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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.
TSIA. It's meaningless pap.
"I am saying that you have a responsibility to treat every person that comes throughâSâ"âSnot only your work life but your life in generalâSâ"âSwith kindness and respect."
No, REALLY?
A PLAN would be something like: ....because until you extract one of the fundamental drives from our cells (in fact, one might say it is THE drive, as reproduction is the sole reason that there exists a male gender in the first place), men are not going to stop noticing - and reacting - to women.
1) "De-program the mating instinct from humanity"
2) Now watch men treat women more like each other.*
*personally, I believe what women are objecting to is, in a way, men treating them like each other. Obviously, not superficially; but men are competitive as hell, I daresay it's almost instinctive. And the guy who would actively demean or denigrate a woman because of her gender is the same sort of personality that would do the same thing to another man if he's brown, or from Minnesota, or had anything that could be used as such leverage.
Simultaneously, we all can easily trot out examples of women getting special treatment because they're female. Wearing a little lower-cut shirt than they needed to in that tough interview? A little eye contact gets her a free drink? Men will generally stop treating women as sex objects when they - throughout their lives - stop encountering women acting like that.
-Styopa
I already get monthly reminders of gender disparity, I'd rather not be subject to any more.
Slashdot, the daily doze of SJW bullshit, stuff that does not matter. Just publish result of your findings, papers, as anonym or pen-name, no one will fucking care.
This is going to go well.
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.
There is a course in men's studies it is called HISTORY.
It's evolution in action. Men who don't "chase skirt" are not as likely to produce offspring, so that group has the tendency to stay small.
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!
Apologies for length but this issue is sorely getting on my nerves.
I realize that the goal of a lot of these campaigns and whatnot is so that we develop gender-blindness so that women can succeed, yada-yada, but when was the last time that the submitters actually asked any women who frequent this site how they feel.
The alarming frequency of how much I hear about how women in tech need to be helped because OMG sexism!!! is really standing on my very last nerve (and this isn't just in tech, it's in a lot of areas...in the past two weeks, on my Facebook feed alone, I saw a semi-famous internet guy shilling the "poverty is sexist" hashtag and coordinating charity because "women are affected more by poverty than men", the church I just quit put out a fact sheet that men were 95% of perpetrators of domestic abuse, and in addition to Hack Reactor's generous need-blind deferment of tuition, they're now offering scholarships to women...all of which I find to be dubious, or at best moderately short-sighted, to say nothing of the fact that anyone who would question the goodness and purity of the intentions behind any of these MUST be an MRA, which is a group I find to be wildly misunderstood anyway). Never mind all the pro-woman people I know who aren't even in tech pushing the wage gap myth.
It's almost like there's a concerted campaign out there to get people tilting at windmills or something.
Okay, I'm not a typical woman, bear in mind - a number of my "guy friends" like to point out I come across as more male than female, sometimes even more they themselves do. But hear me out for a little bit.
The issue as I see it is not that there isn't sexism - there most certainly is, and yes, I've experienced it. The issue is that all of this fear-mongering is wildly and substantially overblown.
I will say it again. YES, there are sexist men out there. YES, not enough people call it out. YES, there is real injustice out there.
BUT:
YES, women can be sexist too, and I find all of these alarmist cries of sexism to be making it all worse, not better. Women become suspicious of men, and start to believe that 10% of M&Ms are poisonous garbage. Suddenly all men are suspect, and what's that called? SEXISM. But either way, there isn't nearly as much sexism or even as many bad-actors as you might think out there, and if you think so, stop watching so much television.
YES, not enough people call it out, but what do you really think people are supposed to do about it? Most people don't want to get caught up in other people's drama, because if they do, they don't know how to handle it. If we all knew how to tackle all the world's problems, we wouldn't HAVE problems.
YES, there is plenty of injustice in the world, but if we keep drawing arbitrary lines, like male vs. female, then what's going to happen is we're always going to look for those dividing lines everywhere. If all you're looking for is faults, eventually that's all you're EVER going to see. More than that, it doesn't help with equality or gender-blindness. It fact, it's counter-productive. It makes one side suspicious of the other. It creates warring factions.
You can have equality - a notion that assumes women are capable of all the things that men are, including handling their own problems - or you can have the notion that women are somehow handicapped and need gentler handling. Pick one. Pick only one. You can't have both. Not yours.
Women, if you want to be respected in tech, show up, do good work, be reliable and dependable, and for the love of Christ, stop pointing out that you're a woman. Far fewer people care that you're a woman than you think, they just want to make sure deadlines are met and profits are made. Making it about sexism doesn't make a conducive working environment and you're not helping ANY other women at all. And if sexism is so pervasive that you can't succeed, leave. Sometimes the best thing you can do is admit that the problem is much bigger than you. There ar
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.
Posting anon because I'm in a STEM academic field.
First off I don't know what kind of places the author worked at. I saw that kind of behavior when I was a young TA, where the age differences between "teacher" and "student" were very small, but in my professional life I see my fellow professionals acting...well, professionally. I of course may have internal biases and filters that may prevent me from seeing everything like this, but without hard evidence of these scenarios either way, that's all we have.
The author describes several instances of truly inappropriate behavior, but is that really "sexism"? Did the male professors/teachers/authority figures do the things they did to *all* women, or just the ones they found attractive? Did they punish or reward students based only their sex? If not, then I don't think that's sexism.
Flip the situations around: if a woman professor flirted with a male student she found attractive, would that be considered sexism? If a homosexual teacher favored with a student of the same sex, would that be considered sexism? If a student of either sex flirts or checks out or writes cute notes on their homework to a teacher they find attractive, is that sexism?
And don't pretend that the above situations don't happen.
I'm not saying that the instances the author cited shouldn't be considered inappropriate and disrespectful behavior. Far from it; treating your students that way is an abuse of the teacher-student power differential, and should be highly discouraged. But lumping it all into "sexism" dilutes the real problems that women face in STEM and misses a larger opportunity to discuss how to build professional relationships.
Women studies are sexist because there are no men studies
If only there was a way to check whether such a thing exists before making bald and incorrect factual claims:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=men's+stu...
Well, whadya know? Apparently men's studies is a thing. Who knew (apart from google, of course), eh?
SJW n. One who posts facts.
This story probably sparked the recent interest.
I was semi-irritated with these kinds of stories popping up lately, but I've learned to enjoy the aftermath.
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...
I'm getting really tired of such sexism-rerated blurbs. I'm tired of hearing and reading about some people's ideas about how to force an increase in the number of women in politics, in academia, wherever. I'm tired of these ideas mostly because most of them feel themselves forced, and very often drop over to the other side of overly positive discrimination horse. I'm tired of them, because most of them don't contribute and are worthless, or simply disregard the real world, trying to envision some half-assed gender-neutral utopia. All stupid crap.
