Things are different everywhere of course. Where I am public school teachers don't get tenure - that's only for U profs. They do however have a very strong union. The pay seems just fine to me - start at something in the high 40's and 12-14 weeks off a year. NOt bad for a new graduate and pay increase are regular and pretty good. You'll be doing a lot better than that guy in chemistry you used to know at U who is now a poorly paid post-doc.
No teaching isn't easy - I taught at U for a few years and doing a good job really requires a lot of time and effort. And as a student I've had some very smart guys who couldn't teach worth crap... but on the whole I'd have to say that the better a guy was at his field then the better he was as a teacher. One of the best examples of this might be Richard Feynman - certainly attending a Feynman lecture was a delight - a brilliant guy who really knew how to teach!
A big part of the problem is that at U teaching is generally seen as a chore and not a valuable use of time so the U wants their research stars researching and not teaching - during one of my degrees I attended one of the better schools for CS and heard it bluntly put by faculty that winning the teacher of the year award was not a positive thing for career prospects (tenure).
There is some merit in that suggestion I think - two or three of the best teachers I had in school were "old", coming from outside "the system", and were doing it because they wanted to not because they had to. One had a Ph.D. in math.
Except what I need to use in my upcoming machine is a Cayman (or Antilles - cards coming soon) GPU and, while Cayman cards have been out for a while now, ATI apparently haven't provided support for Cayman in their open source Linux driver. And with the recent departures from the ATI Linux team it may be a while before that happens.
I've met some very bright and talented teachers but I have to say that on the whole teachers do not seem to be the cream of the crop, or even the whole milk... maybe non-fortified skim would be about right. The teachers here are very well paid. They don't seem to have much facility with logic and seem, well, woefully uneducated. It might help if they also had to complete an actual degree in something other than teaching.
I don't see teaching to tests as a problem... if the tests are well thought out.
I totally agree - what the frick gives anybody the right to send me solicitations that I then have to waste resources on to identify? This should apply to snail mail spam too. And it is certainly made worse by the spammer taking deliberate action to circumvent measures specifically designed to prevent or lessen the impact of spam on your time and resources - that should put it into the realm of criminal harassment.
Or just encourage boys to consider those roles... but the school system seems to have pretty much abandoned boys.
Still you would think anybody claiming to be interested in "sexual equality" would want programs supporting boys making non-traditional career decisions just as much as they'd want programs supporting girls who make non-traditional career decisions. Right?
ecause your comment makes it sound like "yeah the sun comes up in the East and women have been disadvantaged relative to men."
The sun comes up in the east BY DEFINITION, and yes they have.
Ok I said I wasn't going to bother FulcrumOfEvil anymore but I have to clear this one thing up... my comment at the top was mean to point out that what is only an opinion about women was being put forward as if it had the same level of credibility as something defined by the laws of physics which, intrinsically, it doesn't; but my point seems to have gotten lost. Oh well, I just wanted to be clear that obviously I wasn't questioning that the sun rises in the East (on our planet at least)... . Merry Christmas all.
Hmmm expressing an opinion on someone's attitude and then leaving a conversation with well wishes now get me modded a troll? Riiiight - way to go moderator and yayyyyy/.
"Your attitude is actually a fine example of the problem here - as it is quite typical of people in the computing field: obnoxious and narrow-minded. Socially unaware. Reactionary and hostile. Arrogant."
I tell him I'm not going to respond further to his abuse. Then he keep keeps posting trying to provoke a reply from me, someone who has said they don't want to talk to him, and then I get modded as a Troll for pointing out that he is trolling??? LOL riiight - good job moderator. Yaaayyy/.
"Your attitude is actually a fine example of the problem here - as it is quite typical of people in the computing field: obnoxious and narrow-minded. Socially unaware. Reactionary and hostile. Arrogant."
and I get modded as a Troll for refusing to continue responding to his abuse. LOL riiight - good job moderator.
The fact is, Prius drivers (apparently) have little to no respect for the others who share their environment.
This is off-topic and just venting but one of the most dishonest guys I was ever forced to deal with drove a Prius (not that the make is relevant). He was was so proud of the fact that he was saving the planet for his kids... yeah they'll grow up into a greener world where nobody can trust anybody else. What a dick.
