Hard Light Productions Forums
Off-Topic Discussion => General Discussion => Topic started by: Dragon on February 03, 2016, 10:30:13 am
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IMO, political correctness is essentially sweeping the underlying problems under the rug. Racism, for example, isn't gone when people don't use racial slurs. It's gone when they use them in jokes and they're understood as being just a joke.
Oh, I get it! Just like sexism is no longer a problem because we joke about women drivers all the time! (You are very wrong)
Until it's actually become nothing but a joke, you can't really say the serious version is dealt with.
One of the highest grossing comedies in german cinema last year, with over 2.4 million viewers (which is about the same as the first Avengers movie, to put it in perspective) was "Er ist wieder da", a film in which Adolf Hitler suddenly appears in modern-day Germany.
The fact that jokes about Nazis have become mainstream should tell you something.
Actually, both examples quoted support my position. Yes, I feel that the civilized world has largely (though not entirely) gotten over sexist attitudes. And yes, most people don't actually seem have a problem with women driving, at least around here. Overt sexism is pretty much a joke, but it's still an area where some things are not allowed to be said. The US is a bit behind, and there are still things you're not allowed to say, but feminists have largely won their fight. Notice that most of the time we hear of feminists, they're fighting for privileges or preferential treatment for women.
Of course, there's a chance that I might have a wrong impression. Sexism is something Poland (and the rest of the former Soviet block) is actually better about than the rest of Europe, thanks to the Commies, no less. For everything that they did, the egalitarianism of the Communist ideology did extend to women and it was one of the few things in it that did largely work out.
Now, maybe I did get a poor impression from what German censorship affects media (especially video games), but it seems to me that swastikas, explicit mentions of Hitler and such are still censored heavily. It's not "anything Nazi-related", I did exaggerate a bit. Perhaps it's just video games, but note that comedic stuff is generally easier to get past censorship of all kinds (being explicitly a joke, not to mention parody and satire enjoys a degree of protection) than serious depictions. That said, if the Nazis are an acceptable subject of jokes now, it might be an indicator that the government is simply keeping useless censorship laws around and the German public wouldn't have any problems with having Nazis in video games.
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Notice that most of the time we hear of feminists, they're fighting for privileges or preferential treatment for women.
If that's all you ever hear about feminists, you need to stop going to men's rights websites so often. In the real world that's not what's going on the vast majority of the time.
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what if that's all you hear FROM feminists and you can't even name a men's rights website?
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Then stop hanging out with militant feminists. The majority of feminists are not after special privileges or preferential treatment for women. They might not spend as much time as they should arguing for men's issues but anyone claiming that the equality battles have all been won is deluding themselves.
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I really wish I could get away from a few of them /*looks at people in my life not on this forum*/
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Tell them to go make you a sammich.
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that would... probably end poorly.
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If you film it, it would go viral though.
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if I survived to upload it.
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what if that's all you hear FROM feminists and you can't even name a men's rights website?
Mabye ask why they are saying that?
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Because they have explained why at great length whether I wanted to hear it or not repeatedly. and it's more than just one person, though there is one person in particular I'm addressing here.
Their position seems to be that oppression in the past not only justifies but mandates a equal and opposite oppression at a later point of different individuals. Though that's not how they would word it.
and all the typical SJW bs you and I argue about except involving phone calls in the middle of the night.
Oh, and getting spammed with gore, which is honestly sorta boring, but it's the thought that counts.
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Which is why, as MP-Ryan already mentioned, we need to handle this at a federal level.
Couldn't agree more. For now, however, EU did not only fail to propose a complex solution for the entire Union, they also criticize national governments trying to handle the crisis on their own - like Denmark or Hungary. There are some plans in motion to reinforce Frontex, but they doesn't seem to do the job. For now it's mostly a "if I ignore them, maybe they will go away" policy.
I am not sure how it is over at you, but refugees that are placed in dutch detention camps do not recieve benefits. To recieve social benefits you have to be a dutch citizen, and the refugees that are placed are not: They are waiting for the completion of the process that will indicate if they get a shot at becoming a dutch citizen or not. That this is a process that can take years is a problem. A similar and related problem is the process that refugees in The Netherlands have to go once their refugee status has been denied, which takes so long that people have been driven to suicide over it.
It highly depends on policies of particular EU member states, but e.g. Germany and Sweden provided a wide range of social benefits to refugees. I tried to deepen the subject and found this article which summarizes it quite well:
http://www.euractiv.com/sections/social-europe-jobs/aid-refugees-how-do-european-countries-compare-317293
GERMANY:
Basic needs – housing, food, clothes and health care – are covered by initial welcome centres.
Asylum seekers receive €143 per month per adult for personal needs. Syrians benefit from extra protection.
SWEDEN:
Asylum seekers can request a daily allowance while waiting for their request to be processed. This is worth between €60 to €225 a month per adult depending on their personal situation, such as whether they are single or part of a larger family. Minors receive between €36 and €159 a month.
Asylum seekers are housed either in a reception centre or find lodging themselves, in which case they receive a monthly allowance of €37 for someone who is single, and up to €89 for a family.
What is more, police and authorities are given instructions to tolerate visitors' assaults on women and other violations of law. If you send them a signal "we won't punish you", then how could you expect them to change?
Where did this happen?
After Cologne New Year attacks, for example. The case went out after a few days, when media revealed it.
Notice that most of the time we hear of feminists, they're fighting for privileges or preferential treatment for women.
This is so-called third wave of feminism. While first-wave feminism was aimed to fight for women's political and economical rights (fighting REAL discrimination), second was trying to draw public attention for domestic violence and women's place in a family, third-wave seems to be a promotion of some irrational social constructs and an attempt to guarantee benefits to women from the simple fact they are women. Ironically, third-wave feminism is sexist - how else could we name gender parities and quotas, the idea we have to put some percentage of women on the list regardless of their qualifications? Generally it's an attempt to equalize things that are not equal by nature.
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Then stop hanging out with militant feminists. The majority of feminists are not after special privileges or preferential treatment for women. They might not spend as much time as they should arguing for men's issues but anyone claiming that the equality battles have all been won is deluding themselves.
Every social cause is made up of a vast, silent, moderate majority and a tiny, loud, extremist minority. Because the latter is the one that gets all the attention, the former ends up throwing their weight behind them. It's the reason you get common-sense objectives like equal pay, scientifically- and morally-questionable ones like women in the military, and outright contradictory ones like increased sexual openness but an end to sexual humor, under the same banner.
Obviously not every feminist reads the SCUM Manifesto, but it's hard to deny that the movement as a political entity isn't sick and ailing.
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It's not really been a political entity for a very long time.
Notice that most of the time we hear of feminists, they're fighting for privileges or preferential treatment for women.
This is so-called third wave of feminism. While first-wave feminism was aimed to fight for women's political and economical rights (fighting REAL discrimination), second was trying to draw public attention for domestic violence and women's place in a family, third-wave seems to be a promotion of some irrational social constructs and an attempt to guarantee benefits to women from the simple fact they are women. Ironically, third-wave feminism is sexist - how else could we name gender parities and quotas, the idea we have to put some percentage of women on the list regardless of their qualifications? Generally it's an attempt to equalize things that are not equal by nature.
Nope. I think you completely misunderstand what third wave is about.
The problem is that third wave has no really defined goals beyond an end to sexism. It's third wave because these are the people who grew up once all the obvious major cases of inequality in the West had been dealt with. So it's a very different from second wave which actually had defined goals. Beyond that it's impossible to define what it is. It's like if you ignore the religion itself in defining what is a Muslim or a Christian. You end up with extremists who make it the basis of their entire existence and are ready to lynch anyone who shows the slightest indication of different thinking. Then you end up with moderates who don't care about other people except when it infringes upon them. Then you end up with groups who consider certain things very important while ignoring other issues.
At this point anyone who talks about feminism as if it's a single entity is wrong. What you have is several movements with differing (and sometimes completely contradictory) goals all lumped under the same heading. Little wonder that most people find feminists to be confused, they seldom notice that it's not the same people who are arguing for different things. Funnily enough it's not actually 3rd wave feminism that is sexist so much as grouping every single feminist under one banner regardless of what they are actually protesting for or against just cause they are women.
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all big problems solved.
searching desperately for a cause to go to war over.
I think you summed that up pretty well.
but you also have people fighting for the same goal and explicitly rejecting the banner because they don't want to be associated with the other people who have sized the banner and take every opportunity to wave it in as many faces as possible.
Sort of like the Atheist/Agnostic schism where you have people that completely agree with everything Atheists believe except they think the Atheists are assholes so they call themselves Agnostics, act like they disagree about something, and the two hold each other in mutual distain.
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It's not really been a political entity for a very long time.
Say that to all the women who support Hillary purely because she's a woman and it's current year and it's time to have a president that isn't an old white man.
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There were loads of people who supported Bush purely because they thought he was someone you could have a drink with. Are they BeerDrinkerists?
People pick candidates for all kinds of stupid reasons. I say feminism isn't a political movement because you can't see people holding rallies saying that you should vote for her because she is a woman. Most feminists in fact would actually be horrified by the idea that Hilary being a woman would be more important than her politics.
all big problems solved.
searching desperately for a cause to go to war over.
Hmmmm. All the obvious major cases of inequality in the West had been dealt with. When I edited that sentence earlier I accidentally removed an important word. There are still major issues that affect women (and men for that issue) but there is nothing you can rally around now. You often see them try to do it with pay equality or the glass ceiling but that always runs into a brick wall when you realise that female bosses do it too and that it's due to cultural issues and not something you can legislate against. Now there's nothing you can pass a law against. The easy battles have by and large been won.
That doesn't mean that all the big problems are solved. What it means is that there is no easy consensus on how to solve the remaining problems. 1st wave was really easy. Women couldn't vote. It was easy to see how to solve that problem. As time has gone on, the problems have gotten harder. And that's why feminists will often go about it in completely the wrong way, actually damaging their cause. Sure, sexual objectification of women is an issue. But harassing a scientist over his shirt is not the way to solve that.
What feminists these days need to realise is that we're at the point where feminists issues are rapidly reaching parity with the issues that affect males. And that sexism against males reinforces the exact same stereotypes about women that they want to defeat. It isn't doing women's rights any good at all to act like women are the only victims when instead both sexes should be fighting inequality together.
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Their position seems to be that oppression in the past not only justifies but mandates a equal and opposite oppression at a later point of different individuals. Though that's not how they would word it.
Well, how do they word it? This is not the first time I have seen these kinds of arguments levied against feminism as a whole and they turned out to be strawmen (strawwomen?). Because honestly, when we get to the point that men are opressed, you'd know it. (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4UWxlVvT1A)
This is so-called third wave of feminism. While first-wave feminism was aimed to fight for women's political and economical rights (fighting REAL discrimination), second was trying to draw public attention for domestic violence and women's place in a family, third-wave seems to be a promotion of some irrational social constructs and an attempt to guarantee benefits to women from the simple fact they are women. Ironically, third-wave feminism is sexist - how else could we name gender parities and quotas, the idea we have to put some percentage of women on the list regardless of their qualifications? Generally it's an attempt to equalize things that are not equal by nature.
How did you come to the conclusion that the gender distribution of whatever process you currently have in mind is natural?
What feminists these days need to realise is that we're at the point where feminists issues are rapidly reaching parity with the issues that affect males. And that sexism against males reinforces the exact same stereotypes about women that they want to defeat. It isn't doing women's rights any good at all to act like women are the only victims when instead both sexes should be fighting inequality together.
