Feminism discussion

[-Cynthia-]

A point on affirmative action- do people support veterans' preference for job hiring? As in, on selection tests for some federal and state government jobs, veterans are given additional 'points' on their examination compared to non veterans. Was interested in seeing people's views on that, since frequently people that are against affirmative action are for veterans' preference, despite the similarities.

[Phoenix Wright]

yeah, but race matters. also, how is the narrative any different really? people are just gonna look at poor people and explain they are where they are because they're poor.

[Life]

i understand you have libertarian ideals, but pulling oneself up from the bootstraps is not what should be expected of everyone in existence.

No? We shouldn't work on a meritocracy? Kinda absurd if you ask me.

Edited September 20, 2016 by Deplorable Pepe

[Phoenix Wright]

the bootstraps of a white male born in the suburbs are a lot nicer than a minority's from detroit.

hell, my bootstraps were a lot nicer than some of my neighbors in compton.

Edited September 20, 2016 by Phoenix Wright

[Life]

the bootstraps of a white male born in the suburbs are a lot nicer than a minority's from detroit.

hell, my bootstraps were a lot nicer than some of my neighbors in compton.

I call bullshit on that.

Poor is poor. The colour of your skin doesn't matter. A poor white kid in Detroit has no better shot at life than a poor black kid. In fact, AA screws the white kid.

Raising the level of basic education is much more important than lowering the standard to those who may not succeed.

If I have a solid 85 average across the board in high school, should I be given a spot at Yale rather than an Asian kid who averaged 90 because I'm black?

That's my favourite thing about AA. What about Asians?

Honestly, I think that is a racist argument. You are saying that black kids need a boost because they're black. And that they simply are not at the intellectual standards of white kids because of their skin colour.

Edited September 20, 2016 by Deplorable Pepe

[Time the Crestfallen]

My problem with AA is that because of it's existence, it doesn't feel like the government does enough for disadvantaged groups so that they don't need it. Maybe I'm missing something, but it seems like the government is perfectly okay to let black people (for example) flounder through elementary to high school as a result of poor socioeconomic income and only having access to poor schools and only start caring once they reach college-level education, give themselves a pat on the back for being so progressive and helpful, and then stop caring again while blacks go on to drop out at unacceptable rates.

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2015/09/public-school-funding-and-the-role-of-race/408085/

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/data-mine/2016/03/23/study-college-graduation-gap-between-blacks-whites-still-growing

http://www.jbhe.com/features/50_blackstudent_gradrates.html

http://fivethirtyeight.com/features/race-gap-narrows-in-college-enrollment-but-not-in-graduation

This applies to women as well. There's a big thing about getting more women into stem, but I can tell you for a fact that, out of 20~ students in my high-school chemistry class, only about 5 of them were women. I feel like if the government actually wanted the best results, they'd start at the earliest levels of education, giving increased funding to black-majority schools/launching programs to get women more interested in science at primary/middle school stages/whatever. But as it stands, they only really seem to care about getting people through the front doors of college and everything else doesn't matter.

[Life]

Your first point is spot on the money and I put that solely on Democrats who are elected by those communities.

Women don't usually want to go into hard sciences where they have to devote their lives to their jobs rather than raising a family.

I'm all for encouraging them to do so but just because there are 5/25 women in a class, that doesn't mean that women can't choose that class. It's more that they don't.

Correlation =/= Causation

Edited September 20, 2016 by Deplorable Pepe

[Time the Crestfallen]

Women don't usually want to go into hard sciences where they have to devote their lives to their jobs rather than raising a family.

I'm all for encouraging them to do so but just because there are 5/25 women in a class, that doesn't mean that women can't choose that class. It's more that they don't.

Correlation =/= Causation

That's not the point I was making. My point is that, like a lot of things to do with affirmative action (in my opinion), using it to get more women into STEM fields is extremely too late since you're pretty much deciding what course you want to take in high school by picking your subjects and that, if they want more women in STEM, they probably have to start at years 7-9.

Edited September 20, 2016 by The Blind Idiot God

[Lord Raven]

And why is that, then?