I get why you're bothered by this but I have to say pedestrians are at least as much at fault in these situations. I can't count the number of times I've been backing out of a spot, i.e. already in motion, and a pedestrian in the lot will just come up and walk behind my moving vehicle expecting me to stop (which I do). Then there are the ones who don't realize you aren't backing out to leave but are just straightening up in the spot - so first they head to go around the front of the car then when they see you shift direction they go to move around the back... geez I mean what the hell is so important in Home Depot/WalMart/Safeway that they can't stop for two frickin seconds? When I'm walking in a lot I make a point of stopping and letting drivers complete their manoeuvre before I move on.
It's like the guys who stand with one foot (or both) off the curb waiting for the light to change and then start racing across when the cross traffic light goes red but before their light goes green... slow the frick down - there's nothing that important unless you're dying and getting to the hospital on foot! Consider me to have made similar complaints about drivers and cyclists.
I think there is a serious problem with the way children are not being trained to respect the damage a moving object will do - regardless of whether they have a legal right to be doing what they are doing they shouldn't feel like that invalidates the laws of physics.
Now having said that... I travel by cycle, foot and car. Whether I'm on foot or bike I see and experience lots of poor drivers doing all sorts of stupid and illegal things. And there are lots of stupid pedestrians doing stupid and illegal things - for example whether cycling or driving I get so tired of pedestrians walking against a sign making me lurch to a stop for them thereby missing my chance to make a turn or cross somewhere. But I find the most disrespectful of the law are cyclists. Riding on the sidewalk, riding without helmets, not stopping at stops signs, not signalling lane changes and turns, not having a headlight and reflectors on their bike etc. all violations of the law around here. As a pedestrian I have trouble with cars at intersections and while it's infuriating that's about it but I have to constantly be on the lookout for cyclists being bone heads. If the average driver was so cavalier the roads would be awash in blood.
As for cars and cycles - well I don't really care that I have the right of way - I stay out of the path of large and small moving objects because I'm the one who'll suffer the pain and "being right" won't help that at all.
I agree with everything you said except that 10+ is way too old - children should have learned to look and not to step in front of moving objects by the time they are 5 and if they haven't and are not mentally impaired then the parent(s) are doing a pretty crappy job. I find it amazing how many times I'll see a parent with a small child just step off the curb in the middle of the block and jaywalk their little kid across a busy street with little or no effort to check for moving cars. It really is mind boggling.
Let's see... I take significant time and effort to write a very long and thoughtful reply to you. All I get back is about 4 or 5 off the cuff sentences in reply that don't address what I've said. In response to my saying you believe what you believe just because someone told it to you, you actually confirm my hypothesis and yet seem to think you are refuting it in some way:
Because I read a damn book. It's hardly controversial, so if you want to argue about how women who couldn't even vote weren't marginalized, you have to present some evidence to support it.
You read a book? Try reading a few dozen. Try reading books that give different viewpoints. As to "hardly controversial" - so what's your point? If enough people parrot some something then it must be true??? Geez Black people would have been doomed if that were true because "everybody" just "knew" they weren't as good as whites - and better not question that cause folks knew it was true. How? Well they probably read a book that said so.
Or how about "A woman's place is in the home"??? Everybody just knew that was true - hardly controversial and it was easy to find a book that said so... so it must be true. Right?
BTW for the vast majority of human history men didn't get to vote either. Women essentially got the vote instants after men did. Oh and who gave it to them? Mmmm men it would seem... gee those oppressive men.
Care to dispute it [that women are as surely disadvantaged as the sun rises in the East] or are you just trolling?
Uhhh... what did you think my lengthy post was? It doesn't appear like you actually read it. And then:
See, this is what I mean by you looking for a fight - you can't discuss the issue at hand, but demand that I reexamine basic assumptions for your benefit. Meanwhile, I don't see you having done any work on the issue. You sound like a pissed off gender studies major.
Ahhh the inevitable ad hominem. And... I can't discuss the issue at hand???? My entire post was a discussion of the issue at hand. Do you really honestly not get that????? It is very hard to believe that anyone who actually read what I took the time to write could think that I was not addressing the issue at hand. You on the other hand simply ignore 99% of what I wrote and then claim I'm the one ignoring things. Wow. And, believe it or not, my request that you examine you basic assumptions was for your benefit not mine. Oh, and my trying to explain a different point of view to you is me "having done work on the issue."