:)) And the ones I do know personally always seemed to be really motivated, since they want to show they can do more and better. Which, while is nice, it's really unnecessary, nobody I know would think they are inferior. Also, performance&results are important, gender is not.
I've spent now more than a decade in academia, and I've always had women colleagues, during msc, during phd, after phd. Not many, naturally (fairly typical CS/IT ratios), and even today from the 9 senior (young postdocs and "older" postdocs) in our lab onyl 2 are women - which I think is a fairly average ratio in our field. None of my earlier or current female colleaues/coworkers had such negative experiences as the blog post is about. That doesn't mean others didn't, but sometimes I have the feeling such stories are a bit overreacting and over-generalizing.
Personally, I wouldn't mind to see more women in scientific fields, but I couldn't care less if there weren't any either. I just never thought about such numbers as ratios as being an issue. It certainly never occurred to me - or anyone I've ever spoke about such topics - that women couldn't perform in our field, since I know from experience that they can, furthermore, most women I know - personally or because of their results and publications - in our field are really exceptional in their areas, very many of them are much better than me or some of my colleagues
So, tl;dr, sexism and gender issues: don't care.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
http://www.ashedryden.com/blog...
Meritocracy is the belief that those with merit float to the top - that they should be given more opportunities and be paid higher.
We prize the idea of meritocracy and weigh merit on contribution to OSS. Those who contribute the most, goes the general belief, have the most merit and are deemed the most deserving. Those who contribute less or who don't at all contribute to OSS are judged to be without merit, regardless of the fact that they have less access to opportunity, time, and money to allow them to freely contribute.
As the people who exist within this supposed meritocracy don't exist within a vacuum, we also have to realize how our actions affect others. Meritocracy creates a hierarchy amongst the people within it. Some of those at the top or striving to at least be above other people have been guilty of using their power for bullying, harassment, and sexist/racist/*ist language that they use against others directly and indirectly. This creates an atmosphere where people who would otherwise be deemed meritorious within this system choose not to participate because of a hostile, unrewarding environment.
Yes if you contribute to OSS projects don't you dare think that's merit.
You're actually the first the bring it up. Now add some content, and it will be a perfect post.
Thank you for your comment. I've been saying much the same thing for - it seems like - forever. But it's one thing coming from a guy (even though my wife is in tech, and agrees with all of this), and entirely another coming from a woman.
"there are sexist men out there"
I would put it even more generally: There are jerks out there. Men and women both. That is, unfortunately, just the way life is...
"You can have equality - a notion that assumes women are capable of all the things that men are, including handling their own problems - or you can have the notion that women are somehow handicapped and need gentler handling. Pick one."
This. Exactly this.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
More hot chicks in science. Then they are all sexy.
Everyone's a winner!
- Zav - Imagine a Beowulf cluster of insensitive clods...
in a great many cases, that unacceptable treatment came simply because they're grad students
If a woman is treated badly, then a human being is treated badly. If a man is treated badly, then a human being is treated badly. Personally, I'm against human beings getting treated badly.
To have a right to do a thing is not at all the same as to be right in doing it
When I read that story as a kid, it seemed absolutely absurd to me. How could such a society ever even come to be?
Now I understand. God Bless You, Mr. Vonnegut
SJW's don't eliminate discrimination. They just expropriate it for themselves.
How to stop sexism on slashdot articles?
Nothing to see here... go on.
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.
Scientist here. In my working life, I've noted more instances of female-on-male abuse - up to and including physical assault - than male-on-female. I sat down and cranked the stats at one point. The significance depends on your null hypothesis: do you expect, by default, the number of instances of X-on-Y abuse to be proportional to the number of people of type X, or the product of the numbers of people of types X and Y? In the latter case, you expect male-on-female and female-on-male abuse to be equally common, and I excluded that with confidence >95%. In the former case, the significance is substantially higher (i.e. women are responsible for a majority of abuse despite being a ~30% minority in the workplace), but I didn't actually calculate the figure.
The other thing I noticed was a correlation between women carrying out abuse, and women who were most outspoken about mistreatment of women by men in the workplace. The sample size was smaller, but the confidence was still ~90%. I'd expect the same to be true of men carrying out abuse (i.e. this is only a specific example of a general trend that people are more likely to abuse those they see as enemies), but the sample size was too small to get a meaningful result.
> 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.
If you don't stop posting this "men need to fix everything for the poor coddled women", you're going to lose thousands of your readership SOON. One more article, and I'm gone--and I'm taking my dollars with me.
My wife doesn't want your goddamn help. She wants to be treated as an equal--which means she's strong enough to take care of herself without you constantly trying to tell her she's broken and needs men to change the system so that she can get a job. Women don't need men to fix things. Women are strong. Women need themselves, and healthy relationships with their opposite sex to succeed--something you don't fight for at all.
Unlike your modern peers, 1st and 2nd-wave feminists ALREADY WON because they weren't morons. Equality is here, and you're doing everything you can do lie to us, and remove the confidence women have in their abilities, just so you can keep funding your bullshit Women's studies degrees. Like constantly talking about rape culture when rape has been steadily declining since the 70's, and rape is LOWER on campus than off campus.
Look at 3rd wave feminism. It's "gender feminism." They're not even talking about helping women get equality in laws anymore--it's all "gender gender gender." Why? Because the real equality is already here! So they have to make up new ways to make people think we're not equal.
You don't go after women's magazines, after Yahoo news, after women-attacking-women venues because you want women to be broken so you can sell them the snake oil solution. Just like when you guys did NOTHING while Britain ran human smuggling and rape of young Muslim girls because they were brown and didn't fit your "white male oppressor" narrative. Just like your numerous celebrity "let's shame women who don't identify as feminist" smear campaigns.
You don't actually care about women at all, and society will remember you for what you are: Fascists and domesticated terrorists.
feminism, multiculturalism, etc is much adored by the big corporations and the plutocrats because they increase the supply of labor and depress wages. Whatever ideologies those at the top love, I hate.
posting at http://leftistconservative.blogspot.com
The good thing is, though, that male assholes who behave like those who seem to constitute a slashdot majority on topics like these, are probably already outsiders at most attractive (for any gender and orientation, not just non-male or non-straight) workplaces and will more and more become so. Everyone's entitled to their nerdiness, and while many a nerd's antihumanist attitude may be explained by unfair behaviour the world did show to them at some point in their lives, that of course doesn't make their antihumanist attitude (like the extremist, antifeminist and misogynist hate they literally pour into forums like this) any more acceptable than it is, i.e. not at all.
Except nobody said that. If you actually paid attention you might learn something.
No one ever is driven from their passion.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
Abolish women studies/gender studies
Women studies are sexist because there are no men studies and both produce crazy sexist feminazis.
For the rest, act cool.