He didn't say they can't, he's saying they don't...

[Tryhard]

That's not the point I was making. My point is that, like a lot of things to do with affirmative action (in my opinion), using it to get more women into STEM fields is extremely too late since you're pretty much deciding what course you want to take in high school by picking your subjects and that, if they want more women in STEM, they probably have to start at years 7-9.

Pretty much. There was no women in my high school computer science class. In university there was about 5 out of 60. Pretty dismal.

One thing I always wondered is if the insistence that STEM fields are terrible (even if it isn't necessarily true) for women has adversely affected women wanting to pursue that path, or if it could be said that that insistence is absolutely true.

[Lord Raven]

I think part of it is depending on the field. I feel like the more life science-esque fields have more women than Physics or computer science.

also my physics grad department is like 1/5 women, which corresponds to 15 grads, and there was one woman in my graduating class in physics/5 over a span of three years. I remember in undergrad Biochemical Engineering seemed like 50/50 men/women but the other engineering types were not nearly as favorable.

[Res]

I'd argue that men and woman simply had different roles to play. The right to vote was only afforded to land owning citizens and those registered for the draft of which men were the overwhelming the majority due to men being expected to be the breadwinners. The few woman that were land owners, could vote. Men could work and earn money with less scrutiny, but they also put themselves at risk working dangerous jobs and had to spend less time with their children. Woman were kept away from the workforce because the ability to reproduce was simply held at a far higher value than it originally was.

A lot of the laws varied by country, so to focus on the U.S.:

- women were actually barred from owning property full stop until the 1840s. After that, it was only single women who could own property - rights automatically transferred to their husbands upon marriage.

- white women did not gain full voting rights until 1920. (Voting rights for women of color came much later).

- a lot of women worked; really, it's only ever been upper class women who've been able to stay at home. Women were usually barred from professional white collar work, but many women were housekeepers/maids, laundry women, farm workers (especially pioneer families; everyone had to work hard!), etc. To be honest, a lot of work prior to the use of a lot of modern technology was hard and back-breaking for everyone concerned.

- there are a whole lot of smaller rights that weren't gained until much later; for example, marital rape was not illegal in all 50 states until 1993. Until 1977 in California, a wife wishing to prosecute her husband for assault and battery had to suffer more grievous injury than she would from a stranger.

- yes, a lot of women's rights were confined because of their ability to bear children. But the same lack of rights extended to single and childless women. There wasn't a choice.

- all these laws were proposed, written and voted on by men, and that's really the key. You can argue that men also had it rough in various ways, which they did, but it wasn't because women voted for it to be that way.

An example would've been the draft. Men can be punished harshly for not registering for the draft, not being able to reap government benefits, could technically face jail time, while woman never needed to register for the draft, simply because they were consicered more valuable than men. (Woman and children first) wasn't a term coined because men were just privileged.

Draft restrictions were set in place by men, too.

All remnents of a society long past. Men weren't given any more flexibility than woman were in terms of gender roles, both were locked rigidly into the system.

Right, but... Evidently it's still a problem for many people today, even if the laws have changed. Not all of society has moved on. And women ultimately can't break men out of their stereotypes if the men don't also put in the work.

That's the impression I get, at least in first-world countries. Women had fewer rights than men historically, so feminism has been about addressing the ways in which women aren't on equal footing with men. For men however, we were in a, for lack of a better word, privileged position years ago but in many ways, it's been a lateral movement in terms of equality and the non-shitty side of the MRM is about addressing the ways in which men are stuck in the same place they were 50/60 years ago.

Well, the majority of feminists anyway.

For example, there's this piece from the daily mail about how being a 50/50 custody mother is bad for mothers and how fathers winning equal access to children is a bad thing:

Also this:

There's also a lot of pressure on men's only spaces to be more open, but women's spaces are allowed to remain exclusive.

