Why Kids Love Garbage Trucks • Hacker News Board

Re: Why Kids Love Garbage Trucks

#131

Post by kbutler » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 4:14 PM UTC

dhshahsndeisjwn wrote: post #95

smush wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wow, parent comment and this one summing up what often turn into X000 comment flame wars that dang has to bag up and send out to the flag truck, now that is a feat of summarization. > Overwhelmingly the feminist position that's pushed to the fore is "any lack of equal representation of females in a roles that're desirable is down to patriarchal actions and unrelated to any natural differences between the sexes; which…

I'd have more sympathy for critiques of feminism (and similar policies designed to help minorities) if even basic indices of equality like pay for equal work were fixed, and there wasn't clear evidence of discrimination on grounds of gender in interviewing, police treatment etc.

If you account for education, experience, and hours worked, equal pay for equal work is already here (or the pay gap is reversed for asian women).

Education and experience bring it to 98% parity overall, with asian women getting to 102% parity. https://www.payscale.com/data/gender-pay-gap

"job market forces and gender preferences in relation to marital status and parenthood could explain almost all of the pay gap. Most of the gap is not the result of gender discrimination" https://towardsdatascience.com/is-the-difference-in-work-hou...

"Because men tend to work more hours than women, especially if they are married, and even more if they are married parents, this could explain a large portion of the pay gap."

"As years pass, men accumulate more practice and training than women. The job market pays more if the worker has more experience. In other words, the gap widens as men acquire more experience than women."

Re: Why Kids Love Garbage Trucks

#132

Post by magduf » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 4:18 PM UTC

dhshahsndeisjwn wrote: post #96

Pigo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody that is not making room for girls to play with race cars, if they want, was is a jerk in the past, present, and future. Unless they are Betty Draper, I can't imagine a parent that would take a toy away from their kid.

Except that many girls are made to feel abnormal for expressing an interest in stereotypically male activities (as are boys in reverse). The key is to acknowledge first that our society is incredibly gendered (and racist) in ways we often oblivious to.

I think that, these days, in western countries, it's much worse for boys. Girls are still actively shamed for stereotypically male activities within extremely conservative and religious groups, but outside that, there's been a big push to get girls interested in "male" things.

The same is absolutely not true for boys. Just look at what happens to a little boy if he decides he wants to wear girls' clothes or play with dolls. Whereas a girl wearing pants and playing with trucks will, at worst, be called a tomboy.

Re: Why Kids Love Garbage Trucks

#133

Post by magduf » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 4:20 PM UTC

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #88

olau wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Pink used to be a boy's color. I don't think your child is interested in jewellery and fancy hats for the same reason as a grown up. My children of both genders enjoy that stuff too, to the point where my none of my wife's jewellery is in one piece. One thing I've noticed is that I can't look at them without a cultural confirmation bias. So I've completely lost faith that anyone can judge these things without a strin…

>Pink used to be a boy's color. // Which shows nothing. The natural allure might be for girls [in general] to go with pink, and the use of pink for boys (is/was it something to do with hunting?) might have been pure social conditioning. Aside: Are their examples of paintings showing boys in pink? The only historical "pink" I know of is "hunting pinks" which are bright-red. I imagine we're only talking "aristocratic b…

Nope. Historically, pink was considered a masculine color, because it's a shade of red. It was like this for centuries, until the 20th century in western nations.

Re: Why Kids Love Garbage Trucks

#134

Post by shantly » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 4:20 PM UTC

ralusek wrote: post #39

skavi wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are you perhaps discounting the societal influences pushing your kids towards their respective interests? If they view any amount of advertising or interact with other children who do, for example, they could already have ideas about what is "appropriate" for them to like.

Newborn babies exhibit differences, by sex and on average, regarding what captures their interests. EDIT: I looked into this more and could only find studies on 9 months old, which is potentially old enough to argue for socialization, although the studies obviously tried to control for that.

It's probably hard to get much meaningful info out of kids in the under-6-month range because their senses, including eyesight, tend to be, to use the technical term, shit.

Re: Why Kids Love Garbage Trucks

#135

Post by magduf » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 4:21 PM UTC

jacobush wrote: post #82

wisty wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder if there's some social constraints that babies naturally seem to rebel against (or at least be less interested in). Cooks used to be mostly women, now they're mostly men. Accountants used to be mostly men, now they're mostly women. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2016/03/a-visual-history-of-g... Pink was once for boys. On the other hand it seems that infant chimps and rhesus monkeys play with gendered toys -…

Follow the money. Where more money is to made at a given time, find the men.