In my opinion, women studies is school sanctioned hate speech.
Why is it acceptable to teach women to hate men...
You don't build by dividing, you only destroy.
Yes. Take Lifetime TV for example. It seems to exist solely to teach women that all men are rapists, wife beaters, cheaters and murderers. I am not sure if this to try to teach them all to hate men and become lesbians, or whether it is to teach them that since all men are evil, they should settle for the first guy who beats them, or somewhere in between. But whatever they are doing, it is extremely irresponsible and promotes division among genders.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
While few will have the tremendous insights of an Einstein, most people can observe, record, and _verify_ data
Dealing with customer bug reports, it has become very clear to me that most people are terrible observers.
You forgot
- for being whiny virgins who feel they should have got a free supermodel.
That's the real problem. The rest of the long whiny list is not relevant.
Some people just can't get their career going because they're too busy blaming sexism for every failed interview, unread resume, and bad score on a college exam. I know, it's sad.
Every Friday here like clockwork. Your anger is generating ad views.
The weekly MRA vs SJW fight (neither really fits most commenters but they get cast into the role) gets a lot of attention and a lot of comments.
What makes it incredibly funny is most of the arguments are about how woman are unsuitable for staying indoors and typing while men are - your grandpas in their youth would have called you all sissies for doing woman's work.
Lifetime didn't set out to *MAKE* their audience into misandrists, I don't think, although there can be self-reinforcing aspects to it. It set out to *CATER TO* an audience of misandrists. The misandrist sentiment already existed among a subset of the female population, it just hadn't been turned into a niche market yet.
Many even otherwise quite thoughtful people are bigoted. If they have a bad experience with a single individual, or maybe a run of bad luck with a few individuals, who all share a trait not shared by the victim, then many victims will begin to associate the trait with the behavior. They'll begin to expect the same behavior out of everyone who exhibits that trait. It's the same thing going on now with black people and police officers. And it's why every show on Lifetime is about a woman being abused by her husband, or getting cheated on, or stuff like that: because those tend to be at the root of misandrist thought, or at a very minimum serve to emotionally confirm a misandrist bias.
You just responded to a thoughtful, detailed, logical post with a "can't get a girlfriend joke", but you're the one complaining about the tenor of the conversation? How is it even possible to be so shameless?
And oddly enough, I see women as privileged.
Guess how well that plays with them?
You myst never have done paper-reviews or supervised undergraduate work. Yes, I know that is a problematic "Argument from authority", but really, try it. It will open your eyes.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
Way to display your bias there buddy. People are pointing out that the incessant harping on "this is sexist", "that is sexist", "everything is sexist" being counter-productive and your knee jerk reaction is to call people using a non-derogatory term (SJW), "Douchebags".
The reason why the term SJW is becoming pejorative is precisely due to reactions like yours from people who see no common ground.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
While few will have the tremendous insights of an Einstein, most people can observe, record, and _verify_ data
Dealing with customer bug reports, it has become very clear to me that most people are terrible observers.
Urgh. I feel for you. That kind of work sucks. Sometimes you have the impression people navigate by color-palette or general structure of the elements on the screen.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
There is a course in men's studies it is called HISTORY.
Beliefs like this is why your movement is met with laughter and contempt by the mainstream, by both men *and* women.
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.
I expect at least half of the comments here to contain the words "SJW" or "social justice" (as all-purpose insults) together with lengthy whinges about how sexism literally doesn't even exist any more so why do slashdot keep posting stories about it, and anyway even if it does it's now only discrimination against men, and anyway girls just aren't physically strong enough to do Real Science and that's a FACT.
Nice run-on sentence. I'll try to avoid your word traps, and actually discuss the issues.
I have strong doubts that anyone with a passion for science can be turned away from it. I had enough roadblocks in my way, and It was just a distraction to be overcome
But I'm passionate about what I do.
I'm taken to task in here because of my approach to work. I've pulled many all-nighters, and 100 hour weeks in order to do my work. Thing is, I often had other engineers and scientists with me. We were passionate about our work. Some of these were women engineers and scientists who were likewise passionate.
So now, we have the concept of passionate people who can be dissuaded from their passion by men, who are sexist. No, I don't think so. If a dongle joke, or a teacher or co worker has views you don't like, you don't walk away from your passion.
I think its just possible that some folks see a gender disparity, and quickly jump to the conclusion that the disparity exists because men are pigs.
This is hardly a scientific conclusion. Its a biased presupposition.
It is the same thing as saying 80 percent of veterinarians are now female - This is because they are sexist pigs. Or saying there are almost no male elementary teachers any more - it's because female elementary school teachers are sexist pigs.
Aside from the bristling one might get in response to even suggesting such a thing, it has a similarity to the men are pigs approach to STEM. It is an opinion, not necessarily a fact.
So instead of believing that people with a passion can be so easily turned away from it, perhaps we need to investigate some other possibilities. Perhaps there is something else in some STEM careers that young ladies find not to their liking. The likeliehood that it is the occasional off color joke - which is not really a gender based thing, sexual innuendo - of which I've heard many from women, or even that there are people who don't like you - its a big world, and not everyone will love you.
Perhaps in these matters, it might be better to explore more options than men are pigs. That would be a more scientific approach to consider more than one possibility.
It might be better to look at other fields, where there is parity, or fields in which women are overwhelming majorities, such as veterinarians or elementary, and even secondary teachers, in order to see if there is anything we can learn or apply.
My favorite little illustrative anecdote regarding the ease with which people can jump to conclusions involves the machine shop in the place where I worked. After the early 90's, when sex was scrubbed from the workplace, and especially the machine shop, where calendars with women in shorts and halter tops were outright banned, one of the machinists was found with a photo of a cheerleader in his toolbox, quite visible when his toolbox was open. A very pretty girl, in a cheerleader outfit with pom poms.
Someone turned him in to human resources, because he was being sexist, with a thing for cheerleaders. So HR came out to force him to take the offensive image down, and give him a little sensitivity training.
They hit a little snag. The young lady in the so called offensive photo was his daughter, who was a high school cheerleader. He demanded in writing that he was not allowed to have photos of his daughter at work. They ended up allowing him to have that sexist photo of his daughter, and were then the subject of some ridicule.
The moral of the story is to not jump to conclusions.
Another moral is to pay attention to the old adage that when your tool is a hammer, everything looks like a nail - perhaps if you look at everything through a filter of sex, everything will look like a sexual issue.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
"SJW" is exclusively pejorative for the folks who use it. Also, you assume too much about me. I can grant that there are some folks who are too thinn-skinned and who perceive slights where there aren't any. That is, people who might actually deserve the "SJW" label in a pejorative sense. But the camp that frequently uses the term "SJW" applies too broadly. Anyone who argues that sexism, racism, etc. actually exist and may disadvantage certain groups is a raving "SJW" zealot.