In the Daily Mail piece (surprisingly well written for the Mail), I don't think it was arguing for more women to have custody, though. The women were detailing their heartache but weren't calling for amendments to their custody situation. I mean, if I divorced, and I only had my kids during the week, yes, that would absolutely be very hard for me, especially as the weekends are the time when I really get to spend quality time with my kids. I think I could be sorrowful and self-pitying while also recognizing that the custody agreement was fair. And the article was in the Femail section, so it's aimed at women; I would expect the article to have input from both sides if it was published elsewhere, though. I actually read the article more as a caution about the realities of divorce than as a complaint about how custody is awarded. The professionals quoted gave quite a fair assessment and didn't say that it was wrong when a father is granted equal custody.

The second article - I guess that's what I get for making a sweeping generalization. Okay, so most of feminism is not about taking away men's rights. I concede that there probably are some small pockets who do, but they must be pretty rare.

Rezzy - yeah, definitely. I plan to always be there to offer my children a ride home, too. And I will caution about drinking too much and other things, although it'll be as much for health reasons as anything.

One thing I always wondered is if the insistence that STEM fields are terrible (even if it isn't necessarily true) for women has adversely affected women wanting to pursue that path, or if it could be said that that insistence is absolutely true.

One possible factor is that impostor syndrome is thought to be pretty common amongst professional women. There's a study here, which looked at societal stereotyping and family dynamics as a reason for this.

Has anyone read up on the differences trans men and trans women encounter after transitioning? I've found it really fascinating.

[Time the Crestfallen]

In the Daily Mail piece (surprisingly well written for the Mail), I don't think it was arguing for more women to have custody, though. The women were detailing their heartache but weren't calling for amendments to their custody situation. I mean, if I divorced, and I only had my kids during the week, yes, that would absolutely be very hard for me, especially as the weekends are the time when I really get to spend quality time with my kids. I think I could be sorrowful and self-pitying while also recognizing that the custody agreement was fair. And the article was in the Femail section, so it's aimed at women; I would expect the article to have input from both sides if it was published elsewhere, though. I actually read the article more as a caution about the realities of divorce than as a complaint about how custody is awarded. The professionals quoted gave quite a fair assessment and didn't say that it was wrong when a father is granted equal custody.

The second article - I guess that's what I get for making a sweeping generalization. Okay, so most of feminism is not about taking away men's rights. I concede that there probably are some small pockets who do, but they must be pretty rare.

Perhaps, but I still find the lack of empathy in that article to be absolutely disgusting. Not only saying that the growing trend of 50/50 parenthood is agony for mothers, completely ignoring the fact that even perfectly good fathers have wound up having no custody of their children, but going so far as to say that "the consequences for children are as yet untold", which has some...interesting implications.

I agree that it's a small minority though.

[Thor Odinson]

I didn't want to get involved here but as the resident computer scientist/tech industry professional who happens to be a Chinese woman, women in stem is kinda my thing

I have not done any studies on this, so take these anecdotally. From my experiences, Chinese people are more likely to have women in STEM fields--given that there's more Chinese women in my Computer Science graduate courses than white men. Despite that, there's still a prevailing attitude even in China that women in stem is undesirable. I sometimes hang around the Chinese side of the internet, and there's a saying that roughly translates to "there are no beautiful women in STEM". Even my own mom--and she was coming not out of malice but just misguided social stereotypes--asked me, a few years back when I was still in undergrad she asked me if I was holding up alright, that "girls had a disadvantage at math". My own mom! I mean, she's seen my report card through the years, I've always excelled in math and kinda sucked at humanities (comparatively). And even then somehow she still had that idea, and somehow she thought that applied to me, out of all people. And this isn't to say that she's a bad mom or anything, but rather the societal ideas of women in stem is is a fairly negative one. It's certainly not inviting for most women.

I can't blame women from not wanting to study compsci. Society tells girls that doing math is "unfeminine" and makes you unattractive and when there's about a 10 to 1 ratio of men to women in my field, sometimes it's not the aptitude, but the environment. I don't think I'm that special being good at code and also female. If given actual encouragement, especially from an young age especially when they're most impressionable, I'm confident many more women who have the aptitude could excel in CS.