This is a thing already: It's commonly referred to as "Toxic masculinity".
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I know it's a thing. But it's a thing most feminists spend less time worrying about than the extinction of the lesser wattled umbrella bird. Let me put it this way. I've seen more articles from feminists complaining that pink razors cost more than blue razors (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/shopping-and-consumer-news/12115310/If-women-are-stupid-enough-to-pay-extra-for-pink-razors-they-deserve-to-be-fleeced.html) than I've seen complaining about men being treated unfairly in divorce courts. Which one do you think really hurts women more?
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The latter, obviously (Yes I know it's rhetorical).
Mabye it's because I spend my time more with the academics though, 'cause I am not relating to any of this.
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Well, how do they word it? This is not the first time I have seen these kinds of arguments levied against feminism as a whole and they turned out to be strawmen (strawwomen?).
differently, any wording of it I would do would be inaccurate, I give my perception of their position rather than trying to present their position because I know I will not do so accurately.
Which is kinda the opposite of strawmanning BTW. I hear people use the term strawman a lot when they have failed to convey their position and hear what made it across come back at them.
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I know it's a thing. But it's a thing most feminists spend less time worrying about than the extinction of the lesser wattled umbrella bird. Let me put it this way. I've seen more articles from feminists complaining that pink razors cost more than blue razors (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/shopping-and-consumer-news/12115310/If-women-are-stupid-enough-to-pay-extra-for-pink-razors-they-deserve-to-be-fleeced.html) than I've seen complaining about men being treated unfairly in divorce courts. Which one do you think really hurts women more?
Things like this are expressly why I don't identify as "feminist" in any sort of labeling exercise (moreover, I find labels irksome and group-think inducing, but that's a point for another day).
Many/most vocal feminists are very good at handwaving about equal concern over rights, but in practice I notice they spend far more time talking about how issue X affects women specifically than people as a whole (or even just marginalized people; issues are nearly-always discussed in gendered terms). On other issues, I note a disturbingly gendered-slant to the approach toward an issue depending on the role of a male involved versus a female. And yes, I have some very good examples, though I'm not going to single out any of the individual women making them. Instead, I'll just mention a particular issue:
Criminal justice is a minefield at the best of times, but I've noted a disturbing trend away from due process rights when the trial involves a female accuser and a male accused. Sexual assault trials are the most common example, but there was a recent criminal case involving criminal harassment charges here in Canada where this also stuck out. When the accuser is female and the accused is male, we are asked to believe her and render judgment before a trial returns with a guilty finding. No such bias exists when we are dealing with two female accused. The same occurs with transgendered persons. We have finally moved away from criminal justice institutions where the testimony of the male is automatically believed over the testimony of a female, to one in which we see active calls for an erosion of due process rights of the accused based on their gender. That scares the crap out of me. Many of the vocal feminists I follow online or interact with - who, let it be said, are great people and I believe do great work, which is why I follow and interact with them - have blinders on on this issue, where its no longer just a rush to support victims, but also a rush to condemn the accused solely on the basis of their story. I'm happy to do the former, but not the latter. I was concerned, after the disastrous RollingStone-UVA mess, to see people STILL rallying around cries of "I believe Jackie!" to condemn both the university and the fraternity despite the findings of multiple investigations, including a criminal one, that her allegations could not be substantiated and that many of the events detailed in the article were fabricated.
Sexual assault is another specific issue, especially outside the criminal context. For far too long, women have been discouraged from reporting sexual crimes, improperly questioned/interrogated by authorities when they do, and subjected to detailed examinations of irrelevant details of their private lives when a case does actually make it to court. Finally - FINALLY! - we are seeing something of a reversal (at least in the latter two), where authorities have developed more sensitive techniques for handling victims and shield laws on identity and history have been enacted to protect them in the court process, and along comes Title IX and civil disciplinary approaches. Suddenly we've arrived at a process where an accused is essentially found guilty on the basis of the complaint without any due process protections. Moreover, we've seen a shift to a seemingly ridiculous situation where it's a race - if you're both drunk, first person to make an assault complaint wins. Impairment automatically means consent cannot be obtained from the accuser, while impairment simultaneously is an aggravating factor on the accused.
I fully believe there are a great many social problems where women face significantly greater burdens and discrimination than men, and that those issues should be challenged. Feminists have a very large role in challenging those situations, but they also have a role in challenging others in which the gendered slant tilts against men, and there is far less evidence that that is occurring. Doesn't mean that I don't think feminism and feminists aren't valuable, quite the contrary - I just don't think the movement is quite as intersectional and inclusive as it claims to be.
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The problem is that third wave has no really defined goals beyond an end to sexism. It's third wave because these are the people who grew up once all the obvious major cases of inequality in the West had been dealt with. So it's a very different from second wave which actually had defined goals. Beyond that it's impossible to define what it is. It's like if you ignore the religion itself in defining what is a Muslim or a Christian. You end up with extremists who make it the basis of their entire existence and are ready to lynch anyone who shows the slightest indication of different thinking. Then you end up with moderates who don't care about other people except when it infringes upon them. Then you end up with groups who consider certain things very important while ignoring other issues.
At this point anyone who talks about feminism as if it's a single entity is wrong. What you have is several movements with differing (and sometimes completely contradictory) goals all lumped under the same heading. Little wonder that most people find feminists to be confused, they seldom notice that it's not the same people who are arguing for different things. Funnily enough it's not actually 3rd wave feminism that is sexist so much as grouping every single feminist under one banner regardless of what they are actually protesting for or against just cause they are women.
I don't see third-wave feminism to be as diverse as you describe it. There are several basic ideas commonly shared among modern feminists. They include opposing discrimination in any form, fighting so called gender pay gap, supporting gender parities and quotas, opposing traditional patriarchal model of family.
I do not group EVERY feminist under this banner. I'm sure there are exceptions, but same would go for first and second waves too, basically for any ideology. At least I've never met a feminist who would not support ideas above.
How did you come to the conclusion that the gender distribution of whatever process you currently have in mind is natural?
Because it was going that way throughout history, without social engineering of any kind.
Various "specialists" regularly publish articles with thesis like "There are only 20% women in [put any profession here, e.g. CEOs, soldiers, IT specialists, politicians], we must change it!". How would we want to change it? Gender gap here shows mostly that men statistically suits better for the job. For same reasons vast majority of nurses or teachers are women - it requires skills that statistically are more common among women than men. It does not prevent man from becoming a nurse of women from joining the military. It's absolutely ok as long as there are no legal barriers for one sex.
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or ignoring any of that issue of physical differences between
genders sexes, it seems women just simply don't want certain jobs.
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I fully believe there are a great many social problems where women face significantly greater burdens and discrimination than men, and that those issues should be challenged. Feminists have a very large role in challenging those situations, but they also have a role in challenging others in which the gendered slant tilts against men, and there is far less evidence that that is occurring. Doesn't mean that I don't think feminism and feminists aren't valuable, quite the contrary - I just don't think the movement is quite as intersectional and inclusive as it claims to be.
I fully agree with that. But I'll point out another issue related to the above.
Various "specialists" regularly publish articles with thesis like "There are only 20% women in [put any profession here, e.g. CEOs, soldiers, IT specialists, politicians], we must change it!".
If the 20% is due to actual discrimination against women then feminists obviously have a reason to get involved. If people aren't giving women jobs in IT cause of old boys networks or because they believe that women can't be good programmers that is an issue.
However feminists also want to get involved when they think the root cause is cultural rather than due to actual discrimination. Now I can understand that if they feel that women don't get into IT because they feel it's a man's job then they also need to challenge this issue. IT is not a job that can't be done by women so I fully support any feminist who wants to make it more culturally acceptable for women to become programmers. Macielos and Bobboau are trying to claim that the differences might be down to the biological differences between the sexes. They might be partially correct. But if the difference is social, then it does need to be explored and looked at. If women don't want to be coders because they think women can't do that job. Or because they think that it's a job for fat, sweaty neckbeards then yeah, that should be challenged until the only differences left are biological.
BUT
Where is the charge to make being a nurse more culturally acceptable for men? Never seen it, never heard it, never even heard OF it. And the cultural perception that only women and gay men want to become nurses is far more damaging to women than the stereotype about women not being coders.
My basic point is that feminism in general is very reluctant to challenge any issue related to men's rights even when women would be better off as a result. I hear a lot of lip service to the idea but it's very rare that I see any action about it.
supporting gender parities and quotas {snip}
At least I've never met a feminist who would not support ideas above.
I might have agreed with you until that bit. I don't think supporting quotas is anywhere near as big a thing as you believe. I suspect you're confusing the issue I mentioned above (trying to bring about cultural changes) with supporting quotas to enforce them.
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How did you come to the conclusion that the gender distribution of whatever process you currently have in mind is natural?
Because it was going that way throughout history, without social engineering of any kind.
Social engineering has been going on in human civilizations ever since they developed agriculture. To ignore that is to be ignorant of history.
But hey, let's give it a shot: Can you explain how the process described in this article is natural? (http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding)
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so has genocide. just because something has been going on for generations doesn't mean it should be considered acceptable.
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You don't beat an appeal to nature with an appeal against tradition. Both are logical fallacies. What matters is whether social engineering is a good idea or not.
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I didn't say I won, I just said his defence made no sense.
so, agreed.
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so has genocide. just because something has been going on for generations doesn't mean it should be considered acceptable.
Not my point: I am arguing that the gender inbalances we have now are just another result of social engineering being conducted, and not the result of some indescrible natural process. Hence the link (http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding): If one would make the argument that the current gender imbalances are a natural phenonom (like Macieclos is doing), they would have to explain why the female population suddenly lost the natural affinity with skills associated with computing in a space of 25 years.
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This is a thing already: It's commonly referred to as "Toxic masculinity".
It very much is insufficient. Even the name, toxic masculinity, implies that males are toxic. More broadly, the entire feminism movement is derived from the word female and was originally about female rights. It just cannot effectively address the other side of the issue. Nor should it really try to address male issues, because this idea that male issues should be addressed through a female movement is quite insulting and demeaning. Male issues need a Mens rights movement, meninism, or whatever you want to call it. Of course, Id be the first to say that current MRM seem to have no less crazies than third wave feminism in its ranks..
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This is a thing already: It's commonly referred to as "Toxic masculinity".
It very much is insufficient. Even the name, toxic masculinity, implies that males are toxic.
Only if you consider masculinity an inherent, unshakable and unredeemable trait to all males. Which it isn't: Masculinity (and the toxicity that derives from some of it's aspects) is a cultural phenonom.
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More broadly, the entire feminism movement is derived from the word female and was originally about female rights. It just cannot effectively address the other side of the issue. Nor should it really try to address male issues, because this idea that male issues should be addressed through a female movement is quite insulting and demeaning. Male issues need a Mens rights movement, meninism, or whatever you want to call it. Of course, Id be the first to say that current MRM seem to have no less crazies than third wave feminism in its ranks..
There's no reason a man can't be a feminist. In fact it's quite shockingly sexist of you to imagine otherwise. :p
Seriously though, I'd rather any sort of movement DID come from the feminist side of things. It would be much harder to for it to end up full of the kind of idiots who make up the men's right movement. And feminism was originally only about equal rights for the most part. If things have reached the point where something needs to be done about men's rights too, there is no reason anyone should be butt-hurt if the people who start it off are the people who have been studying gender politics for years.