I would say that the first thing those attempting social engineering should seek is to utilize the solutions they propose. For instance, it's amazing how many of the politicians in the US who seek to raise the minimum wage also make broad use of unpaid interns. If even the crusaders can't manage to pay everybody minimum wage (not the new level of $10, $15, or whatever is being proposed today, but just the current amount), what makes you so certain it's a great idea?
Do you like Japanese imports?
From the Wikipedia article for your google search
"As a relatively new field of study, men's studies was formed largely in response to, and as a critique of, an emerging men's rights movement, and as such, has been taught in academic settings only since the 1970s. In many universities, men's studies is a correlation to women's studies or part of a larger gender studies program, and as such its faculty tends to be sympathetic to, or engaged in, advocacy of feminist politics."
Sounds like a part of women studies to me.
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power lost.
"Cut the mustard" has become common usage from ignorance and stupidity. The proper phrase is "cut the muster"
Contribute to civilization: ari.aynrand.org/donate
There's a wide plain between Einstein (who was a theoretical scientist anyway and didn't observe, record, and verify data) and a technician whose only role is to observe, record, and verify data. The GP was referring to PhDs in science, whose role involves making models to explain the data that they collect, not just collecting data and applying it to models that somebody else made.
While anybody can observe, record, and verify data (which isn't even remotely true and many people trained in science are terrible at this, let alone determining what data needs to be collected), very few people have the talent, training, and desire to make models that explain the collected data.
If you want a vision of the future, imagine a youtube comments section scrolling - forever.
My options are to skim these crap stories, find idiot comments like yours, tell you to get off my lawn, and end it with a big FUCK OFF for good measure.
If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
Ah, the Aristotelian idea of to rule and be ruled. Nope, that simply will not do. We jockey for positions of power less for absolute control than to keep ourselves from being directed by others.
And so it goes, the latest being to impinge on the goodwill of others, except more and more it looks like obligation, and frankly my sense of concern is near exhaustion.
The perverse side effect being more and more the geek community is starting to loath being baited this way, they will simply not give a damn about any sexism realized or not, and those who chastised them will have succeeded in creating the very thing they were trying to eliminate
You can only call someone a monster for so long before they are willing to prove you right.
Stop hiring women scientists.
Solved.
Next.
Except it's 2015, there's hardly a structural barrier keeping women out of STEM.
In fact girls are overly encouraged to study math and science. Celebrities and the media
tell girls it's cool to study science.
The thing is that college and graduate level science courses are hard, require practically a single-minded dedication to succeed in, and have very little social prestige. And even then there are plenty of women who graduate with hard science degrees (chemistry, physics, math) from 4-year colleges.
But then they go off to work on Wall Street, where the money is, instead of going to graduate schools (for science) or going into a lab.
So enough of the 'it's 1955 all over-again' bullshit!
This Sig does not Exist.
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.
Well, that's one way to look at it.
Another way is "You are a male in STEM. You are a sexist pig. If you don't agree that you are a sexist pig, you are simply proving you are a sexist pig."
Oh wait - I just wrote exactly what you said, just with different words.
Your argument is no better than the people you are trying to argue with. It's the old Women are always right, men are always wrong meme. It's hard to make a mathematical or even honest social case for that.
How far are we going to get with that? Seems to me if more women want to get into STEM, they need to en masse go into STEM careers, not claim that off color and dongle jokes, and men who don't theink theway they want, turn them away. That is a complete lack of passion. If you quit because someone doesn't think like you want them to think, you didn't really want that job anyhow.
Life isn't a situation where you can completely control what others do. This silly women in STEM being turned away by sexist males means that if there is one sexist male, he personally can determine every woman's career. So its simply an impossible requirement they are setting up.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
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.
I don not see any reason why to believe it. History is written by victorious. And those, who could write (if they survived). It would be perfectly reasonable to have separate native American history study, given how much time is spent on studying white immigrant history (I am pulling this out of my ass, since I live in Europe). If any particular subfield in history is poorly studied, it makes perfect sense to study that particular field more carefully, nut just "whole history". Having separate "white studies" would make sense in, say, Japan, which is dominated by Japanese and impact of west could be an interesting subject. What would "white history of USA" even look like? No mention of slaves? Native Americans? How would such studies deepen our understanding on what had happened?
My guess is that if beauty pageants were systematically won by Latinos, and someone made a separate pageant for whites only, there would be no outcry. For some reason you seem to be blind to any social inequalities.
Yeah, like all issues which needed to be dealt with, to reach the moderate level of civilization we at least have reached, used to be non-issues for the privileged asshole majorities of their time who thought it was their natural right to boss others around. No, sir; we, and by that I explicitly mean the male part of the civilized population, too, will continue to civilize those who insist on uncivilized behavior wherever we meet them and especially where we meet them in person. At my workplace the likes of you and their big-mouthed anti-feminist nonsense they oh-so-bravely blare into forums wouldn't last even one day.
So, CaptainDork, have you stopped beating your wife?
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Actually there is a white studies class. Well, it's called whiteness studies actually.
Unlike the other ones, it's more about disparaging whites... that's why it's "okay" I guess.
There are plenty of appropriate roles in combat for women.
Tunnel rat
Driver, especially tank driver (size, weight, flexibility)
Pilot and other roles on aircraft (less weight, greater flexibility, smaller size to fit in tighter spaces)
(fixed) Machine gunner (smaller target, greater flexibility. Think ball gunner in WWII
Sniper (smaller target, easier to hide) Consider female snipers in Soviet Union during WWII
etc. Men are in fact chosen/assigned for various roles based on size, strength, endurance, flexibility, intelligence (level and types) etc. In all of these women have their advantages and their disadvantages.
I say: expand selective service, and when the draft comes back they better draft women at a level high enough so the armed forces are 50-50, otherwise all this equality stuff is indeed bullshit.
Hmm "Social Justice Warrior" vs "Penis-Worshipping Douchebag"
Yeah that's about the same level of pejorative...
Discussions like this always center on the need to make science less 'male' in the sense of getting rid of locker-room humor or, once the academic battleaxes really get going, humor of any kind.
But if women are going to meet us halfway and make the most of their talents in STEM, they too need to make one change..
Stop being afraid of everything!/b
It's getting absurd that lower qualified women get positions in science just because they are of the right gender. Stop discrimination in science.
Mod parent up!
I've been saying this since I was a we little lad. We do the jobs we like. I like I.T. I like computers, I have since I was a kid. My sister on the other hand liked crops and animals, she works in agriculture.
How is it that science can explain how and why our hormones and evolution drive men and women to different interest, yet science (or in reality H.R.types) can't accept the findings of science?!?!
Slashdot under current management is just pandering to the H.R. and equal outcome everything crowds.