Ok, well, you "read a damn book"... that would have given you all of one point of view so there's no need for you to ever think about your beliefs again. Obviously you aren't willing to put the same effort into discussion that I am, so sorry to have wasted both our time trying to communicate with you. And sorry to make you feel threatened by challenging your beliefs - you seem unwilling or unable to consider any viewpoint other than the one you are already comfortable with so I won't bother you with this again. Please have a Merry Christmas.
Nope, never seen a guy refuse to sell a car to a woman. Any salesman I've ever heard of would be fired for passing up a sale.
The historical marginalization of women isn't really up for debate
Why is that? I mean I could understand it if there had ever been any analysis of the the downside of being male throughout history. But there hasn't been. Strangely enough Feminism, which claims to be about equality, never ever looks at situations where men are disadvantaged. In fact have you ever heard a feminist talk about any situation and say that women were privileged/advantaged? Because I haven't. Now how likely is that attitude to be an accurate reflection of reality? So let me ask again - how do you know women were disadvantaged relative to men throughout history? Someone told you so right? Have you ever actually questioned that assertion?
I'm serious - have you? Because your comment makes it sound like "yeah the sun comes up in the East and women have been disadvantaged relative to men." First question would be - what's your metric to determine advantage/disadvantage? Relative happiness? Lifespan? Having society value your life over others, e.g. who gets the lifeboats? Income? Control of spending (which is very different than income)? Likelihood of your job killing you? Level of responsibility (as in who bears the responsibility for income, food, clothing, shelter etc.)?
- high status jobs were at one time off limits
What exactly does that mean? Did you know there were female judges at the beginning of the last century? Did you know that for thousands of years many countries have been ruled by Queens? It seems these high status jobs weren't off limits. So let me ask you the same kind of question I've been asking you - what does high status mean to you and why is status important? I don't now how old you are but if you are in the right age bracket - do you value raising your children? Which is more important in *your* value system - being there for your kids or having a high status job? In a very real sense "Women's jobs" were only low status if you don't value the things that women did. It's all about what you value. And if you only value the things that women didn't get to do then of course it looks like only women had a bad deal. It would be exactly the same if you only valued the things that men didn't get to do - then men would be the ones who obviously got a bad deal.
When you assert that women were the victims of history then you reduce an extremely complex situation into something so grossly oversimplified that it is meaningless. It is meaningless to say anything like "women are the victims because they didn't get XYZ" unless you also say "and men didn't get ABC" - maybe in the long run neither was advantaged or disadvantaged because they both had drawbacks to their roles. But if you only look at one side of things you can only get a truly distorted view of things. This is why I keep asking you to examine your assumptions and your knowledge. Does equality really require things to be exactly identical?
We don't bitch so much about men trying to be nurses because it's not as high a status job, and engineering tends to have better hours and pay.
I didn't ask about what we do now, I asked about historically - since you didn't answer let me tell you the answer: 50 years ago the response to a boy who said he wanted to learn to be a nurse, or nanny, or kindergarten teacher or typist would have been far worse than laughter, and it would have been doled out by men and women alike, and his physical well-being would probably have been at risk. If he had said he was gay he would likely have been killed - with both men and women approving of that. But the problem that you see is that you believe that at that same time a woman would have been laughed at if they wanted a high status job. Do you think it is possible that you are missing a big part of the picture?
I pointed out the problem with your example, as far as my responding to it. You ignored that.
I gave a detailed explanation of my concerns and you ignored that with a simple two sentence response that was devoid of thought and useful information and was merely insulting. The nice thing about/. is that it is there in the record no matter how much you want to say it was otherwise.
And giving an advantage to one group (your statement) and not to the other is unfair (your words again). And then you embark on some pontless comment about libertarianism - news flash concern with fairness is not limited to libertarians.
Then after admitting it is unfair you claim that giving one group an advantage doesn't disadvantage the other because it is not "a zero-sum game." But giving one group an advantage does disadvantage the other group because it is a zero-sum game when the question is getting into and staying in a university, or a particular university program, because the number of "seats" is less than the demand for the seats... helping one group get and keep the seats does disadvantage the other group.
And having already admitted it is unfair to boys at the start of your paragraph you then end your paragraph saying the boys aren't being punished or being held back. You contradict yourself within the very same paragraph.