I do agree with you about the name toxic masculinity though. If someone had used that term for anything women did you could bet that feminists would be up in arms about it. But it is worth remembering that it wasn't feminists who came up with the term.
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There's no reason a man can't be a feminist. In fact it's quite shockingly sexist of you to imagine otherwise. :p
Of course a man can be a feminist, but you just cannot expect such man to address male issues effectively through his feminism. That is, unless he is also a meninist, egalitarian, or something like that. And ideally, there should not be any inner conflict between his feminism and meninism. But gender wars being as polarising as they are, that balance is hard to achieve.
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If the 20% is due to actual discrimination against women then feminists obviously have a reason to get involved. If people aren't giving women jobs in IT cause of old boys networks or because they believe that women can't be good programmers that is an issue.
I'm a programmer myself. In my company there is one female programmer (and about 20 males). At the Faculty of Electronics where I study there are circa 5-10% of girls (and most of them study one course - biomedical engineering). A friend of mine (a girl) is attending course of electronics, although I see she has no talent for it at all and she keeps failing her exams - but it seems she is afraid of admitting she chose the wrong studies and seeking something else. On the other hand, the few women working in IT I know are handling programming and generally computers pretty well.
I think we in this discussion are paying far too much attention to statistics and too little to individual cases. When we say that only e.g. 10% of programmers are women, this may sound like a discrimination. But let's ask ourselves a question "why should it be 50%?"
A job interview for a software developer usually looks like that: interviewer asks candidates some questions on theory, gives a simple algorithmic problem to solve. It is often preceded by a programming task a candidate does online. I don't think there is much place for any meaningful discrimination here. You just see if candidate is suitable for the job when you examine him or her.
However feminists also want to get involved when they think the root cause is cultural rather than due to actual discrimination. Now I can understand that if they feel that women don't get into IT because they feel it's a man's job then they also need to challenge this issue. IT is not a job that can't be done by women so I fully support any feminist who wants to make it more culturally acceptable for women to become programmers.
Encouraging women to take traditionally male jobs - I'm ok with that. Hell, I'd be more than happy seeing more girls studying and working with me :P.
The problem is when we try to enforce it - e.g. introducing a regulation so that an employer HAS to employ woman to satisfy a quota. Or a political party HAS to put 50% of women on the lists to meet the parity although political reality is that there are more charismatic and qualified male candidates (or more female - it may go both ways).
Even worse is that there are attempts to loosen requirements for some jobs to make women meet them more easily. There was a case in Germany (it was last year, I think) when police deleted part of the physical test for candidates because it was mostly failed by women.
Macielos and Bobboau are trying to claim that the differences might be down to the biological differences between the sexes. They might be partially correct. But if the difference is social, then it does need to be explored and looked at. If women don't want to be coders because they think women can't do that job. Or because they think that it's a job for fat, sweaty neckbeards then yeah, that should be challenged until the only differences left are biological.
I do not neglect role of social and cultural factors, but these also have some origins and in each case we should determine if there is any point trying to change them. E.g. in many families father works long hours (and as a result usually gets paid more) while mother takes up a less time-consuming job like a teacher. It's because a mother prefers a job that would allow her to spend afternoons and holidays with children. Nobody enforced that model, it was just formed naturally as it was the most suitable both for kids and family's financial situation. But nothing prevents parents from both working part-time or full time or even exchanging their roles to make father a "house-husband".
BUT
Where is the charge to make being a nurse more culturally acceptable for men? Never seen it, never heard it, never even heard OF it. And the cultural perception that only women and gay men want to become nurses is far more damaging to women than the stereotype about women not being coders.
My basic point is that feminism in general is very reluctant to challenge any issue related to men's rights even when women would be better off as a result. I hear a lot of lip service to the idea but it's very rare that I see any action about it.
I don't think there is much pressure on opening traditionally female jobs for men. If a man is really determined to become a nurse, he'll be a nurse.
A good example of clear men discrimination is divorcing. In Poland when a couple with children is divorcing, in circa 90% cases courts give mother a right to keep the kids and charge father with alimony.
I might have agreed with you until that bit. I don't think supporting quotas is anywhere near as big a thing as you believe. I suspect you're confusing the issue I mentioned above (trying to bring about cultural changes) with supporting quotas to enforce them.
As I said, I may have simplified a bit. But from my experience and knowledge, every meaningful feminist and every feminist organization in Poland is a strong supporter of gender parities.
so has genocide. just because something has been going on for generations doesn't mean it should be considered acceptable.
Genocide is not humanity's natural state. Normally you are not pushed to cutting your neighbour's throat unless you are brought to the limits by poverty, war or starvation or your neighbour is dehumanized by some collective ideology.
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This is a thing already: It's commonly referred to as "Toxic masculinity".
It very much is insufficient. Even the name, toxic masculinity, implies that males are toxic.
Only if you consider masculinity an inherent, unshakable and unredeemable trait to all males. Which it isn't: Masculinity (and the toxicity that derives from some of it's aspects) is a cultural phenonom.
Also, "toxic masculinity" doesn't mean "all masculinity is toxic" any more than the phrase "man-hating feminist" implies "all feminists hate men".
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I've read through a fair bit of the kind of feminist blogging referred to here and disagreed with more points than I can count, but even there I never got the impression that "toxic masculinity" was in any way used to imply that masculinity is toxic.
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No it isn't. But as an example try saying "man-hating feminist" to a lot of feminists. See what happens. :p
I think we in this discussion are paying far too much attention to statistics and too little to individual cases. When we say that only e.g. 10% of programmers are women, this may sound like a discrimination. But let's ask ourselves a question "why should it be 50%?"
Why shouldn't it be? On what basis have you formed the opinion that women don't want to be coders?
See the problem is that you're being fundamentally unscientific about this. You're looking at the state of affairs, making a hypothesis about why it is (women just don't want to be coders) and then not testing that in any way, shape, size or form. What I've said is that you need to separate out the cultural reasons until only the biological ones exist.
A job interview for a software developer usually looks like that: interviewer asks candidates some questions on theory, gives a simple algorithmic problem to solve. It is often preceded by a programming task a candidate does online. I don't think there is much place for any meaningful discrimination here. You just see if candidate is suitable for the job when you examine him or her.
You've confused discrimination with cultural issues here. I addressed both in my earlier post. What you're talking about here is actual discrimination. And although I disagree with you and suspect it does happen a lot more than you claim, I suspect the real reasons for women in IT being lower are cultural.
The problem is when we try to enforce it - e.g. introducing a regulation so that an employer HAS to employ woman to satisfy a quota.
Who said anything about enforcing it? Claims of quotas are exactly the same sort of bull**** argument people have tried to use against racial discrimination too. And they never existed there either. In the end, one of the best explanations of how affirmative action should work was from Chris Rock
Don't get me wrong with affirmative action.
I don't think I should get a job over a white person if I get a lower mark in a test.
I don't think I should get accepted into a school over a white person if I get a lower mark.
But if there's a tie, **** 'em.
****, you had a 400-year head start, mother****er.
I don't think there is much pressure on opening traditionally female jobs for men. If a man is really determined to become a nurse, he'll be a nurse.
I know there's no pressure. My point is that there should be. You said you were okay with encouraging women to take traditionally male roles, why shouldn't the reverse also happen?
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Who said anything about enforcing it? Claims of quotas are exactly the same sort of bull**** argument people have tried to use against racial discrimination too. And they never existed there either. In the end, one of the best explanations of how affirmative action should work was from Chris Rock
Don't get me wrong with affirmative action.
I don't think I should get a job over a white person if I get a lower mark in a test.
I don't think I should get accepted into a school over a white person if I get a lower mark.
But if there's a tie, **** 'em.
****, you had a 400-year head start, mother****er.
You just proved his point by posting that BS. If there is a tie, there should be a random outcome. Giving preference to anyone based on race is racism, giving preference to anyone based on gender is sexism. If you support such policies, then you are part of the problem, not part of the solution.
EDIT: also, affirmative action does not usually apply only if there is a tie. The bottom line is, supporting such affirmative action and also gender quotas is quite common among feminists. And this is a problem and a valid criticism, IMHO.
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It's not common at all. Seriously, this sort of argument has been proved false every single time it has come up in the race debate (quotas are actually illegal in most Western countries in fact) and I've yet to see an iota of evidence it's any more common when it comes to gender.
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eh... http://lmgtfy.com/?q=tech+should+hire+more+women
you really saying that there is not a huge push to take people's sex into account in hiring with more women and minorities being classified under 'good'?
Maybe there is an inference being made here causing people to talk past each other.
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I'm saying that there is no such thing as quotas. No one is saying "x% of your workforce must be women/black/transgender/Martian" Not only are they not saying it but it is also illegal in the UK, and US, and most other Western countries. So I find the continued insistence by people that it is happening because of feminists somewhat strange.
That is a different issue from affirmative action which is a drive to try to avoid sexism and racism, etc by taking gender and race into account.
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ok, so when one says there should be more, that is saying it is below some threshold. which to me sounds remarkably similar to a quota.
just because something is illegal, doesn't mean people don't do it, or advocate for doing it. this doesn't prove the opposite, but you've used that argument twice now to prove no one is calling for quotas.
"try to avoid sexism and racism, etc by taking gender and race into account."
and it's not obvious why this scheme might be doomed to failure?
are women/minorities underrepresented in certain professions? if so should more be hired?
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I am not entirely sure what is wrong with NPR's views that they seem to be consistently ignored, but I do think that a sudden drop of the participation of women in computer science compared to other STEM fields is a clear cut example of underrepresentation. (http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-women-stopped-coding)
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because I was having a conversation about Kara about something else. I actually spent an hour or two looking into that, but I couldn't find any raw numbers, my suspicion is that the number of women in computer science never dropped but as CS went from being a theoretical pursuit to a major industry it attracted people who were very much interested in making money rather than satisfying academic pursuits and so it wasn't that women left but that men came.
or were you answering the first part of that final question I had directed at Kara? if that's the case could you answer the second part.
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More broadly, the entire feminism movement is derived from the word female and was originally about female rights. It just cannot effectively address the other side of the issue. Nor should it really try to address male issues, because this idea that male issues should be addressed through a female movement is quite insulting and demeaning. Male issues need a Mens rights movement, meninism, or whatever you want to call it. Of course, Id be the first to say that current MRM seem to have no less crazies than third wave feminism in its ranks..
There's no reason a man can't be a feminist. In fact it's quite shockingly sexist of you to imagine otherwise. :p
Ever notice how when it's women, they are feminists, but when it's mentioning men, it's just as "feminist allies" in half the feminist articles out there? There is a real (and cringe worthy) discussion among some feminists if you can apply the feminist label to men. Can you really blame 666maslo666 when a significant portion of the group he is addressing agrees with him on this point?
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Ever notice how when it's women, they are feminists, but when it's mentioning men, it's just as "feminist allies" in half the feminist articles out there? There is a real (and cringe worthy) discussion among some feminists if you can apply the feminist label to men. Can you really blame 666maslo666 when a significant portion of the group he is addressing agrees with him on this point?
Yes.
The fact he (and you) can't seem to sort those who are genuinely engaged in an attempt to sort the issues and solve them versus those who are on journeys of self-actualization without referent to reality, Hamas-esque quests to accomplish things they know are beyond them but pay well to sell the dream, and the generally disconnected is not a reason to accord his (or your) viewpoints weight. Quite the opposite.
The fact this specific phraseology is frequently a useful indicator for doing just that seems to have eluded you. It's fun indulging in the absurdity, I suppose; but an attempt to rationalize and normalize a relationship takes the active effort of both sides.
