepants wrote: »

I've never seen it, but I do like Victoria Coren, she's quite funny.
It's worth checking out you reckon?

Absolutely it is. Some of the questions are headache inducingly difficult. Which makes it all the sweeter when you are shouting the answer at the tv while the contestants are still working it out.

ohnonotgmail · 29-08-2018 11:56AM

Grayson wrote: »

But on the other hand you have philosophers like Stein who are widely studied. Stein was a jewish woman who converted to catholicism, became a nun and was killed by the Nazi's in a gas chamber. She's now a saint and is one of the 6 co-saints of europe.

I even studied St. Hildegard in college.

BTW, Arendt was definitely a philosopher although she hated being called that because she felt that philosophers were pontificating men who did not engage with the world. That might come from her teacher Heidegger. He had an affair with her, a jew, but later became of of the nazi's most emphatic flag wavers.
Arendt wrote extensively on phenomenology and later on ethics, especially totalitarianism and the nature of evil.

As for Ayn Rand, jesus what a pile of crap. Her work is essentially a celebration of egoism and selfishness. I would describe her work as a work in philosophy but I would say that the admiration it gets from the right is greatly undeserved.

There are essentially two types of philosophers and even I guess two type of readers. Those who start with an idea and build and argument to prove it, and those that start with evidence and build a hypothesis from it. Rand is definitely the former.

was he the boozy beggar?

seamus · 29-08-2018 12:02PM

Badly Drunk Boy wrote: »

That's the thing though...it implies that males only know/want to know about males in history/science/whatever and females only want to know about females. Women didn't have the same opportunities as men in centuries gone by, therefore it's expected that there should be more questions about men.

I'm not sure it implies that men only know about male history and women only know about female history.

It implies that as a society we tend to rely on history that was written from a male perspective. We're not constantly revisiting and refining what we know about history. A lot of what we know comes from contemporaneous works.

As you quite rightly point out, women actually feature less because there were less opportunities, but women were also whitewashed/ignored in contemporaneous writings because the people documenting at the time did so with a focus on the men present. Teachers and professors who talked about history, tended to focus on the men, and pay less attention to the women. As a result, the "popular" and "well-known" historical figures, are men.

While the bible may not exactly be an historically accurate document, when we look at the parables contained within, women are often excluded from them unless they are a major focus. The creation myth, for example, talks about Eve, but then mentions few or no women for many generations, even though clearly there must have been.

This writing then informs later readers and drives later adaptations and discussions about the stories.

The key here is that nobody is intentionally viewing it with a male-focussed slant; but they are unaware that they are parroting slanted views which have been previously presented.

A large and popular body of work in historical research now is going back to discover the women (and other players) who received little recognition for their contributions at the time and who may have been excluded from contemporaneous accounts of historical events; for better or worse.

UC is simply recognising that there is a huge body of data out there from which to draw questions, which has been traditionally been ignored - not intentionally, but through unconscious bias and the tendency of the question-writer to draw on the things that s/he knows about. Which, on the whole, tends to be more weighted towards men; especially when it's a man writing the question.

xi5yvm0owc1s2b · 29-08-2018 12:06PM

seamus wrote: »

I don't know why people are getting so offended about a programme tweaking their questions to provide a level playing field.

The vast majority of world leaders, scientists, mathematicians, composers, intellectuals, and artists have been men -- so it's difficult to see how one can create the illusion of a "level playing field" when the playing field throughout human history has been about as level as a railway embankment.

Suppose they want to ask a question on the topic of US presidents. How do they "tweak" the questions to create a "level playing field" when every US president in history has been male?

sliabh 1956 · 29-08-2018 12:10PM

Love watching UC some amazing brains on display though I feel much more at home watching Eggheads It would be gas to see if the BBC could arrange a challenge between the Eggs and the winners of UC

seamus · 29-08-2018 12:16PM

Lorenzo Bumpy Rake wrote: »

The vast majority of world leaders, scientists, mathematicians, composers, intellectuals, and artists have been men -- so it's difficult to see how one can create the illusion of a "level playing field" when the playing field throughout human history has been about as level as a railway embankment.