I'm sorry but your response isn't logical or rational. There's no point in even bothering with your unproven assertion that females are historically disadvantaged - the justification for all the unfairness you approve of - when you can't even get through a short paragraph without contradicting yourself and misusing the term zero-sum to boot. Feel free to misrepresent things again but I'm done with you.
Why is it that questioning the party line is seen as looking for a fight rather than seeking the truth? What I'm suggesting is looking for the verifiable facts. Your very first sentence makes all sorts of assertions - how do you know these things? Who told you and why do you believe them? Were men laughed at if they tried to step out of their assigned gender roles? What do you think the reaction was 50 years ago to a boy who said he wanted to learn to be a nurse, or nanny, or kindergarten teacher or typist? Probably a bit worse than "laughter" don't you think? Or a guy who said he didn't want to go fight in a war because he was scared of dying. Do you know what the WW I "White Feather" campaign was? Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_feather. Ahhh but it is women who have been historically oppressed... you know that, right?
There is so much propaganda floating around promoting the idea of "women are victims" it is easy to see how you would think these things but maybe you should question your assumptions a bit. I don't see how suggesting that or asking the questions I raised in response to your posts is "looking for a fight". If asking you to question your beliefs a bit is "looking for a fight" then, with the greatest of respect, let me suggest that you should first wonder why you feel threatened if your beliefs are questioned.
You have avoided trying to address the very basic questions I asked. Do you find them unreasonable? If so why? Because they seem quite pertinent to me. Really, don't you think it is a good idea to see if there is a fire before you start trying to put it out? You "just want a solution"... don't you think you should make sure you know what (all the related) problems are first?
I wonder how much effort you have put into looking at just what life was like for the average common man historically? In comparison to women? Have you ever investigated how men might have been discriminated against? Or do you just assume that women are victims and men are the victimizers; life was good for men and bad for women, just as simple as that and case closed?
I expect you will not take this seriously and perhaps it makes you uncomfortable (well that would be a start at least)... that's too bad. Ah well, have a nice Christmas.
Sorry I'm not going to play your game. You deliberately misconstrue what is said and then rail against it, are deliberately (at best) obtuse, apparently unable to logically address what is said to you, you appear unaware of the idea of "context" in a discussion and head off on wild tangents. You are either highly irrational or are deliberately dishonest. I'm going to assume the latter given your long list of insults against "typical" people in computing. I won't waste my time on the likes of you. Have a life.
Remembering both that a) men and women are different and b) not to confuse correlation with causation, why would you think there are any systemic roadblocks to women in education?
Slashdot Mirror
You might draw that conclusion, I suppose, if you think there are only two possibilities.
Things are different everywhere of course. Where I am public school teachers don't get tenure - that's only for U profs. They do however have a very strong union. The pay seems just fine to me - start at something in the high 40's and 12-14 weeks off a year. NOt bad for a new graduate and pay increase are regular and pretty good. You'll be doing a lot better than that guy in chemistry you used to know at U who is now a poorly paid post-doc.
No teaching isn't easy - I taught at U for a few years and doing a good job really requires a lot of time and effort. And as a student I've had some very smart guys who couldn't teach worth crap... but on the whole I'd have to say that the better a guy was at his field then the better he was as a teacher. One of the best examples of this might be Richard Feynman - certainly attending a Feynman lecture was a delight - a brilliant guy who really knew how to teach!
A big part of the problem is that at U teaching is generally seen as a chore and not a valuable use of time so the U wants their research stars researching and not teaching - during one of my degrees I attended one of the better schools for CS and heard it bluntly put by faculty that winning the teacher of the year award was not a positive thing for career prospects (tenure).
There is some merit in that suggestion I think - two or three of the best teachers I had in school were "old", coming from outside "the system", and were doing it because they wanted to not because they had to. One had a Ph.D. in math.
Except what I need to use in my upcoming machine is a Cayman (or Antilles - cards coming soon) GPU and, while Cayman cards have been out for a while now, ATI apparently haven't provided support for Cayman in their open source Linux driver. And with the recent departures from the ATI Linux team it may be a while before that happens.
I've met some very bright and talented teachers but I have to say that on the whole teachers do not seem to be the cream of the crop, or even the whole milk... maybe non-fortified skim would be about right. The teachers here are very well paid. They don't seem to have much facility with logic and seem, well, woefully uneducated. It might help if they also had to complete an actual degree in something other than teaching.