The preceding post was not a Slashvertisement.
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.
Men's studies is not what you think it is, it's actually just a women's studies course taught from the perspective that all men are the problem and is often controlled by and taught by the same radical feminists in charge of the women's studies course.
Women's studies = "Women are the greatest"
Men's Studies = "Men are the worst"
Of course that's just my opinion...... you could be wrong!
Don't worry -- in just one generation, advancements in robotics will ensure that "women" and "sex objects" are forever separate things. Then women can be free of men's "unwanted" attention, and maybe even they'll be treated as "nicely" as men treat each other.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
Women control the majority of wealth while earning less. Tell me that doesn't involve the 'power of the pussy'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Mostly it involves the "power of the widow".
Go into Sales and Marketing. I really wonder how sexism compares in STEM, Academia (a recent study already concluded that you have twice as much chance to get tenure being a woman) and IT to 'regular jobs' like your local supermarket and bar/restaurant. I'm pretty sure you can expect crude sexist remarks there as a woman all day long.
When looking at stuff like Zinn you have to recognize the difference between 'history' and 'propaganda'. Zinn is clearly 'propaganda', in a league with 'Red Star Rising' and 'Triumph of the Will'.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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.
Indeed, that's how I read it. The paper started with an assumption that females are equal to males in producing scientifically correct papers, and therefore any discrepancy between male and female publication acceptance rates must come from discrimination. The reviewer pointed out that if you take an alternative hypothesis, that males are better at this stuff than females, then the conclusion didn't hold. They were begging the question. He went even so far as to explain that if you would take sports as an example, you could provide an absurd conclusion -- females are discriminated against participating in the 100 meters dash. Note, he was not saying that males are better than females at doing science, simply that this is not a foregone conclusion. And that's absolutely politically incorrect. All in all, I think he was pretty stupid to formulate it the way he did, but I don't think this is a slam-dunk to show suppression of females. Quite the opposite.
Buddyboy (& others like him so convinced that their actions are justifiable "for the good cause") is incapable of discerning the difference between descriptive and pejorative. Arnaud Amory would be proud.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
What it tends to come down to are three things:
1. Can you get published? Especially in top rated journals.
2. Can you become tenure faculty with research grants. Saying you'll increase it by 10 percent when it's only 1 percent means it's now 1.1 percent.
3. Can you get awards?
I've seen more change occur due to the above three focii than the other stuff, but then I work in a mostly female branch of science (which didn't used to be so, that happened quite recently).
I'm hoping that the same will occur with my intended new field (engineering) as well. There is no reason why it can't.
-- Tigger warning: This post may contain tiggers! --
Women just naturally get money from their husbands?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
> Fact of the matter is, most people cannot do science.
Fact is, most people can do science.
Fact, most people won't, nor do they have the mental makeup to handle it. REcording data is at the bottom of the skill set. Not only that, but long hours, mediocre pay, sometimes awful and dirty work conditions, and not much respect from either left or right of the political spectrum. Yeah, everyone's gonna do that.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
These same sad sack ideological robots just can't help themselves.
Your bullshit doesn't work so well on the internet and certainly not on a board where people are inclined to actually look at your data, check your methodology, and question your premise.
You people brought this crap up on this board repeatedly and everyone collectively went through it all and concluded it was shit.
Enough.
You people are not interested in the problem because there isn't one. What you care about is your solution. And your solution is giving a bunch of dishonest hipsters total control over fucking everything.
Enough with the witch trials. Enough with the book burnings. Enough with the sophistry. You've been found out.
You people have been running around all over the internet shitting all over everything. You've even shat all over the Magic the Gathering community and comic books... There is nothing you idiots won't attempt to make about sexism.
Everything is apparently sexist.
Here is a better theory, the scientists and programmers tend to be introverts. And introverts make extroverts feel uncomfortable because they express themselves differently. Women are much more likely to be extroverts than introverts. From what I've seen, every women complaining about sexism in tech etc has been an extrovert. Rather than sexism, it could be that she's just not comfortable being surrounded by lots of introverts when she's an extrovert.
And to that I have to say tough shit. Because the introverts deal with that all the time. Introverts are about 25 percent of the population which means in nearly every situation they're out numbered 3 to 1. So cry me a fucking river that you get put in a situation where the tables are turned on you for once.
And how fucking dare you take what is a safe space for introverts... a place they can feel comfortable and be successful... and shit all over them and suggest that they're sexist just because you didn't get full extrovert emotional feedback.
Nuke this issue from orbit. It is the only way to be sure.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
It manifests differently, but it is sexism all the same. Many of the "defender of women" types really do see women as weaker, inferior. These poor little flowers just can't, CAN'T stand up for themselves. They need guys to help them out so that things can be fair! So don't worry, fair lady, they'll protect you from the evil men... unless of course you disagree with them in which case they'll attack your fiercely for having "internalized misogyny" or some such. After all, you can't be strong enough to have your own opinions!
They don't believe they are sexist, but then people who are sexist/racist/etc rarely believe they are. Make no mistake though, that's what it is. While it might manifest as seemingly good intentions, it is actually a view of gender inferiority. I mean after all, if you truly believe that women are equal to men, just as capable, then you aren't going to think they need special champions. They can, and will, handle it themselves. It is only people who view them as weaker in some way that would think they can't handle themselves. It is pretty insidious.
I think people need to start calling them out on their bullshit. Sexism under the cloak of "equality" or "justice" is little better than sexism in the form of harassment.
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.
No. None of the words that compose SJW are pejorative. It is a descriptive acronym for people who see the world in absolutes & refuse criticism of their platform, though SJZ (Social Justice Zealot) is sometimes more apt. Equating condemnation of your insults with being pro sexism/racism/... just shows how much of a zealot you are.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Had you bothered to read the article you would have found out that there is copious evidence of sexism in science.
I RTFA and I did not see "copious evidence" of sexism. It seemed like the author was grasping at straws to prove a preconceived notion. Seriously, the examples given boarder creepy/inappropriate but to extrapolate "copious evidence of sexism in science" or in the authors words "institutionalized sexism" is an exaggeration.
The professor who leaned in just a little too-close-for-comfort, not to everyone, but to one girl in particular. The student invited to an academic event one evening, only to find out that her lecturer viewed it as a date. And the one professor who always looked me (and the other young men) right in the eye when we spoke, but whose gaze always drifted downwards, towards their chests, when he spoke with the young women.
...
The professor who’d talk to a student professionally and politely, then stare at her rear end while she walked away.
The graded assignments that would have flirty little comments and smiley faces, only for the female students.
Gossipy conversations—about other people in the department, obviously—that would mysteriously fall silent whenever certain women walked by (but never the men).
And the way word choice would change ever-so-subtly—like how remarks were “ejaculated” instead of “uttered”—in the presence of certain people.
