Nerds and Male Privilege • Hacker News Board

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#141

Post by einhverfr » Sat, Dec 17, 2011, 2:25 PM UTC

da_dude4242 wrote: post #91

wanorris wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> None of this captured by your list though so I suppose it's irrelevant. They're not on a male privilege checklist. A catalog of gender differences would be a different list. > When is the last time you read an article about leveling the field of female privilege? In theory the idea of privilege is inclusive but in practice it's not. I think most feminists would discount the idea of "female privilege" per se as a fa…

"I think most feminists would discount the idea of "female privilege" per se as a false equivalence similar to a hypothetical "black privilege"." That's my point. "The fact that there is a societal preference toward masculinity, which underlies many of your points, is definitely a topic that gets brought up in feminine circles. This is why it's comparatively okay for women to be tomboys and such, and highly frowned u…

But in certain domains (childrearing, for example) females are definitely in a net-privileged position in terms of power and control, particularly if unmarried.

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#142

Post by einhverfr » Sat, Dec 17, 2011, 2:30 PM UTC

burgerbrain wrote: post #101

waqf wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Right, and " 22. If I’m careless with my driving it won’t be attributed to my sex. " Supposing you are caught speeding down the freeway at 110mph on Saturday night. What sex is everyone going to expect you to be?

Or this one "25. I do not have to worry about the message my wardrobe sends about my sexual availability." Compare: A woman wearing pants. A man wearing a dress. One person is going to have their sexuality judged. And it's not going to be the woman.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TWuJbOB1kdw

Or a man wearing a pantsuit?

Edit: The point of posting this wasn't just a funny fake political ad but also the nuances of suggesting that Bill Clinton wears the pantsuit, instead of Hillary wearing the pants.

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#143

Post by skore » Sat, Dec 17, 2011, 2:34 PM UTC

burgerbrain wrote: post #128

skore wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That dresses haven't still breaks your initial argument. Also - jeans ceased to be considered gender specific in society while also never being, in their shape and technical form, gender specific to begin with.

"That dresses haven't still breaks your initial argument." No. You must be misunderstanding my initial argument if you think that it does. You are definitely missing my point if you don't think that I understand that about jeans...

Your initial argument was about having your sexuality judged if you are a man wearing a dress, but not if you're a woman wearing pants. You must concede that my point - that dresses being so specifically female (let's face facts - a man just cannot fill that cleavage without surgical help) makes it possible to even wear them as a comedic statement or an underlining of manliness - at least greatly reduces your point. That you appear to insist on the 60s idea of pants being inherently male (not as your argument, but you still use it as an argument, which makes no sense) further takes away from it.

Actually, I really thought you were only pulling a lame joke in the beginning. If that's really your entire argument then I'm not sure why we bother arguing it in the first place. It seems like you don't care elaborating on your point anyhow.

Edit: Hey Downvote Police, what about stepping out and adding reasoning to your downvotes? Thanks.

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#144

Post by einhverfr » Sat, Dec 17, 2011, 2:35 PM UTC

slurgfest wrote: post #106

burgerbrain wrote: post #104

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So I guess we can add "Being able to speak frankly about [opposite gender] privilege in public" to the list of female privileges.

Hmm, I'm not sure - because women talking openly about male privilege might find agreement from some quarters but ridicule or worse from other quarters. This is like saying that black people have the privilege of talking about race in the US, but whites don't. That might have some truth to it, but overall it's a point-missing half-truth, since black people who talk about that kind of thing are often treated as "angry…

Personally I don't find it problematic to talk about female privilege at all. I think one has to be careful (just as women have to be careful talking about male privilege) but there are areas where it is so blatant and damaging that it must be talked about, particularly in areas of domestic violence.

When I was just out of college, I was (as a male) the victim of some pretty intense domestic violence several times a week for about six months. It was a very hellish situaiton, but one thing that made it a lot worse was the sense that if I went to the authorities, I would be blamed for the attacks against me. Yet I was assaulted with lethal weapons (knives mostly) several times a week.

Nobody can tell me that there aren't key areas where female privilege doesn't exist. The problem is that it is as invisible to females as male privilege is to males.

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#145

Post by einhverfr » Sat, Dec 17, 2011, 2:45 PM UTC

mixmastamyk wrote: post #117

rayiner wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Standard procedure in some fields, surprisingly common in others. I had a friend get hassled about an open collection before taking a job with the feds.

No credit as a 20 year old should be acceptable, no?

It depends on the job. PCI-DSS requires credit checks for employees handling credit card numbers. I would expect no credit to be fine, but deep indebt to be a big warning sign.

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#146

Post by spindritf » Sat, Dec 17, 2011, 2:47 PM UTC

zasz wrote: post #118

jcnnghm wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be trivial to create a female privilege checklist? For example, while women may be asked to smile by random people (44), they are murdered by random people far less often than men, representing only 21% of victims. Or, while females spend more time grooming than men (27), they are much less likely to have their genitals mutilated as infants by mothers who do not like the way they look. There can be some t…

Eh, just because females have advantages in some domains doesn't mean that their overall advantages in life are outweighed by the overall male advantages in life. Stuff like the salary gap, stereotype threat ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat ), and being expected to give up your career to be the one to raise the kids affect most adult women for most of their lives. Murder is a pretty rare event, and me…

> the salary gap

Men don't earn more money for being men (not any more at least, if it was ever true):

> according to a new analysis of 2,000 communities by a market research company, in 147 out of 150 of the biggest cities in the U.S., the median full-time salaries of young women are 8% higher than those of the guys in their peer group. http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,2015274,00....