I mean hell, I work in an office of roughly 30 combined full-time devs and interns. Out of the full-time devs, I'm the only woman. Out of all the devs, there's 4 women. A little over 10%. I feel the lack of women in this field makes it discouraging for women looking to join CS, which in turn just feeds the cycle of having very little women in CS.

Edited September 20, 2016 by Thor Odinson

[Rezzy]

Rezzy - yeah, definitely. I plan to always be there to offer my children a ride home, too. And I will caution about drinking too much and other things, although it'll be as much for health reasons as anything.

One possible factor is that impostor syndrome is thought to be pretty common amongst professional women. There's a study here, which looked at societal stereotyping and family dynamics as a reason for this.

Has anyone read up on the differences trans men and trans women encounter after transitioning? I've found it really fascinating.

One could also say that raising kids is "work".

Yeah, I'm not big on drinking in general, but my family has problems with alcoholism.

That's article looks interesting. I don't have time to read the whole thing, since I'm sort of supposed to be doing paperwork right now, but I'm not familiar with imposter syndrome. One might say that I've achieved quite a bit, but I still suffer from a low self-image at times. I don't want to go into the whole Rezzy-life-story again, but I was treated like I was stupid when I was a kid and was bullied quite a bit. I kind of pushed myself to make the most of myself, even if I sometimes have doubts about myself, because I didn't want to feel weak and inferior forever.

I didn't want to get involved here but as the resident computer scientist/tech industry professional who happens to be a Chinese woman, women in stem is kinda my thing

I hope you don't take offense, but you're a woman? I always thought you were a guy, but only because you have your gender listed as male.

Edited September 20, 2016 by Rezzy

[Thor Odinson]

I hope you don't take offense, but you're a woman? I always thought you were a guy, but only because you have your gender listed as male.

Yeah. I display my gender as male because years ago some creep tried to sexually harass me here and I gave him a beatdown but I don't have the energy to deal with that bullshit so I changed my gender to male. I no longer have to deal with creepers. Most SF veterans know who I am, however.

It's not too much of a secret around here, as long as nobody sends me lewd shit in my inbox again I'm okay.

Edited September 20, 2016 by Thor Odinson

[Crysta]

Perhaps, but I still find the lack of empathy in that article to be absolutely disgusting. Not only saying that the growing trend of 50/50 parenthood is agony for mothers, completely ignoring the fact that even perfectly good fathers have wound up having no custody of their children, but going so far as to say that "the consequences for children are as yet untold", which has some...interesting implications.

I agree that it's a small minority though.

I have a hard time seeing a "perfectly good father" being completely denied access to their children tbh.

[Time the Crestfallen]

I have a hard time seeing a "perfectly good father" being completely denied access to their children tbh.

Custody ≠ Visitation

[Life]

Thor, thanks for bringing in your own personal anecdote. I think it explains the situation perfectly.

Is there a social stigma against women going into hard sciences? Probably in a lot of cultures but much less so in Western countries. But those Western countries don't limit women from doing it. Women choose not to for a variety of reasons and social stigma may very well be a big reason.

I don't believe that having less women in hard sciences when no actual barriers exist is a bad thing. For the same reason why less men go into studies such as nursing. Rather, the people who go into those sciences choose to do it themselves, regardless of gender. And those who choose to do it of their own volition will probably have a higher chance of succeeding.

This is why I get annoyed when feminists state that this is a bad thing. Mostly because they then argue that women should have lower standards than men to get in... which is sexist against men. Again, equity based on gender or race is inherently sexist/racist.

The irony astounds me.

I have a hard time seeing a "perfectly good father" being completely denied access to their children tbh.

If a woman claims in court that she is scared of her husband, judge usually rules in favour of the mother regarding kids when no evidence to prove otherwise can be properly brought.

Check out Karen Straughn on this stuff, she's rather informative.

Edited September 20, 2016 by Deplorable Pepe

[Rezzy]

Yeah. I display my gender as male because years ago some creep tried to sexually harass me here and I gave him a beatdown but I don't have the energy to deal with that bullshit so I changed my gender to male. I no longer have to deal with creepers. Most SF veterans know who I am, however.