Programming is a good example here. It used to be women's work, mainly because it was relegated to women (men didn't want to do it, and it was seen as not that important). Now it's reversed; there's lots of money in it.

Re: Why Kids Love Garbage Trucks

#136

Post by shantly » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 4:26 PM UTC

gadders wrote: post #49

KC8ZKF wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Everybody hates a tourist.

I think if you pull your weight, you would earn some measure of respect.

Yeah, I'm pretty sure most folks doing "real" work don't care who you are as long as you show up on time, get shit done, and aren't (the wrong kind of) an asshole. And the last part's negotiable.

Re: Why Kids Love Garbage Trucks

#137

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 4:37 PM UTC

magduf wrote: post #132

dhshahsndeisjwn wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that many girls are made to feel abnormal for expressing an interest in stereotypically male activities (as are boys in reverse). The key is to acknowledge first that our society is incredibly gendered (and racist) in ways we often oblivious to.

I think that, these days, in western countries, it's much worse for boys. Girls are still actively shamed for stereotypically male activities within extremely conservative and religious groups, but outside that, there's been a big push to get girls interested in "male" things. The same is absolutely not true for boys. Just look at what happens to a little boy if he decides he wants to wear girls' clothes or play with…

[deleted]

Re: Why Kids Love Garbage Trucks

#138

Post by Drakim » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 4:40 PM UTC

dhshahsndeisjwn wrote: post #97

Drakim wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, that's assuming that genes are all maximally expressed from the moment somebody is born, and that nothing can lie dormant, so if we don't see the behavior right away it must have been "added later" by culture. I don't think that's a safe assumption to make.

> I don't think that's a safe assumption to make. I agree, but the reality is we don't know. Also there's evidence that cultural norms do substantially shape our opportunities (e.g. Denmark vs Saudi Arabia) and we should be mindful of this always. This cuts both ways too — men in Scandinavia are much more likely to be involved in child rearing through choice, and this is something men in other cultures miss out on.

Oh yes, I never meant to imply that nature vs nurture has some important moral implications. Ultimately it doesn't matter if something is the result of nature or nurture, we wouldn't let people murder if there was a "increased murder likelihood gene" because our genes does not decide what is correct.

The real fallacy has always been people who think that if something can be proven to be nurture rather than nature, that means it's "naturally right" and should thus be encouraged, and deviancy from that norm "corrected".

It's totally okay for boys to play with dolls even if it turns out nature makes boys favor toy cars over dolls on average.

Re: Why Kids Love Garbage Trucks

#139

Post by cjblomqvist » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 4:52 PM UTC

kenforthewin wrote: post #98

pbhjpbhj wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's the correct way to see things but it's contrary to public policies that say things like "there are less girls doing physics, so we're going to make quotas to get more girls doing physics". That's not supporting individual propensities at all. Overwhelmingly the feminist position that's pushed to the fore is "any lack of equal representation of females in a roles that're desirable is down to patriarchal actions…

This take disingenuously ignores the fact that society has forced gender roles since the beginning. Policies like that aren't an attempt to disregard nature, they're an attempt to undo some of the damage that has been done by society.

I think this along with the two parent comments sums up the current challenge with feminism. Often things are made and optimized for the majority for natural reasons (efficiency). How do we the make (equal) room for the 5%? Equal rules tend to not create an equal environment, since it sure to natural reasons is skewed.

PS. As pointed out by another comment, there's of course a significant road we have to travel just to get to the baseline, like equal pay for equal work.

Re: Why Kids Love Garbage Trucks

#140

Post by chongli » Tue, Dec 10, 2019, 4:54 PM UTC

dhshahsndeisjwn wrote: post #96

Pigo wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Anybody that is not making room for girls to play with race cars, if they want, was is a jerk in the past, present, and future. Unless they are Betty Draper, I can't imagine a parent that would take a toy away from their kid.

Except that many girls are made to feel abnormal for expressing an interest in stereotypically male activities (as are boys in reverse). The key is to acknowledge first that our society is incredibly gendered (and racist) in ways we often oblivious to.

Except that many girls are made to feel abnormal

How much of that is due to the efforts of men or boys? Or how much is due to bullying by other girls in middle school and high school?

As far as I can tell, schools have put in enormous effort to stop boys from fighting each other. I can’t find much evidence of their efforts to stop girls from bullying each other by spreading rumours. Girls are highly susceptible to peer pressure, particularly from other girls.