71–80 of 112 posts
Paging Vivek Wadhwa to write an article about Immigrants' children doing well in STEM. (6 out of 20 finalists are Indian-American) [1] [1] http://www.google.com/events/sciencefair/finalists.html
I don't care if they won specifically because they were female. It's a sausage fest in the bay area. Time to get the women on board guys. They need to be part of the 'future' too.
>>Dr. Cerf said. "This is just a reminder that women are fully capable of doing same or better quality work than men can." I hope those those who needed a reminder about the capabilities of girls or women see this news. However, (and I realize this will be controversial) imo this result doesn't contradict the general notion that girls (in mainstream American culture) are discouraged (by societal and cultural pressure…
One possible reason for this is that in those countries science/engineering is often one of the few routes an educated women has available. I've only heard this anecdotally and haven't been able to research it, but it could be one factor.
edit: can we get a reddit-style "context" option? I want to link her to this comment, and display the two parent comments; if I just link to the 'grandparent', who knows where Scriptor's reply will end up.
The winning entry was for finding a way to overcome the resistance to a drug by cancer cells. I'm curious, how does a 17 year old get access to labs, chemicals, cell cultures required to conduct the study ? Is it common in US for students of this age to have access to such things ?
This is the problem I have with science fairs as "competitions". It is completely impossible to disentangle the contributions of the student from the opportunities given by their environment, so if you just judge the end result, of course the kids who happen to have access to university labs are going to get results that are miles beyond what a kid working in his parents' garage can accomplish. But that has, IMHO, very little to do with the individual. (Not to mention that kids whose parents are university faculty or similar, and thus generally pretty well off in society, will disproportionately get these chances.)
I stopped volunteering as a judge for the Santa Cruz science fair because I got so fed up with this bias.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'll accept that victims of violent crime are also more likely to be the perpetrators. I just don't see how that matters: They're still part of the demographic of "men" and still contributing sociological disadvantage to the population (viz. "Men are stupid muscly brutes"). There are disadvantages (and advantages), sociologically speaking, for both genders. I'm not arguing that women are equally enabled at present (I…
> As discrimination trends towards zero -- which I believe it is -- it's hard not to feel frustrated that cheer leading (pun not intended) is acceptable on one side but not the other. I guess our fundamental difference is how much discrimination we believe remains. You seem to think the disparity is small, justifying your frustration with female solidarity. I think the it is still very large. Most areas where men are…
Perhaps the social safety net steps in for women before they are driven to violent crime?
On topic:
I wish both genders would quit moralizing and start negotiating already. I can only feel so guilty before I stop listening.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> As discrimination trends towards zero -- which I believe it is -- it's hard not to feel frustrated that cheer leading (pun not intended) is acceptable on one side but not the other. I guess our fundamental difference is how much discrimination we believe remains. You seem to think the disparity is small, justifying your frustration with female solidarity. I think the it is still very large. Most areas where men are…
I would argue that while discrimination is still significant in the US. IMO, the magnitude of net discrimination is fairly small. It’s not hard to find cases where men have an advantage. However, being a Man is a horrible disadvantage in child custody battles. In the eyes of the law when two drunken people have sex it’s often assumed that the man took advantage of the situation etc. Men receive less support in cases…
Citation needed.
From what I've read, men who choose to contest custody, usually win. That's because he's likely making more money and is therefore in a better financial position to take care of the children.
Women usually get custody because men don't usually contest it. That's not to say that it doesn't come up. But men often trade the threat of a custody battle for other things in divorce proceedings.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
My point, in fact, was that the conflict is _over_ the perception of privilege. Indeed, it has to be. The corollary to your statement: >privileged groups have historically tended to perceive equality well before disadvantaged groups (and its true emergence). ... is that disadvantaged groups tend to perceive equality after its true emergence. Please disentangle the current context (gender) from this discussion so we m…
First, since it wasn't clear, my use of "you" in that last bit was rhetorical. Wasn't intending to address anyone in particular, sorry about that. But since you mention yourself, sure, let's talk that— What would you make of a heterosexual, cisgendered man saying that he doesn't really think people with non-standard gender identities are discriminated against? Again, that's not a taboo thing to say. He's not speaking…
So now that I'm a member of an "unprivileged" viewpoint, I'm granted the privilege of determining what constitutes ignorance and privilege in other people--you granted it directly by asking me. In this way you are propagating the inequality of privilege.
It is enough for me that a viewpoint is wrong; I do not need to associate it with a group. (Or at least, I do my best.)
We are in a war over privilege and who has it: the honest attempt is to balance out the economic and societal privilege with privilege in discourse, privilege in judgment, who has a 'right' to feel a certain way. The dishonest attempt is where selfish action leads those who have power to hold onto it.
In a theater of discourse as muddled as the internet, as cacophonous as our cities and streets, the combat is about shutting down viewpoints, which is _not about who is right_.
