Slashdot Mirror
A Plan On How To Stop Sexism In Science
StartsWithABang writes: If there's nothing else that science has to offer, it's this elegant notion: that anyone, anywhere, at anytime, can investigate and uncover the mysteries and workings of the Universe simply by asking it the right questions in the right ways, listening to its answers, and putting the pieces together for themselves. Anyone can do it. Only, for various and sundry reasons, not everyone gets to do it. Some people don't have the economic ability, some don't have the sustained drive or interest, and some simply can't cut the mustard. But some people — some really, really good people — are driven from their passions for a sad, simple and completely unnecessary fact: that they were treated in unacceptable ways that they refused to just accept. And in a great many cases, that unacceptable treatment came simply because of their gender. Sexism sometimes looks like what you expect, and sometimes not. Here's one opinion on what we can all do about it to create the world we really want: where science really is for everyone.
For gods sake, this again!
Seriously, what is this trash and why is it on slashdot?
And in a great many cases, that unacceptable treatment came simply because of their gender. [...] Here's one opinion on what we can all do about it to create the world we really want
You haven't proven there's a sexism problem, you simply dictated it like some kind of god. Where's the evidence? If it's there, link to it. If not, shut your hole and go find some before you come back.
Enough of this radfem nonsense.
Don't let feminists in?
That feminism is still all about equality of opportunity, and acknowledge that it in fact about equality of outcome, regardless of merit or ability.
Fact of the matter is, most people cannot do science. Yes, that also means most women cannot. That means doing science is for almost nobody. Apparently, some people are pushing for the "skill" and "insight" requirement to be abolished for women. The quagmire that is "gender studies" shows nicely where that will lead.
Also, having been in science for quite a while, I have yet to find the first instance of sexism and none of several female colleagues had any examples for it happening "in science" either or for being held back when doing a PhD. Sure, they all had to do real work and overcome real obstacles, but not in any way different from what male PhD candidates have to do. This whole thing is a transparent move to acquire more power, not to fix any existing problem.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Easy to stop SJW, look at them instead and ask them questions.
Why is only 5% of Hollywood and TV directors women?
Why do women in Hollywood make significantly less than men for top roles?
Why does Mrs. Clinton pay women on her staff 87 cents for each dollar she pays men?
Why does Obama pay women 78 cents for each dollar he pays men on his staff?
Sexism is far more rampant from the left/SJW crowd. That's because no one is supposed to ask them about it, but go ahead and ask them and watch their complaints disappear because its only being brought up as a political issue and they obviously don't really actually care about the issue.
There is only one way to stop sexism in science. Nerds must be shamed, harshly and often.
Nerd must be shamed:
- for being male;
- for being white;
- for being cisgendered;
- for being american;
- for being educated;
- for being tech saavy;
- for playing video games;
- for playing tabletop games;
- for reading sci-fi;
- for being sighted;
- for having two hands;
- for not getting out enough;
- for getting out enough;
- for having parents;
- for not posting trigger warnings;
- for voting Republican;
- for voting Democrat;
- for voting;
- for not voting;
- etc
Nerds must be shamed for all these and more. Constantly. It is only by breaking the collective morale and free spirit of the Internet generation that we can hope to instill the true sense of camaraderie and globalism that the tech industry needs to grow and profit in the post-digital age. Positive change is only possible through negative reinforcement. You can lead a horse to water, but he must be beaten into drinking it.
Nerds will never become tolerant or accepting on their own. They cannot be saved, and their zealous adherence to outdated concepts of equality, meritocracy, and free speech are holding tech companies back. Shaming is best way of gentling this disgusting race of geeks who currently dominate tech. We must rip open their cozy-caves of childish solice, their fortresses of nerdy solitude, and all their conventions and creative workplaces, and there smear the disinfecting lights of inter-sectionalism, sexual politics, and identity politics all over their protesting bodies, minds, and souls until they have no more energy to resist. Only then will tech be finally free from rape culture.
This is a good thing!
The more that people get subjected to this social justice nonsense, the more they see it for the junk that it is, and the more they dislike it.
So I'm all for social justice articles all over the place. The harder the social justice crowd pushes their shit on everyday people, the quicker those people will come to resent social justice and those pushing it.
The social justice crowd will cause more harm to themselves and their cause just by being themselves and promoting their idiocy. We should encourage them to do this as swiftly as possible!
What an antithetical beginning to scientific thinking.
The proof thus far of rampart sexism in science is at best contradictory, and especially now, this push seems to have the flavor of if you repeat a lie often enough, it becomes fact.