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#147

Post by Locke1689 » Sat, Dec 17, 2011, 3:00 PM UTC

sciurus wrote: post #86

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #49

Is there a term for the ridiculous rhetorical tactic of insisting that any attempt to refute one's claims as being illogical is itself only further proof of the claims made? I stopped reading when he said this: "I will pause now for the traditional arguments from my readers...Got all of that out of your systems? Good. Because that reaction is exactly what I'm talking about." Why bother having a discussion with someon…

I think the author has a good point, although it's tricky to make: You can spend all day making excuses for specific instances of sexism in comics and video games, or you can realize that your ability and need to do that is a sign of a problem.

You seem to be spending a lot of time making specific excuses to why you don't need to listen to an opposing argument. Perhaps you should realize that your inability to listen to logical arguments is a sign of a problem.

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#148

Post by [deleted] » Sat, Dec 17, 2011, 3:02 PM UTC

Helianthus wrote: post #23

Is it problematic that I'm sick of gender on HN? "Raising awareness" doesn't mean much when it essentially provokes the same inconsequential firefights. Can we just agree that men are pigs, women feel entitled, everyone's an asshole, startups need good engineers, and stop it? All this article really shows me is that the girlfriend was correct to avoid going into a comic book store. You cannot control culture you cann…

[deleted]

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#149

Post by makomk » Sat, Dec 17, 2011, 3:03 PM UTC

zasz wrote: post #118

jcnnghm wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be trivial to create a female privilege checklist? For example, while women may be asked to smile by random people (44), they are murdered by random people far less often than men, representing only 21% of victims. Or, while females spend more time grooming than men (27), they are much less likely to have their genitals mutilated as infants by mothers who do not like the way they look. There can be some t…

Eh, just because females have advantages in some domains doesn't mean that their overall advantages in life are outweighed by the overall male advantages in life. Stuff like the salary gap, stereotype threat ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stereotype_threat ), and being expected to give up your career to be the one to raise the kids affect most adult women for most of their lives. Murder is a pretty rare event, and me…

On the other hand, stuff like the causes of the salary gap, stereotype threat, and being expected to give up contact with your kids to be the one raising money to bring them up affect most adult men for most of their lives. (There's support out there for heterosexual men giving up their careers to raise kids but only so long as this decision is made by the kids' mother based on what benefits her personally.)

The wage gap is also curious because these days it results mostly from men and women doing different kinds of work, and campaigners demand totally different solutions for high-status jobs than they do for low-status ones. For stuff like tech industry startups there are lots of campaigns to include more women. On the other hand, if you take street-side trash collection (another job which is also largely male) instead there are campaigns for women to get the same pay for doing "equivalent" jobs like office cleaning.

Now, trash collection of this kind is an awful lot more dangerous than cleaning offices and this is both why it's better paid and why there are few women doing it; for various reasons people get more upset about a woman dying in a horrific industrial accident than a man so employers have an incentive to discourage women, and there's not so much social pressure for them to get dangerous jobs. Equality would require making people care more about men dying or less about women, both of which benefit men rather than women, so feminists go for the unequal option of paying women for doing less than men instead.

Edit: For example, if you play video games take a close look at the gender of the mooks that you kill en-masse. That's just one of the subtle messages saying that men are disposable in mass media.

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#150

Post by culebron » Sat, Dec 17, 2011, 3:14 PM UTC

I agree with the commenter who points out that the culture is not dominant, and if it's that bad, it won't have much acceptance.

And all who care of the sexism in IT, geek culture, etc., should turn themselves to the core problem. Use the Japanese method: ask 5 questions "why?"

Why are geeks so sexist? They see women first of all as a sexual object.

Why they do this? Because this is what they want. They are sexually hungry young men.

Why are they sexually hungry? They don't have much dating and sex. I admit that some guys are ok in this area and just misbehave.

Why do they have issues? Because they're geeks, and geeks are uncool, not sexually attractive.

Now, start curing this issue, not telling them to behave.

If a person is depressed, up to having no appetite, it's a common complaint from the relatives that the sick person is mistreating them, doesn't want to talk, closes the door, etc. Do you think a depression can be solved by telling that person to behave? Or by telling "life goes on", "birds are tweeting, ha ha"? No. It still doesn't make that person's needs met.

Yet when it comes to social phoenomena, the treatment that is zealously promoted is to treat the outcomes, not the source.

So, I suggest to the IT industry managers: start making your nerds' needs met. I don't know how. Hire a prostitute? May be valid in some special cases. Make a dating event? Maybe. Hire a psychologist? Can be useful. Make a party with a most-women company? Maybe.

Basically, I think it's worth trying to let them have more dating and learn some social skills. (This all has to be in a very delicate way, of course.) But stop teaching people how to live. If you don't like how they behave, fire them, don't try to become a father who dislikes his son but keeps living together. (This is exactly what the article says: I hate this, but I stay!)

Solve the real issue, make their needs met.