I don't see teaching to tests as a problem... if the tests are well thought out.
I totally agree - what the frick gives anybody the right to send me solicitations that I then have to waste resources on to identify? This should apply to snail mail spam too. And it is certainly made worse by the spammer taking deliberate action to circumvent measures specifically designed to prevent or lessen the impact of spam on your time and resources - that should put it into the realm of criminal harassment.
If the Supercomputer race wanted to race wouldn't they need to grow legs more than arms?
Or just encourage boys to consider those roles... but the school system seems to have pretty much abandoned boys.
Still you would think anybody claiming to be interested in "sexual equality" would want programs supporting boys making non-traditional career decisions just as much as they'd want programs supporting girls who make non-traditional career decisions. Right?
Ok I said I wasn't going to bother FulcrumOfEvil anymore but I have to clear this one thing up... my comment at the top was mean to point out that what is only an opinion about women was being put forward as if it had the same level of credibility as something defined by the laws of physics which, intrinsically, it doesn't; but my point seems to have gotten lost. Oh well, I just wanted to be clear that obviously I wasn't questioning that the sun rises in the East (on our planet at least)... . Merry Christmas all.
Hmmm expressing an opinion on someone's attitude and then leaving a conversation with well wishes now get me modded a troll? Riiiight - way to go moderator and yayyyyy /.
LOL, Dangitman says stuff like:
/.
"Your attitude is actually a fine example of the problem here - as it is quite typical of people in the computing field: obnoxious and narrow-minded. Socially unaware. Reactionary and hostile. Arrogant."
I tell him I'm not going to respond further to his abuse. Then he keep keeps posting trying to provoke a reply from me, someone who has said they don't want to talk to him, and then I get modded as a Troll for pointing out that he is trolling??? LOL riiight - good job moderator. Yaaayyy
LOL, Dangitman says stuff like:
"Your attitude is actually a fine example of the problem here - as it is quite typical of people in the computing field: obnoxious and narrow-minded. Socially unaware. Reactionary and hostile. Arrogant."
and I get modded as a Troll for refusing to continue responding to his abuse. LOL riiight - good job moderator.
Ummm the tail lights, horn and turn signals on your car are there for your benefit too you know. Makes other people less likely to hit you.
This is off-topic and just venting but one of the most dishonest guys I was ever forced to deal with drove a Prius (not that the make is relevant). He was was so proud of the fact that he was saving the planet for his kids... yeah they'll grow up into a greener world where nobody can trust anybody else. What a dick.
I get why you're bothered by this but I have to say pedestrians are at least as much at fault in these situations. I can't count the number of times I've been backing out of a spot, i.e. already in motion, and a pedestrian in the lot will just come up and walk behind my moving vehicle expecting me to stop (which I do). Then there are the ones who don't realize you aren't backing out to leave but are just straightening up in the spot - so first they head to go around the front of the car then when they see you shift direction they go to move around the back... geez I mean what the hell is so important in Home Depot/WalMart/Safeway that they can't stop for two frickin seconds? When I'm walking in a lot I make a point of stopping and letting drivers complete their manoeuvre before I move on.
It's like the guys who stand with one foot (or both) off the curb waiting for the light to change and then start racing across when the cross traffic light goes red but before their light goes green... slow the frick down - there's nothing that important unless you're dying and getting to the hospital on foot! Consider me to have made similar complaints about drivers and cyclists.
I think there is a serious problem with the way children are not being trained to respect the damage a moving object will do - regardless of whether they have a legal right to be doing what they are doing they shouldn't feel like that invalidates the laws of physics.
Now having said that... I travel by cycle, foot and car. Whether I'm on foot or bike I see and experience lots of poor drivers doing all sorts of stupid and illegal things. And there are lots of stupid pedestrians doing stupid and illegal things - for example whether cycling or driving I get so tired of pedestrians walking against a sign making me lurch to a stop for them thereby missing my chance to make a turn or cross somewhere. But I find the most disrespectful of the law are cyclists. Riding on the sidewalk, riding without helmets, not stopping at stops signs, not signalling lane changes and turns, not having a headlight and reflectors on their bike etc. all violations of the law around here. As a pedestrian I have trouble with cars at intersections and while it's infuriating that's about it but I have to constantly be on the lookout for cyclists being bone heads. If the average driver was so cavalier the roads would be awash in blood.