It's not too much of a secret around here, as long as nobody sends me lewd shit in my inbox again I'm okay.

Sorry to hear that. And, hopefully, this comes across, not in a creepy way, but I think Chinese women in STEM are plenty attractive. I had a Chinese girl in my P-Chem class, who I thought might be interested in going out, but she said she wasn't into girls (or just me, or was in denial. I didn't pursue it after that).

I have a hard time seeing a "perfectly good father" being completely denied access to their children tbh.

Custody hearing can get heated and is can sometimes be up to who has the better lawyer.

Thor, thanks for bringing in your own personal anecdote. I think it explains the situation perfectly.

Is there a social stigma against women going into hard sciences? Probably in a lot of cultures but much less so in Western countries. But those Western countries don't limit women from doing it. Women choose not to for a variety of reasons and social stigma may very well be a big reason.

I don't believe that having less women in hard sciences when no actual barriers exist is a bad thing. For the same reason why less men go into studies such as nursing. Rather, the people who go into those sciences choose to do it themselves, regardless of gender. And those who choose to do it of their own volition will probably have a higher chance of succeeding.

I think there are definite social stigmas on certain professions for lack of a better word. Both the anti-woman ones mentioned and some male ones as well. The fact that Murse is a word for male nurses shows this. I have an uncle who's a nurse.

I think that really, it's just something that society will have to change gradually by more people becoming open minded, but I don't think that legislation is a good way to effect that change.

Edited September 20, 2016 by Rezzy

[Rezzy]

Sorry for the double post. I thought I was editing my last post.

Edited September 20, 2016 by Rezzy

[Time the Crestfallen]

I don't believe that having less women in hard sciences when no actual barriers exist is a bad thing. For the same reason why less men go into studies such as nursing. Rather, the people who go into those sciences choose to do it themselves, regardless of gender. And those who choose to do it of their own volition will probably have a higher chance of succeeding.

You say that as if the only barriers are things that actually prevent them from doing so. I find that self-imposed barriers can often be just as powerful as actual ones, self-imposed barriers such as the belief that STEM fields are all sexist and women enrolling in them will be treated like shit. The 'physical' barriers aren't there anymore, but what about the social and self-imposed barriers? Do you propose we just leave them be?

[Res]

One could also say that raising kids is "work".

Yeah, I'm not big on drinking in general, but my family has problems with alcoholism.

That's article looks interesting. I don't have time to read the whole thing, since I'm sort of supposed to be doing paperwork right now, but I'm not familiar with imposter syndrome. One might say that I've achieved quite a bit, but I still suffer from a low self-image at times. I don't want to go into the whole Rezzy-life-story again, but I was treated like I was stupid when I was a kid and was bullied quite a bit. I kind of pushed myself to make the most of myself, even if I sometimes have doubts about myself, because I didn't want to feel weak and inferior forever.

Same. I wasn't necessarily treated like I was stupid (I received a fair amount of academic recognition in high school particularly) - although having said that, my own younger brothers sometimes do treat me that way. I recently got into an argument while on holiday with my brother over that matter.

Perhaps, but I still find the lack of empathy in that article to be absolutely disgusting. Not only saying that the growing trend of 50/50 parenthood is agony for mothers, completely ignoring the fact that even perfectly good fathers have wound up having no custody of their children, but going so far as to say that "the consequences for children are as yet untold", which has some...interesting implications.

I agree that it's a small minority though.

I admit I missed/glossed over that line. I was trying to give my due attention to both articles but my eyes starting glazing over after a while. There are certainly plenty of great fathers out there who deserve more time with their children.

[Thor Odinson]

Mental/psychological/emotional barriers are definitely of valid impact, and this is how gender role/socialization works in the first place. My sister once didn't want a pair of sweatpants she deemed too "masculine" (even though it was a color most men I know likely would not wear). I personally do not care for gender roles one bit and most of my hobbies/personal presentation tend to be what society considers "masculine" anyway, so the pressure doesn't so much affect me---but that isn't to say I don't get pressured. China is a more sexist society than the west in general and I deal with sexist bullshit from Chinese people on a regular basis. I give them the metaphorical finger, but it would be very nice if they would just...not.