This is your evidence?. That doesn't sound like "institutionalized sexism". It sounds like a guy acting like a guy that may be inappropriate in a professional environment. Here is a clue, sexism, racism, agism, etc are illegal if someone makes sexual advances, ask for favors, etc; it is already illegal and there is legal action the woman can take to protect herself. The article links to some studies, but what is also frustrating about this topic, you can find studies to back up claims on both sides.
If you think the gender imbalance is the entirety of the evidence for sexism then you are likely part of the problem.
Or maybe the gender imbalance is due to other factors of a complex system. Maybe, what is described as "institutionalized sexism" isn't institutionalized. because in the authors own words:
Most authority figures in my field aren’t sexist, aren’t sexually harassing anybody, and treat everyone based on their own merits as people.
How can it be institutionalized sexism if "most authority figures aren't sexist"? The real issue the author is pushing is:
if we want to really change the culture of our field
The answers in this thread are telling, and they don't paint a pretty picture.
Here's my hypothesis: Geeks (myself included!) tend to be lone wolves. We like autonomy, and hence have a strong belief in personal responsibility, often at the detriment of shared responsibility. See how many libertarians are on /.?
Geeks also tend to have girl problems. They're often intimidated by them, but also want and can't have them. This leads to resentment. Women seem incredibly powerful and unattainable, so when they claim disinfranchisement, we are incredulous.
In the sciences, geeks rule. Women who enter this field have to be fun, approachable and totally geeky too. Not many women fit that description. But many who don't are otherwise fantastically gifted, intelligent women. And we're missing out.
Jeremy
Women studies are sexist because there are no men studies
If only there was a way to check whether such a thing exists before making bald and incorrect factual claims:
http://lmgtfy.com/?q=men's+stu...
It's very important to read your references before your cite them. From the very first link of the search that you provided(wikipedia, second paragraph):
" In many universities, men's studies is a correlation to women's studies or part of a larger gender studies program, and as such its faculty tends to be sympathetic to, or engaged in, advocacy of feminist politics."
and
"They often discuss the issues surrounding male privilege, "
Certainly doesn't sound like a counterweight to "womens studies".
I'm a minority race. Save your vitriol for white people.
As evidenced by all of the enlightened, sensitive gentleman chiming in in this thread, right? You know, the ones whose basic argument can be boiled down to: "I've never actually raped a woman at her desk, therefore these cunts are engaging in gender warfare against me, and besides, girls are too fucking dumb to science anyway. Therefore there's no sexism in STEM, these girls should toughen up and get a fucking clue."
Sorry bro-ski, but if you don't think there's a massive problem with male-dominated work culture like this, I've got another popped collar to sell you.
Pejorative: expressing contempt or disapproval.
The acronym "SJW" is a pejorative for a certain kind of person. A phrase can be pejorative without being obviously so when removed from the larger context of its usage.
You sound like a truly delightful human being. To be clear, the acronyms I proposed weren't intended to apply broadly to all "gamers" or "nerds". Rather, to the subset who find themselves frequently invoking the acronym "SJW".
I've done it, with children of various ages, in seminars, and with mentoring colleagues. Much like learning to cook or use a knife safely, almost _everyone_ can do the basics..
I've known a few brogrammers. Some were otherwise nice guys, just prone to talking about who had the biggest boobs on Game of Thrones last night at inappropriate times.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
Ah, the theory that the relatively powerless are responsible for social change, which really cuts the odds of anybody messing up the speaker's life of privilege.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Back in the 60s, there was good reason for affirmative action. It was not imposing a quota system, but rather changing the numbers. It also created some diversity in situations that had been homogenous. It's a really blunt instrument, and has serious negative effects, so every so often I look for somebody who can explain to me why it's a good idea today.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
People are turned away from their passions all the time. Passion isn't a binary thing with automatic success when it exists. You went through a lot to pursue yours, but if you'd been less certain if you'd get through it, or if it had been harder, perhaps you would have slacked off. I'm also saying not to jump to conclusions.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
I don't know about anybody else, but I've always found intelligence sexy in a woman. This does mean I look for it and appreciate it.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Malthus pointed out that population, given enough food, grows exponentially, while food production isn't going to. Therefore, unless there was some way of limiting fertility, population was always going to outrun resources. As it happens, giving women equality or a reasonable facsimile of, including education and birth control methods, lowers the fertility rate. This was not understood until fairly recently, and could not have been understood in Malthus' time.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
The reason why there aren't departments devoted to studying history and such about white men is that so frippin' much of history is about them. The perceived default human in most of the West is white and male, and so it's more natural to write down stuff about white males than others. It's getting better now, and if it continues there won't be any reason for women's study programs (not that that will get them dropped, necessarily).
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Wrong. Malthus's theories were disproven in their time and have gained no actual credibility since.
Saying "something unless stopped will continue" is not much of a theory. And really it has never been true for human beings. For lemmings perhaps but not people. We can CHOOSE. You tend to only find serious problems with over population in areas were social planners are fucking with the system and doing it incompetently.
What is more, the attraction to Malthus's theories is nothing more than pseudo intellectualism cloaking crypto marxism. That is, you support this because you feel in doing so you make various Marxist theories for population management and social control seem more reasonable.
And that would be fine if you were honest about it but the very nature of crypto marxism is to not be honest about your intentions or motivations.
You people have been spinning sophistry for generations and while you fooled people for a time, we have eventually caught on.
Deny it. I dare you. Say you've no affection for Marxism. :)
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Social relating to or involving activities in which people spend time talking to each other or doing enjoyable things with each other
Justice the process or result of using laws to fairly judge and punish crimes and criminals
Warrior a person who fights in battles and is known for having courage and skill
No contempt or disapproval in any of these, nor even in:
Warrior a person who has very strong feelings about something (such as religion or politics) and who wants other people to have those feelings : a zealous person
However, just for you:
Pedant a person who annoys other people by correcting small errors and giving too much attention to minor details
Note that a pedant's corrections aren't necessarily correct, just minor and annoying.
And again: "The reason why the term SJW is becoming pejorative is precisely due to reactions like yours from people who see no common ground". It is because SJW is being used to describe your zealotry and over-reactions that a descriptive acronym is becoming pejorative & not the other way around.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
You mean the "poor me I can't do anything right" post is sarcasm and not a whiny complaint? Pull the other one, it's got bells on it. Pretending you were only joking when something backfires is pathetic.
Now that you've (incorrectly) analyzed my politics and psychology, and shown that you believe educating women to be a neo-Marxist method of social control, is there more to be said?
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
1. Your defense of malthus is a dead give away. He is speciously held as meaningful to certain ideologies but he has no utility beyond a historical example of hubris and folly. But by all means, correct me. What are your politics?