As for cars and cycles - well I don't really care that I have the right of way - I stay out of the path of large and small moving objects because I'm the one who'll suffer the pain and "being right" won't help that at all.
I agree with everything you said except that 10+ is way too old - children should have learned to look and not to step in front of moving objects by the time they are 5 and if they haven't and are not mentally impaired then the parent(s) are doing a pretty crappy job. I find it amazing how many times I'll see a parent with a small child just step off the curb in the middle of the block and jaywalk their little kid across a busy street with little or no effort to check for moving cars. It really is mind boggling.
Let's see... I take significant time and effort to write a very long and thoughtful reply to you. All I get back is about 4 or 5 off the cuff sentences in reply that don't address what I've said. In response to my saying you believe what you believe just because someone told it to you, you actually confirm my hypothesis and yet seem to think you are refuting it in some way:
You read a book? Try reading a few dozen. Try reading books that give different viewpoints. As to "hardly controversial" - so what's your point? If enough people parrot some something then it must be true??? Geez Black people would have been doomed if that were true because "everybody" just "knew" they weren't as good as whites - and better not question that cause folks knew it was true. How? Well they probably read a book that said so.
Or how about "A woman's place is in the home"??? Everybody just knew that was true - hardly controversial and it was easy to find a book that said so... so it must be true. Right?
BTW for the vast majority of human history men didn't get to vote either. Women essentially got the vote instants after men did. Oh and who gave it to them? Mmmm men it would seem... gee those oppressive men.
Uhhh... what did you think my lengthy post was? It doesn't appear like you actually read it. And then:
Ahhh the inevitable ad hominem. And... I can't discuss the issue at hand???? My entire post was a discussion of the issue at hand. Do you really honestly not get that????? It is very hard to believe that anyone who actually read what I took the time to write could think that I was not addressing the issue at hand. You on the other hand simply ignore 99% of what I wrote and then claim I'm the one ignoring things. Wow. And, believe it or not, my request that you examine you basic assumptions was for your benefit not mine. Oh, and my trying to explain a different point of view to you is me "having done work on the issue."
Ok, well, you "read a damn book" ... that would have given you all of one point of view so there's no need for you to ever think about your beliefs again. Obviously you aren't willing to put the same effort into discussion that I am, so sorry to have wasted both our time trying to communicate with you. And sorry to make you feel threatened by challenging your beliefs - you seem unwilling or unable to consider any viewpoint other than the one you are already comfortable with so I won't bother you with this again. Please have a Merry Christmas.
Why is that? I mean I could understand it if there had ever been any analysis of the the downside of being male throughout history. But there hasn't been. Strangely enough Feminism, which claims to be about equality, never ever looks at situations where men are disadvantaged. In fact have you ever heard a feminist talk about any situation and say that women were privileged/advantaged? Because I haven't. Now how likely is that attitude to be an accurate reflection of reality? So let me ask again - how do you know women were disadvantaged relative to men throughout history? Someone told you so right? Have you ever actually questioned that assertion?
I'm serious - have you? Because your comment makes it sound like "yeah the sun comes up in the East and women have been disadvantaged relative to men." First question would be - what's your metric to determine advantage/disadvantage? Relative happiness? Lifespan? Having society value your life over others, e.g. who gets the lifeboats? Income? Control of spending (which is very different than income)? Likelihood of your job killing you? Level of responsibility (as in who bears the responsibility for income, food, clothing, shelter etc.)?
What exactly does that mean? Did you know there were female judges at the beginning of the last century? Did you know that for thousands of years many countries have been ruled by Queens? It seems these high status jobs weren't off limits. So let me ask you the same kind of question I've been asking you - what does high status mean to you and why is status important? I don't now how old you are but if you are in the right age bracket - do you value raising your children? Which is more important in *your* value system - being there for your kids or having a high status job? In a very real sense "Women's jobs" were only low status if you don't value the things that women did. It's all about what you value. And if you only value the things that women didn't get to do then of course it looks like only women had a bad deal. It would be exactly the same if you only valued the things that men didn't get to do - then men would be the ones who obviously got a bad deal.