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ok, so when one says there should be more, that is saying it is below some threshold. which to me sounds remarkably similar to a quota.
Then you obviously don't understand what a quota is. A quota is when you say "X number of people from this gender / race need to have this job. Regardless of whether or not they are the most qualified." Not only are they illegal but they are a very stupid business practice. What kind of idiot boss would hire someone less qualified than another applicant just because of their race or sex?
The response I've seen so far is basically 'I don't like feminists so this must be happening." No. Prove it actually happens. Prove that it is a mainstay of feminism and not some crackpot fringe member or shut the **** up about it.
Quotas are not the same as saying "I have two candidates here who are basically the same level of qualifications so I'm going to hire the woman / black guy because they'll bring a viewpoint that is currently under-represented in my organisation." It is a very sensible attitude to hire people who have viewpoints your organisation currently lacks. And the reason you should think this way is because there is a bias to saying "I'll hire the white guy cause the rest of the team are also white guys and he'll fit in better."
Seriously how many times have you seen a disastrously bad advert or PR campaign and thought "Didn't they have a women in the company who could say "ummm. That's a really bad idea!"?" Monocultures can be very bad for your business.
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Quotas are not the same as saying "I have two candidates here who are basically the same level of qualifications so I'm going to hire the woman / black guy
well then I guess we have a genuine disagreement.
First of all, I do not presume that there are viewpoints that are inherent to races or genders or anything like that. I have a feeling I could find black white supremacists. Now there could be, I'm not claiming their isn't either, but off the top of my head I can't imagine what a "black viewpoint" would be without starting to feel a little /pol/ish. Generally I try to judge individuals by what they bring before me and not presuming that they are a stereotype. If there is something that my team lacks, I will look for people with that something, not for people with a skin color or genital concavity that I for some reason associate with that something. Maybe there is some natural affinity between <identity> and <valueable_personality_charictoristic>, if so then I will naturally end up with more persons of <identity> by hiring people with <valueable_personality_charictoristic>. In the case of a PR firm, yeah I could see 'understanding of demographic X' as being a valuable personality characteristic, and I could see how person from demographic X might have a high degree of correlation with that characteristic. In the case of an engineering firm, designing a new bridge for instance, I don't see a characteristic like that as being nearly as valuable, nor can I think of any other characteristic that might be linked to any identity.
Second this is not a dichotomy where you have to choose to hire more people belonging to an underrepresented class, or hire a monoculture consisting entirely of white heterosexual cisgendered rich property owning protestant men. You could also just not take race or gender or whatever into account at all. Generally speaking I would expect <identity> people to be hired at their proportion of application for a job when normalized for qualifications. If my assumption is wrong and there does exist some correlation between <identity> and ability then I would expect that to show up in the qualification normalization phase.
A quota is when you have a number or percentage of something that you try to get. You can certainly reduce the pool you try to apply your quota to to being only people with roughly equivalent qualifications, but that doesn't make it stop being a quota.
Your justifications for it are irrelevant.
also, do not presume motivations in others.
hmmm...
Prove that it is a mainstay of feminism and not some crackpot fringe member
ok, so anything I find will be dismissed with "no true feminist".
In fact you've basically just partially defined 'feminist' as one who does not call for a quota.
The fact that anyone would explicitly try to hire more X is basically inescapably linked to 'there is a quota for X'. They need to hire more means they haven't hired enough, meaning there is a quota. I am correct in assuming you are not going to tell me feminists would not call for employers the explicitly try to hire more women, right?
Ok, Off the top of my head though, there are related movements like CS1950 that while not primarily feminist (in the age of intersectionality the lines get blurry), they do explicitly give a number(percentage) of black people that they demand being hired. It's not feminist but it has the same underlying issues.
ah, but they are a some crackpot fringe member. Before I take any more effort than picking the worst quota offender off the top of my head and find one that is overtly feminist specifically, let me see if this is a true scotsman or not.
So this now degenerates to an argument about semantics, but at least now you can know what is meant when you hear people complaining about quotas.
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Yeah, I was right. You both have no idea what a quota is and you're now trying to rewrite what the word means to suit your definition of the word.
Sorry but a quota when it comes to affirmative action is an actually defined term. You can't just change the meaning. Yeah, if someone argues that red and green are the same thing that is also an argument about semantics. It doesn't however mean that one person isn't completely wrong.
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You know I type the word "quota" into google and it gives me a bunch of definitions that have nothing to do with ignoring ability (which seems to be the main difference between how you defined it and what everyone else was saying) and entirely about having a fixed/required/desired amount of things. Don't start accusing others of trying to rewrite what a word means just because others weren't using the very specific and relatively obscure legal definition you were thinking of.
You did say they were illegal, but you never said, "look when I say quota I mean this legal construct (http://link_to_definition_here)'. It doesn't mean people have no idea what they are talking about, it means you have no idea what others are saying. Or honestly it kinda looks like you did understand but were trying to force some contrived alt definition yourself.
but it's good that you're right.
So now that you know what was meant by "quota" and there is no more ambiguity, do you still stand by your assertion that quotas don't exist and are not called for by feminists and other similar groups?
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http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/07/world/europe/german-law-requires-more-women-on-corporate-boards.html?_r=0
Does not look like only a small minority of extremist feminists agree with gender quotas, when things like this actually get passed into a law and the only protest from the left was that the measure "did not go far enough".
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Bob, we're talking about affirmative action and I'm using the definition that applies to affirmative action. If you are not only ignorant of it but also choose to remain ignorant of it after having it explained to you, that's not on me.
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Ever notice how when it's women, they are feminists, but when it's mentioning men, it's just as "feminist allies" in half the feminist articles out there? There is a real (and cringe worthy) discussion among some feminists if you can apply the feminist label to men. Can you really blame 666maslo666 when a significant portion of the group he is addressing agrees with him on this point?
Yes.
The fact he (and you) can't seem to sort those who are genuinely engaged in an attempt to sort the issues and solve them versus those who are on journeys of self-actualization without referent to reality, Hamas-esque quests to accomplish things they know are beyond them but pay well to sell the dream, and the generally disconnected is not a reason to accord his (or your) viewpoints weight. Quite the opposite.
The fact this specific phraseology is frequently a useful indicator for doing just that seems to have eluded you. It's fun indulging in the absurdity, I suppose; but an attempt to rationalize and normalize a relationship takes the active effort of both sides.
I'm not really sure what you are getting at, but for instance, is NOMAS (http://nomas.org/roles-of-men-with-feminism-and-feminist-theory/) on a journey of self-actualization?
Is Everyday Feminism (http://everydayfeminism.com/2015/05/can-men-be-feminists/)? (although to their credit they go back and forth on the issue and land on the conclusion that men can be feminists... if you use their second definition of Feminism.)
Can the Guardian (http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2008/apr/23/canmenbefeminists) also not sort out those who are on this journey of self-actualization?
Or are you just gonna pull a no true scotman? Or is it really about ethics in feminist definitions?
EDIT:
Can it really be clearer than this (http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Allies)?
Specifically, feminist allies are individuals who are not women who support women's rights and promote feminism.
It's beyond obvious the label of "feminist ally" is only applied to men.
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Bob, we're talking about affirmative action and I'm using the definition that applies to affirmative action. If you are not only ignorant of it but also choose to remain ignorant of it after having it explained to you, that's not on me.
ok, well, we now know what everyone else is talking about.
and just for fun:
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/quota
"a fixed number or percentage of minority group members or women needed to meet the requirements of affirmative action"
sounds like the opposite of the distinction you are making.
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Sounds exactly like what I'm saying. Once again, not my fault if you choose to remain ignorant.
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Bobbeau, I can only make the conclusion that you misread Karajorma's posts.
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it doesn't say anything about ignoring level of qualification.
OK, tell me what I'm saying, what you are saying, and how they differ.
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I think we in this discussion are paying far too much attention to statistics and too little to individual cases. When we say that only e.g. 10% of programmers are women, this may sound like a discrimination. But let's ask ourselves a question "why should it be 50%?"
Why shouldn't it be? On what basis have you formed the opinion that women don't want to be coders?
See the problem is that you're being fundamentally unscientific about this. You're looking at the state of affairs, making a hypothesis about why it is (women just don't want to be coders) and then not testing that in any way, shape, size or form. What I've said is that you need to separate out the cultural reasons until only the biological ones exist.
You are reverting the case. We have the current state - e.g. 10% female programmers. You claim it is wrong as it should be closer to 50% and I ask: why is it wrong and why should it be closer to 50%? That's the fundamental question to the issue. What makes you think we should intervene in the matter at all?
There may be plenty of reasons why few women code. I don't claim for sure what they are because this should be a subject for a major research. I just don't think the government or whoever should intervene as long as they are not of legal nature (women are forbidden to enter a profession) or freedom to choose this job in not limited in other way.
Supporters of equalizing sex distribution in professions are using converse implication which is wrong be definition. If there is a discrimination of one sex or race in a profession (e.g. civil statesmen in apartheid), then there will be unequal distribution of this sex or race. But the fact distribution is unequal doesn't mean there is a discrimination (on other kind of injustice) and we should try to change the state of affairs.
You've confused discrimination with cultural issues here. I addressed both in my earlier post. What you're talking about here is actual discrimination. And although I disagree with you and suspect it does happen a lot more than you claim, I suspect the real reasons for women in IT being lower are cultural.
Perhaps they are, although it is rather when girls choose their education career, not when they are being employed.
But again, why should be change it?
Who said anything about enforcing it? Claims of quotas are exactly the same sort of bull**** argument people have tried to use against racial discrimination too. And they never existed there either. In the end, one of the best explanations of how affirmative action should work was from Chris Rock
Don't get me wrong with affirmative action.
I don't think I should get a job over a white person if I get a lower mark in a test.
I don't think I should get accepted into a school over a white person if I get a lower mark.
But if there's a tie, **** 'em.
****, you had a 400-year head start, mother****er.
Okay, I'm not sure I got you right, but how exactly should this 'equalizing' look like according to you?
I don't think there is much pressure on opening traditionally female jobs for men. If a man is really determined to become a nurse, he'll be a nurse.
I know there's no pressure. My point is that there should be. You said you were okay with encouraging women to take traditionally male roles, why shouldn't the reverse also happen?
It is okay as long as it remains voluntary, it does not affect job effectiveness and it is not funded by taxpayers. An NGO can organize an advertising campaign encouraging males to become nurses or women to become engineers. I don't see the point, but it doesn't bother me if someone does that. It is not okay, however, if we set a goal "we want 30% of men in nursery/women in IT" and use some sort of state regulation to reach it.
because I was having a conversation about Kara about something else. I actually spent an hour or two looking into that, but I couldn't find any raw numbers, my suspicion is that the number of women in computer science never dropped but as CS went from being a theoretical pursuit to a major industry it attracted people who were very much interested in making money rather than satisfying academic pursuits and so it wasn't that women left but that men came.
Good point. We should not look at percentage only, but on total numbers as well.
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It is okay as long as it remains voluntary, it does not affect job effectiveness and it is not funded by taxpayers. An NGO can organize an advertising campaign encouraging males to become nurses or women to become engineers. I don't see the point, but it doesn't bother me if someone does that. It is not okay, however, if we set a goal "we want 30% of men in nursery/women in IT" and use some sort of state regulation to reach it.
I'll address this first.
In case you haven't noticed I've already pointed out in this thread that quotas are illegal in the UK and US and I've given no reason why that's a bad thing. I definitely think that it's not something the government should be interfering with. Unlike you though I do see a point.