As far as STEM is concerned, and I'm speaking only for the subset of feminists I know (I do consider myself one, moderate, etc), we're not asking companies to hire unqualified employees. What we want is for STEM as a field to be less isolating for women, and actively seek out to interview more female candidates, but you know, if she's shit she's shit. To have more women in stem requires getting more women trained in the first place, and we want that.

For example, every semester we reach out to hire new interns from the university I went to, because every semester people graduate. We've only posted on the general Computer Science club facebook for recruitment historically, but were we to post a message on the Women in Computer Science club facebook to also recruit, that would be reaching out to more female candidates but it's not like we're specifically filtering out all those men on the much larger general group. And come actual hiring time, it's still whoever most qualified gets hired.

One thing is that girls are often socialized away from tech interests from a young age, and by university age there's a big discrepancy between the average woman and man in terms of advanced knowlege around a computer because of that, and it makes the starting bar higher for many women as a result of lack of exposure earlier on in life. I only know html/css when I went into college (though in my case it's not out of discouragement but I also did a lot of art so that took up my time too) and the learning curve was pretty fucking steep. I remember in my earlier classes where most of my other classmates have already taken AP Computer Science and know basic Java (my school didn't offer that) and I'm sitting there flailing around not knowing what to do. I remember thinking "was I in the wrong major?" many times while all my peers already have a working knowledge of programming basics and was doing a lot better than I did at the start.

I did succeed, but I pushed myself too hard and I only recently strongarmed my sleep schedule into something remotely reasonable-looking now that I'm out of school. At the risk of sounding arrogant I'm also not exactly an average student (given that I am 23 and have 3 degrees, one of them a masters) and English/communications isn't my strong suit but my point is it would be really nice if society would actively encourage women to code more, even if you don't go into tech coding is great to know and if you do, well, you can not suffer the steep-ass learning curve I did. Which also stops a lot of more average women from CS in the first place even though they still got the aptitude in them to become a perfectly fine programmer with enough work, people who are much less skilled as programmers than me get work all the time

Sorry to hear that. And, hopefully, this comes across, not in a creepy way, but I think Chinese women in STEM are plenty attractive. I had a Chinese girl in my P-Chem class, who I thought might be interested in going out, but she said she wasn't into girls (or just me, or was in denial. I didn't pursue it after that).

Haha, no creepiness taken. From what I've seen in my classes, and most of the women in my classes are Chinese (white women are super rare in my school's CS department, there's a lot of international students though) there's a wide range of presentation of women there. There's ones like me who honestly don't give a shit about being attractive anyway (but it's nice that my boyfriend thinks I am) and whose wardrobe would not look out of place on a guy, and then there's ones who really like to get dressed up even for class and anything in between. I think on average there might be more of us who value comfort over style but when we're up all night cramming code something's gonna give haha

wore pajamas to class represent

also: re: imposter syndrome: most definitely a thing. I just called myself above average in my above tl;dr and I still get it on a regular basis; work my ass off to get a combined bachelors/masters in 5 years? nope, still feels like a fraud

Edited September 21, 2016 by Thor Odinson

[Res]

Thor; case in point - you also mentioned that English/communications isn't your strong point, yet you write more coherently and intelligently than the vast majority of native English speakers.

I looked up Karen Straughan and I'm not going to watch YouTube videos (no sound) but apparently she relies on old data for many of her divorce court arguments.

Arguing over whether or not the courts demonstrate a bias (which, granted, I've already done quite a bit of) still makes me uneasy, though, because every case is just so personal. Although roughly equal numbers of men and women are victims of domestic abuse, women still make up the vast majority of domestic homicides. And domestic abuse is often really, really hard to prove until it's too late, so if the courts err in favor of protecting the scared partner, I'm ok with that.