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Nerds and Male Privilege

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Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#221

Post by bermanoid »

overgryphon wrote: post #216
bermanoid wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You note that in medicine and law women are no longer a minority, and that they receive equal pay, and nearly equal social power as their male counterparts. Sorry to be [citation needed]-guy, but a quick Googling tells me that this is not true. In both medicine ( http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/02/gender-gap-physician-sal... ) and law ( http://www.theglasshammer.com/news/2009/02/05/the-wage-gap-p... ) the pay gap is…

I am a woman just entering the field after college. So I'm going to speak from my own experiences. I haven't found much discrimination, but I have noticed that any boss considering to hire me after an internship has asked if/when I plan to have children. This has happened twice, and is the only situation anyone has asked me that question in college. It really is an odd question to ask an 18 year old. "I wonder what i…

I haven't found much discrimination, but I have noticed that any boss considering to hire me after an internship has asked if/when I plan to have children. This has happened twice, and is the only situation anyone has asked me that question in college. It really is an odd question to ask an 18 year old.

Isn't that actually illegal to ask as part of a job interview? Assuming you're in the US, I'm pretty sure questions relating to children, child care, or marital status are forbidden, though I'm not an expert so I could be wrong.

In any case, even if technically legal, it's not an acceptable practice, and anyone that interviews job candidates should damn well know this.

Why does someone have to be interested in computers/video games at a young age to pursue software development?

They don't, by any means. I'm merely wondering if perhaps that might be the point where the gender gap starts. It's certainly in full effect by the time people hit high school, so it's got to start pretty early, and it occurs to me that video games are probably the main difference in the way boys and girls interact with computers before that age.

I think the attitude that if you didn't play with computers at a young age you can't do tech is rather egotistical.

I would never support such a statement, I don't at all believe that it's necessary, merely that it's fairly common. Going in to tech requires a great investment of time and effort into difficult coursework, and it's a pretty huge commitment that people tend not to be willing to make unless they're already positive that they like it.

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#222

Post by philwelch »

wazoox wrote: post #206
philwelch wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> On the other hand, women are a huge majority among rape victims No one is even going to listen to a man complaining he has been raped, so I very highly doubt the validity of those numbers.

Men are a significant minority of rape victims (5 to 10%). However more than 99% of perpetrators are males.

And my contention is that rapes against men, and woman-on-man rape in particular, are incredibly underreported and hence your numbers are invalid.

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#223

Post by prodigal_erik »

overgryphon wrote: post #216
bermanoid wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You note that in medicine and law women are no longer a minority, and that they receive equal pay, and nearly equal social power as their male counterparts. Sorry to be [citation needed]-guy, but a quick Googling tells me that this is not true. In both medicine ( http://www.kevinmd.com/blog/2011/02/gender-gap-physician-sal... ) and law ( http://www.theglasshammer.com/news/2009/02/05/the-wage-gap-p... ) the pay gap is…

I am a woman just entering the field after college. So I'm going to speak from my own experiences. I haven't found much discrimination, but I have noticed that any boss considering to hire me after an internship has asked if/when I plan to have children. This has happened twice, and is the only situation anyone has asked me that question in college. It really is an odd question to ask an 18 year old. "I wonder what i…

I guess it depends on why they started so late. I don't know how causation works but I see a strong correlation. Almost everyone I know who's any good has talked about being irresistibly drawn in as an early teenager. Maybe the clock-punchers who had shrugged off computers as boring until they noticed software happens to be an extravagantly-paid desk job (which it wasn't when I graduated, I just lucked out) are doomed to mediocrity through lacking intrinsic interest and even obsession. They'd be selling real estate if that paid better, and indeed some of them were.

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#224

Post by wpietri »

jcnnghm wrote: post #211
wpietri wrote: post #170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wouldn't it be trivial to create a female privilege checklist? Sure. And if you do that in the spirit of saying, "gosh, these are also nice problems to fix one day", that's great. But mostly people bring that argument up in the sense of "Gosh, your life is not 100% shitty, so I'm going to go back to pretending everything is fair now." This argument is so common that it appears on the "Derailing for Dummies" guide: ht…

This argument is so common that it appears on the "Derailing for Dummies" guide: http://derailingfordummies.com/#butbut (Note that they include as an example your false equivalence between circumcision and female genital mutilation.) This is really incredible, " Because the removal of a tiny flap of skin is entirely comparable to the crippling mutilation many young girls are subjected to. ." Seriously? Why is the rem…

Yes, the language of the whole piece is intentionally inflammatory. Satire: it's a recognized literary form.