You are reverting the case. We have the current state - e.g. 10% female programmers. You claim it is wrong as it should be closer to 50% and I ask: why is it wrong and why should it be closer to 50%? That's the fundamental question to the issue. What makes you think we should intervene in the matter at all?
There may be plenty of reasons why few women code. I don't claim for sure what they are because this should be a subject for a major research.
The number of women in the work age population is 50%. If the number of women doing a certain job is not 50% that indicates a deviation from the norm. Which means that there is a reason for it. You said "But let's ask ourselves a question "why should it be 50%?"" I've answered that by stating the far more important question, "Why shouldn't it be 50%? - i.e What factors are stopping it from being 50%" I didn't simply reverse your question, I put it in the terms it should originally have been stated. Because a deviation from the norm isn't something you should just accept without an explanation why it happens. But far too many people are willing to simply ignore the mystery and say "Well I guess women just don't like coding."
You say "freedom to choose this job in not limited in other way" and that is the real crux of the matter. Because there are limits that are cultural. Do you think that the reason why male nurses are such a small percentage of the profession is really because men don't have what it takes to be a nurse? Or do you think that the cultural view of male nurses is a limiting factor? When I go to the hospital, I want to be treated by the best nurse. I don't want to risk getting a female nurse who is below average because males who would have been better than her didn't apply.
But the fact distribution is unequal doesn't mean there is a discrimination (on other kind of injustice) and we should try to change the state of affairs.
But it similarly doesn't mean you should stick your head in the sand and assume that the distribution is natural.
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And as a side-note, I hate male-dominated environments and the mindsets that they tend to produce with a passion. I don't think I've actually ever heard someone say "women are bad programmers", but I constantly hear "women programmers are ugly" or variations thereof.
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The number of women in the work age population is 50%. If the number of women doing a certain job is not 50% that indicates a deviation from the norm. Which means that there is a reason for it. You said "But let's ask ourselves a question "why should it be 50%?"" I've answered that by stating the far more important question, "Why shouldn't it be 50%? - i.e What factors are stopping it from being 50%" I didn't simply reverse your question, I put it in the terms it should originally have been stated. Because a deviation from the norm isn't something you should just accept without an explanation why it happens. But far too many people are willing to simply ignore the mystery and say "Well I guess women just don't like coding."
The thing is, they don't! That's what he is trying to say. That is the point. How many women actually want to be coders? Likewise, how many of them actually want to be infantry marines? When the restrictions on women in infantry were lifted, the initial response was abysmal. It seems that some jobs simply attract more men than women. Why should we change that?
The thing about culture is that, generally, both sides are OK with it. In the Western World, cultural norms aren't enforced very strongly. If you want to go against them, it's your choice. There is not oppression that we see in more primitive countries, following cultural norms is a choice. The "woman secretly wanting to do a male profession" kind of plot is thoroughly outdated now, with exception of some militaries. If she wants to do something, she can to do that thing. And here's the thing: most women don't. Even when legal restrictions on "male jobs" are lifted, they do not generally see a vast change in gender dynamics.
I don't think this needs changing, assuming this is even possible, this effort would be better spent elsewhere. You are trying to change what is, for a certain group of people, natural. Culture is very hard to modify, especially the oldest tenets such as gender roles. Either this will change naturally, over many years, or it won't. There is no reason to want a higher percentage of either women or men in most professions.
When I go to the hospital, I want to be treated by the best nurse. I don't want to risk getting a female nurse who is below average because males who would have been better than her didn't apply.
How about being treated by a male nurse who hates his job because this wasn't what he really wanted to do? Really, "could have been better" is a ridiculous concept. People aren't predestined to be good or bad at anything. If a man wants to be a nurse, he can become one. Most men don't. And I can tell you that you can only become good at something you like to do. Its forcing people into specific jobs against their interests that results in substandard performance.
It might be that some people are stopped from picking the occupation they really want by their relatives, but in the end, it's their own choice as well. If an adult person can't make his/her own choice (even in spite of what their relatives want), then they can't be helped, no matter how you'd like to.
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The thing is, they don't! That's what he is trying to say. That is the point. How many women actually want to be coders? Likewise, how many of them actually want to be infantry marines? When the restrictions on women in infantry were lifted, the initial response was abysmal. It seems that some jobs simply attract more men than women. Why should we change that?
Which has nothing at all to do with the average work environment in IT being very unfriendly to women, right?
The issues here go very deep (just like, for example, male nurses have a harder time finding acceptance among their peers and customers than female ones), they start in early education and deeply ingrained mindsets among parents, teachers and bosses. If your conclusion here is that women "just don't want these jobs", then you aren't looking deep enough.
I mean, isn't it kinda interesting, that the early practitioners of the art of coding, back when it was seen as a more glorified version of typing, were women? And that, once it became clear that coding is important, that there's money to be made here, men took over the profession?
Basically, what I'm saying is, if you think that gender is the dominant factor here, and that workplace culture, professional culture, upbringing and gender stereotypes play second fiddle (if you believe in their existence at all), please educate yourself before you fire up your keyboard again.
The thing about culture is that, generally, both sides are OK with it. In the Western World, cultural norms aren't enforced very strongly. If you want to go against them, it's your choice. There is not oppression that we see in more primitive countries, following cultural norms is a choice.
Have you recently tried to go into work naked? Guess not.
(The point is, you're not seeing the forest for the trees: Just because you think your cultural norms are "normal" doesn't mean they are.)
The "woman secretly wanting to do a male profession" kind of plot is thoroughly outdated now, with exception of some militaries. If she wants to do something, she can to do that thing. And here's the thing: most women don't. Even when legal restrictions on "male jobs" are lifted, they do not generally see a vast change in gender dynamics.
I don't think this needs changing, assuming this is even possible, this effort would be better spent elsewhere. You are trying to change what is, for a certain group of people, natural. Culture is very hard to modify, especially the oldest tenets such as gender roles. Either this will change naturally, over many years, or it won't. There is no reason to want a higher percentage of either women or men in most professions.
See above. Programming in particular, as a profession, was thought to be an archetypical women's job. That cultural norm got changed in a hurry.
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How about being treated by a male nurse who hates his job because this wasn't what he really wanted to do?
Where in the name of **** did you pull this idea from?
Encouraging more men to be nurses isn't going to suddenly end up with a large number of male nurses who hate their job. It's not like I'm talking about rounding up a bunch of guys and forcing them to be nurses at gun point. It's about making sure that the women who want to be coders can be coders, rather than getting put off by the idea of having to work in an environment completely composed of sweaty neckbeards who don't know how to act around a woman. It's about allowing the guys who would like to be a nurse do so, rather than get put off by the idea that everyone is going to make jokes about them being women or gay.
The idea that anyone who wants a profession will go out and do it is completely ignorant of how the world works. A lot of people look at the massive amount of **** they'll have to put up with and decide it simply isn't worth it.
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because I was having a conversation about Kara about something else. I actually spent an hour or two looking into that, but I couldn't find any raw numbers, my suspicion is that the number of women in computer science never dropped but as CS went from being a theoretical pursuit to a major industry it attracted people who were very much interested in making money rather than satisfying academic pursuits and so it wasn't that women left but that men came..
Why aren't you seeing similar trends in medical or law school then, which are also professions where there is a lot of money to be made? Why are you operating on the assumption that making money is mainly a men's pursuit?
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In case you haven't noticed I've already pointed out in this thread that quotas are illegal in the UK and US and I've given no reason why that's a bad thing. I definitely think that it's not something the government should be interfering with. Unlike you though I do see a point.
I noticed that. I was just explaining my point of view - when and how an intervention is justified and what intervention could that be.
Even if quotas are not present in Anglo-saxon countries - good to hear that - they are quite popular in continental Europe. Germany, France and most neighbour countries have some sort of them, even Poland passed the law that obligates political parties to have min. 35% of each sex on their lists. EU is also a great supporter of gender quotas both in politics and boards of companies.
Ok, as we both agree government intervention or any kind privilege for one sex are not an option, I'll repeat my question then as you omitted it in your post: How exactly would you change the sex distribution in certain professions? I'm asking only about the means you would use.
The number of women in the work age population is 50%. If the number of women doing a certain job is not 50% that indicates a deviation from the norm. Which means that there is a reason for it. You said "But let's ask ourselves a question "why should it be 50%?"" I've answered that by stating the far more important question, "Why shouldn't it be 50%? - i.e What factors are stopping it from being 50%" I didn't simply reverse your question, I put it in the terms it should originally have been stated. Because a deviation from the norm isn't something you should just accept without an explanation why it happens. But far too many people are willing to simply ignore the mystery and say "Well I guess women just don't like coding."
I am getting a little tired with this. You are making a FALSE assumption that distribution or men and women in certain professions should be moreless equal. It is false because distribution of certain genes and attributes among men and women is not equal. STATISTICALLY (doesn't mean always) men are better in analitical thinking, strategy and being leaders, while women are more often good at multi-tasking, social skills and taking care of others. STATISTICALLY women care more about security and are more often okay with worse-paid but stable job. Women are also the ones spending most time with children - 9 months of pregnancy, then probably another few months, often more, that may also affect that less women take on dangerous or time-consuming jobs. So STATISTICALLy you will find more men with talents for some jobs and more women with taletns for other jobs.
There are also cultural factors, some of them could be harmful, some I'd defend, but let's put them aside for now. You said you are okay with biological differences and they alone are enough for you to never achieve moreless equal distribution of sexes in some professions.
You say "freedom to choose this job in not limited in other way" and that is the real crux of the matter. Because there are limits that are cultural. Do you think that the reason why male nurses are such a small percentage of the profession is really because men don't have what it takes to be a nurse? Or do you think that the cultural view of male nurses is a limiting factor? When I go to the hospital, I want to be treated by the best nurse. I don't want to risk getting a female nurse who is below average because males who would have been better than her didn't apply.
When I go to hospital, I want to be treated by the best nurse regardless of his/her sex. That means we must have some job requirements/exams/studies/whatever other method to verify a candidate's skills. If this verification does not include discrimination and we filtered the best candidates, it does not matter how many men and women there are among them.
Which has nothing at all to do with the average work environment in IT being very unfriendly to women, right?
The issues here go very deep (just like, for example, male nurses have a harder time finding acceptance among their peers and customers than female ones), they start in early education and deeply ingrained mindsets among parents, teachers and bosses. If your conclusion here is that women "just don't want these jobs", then you aren't looking deep enough.
Please read my earlier post. IT work environment is not women-unfriendly, it's quite the opposite. Job requirements in IT I came in touch with are mostly gender-neutral (tests and practical job interviews) and attitude to women working in IT companies is usually warm and friendly. Same refers to girls studying technical courses at my university.
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Which has nothing at all to do with the average work environment in IT being very unfriendly to women, right?
Indeed. The underrepresentation of women in IT (or technical fields and interests in general) starts much earlier than at workplaces, so I dont think its fair to blame workplace culture or employers for it. As you said, it starts in early education and ingrained mindsets among parents and teachers - how many girls vs. boys in your high school regularly played computer games?
This is where the efforts to change it should be concentrated. After high school it is already too late to change anything, most people have already decided their career path by then, at least in broad terms (to STEM or not to STEM). If you then start to discriminate employees because you want to reach some target % of women in IT, despite the fact that IT schools dont produce such % of IT graduates, it will lead to lower quality, because the fundamental lack of deep interest in the subject wont be changed by a few late positive discrimination perks, but it could very well bring in women with other motivations.