Also, I see no reason why women should be singled out in this regard with a myriad of social injustices that take place. By the HDI, they are a privileged class.
Right now there is a Supreme Court case pending of how affirmative action ends up being discriminatory to Asians, similar in effect to quota systems to keep Jews from higher education.
I caution attempts at social engineering result in greater injustices than those they seek to fight against.
> Last week, I live-blogged a talk by theoretical physicist Amanda Peet, and while there were a great amount of comments and discussions focused on her lecture, there was also a great amount focused on Dr. Peet’s physical appearance. Sure, sometimes I’m judged on my appearance as well—I’m an unusual looking person and I do things to draw attention to myself—but when I talk or write or profess about whatever it is I’m doing professionally, I can always expect to be judged for my merits as a professional. Not for my looks first and then for my scholarship, but for the quality of the work I do. I feel like that’s a privilege, a way I get to play the game of life on “easy mode,” that I wouldn’t get simply if my gender weren’t male.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/new...
Well, it is a problem every day. That is one of the things about the 'privilege' concept, privilege gives one the luxury of not having to think about or notice something because it does not impact them. Which is why you get such a big backlash of 'I do not want to hear about this' from guys on boards like this, it is not their problem, they can't see it, they do not want to think about it. They really do not want to consider they might be feeding into a problem that hurts people who are not like them.
The professor who’d talk to a student professionally and politely, then stare at her rear end while she walked away.
Oh yes, how terrible. Great think piece, Sir Galahad.
If people looking at your ass makes you uncomfortable, wear clothes that obscure your ass. That's what clothes are for, covering the parts of your body that you don't want others to see.
Why does Mrs. Clinton pay women on her staff 87 cents for each dollar she pays men?
Why does Obama pay women 78 cents for each dollar he pays men on his staff?
Probably because both of those statistics derive from studies using flawed/dishonest methodology?
> Fact of the matter is, most people cannot do science.
Fact is, most people can do science. While few will have the tremendous insights of an Einstein, most people can observe, record, and _verify_ data, and especially note and report details that don't match the models they understand. That data gathering and verification, and that concern for data that does not fit the model, is a vital part of science that almost every human can participate in.
It's pretty obvious: They use the bottom 5% of all men to generalize and demand laws to reduce things like male violence and rape--for the other 95%.
They use the top 5% of men to generalize, campaign, and demand laws about reducing men's success--for the other 95%.
If you did that with the genders reversed, it'd be called sexist as hell.
There are strong men, there are weak men, and to assume that every man somehow knows how to negotiate, step up for himself, and get a wall street job is insane. At the same time these feminists are arguing that gender is a spectrum, except when it's "evil men who control everything." It's laughable.
There is a course in men's studies it is called HISTORY.
History is gender neutral. It talks about all things that happen whether women or men were involved. Women's studies specifically studies women in history. Men's studies doesn't exist because there would be outrage.
This is similar to racism. There is Black studies and there is Mexican studies, there is Islam studies, but if there was White studies, there would be outrage.
There are beauty pageants specifically for Blacks and for Latinos, and then there are beauty pageants that must allow everybody. If there was a beauty pageant that only allowed whites, there would be outrage. Same with awards shows.
Racism and feminism are big business. This is why the likes of Al Sharpton and Jesse Jackson continue to promote and incite racism and racial divisionism in this country. If we could get past the "something bad happened to a black guy" and get it down to "something bad happened to a person", then we would be making real progress, but the Al Sharptons and Jesse Jacksons of the world would be out of business.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
And oddly enough, I see women as privileged.
Guess how well that plays with them?
Is it possible to find a woman both attractive and intelligent at the same time? I certainly believe so. The author makes it sound like the moment you pay any attention to a woman's physico-social attractiveness, you automatically disregard her academic abilities.
IMHO, it's basically the same thing that happens between any people in a professional setting, with or without sexual compatibility. You get along better with some people than others, and this has an effect on your professional collaborations. We don't simply treat other people as computers or data stores for the professional stuff - is this what the author wants?
Escher was the first MC and Giger invented the HR department.
> And oddly enough, I see women as privileged.
Well, that does exist. But seldom in ways that involve money or power.
Well, shit, would Obama have become President with this resume?
- Community organizer
- IL State Senator (quit after 2 years to run for US Senate)
- US Senator (quit after 2 years to run for President)
Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, and Ronald Reagan had similar resumes to George W. Bush (I assume that's the one you're referring to) as former state governors. Were they all short on merit?