Suppose they want to ask a question on the topic of US presidents. How do they "tweak" the questions to create a "level playing field" when every US president in history has been male?

Yeah, that's not even close to what they're doing.

I can see why you'd get offended about something that's not even happening.

xi5yvm0owc1s2b · 29-08-2018 12:16PM

seamus wrote: »

Teachers and professors who talked about history, tended to focus on the men, and pay less attention to the women. As a result, the "popular" and "well-known" historical figures, are men.

Seriously?

Historians have focused on male figures from Julius Caesar to Abraham Lincoln to Winston Churchill because they are the ones who most influenced the course of history. It's not like we had female Caesars, Lincolns, and Churchills who have been overlooked simply due to the bias of historians. The number of historically notable women is very small by comparison to the number of men. That's just the reality. Trying to turn history into a revisionist fantasy so that we can pretend that women have always been as influential as men is nothing more than a sham and a distortion.

seamus · 29-08-2018 12:23PM

Lorenzo Bumpy Rake wrote: »

Trying to turn history into a revisionist fantasy so that we can pretend that women have always been as influential as men is nothing more than a sham and a distortion.

Nice strawman. Nobody is doing that.

"Fragile masculinity" is something that makes a lot of people think of raving psycho feminists.

But when I see the reaction to the suggestion that some people might dare do some historical research to find any women who've been overlooked, it's clear that fragile masculinity is a real thing.

Why does it seem to upset you so much that someone might go back and look for people who made serious contributions, but who may have been overlooked or removed from contemporaneous accounts?

Is "revisionism" a bad thing if it's uncovering lost facts? History is always written with a bias. Whether that be an ideological one or a gender one, or a race one. The aim of the historian is to peel back that bias and try to establish the facts, without bias or prejudice.

Giraffe Box · 29-08-2018 12:30PM

Badly Drunk Boy wrote: »

That's the thing though...it implies that males only know/want to know about males in history/science/whatever and females only want to know about females. Women didn't have the same opportunities as men in centuries gone by, therefore it's expected that there should be more questions about men.

I like University Challenge and usually get a good few answers, even if some of them are only educated guesses. The thing that annoys me most about it though, are the long-winded, rambling questions where at the end you're asking yourself "At the start, did he want to name of a person, a place or a variety of apple?".

I like Only Connect and Mastermind too. I always like to get at least one of the Mastermind specialist questions right, even if I've never heard of the subject of the questions. I'm not mad about John Humphreys but I think Victoria Coren is great.

Most likely 'variety of apple', and the answer is usually 'Cox's Orange Pippin'.

xi5yvm0owc1s2b · 29-08-2018 12:48PM

seamus wrote: »

Is "revisionism" a bad thing if it's uncovering lost facts? History is always written with a bias. Whether that be an ideological one or a gender one, or a race one. The aim of the historian is to peel back that bias and try to establish the facts, without bias or prejudice.

Recovering lost facts is all very well. But one would be a fool to believe that feminist histories attempt to "establish the facts, without bias or prejudice." In reality, they just introduce their own biases and prejudices. Histories written from a revisionist feminist perspective usually grossly exaggerate the contributions and significance of women, frequently to a farcical extent, while casting men as playing no role other than that of oppressors.

There simply is no female Aristotle, female Mozart, female Shakespeare, or female Einstein. That's not because female philosophers, composers, playwrights, and physicists of equivalent stature existed and were somehow overlooked by the biased males who wrote the history books. It's because they just didn't exist in the first place.

It's this silly pretense that women of equivalent stature must have existed, but were overlooked due to <oppression, bias, sexism, patriarchy, blah blah blah> that's offensive to anyone who believes that history is one thing and revisionist fantasy quite another.

29-08-2018 12:53PM

seamus wrote: »

I'm not sure it implies that men only know about male history and women only know about female history.

It implies that as a society we tend to rely on history that was written from a male perspective. We're not constantly revisiting and refining what we know about history. A lot of what we know comes from contemporaneous works.