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Please read my earlier post. IT work environment is not women-unfriendly, it's quite the opposite. Job requirements in IT I came in touch with are mostly gender-neutral (tests and practical job interviews) and attitude to women working in IT companies is usually warm and friendly. Same refers to girls studying technical courses at my university.
Okay, a few things.
One, I know from my experience that customers would rather deal with a male apprentice than a female consultant. This actually happened on a project the company I work at did; A bunch of their IT staff were complaining about the work our (only) female consultant did, but those complaints more or less stopped once the apprentice took over (or rather, emails were sent from the apprentice's account, our consultant still did all the work).
Two, in companies that actually structure their hiring process so that gender is eliminated as a factor in selecting applications, women have much better chances of getting jobs. Even something as simple as having HR remove the names of the applicants from their applications led to a much fairer assessment of their skills; This same mechanism also applies in cases where people with obviously foreign names apply to a job.
Three, it is remarkably easy for a predominantly male company to think of itself as welcoming to women. Hint: The absence of complaints does not indicate an absence of issues.
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fix casing in topic title plx
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fix casing in your posts plx
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casing in my posts is informal but idiomatic, casing in title looks strange and german
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wait that's a tautology
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Ok, as we both agree government intervention or any kind privilege for one sex are not an option, I'll repeat my question then as you omitted it in your post: How exactly would you change the sex distribution in certain professions? I'm asking only about the means you would use.
You touched on some of it yourself. NGO campaigns. For male nurses it would be simple, a series of adverts showing nursing as being just as demanding and manly as any other job would go a long way towards reversing the cultural issues. More importantly though (and the reason I brought it up in the first place) I'd want to see feminists spending just as many column inches on male nurses and junior school teachers as they do complaining about the lack of women in traditionally male jobs.
a deviation from the norm isn't something you should just accept without an explanation why it happens. But far too many people are willing to simply ignore the mystery and say "Well I guess women just don't like coding."
I am getting a little tired with this. You are making a FALSE assumption that distribution or men and women in certain professions should be moreless equal. It is false because distribution of certain genes and attributes among men and women is not equal. STATISTICALLY (doesn't mean always) men are better in analitical thinking, strategy and being leaders, while women are more often good at multi-tasking, social skills and taking care of others. STATISTICALLY women care more about security and are more often okay with worse-paid but stable job. Women are also the ones spending most time with children - 9 months of pregnancy, then probably another few months, often more, that may also affect that less women take on dangerous or time-consuming jobs. So STATISTICALLy you will find more men with talents for some jobs and more women with taletns for other jobs.
This is hilarious. You literally just did exactly what I complained about. You decided that the way things are now must be natural based on the fact that it is the way things are today. This is despite evidence already posted on this thread that the number of female programmers was actually higher than the number of males at one point. You forget (or are completely ignorant of) the fact that the first computer programmer (or debugger) ever, Ada Lovelace, was a woman and that first ever computer development team was entirely female. You ignore that programming actually was seen as a woman's job for quite a while and only became more of a men's job after cultural shifts as has already been pointed out!
Not only are you wrong, your analysis is hugely unscientific. You've taken the state of things today and made a laughable hypothesis about why it is that way completely ignoring any historical evidence to the contrary. Had someone done what you did in the 50's they would have concluded that programming was a woman's job and that men were fundamentally unsuited to doing it. They could easily make a case for why women are statistically better at coding.
You said you are okay with biological differences and they alone are enough for you to never achieve moreless equal distribution of sexes in some professions.
I am. What I'm not okay with is people inventing biological differences like you just did.
When I go to hospital, I want to be treated by the best nurse regardless of his/her sex. That means we must have some job requirements/exams/studies/whatever other method to verify a candidate's skills. If this verification does not include discrimination and we filtered the best candidates, it does not matter how many men and women there are among them.
Hell, even Maslo seems to understand that cultural issues that prevent someone entering a certain profession don't begin and end at the job. You're not going to get a fair distribution of male and female nurses if men don't train to become nurses because they don't want to be called gay. If only women are training to be nurses then it doesn't matter how fair and undiscriminatory your hiring practices are, there aren't going to be any male candidates to discriminate against. Once again you've failed to actually identify the problem before telling us that it isn't a problem / there is a simple solution.
I want to be treated by the best nurse regardless of their sex too. But unlike you I understand that there are reasons that isn't happening at the moment.
Indeed. The underrepresentation of women in IT (or technical fields and interests in general) starts much earlier than at workplaces, so I dont think its fair to blame workplace culture or employers for it. As you said, it starts in early education and ingrained mindsets among parents and teachers - how many girls vs. boys in your high school regularly played computer games?
I think it's actually a mixture of the two. I don't think you're at all wrong here but you've got to remember that people exiting a profession can also have a large effect on the demographics. If women who do actually become programmers get sick of the sexist bull**** they have to put up with and leave for other careers then that is also going to result in less women working as programmers.
If you then start to discriminate employees because you want to reach some target % of women in IT, despite the fact that IT schools dont produce such % of IT graduates, it will lead to lower quality, because the fundamental lack of deep interest in the subject wont be changed by a few late positive discrimination perks, but it could very well bring in women with other motivations.
I've already explained why quotas are illegal in the UK (and you're right that they can cause lower quality) but that's why you need to instead do the things I mentioned earlier. Hiring what is missing in your organisation when skill sets are identical, improving the workplace conditions so that people who were sick of the bull**** come back, etc. The former doesn't decrease quality and the latter would actually increase it.
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Why aren't you seeing similar trends in medical or law school then, which are also professions where there is a lot of money to be made? Why are you operating on the assumption that making money is mainly a men's pursuit?
You mean jobs that have been aristocracy staples for hundreds of years and didn't suddenly become a major industry in the span of half a decade correlating with the observed change of demographics? I'm not assuming that making money is a mans sport, I'm trying to think what happened in that time frame that might have had an effect on which people were getting degrees.
but in hindsight if I wanted to justify "making money (as) mainly a men's pursuit" it would be because it has historically been the trend. In the 80s it was more pronounced than it is today.
Women are permitted to not work, it's not socially required like it is for men. It is a lifestyle choice available to one gender and not the other. The traditional option is still available and some people still choose it. The thing is in a completely egalitarian/feminist society men and women both work, in the traditional order men worked, in both of these men work. I mean, I suppose if you looked hard enough you might be able to find examples of career women with trophy husbands but it is far less common. There isn't really a huge "women do all the work earn all the money and men just clean up at home, cook, and look pretty" option, even feminists shame men like that.
Oh snap! Just found some of the raw numbers I was looking for earlier. this doesn't prove anything either way but it's interesting (https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1bUORqJMicCm1Xrxoz8lJy4P8-BYo6ob26i4v-4036ps/edit?usp=sharing).
The proportion of women peaked in 1983, but the population (for both males and females) peaked in 1985. Interestingly it looks like the demographic shift started in the late 70s but 83-85 was the big shift. This was a 3 year period and the demographic shift remained the stable until the mid 90s. 83 was about when the internet started in its earliest iterations. let's see here, these are degrees conferred, so these are 21 year olds, if we focus on the middle of this (84) these are kids born in 1963, they were 6 during Apollo 11, woodstock, and when feminism originally started to explode (https://books.google.com/ngrams/graph?content=feminism&year_start=1800&year_end=2000&corpus=15&smoothing=3&share=&direct_url=t1%3B%2Cfeminism%3B%2Cc0), and they spent their formative years in the 70s. There was an even more dramatic demographic shift from 98 to 04, but while this is when women make up an ever decreasing proportion it also marks when there are the most women in CS. then I run out of data :/.
It looks like the two huge demographic shifts happened during the PC boom of the 80s and the internet boom of the 2000s. The mid 80s to mid 90s is interesting, why did it stay stable? why didn't it return to the previous proposition or get worse?
I do notice that when the demographics shift, men change more dramatically than women, but this is more pronounced during the upswings than downswings.
Kara you dropped your end of this (http://www.hard-light.net/forums/index.php?topic=91506.msg1813497#msg1813497), I'm actually interested in understanding what the **** we were actually in disagreement about that started this offshoot thread. I thought I understood what our disagreement was until you said that was exactly what you were saying. you seem to have a very specific definition in mind here, can you link me to some resource that provides your definition?
Could you please say back what you think I think is meant by 'quota' in the context of this discussion, so that I know if I have communicated my position to you (please kindly note I'm not accusing you of strawmanning me).
What you think is meant by 'quota', because I have apparently not gotten it yet. Maybe you overemphasized something tangential in your previous attempts?
Could you please point out the difference between what you think is my understanding and your understanding, because maybe you combined these last two steps previously resulting in further misunderstanding.
or did you just like calling me ignorant?
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A quota is very simply "A minimum X of Y must be reached". Such a quota is always pre-recorded, and are banned in both the US (as per a Supreme Court case) and the UK.
In short, saying "we need more women in this company!" is not a quota. Saying "I want atleast 20 women recruited by the end of the week!" IS a quota.
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ok, so is the big argument about it being a specific, predefined, written down, number? this is sounding like it's some sort of legal dodge, missing the point that your identity should not affect your employment eligibility. that there is no 'correct amount' of asians.
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ok, so is the big argument about it being a specific, predefined, written down, number? this is sounding like it's some sort of legal dodge, missing the point that your identity should not affect your employment eligibility. that there is no 'correct amount' of asians.
Which is why nobody is using quotas! It's not a legal dodge, it's literally what the word means. Whenever you say that people are using quotas you are accusing them of having set a specific number or percentage for people with a certain identity. When you want to talk about the issue of identity affecting employment eligibility, then you should talk about the issues of identity affecting employment eligibility. Talking about quota's is simply a de-rail.
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Yeah, Joshua has gotten it.
The problem Bob, is that you want to use a system where you are completely blind to race, colour, sexual orientation when hiring. That's great. In an ideal world, that's exactly how people should be hired. But we don't live in an ideal world, we live in a world where a single person not doing that in the HR department can **** things up quite severely when it comes to being non-discriminatory.
In short you are saying "We should all ignore race / sex / sexuality and hope that things will turn out okay" but they won't turn out okay while there are a lot of people who don't ignore those things.
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so you have to introduce a balancing bias in the opposite direction?
that just seems like you had one problem and now you have two. you will never ever reach a non-descriminatory envirnment this way.
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And you're going to reach one by burying your head in the sand and hoping the racists stop being racist?
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i'm going to reach one by not making new and innovative types of racists.
you know a really good way to make new racists? by focusing on and obsessively discussing race.
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Magic does not exist, but it did not prevent people from burning witches. Talking about the issues of witch burning and taking into account that people tend to burn witches in your speeches or policies therefore is still prudent.
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Sure, but burning non-witch protestants probably would not have improved the situation.
Even though it would have balanced things out, more of a problem is more of a problem.
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i'm going to reach one by not making new and innovative types of racists.
you know a really good way to make new racists? by focusing on and obsessively discussing race.
I don't think anything I've said is going to make new racists. It's only going to give existing racists something else to to be racist about. But they were already going to be racists anyway.
But what it will do, is give a bunch more people jobs who were otherwise not able to get that job because of institutional racism. So no change on the racism front, big change on the non whites get jobs front. I call that a win.
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do we have any numbers on individuals participating in one or more racist organisations/groups?
I found some on number of groups, but you can't tell if you have fewer bigger groups so I don't think it's helpful.
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I don't think anything I've said is going to make new racists.
