The Biology Of Common Sense
The daughter of the head of Harvard's math department has a little something to say about the Summers flap:

My family is saturated with complete and total gender equality. When I was still too young to read, my father often read fairy tales and Greek myths to me, but would change the male hero into a heroine, such as Jacqueline and the Beanstalk, Herculina, etc., enough to make the most hardcore feminist blush. When I entered grade school, my father would come into my classroom once a month for "enrichment math and science," and he was every little girl's advocate and motivator toward these subjects. If anyone tried to tell me I wasn't good enough at math or science, my father would fly into a rage and march right down to my school system, to my ultimate embarassment.

My father is now currently the chair of the Harvard math department, and this is why I laugh at Ms. Paur's accusations of sexism. I grew up roaming the halls of that department, spitting off the balconies and scribbling on the blackboards, and let me tell you, there just isn't any sexism. At all. The professers are the sweetest, kindest, craziest bunch of -- mostly -- men that I have met, and their goal is to show everyone to love math the way they do, regardless of gender. I would like to pose this question to all those who are outraged by President Summers' opinions on male presdisposition: why fight it? The pure fact of the matter is, the people who are doing the most interesting, fascinating, intriguing, boundary-pushing, out-there mathematics are men. Period. Why is this? Well, it certainly isn't because Harvard discriminates against women. Perhaps, just perhaps -- just let down your gaurd for an instant, feminists -- perhaps men are biologically predisposed towards mathematics. So what? That's the way humans are wired, so stop trashing poor Harvard President Lawrence Summers for just pointing out hard, cold scientific evidence. Take it from me, the daughter of an extreme feminist and the Harvard math chair who is going into science herself -- Harvard isn't to blame -- and women, just face it and get over it: human biology is sexist.

So what if there aren't female mathematicians -- or physicists. Why does that matter? Why should every group be represented in every profession? And if that's going to be the standard: Why aren't we worried that there aren't more female construction workers? Or trash collectors? And when are we going to establish quotas in female-dominated fields like psychology -- not for women -- but to force more men into the field -- despite women's biological edge in verbal-emotional communication? (This is not just my opinion. Look at a female brain. A woman's corpus callosum, the connecting cables between the hemispheres, is like a cable modem compared to a man's dialup. Just to name one example.)

via ifeminist