I’m glad you asked, because you prompted me to look for the actual article and I learned that the distortion to the title is more serious than I originally thought. The article appeared in Psychology Today as: “Why Are Black Women Rated Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women, But Black men Are Rated Better Looking Than Other Men?”

http://www.scribd.com/doc/55581831/Psychology-Today-Why-Are-Black-Women-Rated-Less-Physically-Attractive-Than-Other-Women

Does that include the right to be stimulated by porn too? Oh, that’s right… all women are the same, and since she isn’t turned on by it, well then it follows that nobody else will be, right? Why didn’t I see it before.

Mental health bimonthly Psychology Today came under fire Monday after it published a blog post by Dr. Satoshi Kanazawa titled “Why Are African-American Women Less Physically Attractive Than Other Women?”

In response to the perhaps predictable backlash, the magazine softened the provocative headline by changing it to “Why Are African-American Women Rated Less Attractive Than Other Women, but Black Men Are Rated Better Looking Than Other Men?”

But by Monday afternoon, the publication had entirely removed the post from its website, as outcry spread.

I wish we could hope that Psychology Today could lear it up for us – and I agree with you about getting the language right. But they are reporting the ‘rated’ title as the attempt at fixing it. Do we have another source to counter it? I’d like to find out, because I agree 100% about the “right crime” approach.

What may be going on here is clumsiness with language and not racism per se. When the author argues that black women are “objectively” less attractive, in the context of the entire article that clearly appears to mean “according to multiple ratings by independent judges.”

At the very least this article shows an appalling lack of sensitivity and thoughtless use of language, but we should probably hang these people for the right crime.

When I came to this page today the browser hung for perhaps a minute or two until I force-refreshed, then it seemed to come up normal-ish, maybe slightly slow. I’m running Firefox on Windows 7 64 bit in South San Francisco.

That said, I’ve been a long, long time subscriber, and every year it gets more difficult to justify reading it; it’s gone from being a fairly informative journal to being what is essentially a Cosmo for social workers. I understand that controversy is pretty much free publicity, but seriously, PT?