As you quite rightly point out, women actually feature less because there were less opportunities, but women were also whitewashed/ignored in contemporaneous writings because the people documenting at the time did so with a focus on the men present. Teachers and professors who talked about history, tended to focus on the men, and pay less attention to the women. As a result, the "popular" and "well-known" historical figures, are men.

While the bible may not exactly be an historically accurate document, when we look at the parables contained within, women are often excluded from them unless they are a major focus. The creation myth, for example, talks about Eve, but then mentions few or no women for many generations, even though clearly there must have been.

This writing then informs later readers and drives later adaptations and discussions about the stories.

The key here is that nobody is intentionally viewing it with a male-focussed slant; but they are unaware that they are parroting slanted views which have been previously presented.

A large and popular body of work in historical research now is going back to discover the women (and other players) who received little recognition for their contributions at the time and who may have been excluded from contemporaneous accounts of historical events; for better or worse.

UC is simply recognising that there is a huge body of data out there from which to draw questions, which has been traditionally been ignored - not intentionally, but through unconscious bias and the tendency of the question-writer to draw on the things that s/he knows about. Which, on the whole, tends to be more weighted towards men; especially when it's a man writing the question.

Well said seamus.
How famous mozart's sister would have been if she hadn't been sent home from her world tours when she got a bit older as it wasn't apt for a woman. Clara schumann was one of the tops as well. Random examples popping to mind after reading this

29-08-2018 12:56PM

bluewolf wrote: »

Well said seamus.
How famous mozart's sister would have been if she hadn't been sent home from her world tours when she got a bit older as it wasn't apt for a woman. Clara schumann was one of the tops as well

How famous I could have been if I hadn't quit football, sure let's have questions about me.

29-08-2018 12:59PM

Deleted User wrote: »

How famous I could have been if I hadn't quit football, sure let's have questions about me.

Did you do world tours with top billing til you were 18 yeah

xi5yvm0owc1s2b · 29-08-2018 01:09PM

Deleted User wrote: »

How famous I could have been if I hadn't quit football, sure let's have questions about me.

I coulda been a contender. I coulda been somebody...

Grayson · 29-08-2018 01:25PM

bluewolf wrote: »

Well said seamus.
How famous mozart's sister would have been if she hadn't been sent home from her world tours when she got a bit older as it wasn't apt for a woman. Clara schumann was one of the tops as well. Random examples popping to mind after reading this

I mentioned Edith Stein earlier. She was refused permission to submit her thesis to two separate universities because she was a woman.

There's so few famous women from the past because of these reasons. Women tried and did some amazing work, but they never got recognised.

The women we do know about should be lauded because they had so much more to overcome. And we should recognise the women who contributed but who's contribution was ignored.

Shenshen · 29-08-2018 01:46PM

Grayson wrote: »

I mentioned Edith Stein earlier. She was refused permission to submit her thesis to two separate universities because she was a woman.

There's so few famous women from the past because of these reasons. Women tried and did some amazing work, but they never got recognised.

The women we do know about should be lauded because they had so much more to overcome. And we should recognise the women who contributed but who's contribution was ignored.

Rosalind Franklin springs to mind, as does Joan Clarke.

twinytwo · 29-08-2018 01:46PM

NOVA MCMXCIV wrote: »

The world is f***ed.

I agree.... all these new age snowflakes, grow up in their little bubbles and need something to always be offended about.

But then have no clue about any of the real issue facing society as a whole

xi5yvm0owc1s2b · 29-08-2018 01:49PM

Grayson wrote: »

There's so few famous women from the past because of these reasons. Women tried and did some amazing work, but they never got recognised.

So what about the present? In the 2010s, women have won just 11 percent of the Nobel Prizes awarded. If women are out there doing all this amazing work, and there are now no barriers, at least in the Western world, to recognizing women's achievements -- in fact, quite the opposite, given how eager universities and the media are to celebrate any attainment by a woman -- how do you explain the fact that women's accomplishments still demonstrably lag behind men's?

I anticipate yet another politically correct disquisition on bias and oppression -- but I also believe that this does not account for the entirety of what we're seeing.

University Challenge questions made more difficult so as not to offend anyone

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