Note that you entirely ignore my actual point, which is that you have taken a discussion about sexism and male privilege and tried to make it about you and your concerns as a guy. And that your behavior is common enough that somebody took the time to include it in a guide of lame responses to discussions of privilege. Do you see what's wrong with that?

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#225

Post by knucker3 »

wpietri wrote: post #175
spindritf wrote: post #146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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....

Amazing what happens when you read the whole article: you discover that a) this is a market research survey guy, and b) his theory is due to the fact that the women are better educated, and therefore better qualified. Which means that this is definitely not evidence that evidence that women get paid the same as men when all else is equal.

It's not just this one guy though:

http://www.consad.com/content/reports/Gender%20Wage%20Gap%20...

http://www.hudson.org/index.cfm?fuseaction=publication_detai...

http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9C07E6DD1531F...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405311190345450457648...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DVvaQ0xxni8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwogDPh-Sow

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#226

Post by einhverfr »

wanorris wrote: post #220
einhverfr wrote: post #215

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What's infuriating to me was that even when I was going through this (mid-1990's), I was aware of the statistics, that everyone who had studied gender and violence concluded that there was no significant difference in severity or frequency of domestic violence--- that men were more likely to "beat up" their partners but women were far more likely to assault with weapons. This isn't new data. The problem is that talki…

You're right -- the erasure of straight male domestic violence survivors is not an example of heterosexism, it's gender essentialism. It involves the assumption that being male means being stereotypically masculine, and being female means being stereotypically feminine. (Heterosexism occurs when domestic violence survivors in same-sex relationships are erased because the relationships don't follow the heteronormative…

I think a lot of times it is more helpful to see things in terms of normative and liminal models and narratives. The problem at present is that even with this opening up, you still see male victims of DV as liminal (at best!) figures in the conversation. Self-defence defenses in DV however are still very gender-biased, and I still run into lots of people who deny that female on male DV is even a problem.

I don't see this changing right away in any fundamental manner but you are correct that there are slow positive steps in the right direction.

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#227

Post by wazoox »

jcnnghm wrote: post #212
wazoox wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Rape makes up only 6% of violent crimes, and men are much more commonly the victim of violent crimes than women. Most victims of violent crimes are known offenders or their relatives. An overwhelming majority of offenders are male (see the proportion of male vs female in jail). > Nice ad hominem. It's ad personam if you want. You go straight to the usual tactic of pretending that it's the victim fault. Take some ti…

You say that I am blaming the victim, then in your link, the related story is as follows: First of all, the obvious point is that women's intuition, while not entirely the stuff of myth, is not so powerful that it can automatically separate "good guys" from the bad. No woman can walk down the street and as she passes a man, know with certainty that he isn't a threat. Given the high incidence of rape and assault and h…

OK, I give up. I won't convince you from across the oceans and through the internets that white patriarchy is a reality; you apparently live in the nice world where oppression of the poor, the black and women doesn't exist or at least doesn't matter, and I must live on a different planet than you. That won't be much more than a sociological experience I guess.

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#228

Post by wazoox »

philwelch wrote: post #222
wazoox wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men are a significant minority of rape victims (5 to 10%). However more than 99% of perpetrators are males.

And my contention is that rapes against men, and woman-on-man rape in particular, are incredibly underreported and hence your numbers are invalid.

How do you know? What allows you to believe that?

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#229

Post by rmc »

tsotha wrote: post #205
rmc wrote: post #168

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Where do I sign up for the privilige of having members of the opposite sex fall all over themselves doing things for me in order to get my attention? If you're an attractive man, then you can get gay men (esp. older gay men, especially older, ugly, gay men), to do this. If you want people falling all over you, and doing things, there are ways to do that.

Well, you see I specified "opposite sex".

What you meant (i presume) is "i want people who I want to sleep with to fall over themselves to please me". What women actually get lots of time is "people I don't really want to sleep with, but want to sleep with me, falling over themselves to try to please me". As such I think the analogy of 'ugly gay guy hitting on straight guy' is apt, and similar to what a lot of women face.

Re: Nerds and Male Privilege

#230

Post by jopt »

gregholmberg wrote: post #219
rayiner wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Wouldn't it be trivial to create a female privilege checklist? Sure. My girlfriend can randomly go up to random people and play with their babies, while my doing so is likely to get me arrested. A mother has the presumption of getting custody in a contentious divorce, etc. Nobody would take a sexual harassment complaint against a woman seriously. But you know what? In pure economic terms, I'd take male privilege ov…

Back when I had a boyish appearance (20s, early 30s), parents would smile when their kids tried to play with me. After the gray hair showed up, I could see them pull their kids away, no longer smiling. In pure economic terms, what price do we put on "forced to feel like a moral leper"?

And then there's the draft
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