Privilege is not a coherent, sane, or consistent concept. I work as a programmer, and am privileged financially as a result. Should I give up this privilege when the simple fact is _society needs programmers?_ By having privilege do I forfeit the right to be proud of my career? Is there a net privilege quantity that I possess? The only determinative answer I have to these questions is the last one, and it is a solid 'No,' because _each privilege I supposedly possess/lack acts along a different axes_, and sometimes a privilege or lack thereof provides benefits and consequences simultaneously.
Discrimination, likewise, is not a coherent, sane, or consistent concept. "Knowing real discrimination"--you reference an absolute concept that is actually based on your personal evaluation of what constitutes real discrimination. There is no real discrimination or fake discrimination: all discrimination is discrimination. Some of it is valid: no one is complaining that Stanford doesn't let in people without graduating middle school. Some of it is invalid: the Westboro nuts are morons. Some of it cannot be helped: despite all the progress of feminism, some women just want to get married and submit to their husband, and we are left with no course but to respect that choice. (I respect it: do you?) And some of it we _recognize_ as technically 'unfair' but are hoping to mitigate larger effects: affirmative action.
The OP is making a comment about the wider sea. You didn't really provide any evidence to counter his large-scale commentary except for (implicitly) denying his group any privilege to _even contemplate_ the wider sea.
That's the problem with these sorts of discussion: someone can say "We're moving towards equality pretty well, overall" and be attacked with "There is still discrimination X." Both statements evaluate as true, so a fight starts anyway, plus it gets tied up into people's identity (that is something you did _explicitly_, in fact) so people get pissed off.
For what it's worth, here's my take: the demographic shift for males in the US is broadly towards lower education and employment. Additionally the heterosexual relationship has an altered power balance: forces in the legal system that were discriminatory against women have been targeted for elimination for the past however many years, while _not_ being targeted for men. How much discriminatory cruft remains from our hetero-normative past?
It is almost a given that social forces move too far, take too much, and then have to balance out. There are very few conservative revolutions, very few careful idealists. So how _unlikely_ is it that we have not moved past a point, or will very soon, where the equal status of men and women is ambiguous? Arguably the point of equality is _at _ the point in time where equality is ambiguous, because otherwise there wouldn't be much to argue about! (At the very least we can use this to provide lower and upper bounds, eh?)
Your knee-jerk reaction, "No," may very soon be out of date.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Girls do better in school than boys. I'm curious why you'd suggest that boys are privileged in this environment.
First of all, there isn't enough evidence to say whether that's because of privilege or because women are naturally more intelligent than men. Second, we can sure talk about specific environments. Talk to any white kid who grew up in a black neighborhood, they sure don't feel like they're better off for being white. And, yeah, that's bad. We should be doing something to help that kid. But his bad experience doesn't c…
I'm amused. Does it matter which is true if men aren't getting the education they need?
>Men still run the world.
Also an old, old statement that reveals why we need to get rid of gender as a real concept. How many men run the world? Not most of them. In what sense does it carry to include the homeless and the destitute who are men in the same group as those who rule?
>We should also make sure we don't forget that women are an oppressed class
HERE. Here it is. This is the error in your thinking.
All people are oppressed.
But when you start categorizing people into those who are Allowed To Be Recognized As Oppressed and those who are Oppressors By Association: They Have A Dick, you're making arbitrary distinctions that are inflexible and rigid.
There is not a single person on this earth who does not experience oppression. A person who does not belong to any of your protected classes will still be oppressed by your exclusion: or what, did you think it didn't count if _you_ oppressed someone based on what sort of person they were?
>>Dr. Cerf said. "This is just a reminder that women are fully capable of doing same or better quality work than men can." I hope those those who needed a reminder about the capabilities of girls or women see this news. However, (and I realize this will be controversial) imo this result doesn't contradict the general notion that girls (in mainstream American culture) are discouraged (by societal and cultural pressure…
One possible reason for this is that in those countries science/engineering is often one of the few routes an educated women has available. I've only heard this anecdotally and haven't been able to research it, but it could be one factor.
I am Pavel's mom who was born and raised in USSR. I don't think that being an engineer was the only route for a woman to become educated - women could become doctors or teachers as well. As a matter of fact there were more female doctors and teachers than male. Accountant degree was also very popular and obtainable among women. I think that credo may be right - it is societal and cultural pressure that prevent girls from going into these fields.
>>Dr. Cerf said. "This is just a reminder that women are fully capable of doing same or better quality work than men can." I hope those those who needed a reminder about the capabilities of girls or women see this news. However, (and I realize this will be controversial) imo this result doesn't contradict the general notion that girls (in mainstream American culture) are discouraged (by societal and cultural pressure…
One possible reason for this is that in those countries science/engineering is often one of the few routes an educated women has available. I've only heard this anecdotally and haven't been able to research it, but it could be one factor.
Women in developing countries face the same problem as the women in the US on top of facing the problems that are unique to these countries.