You have said that out of two equally qualified people, the underprivileged race should be chosen. That kind of racist policy validates racist narratives of whites being under attack (and in this case, Id say we actually are!), normalizes and legitimizes racial discrimination in general, and also casts doubt on the ability of people of color who get the job due to affirmative action. It will surely create new racists, more racial prejudice and racial tensions.
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I don't think anything I've said is going to make new racists.
You have said that out of two equally qualified people... casts doubt on the ability of people of color who get the job due to affirmative action.
Generally when you start with a set of assumptions (like this thread has been for the entire discussion), you don't get to discard them when you get to your conclusion.
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You touched on some of it yourself. NGO campaigns. For male nurses it would be simple, a series of adverts showing nursing as being just as demanding and manly as any other job would go a long way towards reversing the cultural issues. More importantly though (and the reason I brought it up in the first place) I'd want to see feminists spending just as many column inches on male nurses and junior school teachers as they do complaining about the lack of women in traditionally male jobs.
Ok, on that we have an agreement.
This is hilarious. You literally just did exactly what I complained about. You decided that the way things are now must be natural based on the fact that it is the way things are today.
Where the hell did you find this last statement in what I posted? I am not proving current men/women proportion in IT is perfect, I am not even trying to find a perfect one because there is no even such thing as a perfect proportion in a population. My thesis is not what you're claiming - that it must be unequal because it is now. My thesis is that it DOESN'T HAVE to be equal - for reasons I named above.
Speaking of which - you said my thinking is unscientific? You keep claiming there should be moreless same number of men and women in every profession, but you gave absolutely no arguments to support your claim. You treat this as an axiom and you are attacking the others for not accepting your axiom.
Which leads me to repeating my question - why should it be 50/50, taking into consideration that distribution of particular traits in the society is not equal, but highly dependent on biology?
This is despite evidence already posted on this thread that the number of female programmers was actually higher than the number of males at one point. You forget (or are completely ignorant of) the fact that the first computer programmer (or debugger) ever, Ada Lovelace, was a woman and that first ever computer development team was entirely female. You ignore that programming actually was seen as a woman's job for quite a while and only became more of a men's job after cultural shifts as has already been pointed out!
It's difficult to draw any conclusion from the simple fact the now women's percentage in IT is small, then - it was large. Lots of factors have changed since that time. In the beginning computer science was limited mainly to universities and military with only a handful of specialists employed, now there are millions of IT specialists and business IT plays the most part.
Partial explanation could also be that programming huge computers of that era didn't remind today's programming at all, it required much more patience and paying attention to detail. Now most problems of that time's programming are gone, high-level programming is dominating and emphasis is put on effective solving of complex problems and producing a structuralized and human-readable code easy to maintain and expand.
You said you are okay with biological differences and they alone are enough for you to never achieve moreless equal distribution of sexes in some professions.
I am. What I'm not okay with is people inventing biological differences like you just did.
We're coming to the bases, right? Biological differences between sexes are a scientific fact. Which ones I named incorrectly? Lecture of this (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_psychology) could help you :).
I wasn't directly basing on any external source, but only in this single wikipedia article you can find confirmation of what I said.
Hell, even Maslo seems to understand that cultural issues that prevent someone entering a certain profession don't begin and end at the job. You're not going to get a fair distribution of male and female nurses if men don't train to become nurses because they don't want to be called gay. If only women are training to be nurses then it doesn't matter how fair and undiscriminatory your hiring practices are, there aren't going to be any male candidates to discriminate against. Once again you've failed to actually identify the problem before telling us that it isn't a problem / there is a simple solution.
I want to be treated by the best nurse regardless of their sex too. But unlike you I understand that there are reasons that isn't happening at the moment.
Well, I can partially agree about males not taking female jobs because of stereotypes (despite they could actually be very good in them). They have roots mainly in education and this is where some work at the basis needs to be done. And it is already being done. To be honest I'm concerned about how far go the efforts to upbring boys and girls in a similar manner and what consequences it may have - but that's a topic for a whole another discussion.
I think it's actually a mixture of the two. I don't think you're at all wrong here but you've got to remember that people exiting a profession can also have a large effect on the demographics. If women who do actually become programmers get sick of the sexist bull**** they have to put up with and leave for other careers then that is also going to result in less women working as programmers.
Where did you encounter sexism against women working in male-dominated jobs? Got any research on that? In case of IT, small number of female programmers makes male programmers' attitude towards them more positive, not negative.
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Everyone apparently agrees that it's not good that some people won't get into professions they might want to and be good at because of sexism and gender stereotypes, and that we can't exactly measure the amount of those things despite knowing that they exist and can't know how much of the gender imbalance within any given profession is due to them and how much is simply due to biology, and that no one supports trying to fix such an imbalance by favouring less-qualified members of the minority gender over better-qualified members of the majority gender.
So what are you even arguing about, really? Whether the rare case of equally qualified candidates should be decided by a cointoss or by favouring the minority? Unless you really must pursue ideological purism one way or another, that's a really insignificant difference and everyone and their mom can see that one can legitimately be of either opinion depending on how they want to look at it.
If you can harmoniously stop when you agree about 90% of everything, or start bickering about the 10% despite knowing that the other person knows that you know that you both know that neither can prove themselves right anyway, always go for the latter! That'll teach them jerkfaces.
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We are arguing about if equally qualified candidates should be selected based on their identity or not.
It's an important 10%. There is a lot of push behind it. For one example Github got rid of their "United Meritocracy of GitHub" moto, which is indicative of the sort of culture that is being fostered.
Would you accept a teleporter that successfully transferred 90% of the matter than made up your body?
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We are arguing about if equally qualified candidates should be selected based on their identity or not.
It's an important 10%. There is a lot of push behind it. For one example Github got rid of their "United Meritocracy of GitHub" moto, which is indicative of the sort of culture that is being fostered.
Would you accept a teleporter that successfully transferred 90% of the matter than made up your body?
This is a horrible analogy and you damn well know it, Bob. Would you accept a student that successfully maintained a 90% average? Because we tend to call those "Summa cum laude" or "Valedictorian".
The point being, it's not even apples to oranges, it's carrots to pineapples.
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There are different tolerances for different things. if your house was 90% structurally stable it might not be too bad if the 10% was in your roof vs if it was in your foundation.
It's an important 10%
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Carrots to pineapples, Bob. If I thought about it for a minute I could come up with a bull**** 90/10 analogy too. It would not be less relevant than yours.
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ok, well... I guess I suck at metaphors then. /*shrug*/
...welp, lets get this thing rolling again.
Hey! You guys! Feminists are a bunch of, eh, man hating nazi lesbian communist jews!
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*Bans Bob for trolling.* :p
So what are you even arguing about, really? Whether the rare case of equally qualified candidates should be decided by a cointoss or by favouring the minority? Unless you really must pursue ideological purism one way or another, that's a really insignificant difference and everyone and their mom can see that one can legitimately be of either opinion depending on how they want to look at it.
If you can harmoniously stop when you agree about 90% of everything, or start bickering about the 10% despite knowing that the other person knows that you know that you both know that neither can prove themselves right anyway, always go for the latter! That'll teach them jerkfaces.
Actually I'm not arguing about the 10% difference in opinions. I'm arguing cause people want to use that tiny little difference to claim that all feminists are looking for special privilege which allows them to then bootstrap an argument that feminists are a bad thing.
Ironically they are acting like the racists in my last post, using a tiny issue to justify their deeply held bigoted beliefs. It's an amazing case of throwing out the baby with the bathwater.
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/*skillfully evades ban*/
/*better luck next time, I'm behind six proxies!*/
Well, the thing is when people say "feminist", they are not referring to people that fit the dictionary definition of feminist, because that definition is so broad that it probably includes many MRA groups. They are referring to the people who are really super zealous about grabbing hold of and pushing that label. Yes that is incorrect, but it's just like what has happened with atheists, Neil Degrasse Tyson is an atheist, but he ABSOLUTELY will NOT accept the label despite fitting the definition of the 'atheist' (which is one who does not have a belief in deities) because it has baggage from the likes of Dawkins and Hitchens. The word "feminism" has come to have some additional baggage only tangentially related to it's core, and that is a problem feminists who want to keep using that label have to deal with. There are a lot of 'Neil Degrasse Tyson the atheist' style feminists out there and many of them like Neil (and MANY like him) does with Atheism, criticise feminism.
tl;dr
atheist is to agnostic
as
feminist is to egalitarian
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You've obviously forgotten how this got started.
Overt sexism is pretty much a joke, but it's still an area where some things are not allowed to be said. The US is a bit behind, and there are still things you're not allowed to say, but feminists have largely won their fight. Notice that most of the time we hear of feminists, they're fighting for privileges or preferential treatment for women.
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not following what you are getting at.
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The issue is not one of nomenclature so much as people like Dragon believing that there is no reason for either feminists or egalitarians to exist as the major battles are already won and the only reason for either to be around is to gain special favours.
And that's before we even start getting into how changing the name of a thing because some people view it in a bad light tends to get you nowhere. Look at how people are already rejecting the use of the word retarded even though it only came into existence because people rejected the words that came before it.
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"feminism:
The belief that men and women should have equal rights and opportunities. (http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/feminism)"
Nothing in there about beleiving that there are still major battles yet to be won, or that women DON'T have equal rights and opportunities.
Only an agreement on ideals and values. This is why I said many MRA groups could easily be considered feminist also.
[edit]are we talking past each other again?[/edit]
If you say "all lives matter" it's a perfectly reasonable phrase, but it has accumulated baggage that might be more trouble than it's worth. As an atheist, I totally understand where you are coming from on this, but now I really get what Neil was talking about also. There is some stuff associated with that label I REALLY don't agree with, even though it's not what that label is supposed to be about.
I also don't like it from an etymological perspective, but that's a seperate issue.
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It is stupid to try to make the argument that feminists should rebrand themselves as egalitarians cause in 5 years that word will be viewed in exactly the same way feminism is now. Yet this is a frequent comment made whenever feminism is brought up. Along with the argument that men can't be feminists and a whole bunch of other bull****. Basically my issue is that this topic has just been an excuse for people who don't want things to change to trot out the same tired old argument one more time.
Let me sum up.
I don't believe that the sexes are currently even close to equal.
I believe that this current inequality hurts both men and women.
I think that therefore people of both sexes should be striving to redress that balance.
I think that people who claim that the above isn't true or isn't necessary are deluding themselves.
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Let me sum up.
Now let me sum it up.
1. I believe fighting racial or gender inequality by reverse discrimination is wrong. Two wrongs dont make a right.
2. Significant number of feminists (but not all) advocate for things like quotas. This makes feminism problematic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/07/world/europe/german-law-requires-more-women-on-corporate-boards.html?_r=1
3. Even those who do not want outright quotas often support other forms of affirmative action, such as taking race/gender into account when candidates are equal, or adding points for race/gender during college admissions. This is almost as bad as quotas and another reason why feminism is problematic.
4. There may be some good feminists who are real egalitarians and want a colorblind and gender-blind approach for hiring/college etc, but they are very much a minority IMHO.
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It is stupid to try to make the argument that feminists should rebrand themselves as egalitarians cause in 5 years that word will be viewed in exactly the same way feminism is now. Yet this is a frequent comment made whenever feminism is brought up. Along with the argument that men can't be feminists and a whole bunch of other bull****. Basically my issue is that this topic has just been an excuse for people who don't want things to change to trot out the same tired old argument one more time.