When you assert that women were the victims of history then you reduce an extremely complex situation into something so grossly oversimplified that it is meaningless. It is meaningless to say anything like "women are the victims because they didn't get XYZ" unless you also say "and men didn't get ABC" - maybe in the long run neither was advantaged or disadvantaged because they both had drawbacks to their roles. But if you only look at one side of things you can only get a truly distorted view of things. This is why I keep asking you to examine your assumptions and your knowledge. Does equality really require things to be exactly identical?
I didn't ask about what we do now, I asked about historically - since you didn't answer let me tell you the answer: 50 years ago the response to a boy who said he wanted to learn to be a nurse, or nanny, or kindergarten teacher or typist would have been far worse than laughter, and it would have been doled out by men and women alike, and his physical well-being would probably have been at risk. If he had said he was gay he would likely have been killed - with both men and women approving of that. But the problem that you see is that you believe that at that same time a woman would have been laughed at if they wanted a high status job. Do you think it is possible that you are missing a big part of the picture?
I pointed out the problem with your example, as far as my responding to it. You ignored that.
I gave a detailed explanation of my concerns and you ignored that with a simple two sentence response that was devoid of thought and useful information and was merely insulting. The nice thing about /. is that it is there in the record no matter how much you want to say it was otherwise.
And giving an advantage to one group (your statement) and not to the other is unfair (your words again). And then you embark on some pontless comment about libertarianism - news flash concern with fairness is not limited to libertarians.
Then after admitting it is unfair you claim that giving one group an advantage doesn't disadvantage the other because it is not "a zero-sum game." But giving one group an advantage does disadvantage the other group because it is a zero-sum game when the question is getting into and staying in a university, or a particular university program, because the number of "seats" is less than the demand for the seats... helping one group get and keep the seats does disadvantage the other group.
And having already admitted it is unfair to boys at the start of your paragraph you then end your paragraph saying the boys aren't being punished or being held back. You contradict yourself within the very same paragraph.
I'm sorry but your response isn't logical or rational. There's no point in even bothering with your unproven assertion that females are historically disadvantaged - the justification for all the unfairness you approve of - when you can't even get through a short paragraph without contradicting yourself and misusing the term zero-sum to boot. Feel free to misrepresent things again but I'm done with you.
You == troll.
Why is it that questioning the party line is seen as looking for a fight rather than seeking the truth? What I'm suggesting is looking for the verifiable facts. Your very first sentence makes all sorts of assertions - how do you know these things? Who told you and why do you believe them? Were men laughed at if they tried to step out of their assigned gender roles? What do you think the reaction was 50 years ago to a boy who said he wanted to learn to be a nurse, or nanny, or kindergarten teacher or typist? Probably a bit worse than "laughter" don't you think? Or a guy who said he didn't want to go fight in a war because he was scared of dying. Do you know what the WW I "White Feather" campaign was? Try http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/White_feather. Ahhh but it is women who have been historically oppressed... you know that, right?
There is so much propaganda floating around promoting the idea of "women are victims" it is easy to see how you would think these things but maybe you should question your assumptions a bit. I don't see how suggesting that or asking the questions I raised in response to your posts is "looking for a fight". If asking you to question your beliefs a bit is "looking for a fight" then, with the greatest of respect, let me suggest that you should first wonder why you feel threatened if your beliefs are questioned.
You have avoided trying to address the very basic questions I asked. Do you find them unreasonable? If so why? Because they seem quite pertinent to me. Really, don't you think it is a good idea to see if there is a fire before you start trying to put it out? You "just want a solution"... don't you think you should make sure you know what (all the related) problems are first?
I wonder how much effort you have put into looking at just what life was like for the average common man historically? In comparison to women? Have you ever investigated how men might have been discriminated against? Or do you just assume that women are victims and men are the victimizers; life was good for men and bad for women, just as simple as that and case closed?
I expect you will not take this seriously and perhaps it makes you uncomfortable (well that would be a start at least)... that's too bad. Ah well, have a nice Christmas.
Sorry I'm not going to play your game. You deliberately misconstrue what is said and then rail against it, are deliberately (at best) obtuse, apparently unable to logically address what is said to you, you appear unaware of the idea of "context" in a discussion and head off on wild tangents. You are either highly irrational or are deliberately dishonest. I'm going to assume the latter given your long list of insults against "typical" people in computing. I won't waste my time on the likes of you. Have a life.
Remembering both that a) men and women are different and b) not to confuse correlation with causation, why would you think there are any systemic roadblocks to women in education?