2. What is this absurd strawman you're inserting suggesting that I said educating women had anything to do with neo marxism? And for clarification, I said you were probably a crypto marxist not a neo marxist. I'm not even sure what a neo marxist is but for your information, a crypto marxist is a secret marxist. Someone what pretends to be something else.
I don't blame you for being a crypto marxist by the way, I just find it to be annoying. Some ideologies are persecuted... and those that believe in them learn to keep silent about it least they suffer persecution. And because they continue to believe in their ideologies they find other ways to express their views without outing themselves.
It is this last element that I find irritating because it leads such people into sophistry as they presume to advocate things they don't actually care about but which have a duel use in being applicable to their ideology.
One of the more amusing tells that tends to pop up in these discussions about gender for example are attacks on "meritocracy" which has nothing what so ever to do with gender or sexism. But which is quite applicable to marxism and especially crypto marxism or crypto communism.
But I'm getting ahead of myself... you've said I have you all wrong? Correct me. One must infer and deduct with sophists... so forgive me for leaping to conclusions. There is no alternative when you deal with these issues.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
People are turned away from their passions all the time.
I must have no idea what a passion is then. I defined it as knowing what I was going to do. Perhaps it is only thinking you might do something, but are easily swayed. Like what I would call mild interest.
I also have a passion for Ice hockey. I was never good enough to play in the NHL, and am way too old now. But neither could sway me away from playing.
In the end, science is no field for people who aren't focused. In reality, you could eliminate males in STEM altogether, and it wouldn't change the focus needed to even get started.
Passion isn't a binary thing with automatic success when it exists.
No argument there. All passions are at the mercy of many things.
You went through a lot to pursue yours, but if you'd been less certain if you'd get through it, or if it had been harder, perhaps you would have slacked off. I'm also saying not to jump to conclusions.
Some times I wonder if the concept of passion isn't being diluted. The people I worked with, both male and female, had passion (my definition) in droves. Especially given your mention of "harder" as a turnoff.
If you want to watch something amazing, take a scientist when they are taxed to their mental limit. Where you think it might be grounds for quitting - we're talking real headaches, and discarding what you once thought was true, a scientist often gets really excited. Same with being proven wrong. The normal world finds being proven wrong uncomfortable, even unacceptable, while the scientist is happy because they have something new to think about. It's simply not a world for the easily dissuaded. Not a world for people who have a deep seated need for acceptance.
And the focused passionate person, either male or female tends to do well. Some times it seems we're trying to change that. It won't work.
I've discussed the issue with some of the successful women I've worked with. One told me something that sticks with me to today. She told me "I wasn't terribly successful early on. Until I realized that I was trying to have everyone like me. And I realized that as a woman, I was feeling a deep seated need to be liked, while the men around me didn't really care if people liked them or not, they were focused on the job. After I worked hard to lose that desire to be liked in the workplace, I found myself liberated from myself. And more people actually liked me."
All of which is to say that just perhaps, there are things that men might need to adjust in their approach to work.
All of this is just to say that just perhaps there are things that women might need to adjust in their approach to work.
Especially if they wish to work in science, which doesn't care whether a person is likeable or not.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
You did that yourself. Why on earth are you taking things personally? Did you make a comment of "how woman are unsuitable for staying indoors and typing while men are"? Do you consider yourself a "MRA type"? I'll bet the answer to all of that is no, so please, instead of assuming that I'm accusing everyone of that at least pay some attention to a comment you reply to before attaching completely unrelated baggage.
My comment above is about how nearly every Friday for at least a couple of months this site has put up an article to bait the misogynistic types into posting a lot of rants, or to bait those of us that have noticed that the number of women in IT has been in a sharp decline for the last couple of decades. This latest one appears to be along those lines.
Some of the AC shit about how women have unsuitable brains etc has floated up to 3 or more.
Your post only proves the point he was trying to make. All this random hate and vitriol at nerds lately, and then people come in and slam them even more. I was always the outcast at school, always introverted. I came out of my shell after HS (away from people like you), and I have a very expansive social life, tons of friends, and even dated a model for a bit. Not a supermodel though. The point is that assholes like you were why I was the way I was in HS. It was the stereotypes cast upon me by an outside group making sweeping judgments about who I am based on what I like. Everything that gets posted is basically "Not all men, but srsly, all men". Its about as see through as when someone starts a sentence with "I'm not racist, but..."
Seriously, get bent.
Look up a female scientist or technologist on Wikipedia, and you might not find what you're looking for. Many don't have detailed pages or any page at all on the free online encyclopedia created by contributors, the vast majority of them men. It's a symptom of a larger problem for women in so-called STEM fields (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) where men far outnumber women. Now, Brown University biology professor Anne Fausto-Sterling and alumna Maia Weinstock hope to help chip away at the problem with a Wikipedia "edit-a-thon." They gathered dozens of students and some faculty members this week at Brown to train them on how to add and edit pages. They also provided lists of suggestions for women to add, entries to clean up, or those who needed more detail, along with links to source material. Among those listed was Ingeborg Hochmair, who does not have a page even though last month she won the prestigious Lasker Award for medical research for her work developing the modern cochlear implant. By contrast, her husband, Erwin Hochmair, an accomplished engineer who helped develop the device but did not win a Lasker prize, has his own page.
The labels are un-nerdlike because the folks in this camp are acting like racist, sexist little shits. Which, presumably, is un-nerdlike.
I understand why people are tired of SJW behavior. Most of the people who are tired of that behavior don't actually use the term "SJW". They haven't even heard of it. The majority of the camp that does use that term actually over-uses it to apply to anyone who points out sexism or racism in any capacity, even when the situation is undeniably egregious.
Side point: the fact that you have such a close sense of group identity with "geekdom" is beyond sad. I don't, and I probably have as much geek "cred" as anyone.
The term was pejorative from the outset, created by folks who disagree strongly with the SJW point of view. The fact the none of the three words is individually pejorative when taken out of context isn't relevant. Consider "bleeding heart liberal". "Bleeding" isn't per se pejorative. Neither is "heart". Neither is "liberal". But the phrase "bleeding heart liberal" is used almost exclusively in a pejorative way.
Nope: It only becomes pejorative when the actions of the people it is used to describe are in the majority condemnable - a point that repeatedly flies way over your narrowly focused head.
My initial exposure to the term was long ago and in the context of people like Ghandi & MLK & Mandela. All admirable SJWs.
It's when it's been used since to describe zealots like you who equate any resistance to your methods with being the worst kind of racist/sexist/...ist that it becomes pejorative.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
The term might have appeared occasionally in the past, but around mid-2013 it took on anew and wholly pejorative connotation. Especially when used in its acronym form. Here is the google trend for "Social Justice Warrior". The phrase is almost non-existent until April 2013. Here is the google trend for "SJW". It follows the same pattern, but isn't exactly zero prior to April 2013 due to the existence of a company named "SJW Corp." Now gamergate didn't show up until September 2014, so I can't entirely blame the uptick in "SJW" usage on gamergate. However, you'll notice the big spike in searches for "Social Justice Warrior" starts in August 2014, which is only one month before the big spike in searches for "gamergate".