Either feminism needs a reformation, or the term feminism needs to be forever qualified with some prefix in order to be used, or the different branches of feminism need to get a non-prefix name to more easily distinguish themselves from their root (i.e. feminism). Until one of those things occur, this discussion will happen repeatedly.
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2. Significant number of feminists (but not all) advocate for things like quotas. This makes feminism problematic.
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/07/world/europe/german-law-requires-more-women-on-corporate-boards.html?_r=1
No, this makes those particular feminists problematic.
Also, have you actually looked at that particular law, and what the impact will be? It'll be about 180 positions that will now have to be filled by women. 180 jobs, in all of Germany. Truly, these are dark times, when 180 men who would be qualified for those positions will have to look elsewhere for job opportunities. Whatever will they do?
4. There may be some good feminists who are real egalitarians and want a colorblind and gender-blind approach for hiring/college etc, but they are very much a minority IMHO.
That's because you don't make an effort to figure out what the actual mainstream position is, but just get outraged at whatever the conservative internet drags up from the fringes.
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Yep. Maslo's position is exactly what I pointed out earlier happening with racists. No one becomes a racist because of affirmative action. Racists use affirmative action to justify their racism.
Maslo hasn't taken an objective look at things and decided that because of the evidence feminists are a problem. He's decided he doesn't like feminists and then looked for evidence to justify that point of view. That's why his arguments are so threadbare (oh no! 180 men can't have a particular job!). The whole argument about quotas is pretty stupid anyway cause even if they did exist and feminists backed them, they'd change very little in the fields they'd be instituted. But what is important is that they can be used to fool people into thinking that their arguments about sexism aren't actually based on a deep rooted sexism.
That's why almost every single argument on this thread can be found 10-15 years ago when talking about affirmative action based on race.
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Let me sum up.
4. There may be some good feminists who are real egalitarians and want a colorblind and gender-blind approach for hiring/college etc, but they are very much a minority IMHO.
But colourblindness and genderblindness is unrealistic. Let's tackle colourbrlindness specifically: In the US, for instance, all african-americans share a common heritage: They are the descendants of slaves. They are the descendants of people who suffered from an almost nazi-like racial seperation that lasted untill the 60s, and the effects of which persists trough this date due to many people being raised during those times still being in charge of a lot of institutions. Another big factor is that the primary means of succes is still inheritance: The money your parents have determines which schools you can go to, which healthcare you have access to, etc.
So if you, for your job application, meet two people who are completely equally qualified, one of which is black and one of which is white, the black person would, statistically speaking, be a more logical choice: Due to institutionalized racism being such a strong factor, the black person has had to work a lot harder to get into that position.
A completely meritocratic society is what one should ultimately strive for, but ignoring the reality that our societies are not meritocratic does not make it more meritocratic. You'd have to recognize that there are people who have had the odds stacked against them by the system, and thanks to our troubled history these odds are seperated by race because that's how the systems were built.
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Here's some interesting data (https://peerj.com/preprints/1733.pdf).
This article presents an investigation of gender bias in open source by studying how software
developers respond to pull requests, proposed changes to a software project’s code, documentation,
or other resources. A successfully accepted, or ‘merged,’ example is shown in Figure 1.
We investigate whether pull requests are accepted at different rates for self-identified women
compared to self-identified men. For brevity, we will call these developers ‘women’ and ‘men,’
respectively. Our methodology is to analyze historical GitHub data to evaluate whether pull
requests from women are accepted less often. While other open source communities exist, we
chose to study GitHub because it is the largest (4), claiming to have over 12 million collaborators
across 31 million software repositories.
From the conclusions:
To summarize this paper’s observations:
1. Women are more likely to have pull requests accepted than men.
2. Women continue to have high acceptance rates as they gain experience.
3. Women’s pull requests are less likely to serve an immediate project need.
4. Women’s changes are larger.
5. Women’s acceptance rates are higher across programming languages.
6. Women have lower acceptance rates as outsiders when they are identifiable as women.
We next consider several alternative theories that may explain these observations as a whole.
Given observations 1–5, one theory is that a bias against men exists, that is, a form of
reverse discrimination. However, this theory runs counter to prior work (e.g., (13)), as well
as observation 6. With 6, we observed that when a contributor’s gender is identifiable, men’s
acceptance rates surpass women’s.
Another theory is that women are taking fewer risks than men. This theory is consistent with
Byrnes’ meta-analysis of risk-taking studies, which generally find women are more risk-averse
than men (20). However, this theory is not consistent with observation 4, because women tend
to change more lines of code, and changing more lines of code correlates with an increased risk
of introducing bugs (21).
Another theory is that women in open source are, on average, more competent than men.
This theory is consistent with observations 1–5. To be consistent with observation 6, we need
to explain why women’s pull request acceptance rate drops when their gender is apparent. An
addition to this theory that explains observation 6, and the anecdote describe in the introduction,
is that discrimination against women does exist in open source.
Assuming this final theory is the best one, why might it be that women are more competent,
on average? One explanation is survivorship bias: as women continue their formal and informal
education in computer science, the less competent ones may change fields or otherwise drop
out. Then, only more competent women remain by the time they begin to contribute to open
source. In contrast, less competent men may continue. While women do switch away from
STEM majors at a higher rate than men, they also have a lower drop out rate then men (22),
so the difference between attrition rates of women and men in college appears small. Another
explanation is self-selection bias: the average woman in open source may be better prepared
than the average man, which is supported by the finding that women in open source are more
likely to hold Master’s and PhD degrees (1). Yet another explanation is that women are held
to higher performance standards than men, an explanation supported by Gorman and Kmec’s
analysis of the general workforce (23).
In closing, as anecdotes about gender bias persist, it’s imperative that we use big data to
better understand the interaction between genders. While our big data study does not definitely
prove that differences between gendered interactions are caused by bias among individuals, the
trends observed in this paper are troubling. The frequent refrain that open source is a pure
meritocracy must be reexamined.
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Also, have you actually looked at that particular law, and what the impact will be? It'll be about 180 positions that will now have to be filled by women. 180 jobs, in all of Germany. Truly, these are dark times, when 180 men who would be qualified for those positions will have to look elsewhere for job opportunities. Whatever will they do?
Even one job is too much. It is about the principle. Either you support equality, or you support female supremacy. And as it turns out, most feminists support the latter.
That's because you don't make an effort to figure out what the actual mainstream position is, but just get outraged at whatever the conservative internet drags up from the fringes.
You do realize this is the law in Germany? Cant get more mainstream than that. And similar laws supporting either quotas or other forms of affirmative action exist all over the US and western Europe. This is the mainstream feminist position, period. Feminists who support egalitarian positions are very much a minority.
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Also, have you actually looked at that particular law, and what the impact will be? It'll be about 180 positions that will now have to be filled by women. 180 jobs, in all of Germany. Truly, these are dark times, when 180 men who would be qualified for those positions will have to look elsewhere for job opportunities. Whatever will they do?
Even one job is too much. It is about the principle. Either you support equality, or you support female supremacy. And as it turns out, most feminists support the latter.
My next question then is whether you have actually read the law in question (https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgrembg_2015/index.html). I am guessing that you (or the sources you cite) haven't; After all, proper research would detract from getting outraged.
So, let's do a quick review then. What does this law actually do?
Let's start with Article 2, which governs the law's applicability:
Dieses Gesetz gilt für alle Gremien nach § 3 Nummer 1 und 2, für die der Bund Mitglieder bestimmen kann.
Es gilt nicht für die Ernennung der Mitglieder der Bundesregierung, nicht für die Gerichtsbarkeit und nicht für
Gremienmitglieder, die in Ausübung gesetzlich verbürgter Unabhängigkeit bestimmt werden.
Translation: "This law is applicable for all bodies defined in Article 3, Sections 1 and 2, for which the federal government has the ability to appoint members. It is not applicable for the appointment of members of the federal government, not for bodies of the judiciary and not for bodies falling under the rule of legislative independence."
This already limits the law massively. Companies in which the federal government doesn't hold a stake are exempt.
Article 3 is concerned with defining the terms used; Section 1 defines supervisory boards, Section 2 covers other "important" groups (basically any other group where the government has nominating rights), Section 3 defines entities of the federal government, and Section 4 is a catchall term for cases where the federal government nominates a member of a group not falling under Sections 1 - 3.
Now we come to the meat of the matter, the actual text of the law.
(1) In einem Aufsichtsgremium müssen ab dem 1. Januar 2016 mindestens 30 Prozent der durch den Bund zu bestimmenden Mitglieder Frauen und mindestens 30 Prozent Männer sein. Der Mindestanteil ist bei erforderlich werdenden Neuwahlen, Berufungen und Entsendungen zur Besetzung einzelner oder mehrerer Sitze zu beachten und sukzessive zu steigern. Bestehende Mandate können bis zu ihrem vorgesehenen Ende wahrgenommen werden. Stehen dem Bund insgesamt höchstens zwei Gremiensitze zu, sind die Sätze 1 bis 3 nicht anzuwenden. Bestimmen mehrere Institutionen des Bundes nach § 3 Nummer 3 Mitglieder eines Gremiums, ist die Gesamtzahl der zu bestimmenden Mitglieder maßgeblich. Bei den Berechnungen ist zur nächsten vollen Personenzahl aufzurunden.
(2) Es ist das Ziel, ab dem 1. Januar 2018 die in Absatz 1 genannten Anteile auf 50 Prozent zu erhöhen. Steht dem Bund insgesamt eine ungerade Anzahl an Gremiensitzen zu, darf das Ungleichgewicht zwischen Frauen und Männern nur einen Sitz betragen.
(3) Bei einer Unterschreitung der Vorgaben nach den Absätzen 1 und 2 ist das Bundesministerium für Familie, Senioren, Frauen und Jugend unverzüglich zu unterrichten; die Unterschreitung ist zu begründen.
Translation:
(1) Starting January 1st, 2016, the federal government is bound to ensure that in cases where it has to nominate members of a body, its nominations will be comprised of at least 30% women and at least 30% men. These minimal shares are to be considered whenever new nominations, appointments and secondments have to be made and shall be increased over time. Existing mandates shall be valid until their terms end regularly. If the number of seats under the purview of the federal government does not exceed 2, Sections 1 and 3 shall not be applicable. Should multiple federal agencies have nominating power, nominations should be made based on the total number of positions the federal government can nominate.
(2) The goal is to increase the minimal shares defined in Section 1 to 50%, starting January 1st, 2018. If the federal government can only nominate an uneven number of seats, it shall ensure that the imbalance does not exceed one seat.
(3) If the goals and conditions defined in Sections 1 and 2 cannot be met, the Ministry for Families, Elderly, Women and Youth is to be informed immediately and the reasoning behind this decision is to be explained.
So, what do we have here? A quota for women, yes. But also a quota for men, strangely enough. And let's keep in mind that this only covers the behaviour of the federal government, not that of private actors.
And that's the law in its entirety, pretty much. There are additional provisions for the gathering and disseminations of regular reports on the topic, but I figure those are unimportant to the discussion here.
In conclusion, then, we see that these are rules the federal government has set for itself; It's not applicable to the vast majority of positions in the german working world. Also note that there are no penalties for noncompliance defined here.
You do realize this is the law in Germany? Cant get more mainstream than that. And similar laws supporting either quotas or other forms of affirmative action exist all over the US and western Europe. This is the mainstream feminist position, period. Feminists who support egalitarian positions are very much a minority.
A 50/50 split sounds plenty egalitarian to me, honestly.