Your examples are shit.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
The problem with "we must do something about it" is that it lets the "victim" off the hook. Instead of "victims" sucking it up and giving it back as good as they got it (or worse), we are feeding the victim mentality.
We should be encouraging women to "solve" this rather than "men" or "society at large". That kind of approach is ultimately the only way any real progress occurs. You can't liberate people. They have to take it for themselves.
The real problem isn't "those evil nerds". If anything, it's the same media narrative machine that these journalists are a part of.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Yeah, that's called inertia. In a real meritocracy, there'd be no inertia
Your definition of meritocracy is useless, because that's impossible. Even in the most perfect possible meritocracy, information only travels so fast (speed of light?), so not everybody can dump the erstwhile leader at the same instant. And of course, in reality, it takes much much longer. You don't know that GM's cars have suddenly become worthless for 5 or 6 years, because that's when they start breaking down.
Similarly, you don't know that Japanese cars have dramatically increased in quality because it took 20 years for people to start noticing "Hey there are all these 20 year old Toyota driving around, looking old and boxy, but still running great.. what's up."
How do you think you can get around the fact that measuring quality takes time? How does that fit into your definition of meritocracy having "no inertia?"
If (as you might contend) unions were dragging down the American automakers
No, you misunderstood, I was saying that the (surviving) American car companies showed skill in managing unions and politics. Perhaps that is the meritocracy... not who makes better cars, but who can survive in a hostile world. It takes some kind of skill to get a bailout, which is why Lehman Brothers isn't around, Countrywide isn't around, but Citibank is, Goldman is, etc.
Business isn't all about making the best product, in other words. The guy who makes a great product but can't keep up with his taxes, or mismanages labor and has all his workers go on strike, can still fail. That doesn't violate the concept of meritocracy because those are integral skills in business.
It's getting absurd that lower qualified women get positions in science just because they are of the right gender. Stop discrimination in science.
You want to know how to really contribute to the problem? Tell women that their co-workers, who will be largely male, are a horrible bunch of sexists who will mistreat them based on their gender. If they don't quit right there, teach them that any action those men take is a "microaggression" directed at them as a result of their gender. Teach them that the appropriate response to these "microaggressions" is to be extremely upset and angry, possibly to file a complaint with management or HR. Tell them (and convince HR) that a man defending himself from such a complaint is itself sexism and oppression. This will ensure the women always believe they are being oppressed, that they always feel uncomfortable, and that their male co-workers will never feel comfortable with them and will be apprehensive if they are anywhere around.
Then, once you've done this, blame the toxic environment you've created on male sexism. It's a positive feedback loop.
The term "brogrammer" is kind of a shibboleth; if someone seriously talks about "brogramming" or the "brogramming culture", they're completely disconnected from reality. The whole "brogramming" thing was a hoax, an obvious joke based on the juxtaposition of the opposites of "nerds" and "bros". The press and blogs picked up on it as if it were real (it's still not clear which were in on the joke).
There's no "brogramming culture" where coders with popped collars drink Natty Bo and lift weights in one hand while pounding code in the other. There may be a few fake "brogrammers" out there in a life-imitates-art sort of way, and a few legitimate "bros" who are actually programmers, but "brogramming" was never a thing.
Women are paid the same as men and have been since the 1970s. The pay gap statistic is wrong.
First, it conflates all workers on the basis of education and does not factor whether people actually followed through with those careers.
Second, it counts total life time earning power to get to 72 percent and which means the years women often take off work to care for children are counted the same as the years men stay in their jobs working.
Third, when professions are matched, they're typically only matched by industry. So a person working in the office of a coal mine is counted the same as someone working in the actual coal mine.
These errors and many more render the pay gap statistic meaningless. It was disproven in the 1970s pretty much instantly by the first academic that reviewed it. But shameless politicians, lying interest groups, and hack ideological professors bring it out with some regularity to dupe the gullible.
You see the same thing with Malthus's theories on population. Crypt-communists love bringing him up... but they rarely point out that Malthuse's theories were disproven in his own time, he personally disavowed them, and the whole thesis was based on the fact that the Irish were starving to death while ignoring that the British were literally exporting food from Ireland in the middle of a fucking famine.
Look, if you want to have beliefs, that is fine. You are entitled to believe whatever you want. However, you are not entitled to make up your own facts. Either make an argument that does not rest on facts what so ever or fit your argument TO the facts.
If you did that, you'd drop the whole gender disparity thing and go find something else to bitch about.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.