For the record, I don't "equate any resistance to my methods with being the worst kind of racist/sexist". You don't know anything about me other than that I find the set of folks who frequently use the term "SJW" to be somewhat detestable. One needn't be a "SJW" himself for that to be the case.
The term used in exactly the current way goes back at least to 2009, with Will Shetterly's blog entitled "Social Justice Warriors: Do Not Engage". It's probably older than that; there are earlier tumblr references. Google Trends isn't everything.
It doesn't make any sense to complain the term is pejorative. Any term those of us who find Social Justice Warriors repugnant uses to describe them will be pejorative, just as "liberal" is to a conservative or vice-versa.
I'm not complaining about the fact that it's pejorative. I was responding in disagreement to another poster who claimed it is not pejorative. "Liberal" isn't per se pejorative because it is frequently used in a non-pejorative sense. Liberals call themselves "liberals", for instance. "SJW", on the other hand, is almost exclusively used by folks who mean to evoke a connotation of contempt and/or disapproval. Which is pretty much exactly the definition of "pejorative".
Since you're not telling me what your ideology is I have to assume I was actually correct and I spotted you instantly.
Really my entire argument is sustained on that point and since you're not correcting me... this is pretty much a slam dunk for me.
Is that where you want to leave it? Because it works for me.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Buddy also thinks that SJW is the same level of pejorative as douchebag so you may want to take that into account when reading anything he writes. Read his initial post. It is illuminating.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
The simple answer is, who cares? Why should we be trusting science to a bunch of arrogant people that cost too much, live to short, and have such an inefficient method of programming anyway? Science itself is something that should be automated, to create a world where everyone gets to know exactly how to do whatever they want to do, without all the whiny political bs about it? Wah, women can whine about being unemployed just as much as automated men increasingly are.
This is my sig.
Malthus's argument on the limits of population growth was not ideological, and it applied under the circumstances he knew about. Recognizing its validity under those circumstances is not indicative of any ideology.
I think I could live comfortably in a Marxist utopia, except that I would miss human beings. There's all sorts of wonderful forms of government that could be great for some intelligent species somewhere. I'm not any sort of Marxist.
For example, I pointed out that the answer to Malthus (which he could not have known about) is that with more advanced medical care, making sure women get education and a shot at economic activity, the fertility rate drops to approximately break-even (a bit less most places now). Exactly what this has to do with Marxist theories of social control, as you said such responses to Malthus were, is beyond the limits of my mind.
"When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
Malthus is only remembered and trotted out by certain ideologies.
As to the validity, he based it on the Irish potato famine. So no, it wasn't valid even in his own time because the only reason the Irish were starving was due to English oppression. Ireland could feed itself just fine. The English were EXPORTING food from Ireland and fucking with land management which created a famine.
Do you know why the Irish even like Potatoes? Because a fun thing the English used to do was ride their horses over the fields of rebelious Irish towns. Want to know something fun about potatoes? Well, if you do that to potatoes they aren't ruined. The potatoes are UNDER the ground. Which means the horses don't destroy the food when the English ride their horses over the crops.
The theory is shit. Yes... if people behave like fucking lemmings then X will happen after time Y. But people aren't lemmings so the theory is shit.
But you're dodging my question. What are you politics?
If you make another response without citing your politics... feel free to not adopt a label and just explain yourself if you like. I'm waiting for it.... if you don't, I have to assume you're being intentionally evasive and I have to guess as to why you're doing that. I will likely conclude that I was just right since I presumed your evasion as a quality of your nature. A crypto-anything is someone that wishes to keep their beliefs secret. If you a crypto communist/maxist then you're not going to want to tell me that... its the crypto bit.
And when you deal with cryptos, you have to do your best to suss out what the fuck they're really after because they won't tell you. They operate through inference and misdirection.
I don't want to argue against what you're PRETENDING to care about. I will look to try and figure out what your real interests are and then I will draw them out.
I don't want to persecute you. I couldn't do it if I wanted to anyway. So there is no risk in just admitting it here. I'm not fucking Joe McCarthy. I'm just not interested in arguing against your pretenses.
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Not true. I do, however, think most people who use it are douchebags. Hence my suggestions for acronyms to describe them.
No, it means I have to guess... and the fact that he's being evasive means at the very least he is a crypto... That is fact at this point.
The fact that he brought up malthus is highly suggestive that he is some brand of marxist or communist. And thus he is likely a crypto marxist.
I can't be 100 percent sure about the marxist bit... but it is highly likely. Certain ideologies give themselves away based on the types of words they use and the references they cite.
For example, radical libertarians will out themselves by using terms like "obscenity" which is not often used in modern language but was used CONSTANTLY by Ayn Rand... so if you hear "obscenity" over and over in someone's rants then that is suggestive.
There are markers for pretty much every ideology because the foremost writers in each have distinctive vocabularies certain references which are touchstones for each ideology.
So if I hear the same odd word pop up over over and over again that suggests I'm talking to someone from that group. Or if I hear a reference that is typically only cited by a given ideology that is also suggestive.
Think of old Sherlock Holmes. His ability to know a dozen random facts about your life just by looking at you.
That's all I'm doing.
As I said, the unwillingness to answer the question is 100 percent validation of the crypto portion of my judgement which I pegged him with before he was even obviously evasive. I guessed he was a crypto because I he was using marxist references and nearly all marxists are crypto marxists. So... here he is validated as a crypto... and that only strengthens my other assumptions.
This isn't a court of law. I don't have to prove anything because I've not the weight of the court behind me. I can guess and have any opinion I want. This is my current calculation and given that he's refusing to correct me... I frankly think I nailed him right out of the gate. Which is really kind of impressive.
I am getting good at this. :D
I've decided to stop wasting my time responding to AC trolls/sockpuppets... so if you want a response from me... login.
Funny how you move from ""SJW" is exclusively pejorative for the folks who use it". to only most people. I suppose there may be a slender ray of hope for you.
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
Not exactly. I still think the term is used exclusively pejoratively by active participants in the "man-o-sphere". However, I'm not willing to say 100% of them rise to the level of douchebag. The vast majority do.
No, really it was funny seeing you backtrack all over when really you just consider anyone who doubts your sincerity a douchebag. I mean, how dare they!
Democracy is a sheep and two wolves deciding what to have for lunch. Freedom is a well armed sheep contesting the issue
This is not accurate. There are plenty of people who disagree with me on various things and who may "doubt my sincerity" but whom I nevertheless don't consider douchebags.