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Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

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Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#41

Post by return0 »

lutusp wrote: post #37
return0 wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

- The fight for gender equality is exclusively 20th century thing (correction 18+ century and limited to the industrial world); never happened before - Gender equality wasn't imposed in society by an external entity, it was brought about because it was essential (not only on moral grounds but economic as well) - Most societies for most of history were less hostile to homo/bi-sexuality than the modern (pre-1970s) West…

> The fight for gender equality is exclusively 20th century thing; never happened before No, this is false. All that differed in historical accounts of gender struggles were the methods and the scale, not the goals. Do the names Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony ring any bells (19th century)? Or Margaret Cavendish from the 17th century? Suggested reading: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_feminism > M…

I would not consider a few exceptional single individuals (there were others, beyond the recent anglo-saxon part of history) to constitute a "movement". The social equilibrium at the time did not leave a place for gender equality until the 20th century (industrialization/the need for women to work away from home/the washing machine etc).

WRT homosexuality - you are confusing cause and effect. The Bible was what brought homosexuality to such a negative light in the christian/western world.

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#42

Post by lutusp »

speeder wrote: post #40
lutusp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I love HN, I make a huge post, and when the page finishes loading the tread again it is already downvoted Posts aren't judged based on size, but content. And anonymous voting is often completely unfair -- just like life. I suggest that you take this as useful feedback to improve how you express yourself. Your post has word usage issues (as other have commented), a problem with length versus content, things like tha…

It was downvoted in the time between me hitting submit and the page loading again, how it was a judgement of content? The guy can read the whole wall of text in the three seconds it took my 3g to reload?

> The guy can read the whole wall of text in the three seconds it took my 3g to reload?

1. Certainly. There are lots of speed-readers out there.

2. Why do you assume the downvoter was a guy? That's an everyday example of sexism.

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#43

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

mhansen wrote: post #29
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #12

The word "fact" is used extremely loosely in this article. While the first "fact" is in fact factual it then very quickly goes down the rabbit hole of personal opinion/perspective. By the time we get to "fact 3" the author isn't even pretending any more and the "fact" is just a bizarre "you're a mathematician, you can solve this!!1!" point... I'm happy to have a discussion about gender politics/equality, this article…

You might be interested that this is such a common way to derail conversations about privilege that it's made part of 'Derailing for Dummies'. http://birdofparadox.wordpress.com/derailing-for-dummies-goo...

That web-site's tone is more than a little offensive. If you're going to sink that low that quickly I'm just going to outright refuse to have a discussion with you at all.

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#44

Post by [deleted] »

speeder wrote: post #40
lutusp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I love HN, I make a huge post, and when the page finishes loading the tread again it is already downvoted Posts aren't judged based on size, but content. And anonymous voting is often completely unfair -- just like life. I suggest that you take this as useful feedback to improve how you express yourself. Your post has word usage issues (as other have commented), a problem with length versus content, things like tha…

It was downvoted in the time between me hitting submit and the page loading again, how it was a judgement of content? The guy can read the whole wall of text in the three seconds it took my 3g to reload?

[deleted]

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#45

Post by [deleted] »

smsm42 wrote: post #32
[deleted] wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[deleted]

It's a huge presumption, but it's equally huge presumption that every person on the planet secretly hates women and isn't even aware of it. Either one needs proof to be called true, and neither is proven by just stating the statistics and postulating that one's favorite explanation is the right one.

[deleted]

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#46

Post by speeder »

speeder wrote: post #40
lutusp wrote: post #30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I love HN, I make a huge post, and when the page finishes loading the tread again it is already downvoted Posts aren't judged based on size, but content. And anonymous voting is often completely unfair -- just like life. I suggest that you take this as useful feedback to improve how you express yourself. Your post has word usage issues (as other have commented), a problem with length versus content, things like tha…

It was downvoted in the time between me hitting submit and the page loading again, how it was a judgement of content? The guy can read the whole wall of text in the three seconds it took my 3g to reload?

But I did not edited anything, what are you talking about???

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#47

Post by UnoriginalGuy »

andreasvc wrote: post #26
UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #12

The word "fact" is used extremely loosely in this article. While the first "fact" is in fact factual it then very quickly goes down the rabbit hole of personal opinion/perspective. By the time we get to "fact 3" the author isn't even pretending any more and the "fact" is just a bizarre "you're a mathematician, you can solve this!!1!" point... I'm happy to have a discussion about gender politics/equality, this article…

Oh come on, just substitute rebuttal or response for fact. Do you dismiss a FAQ because the questions aren't actually asked frequently?! I think we should be discussing the actual content, not the form of presentation.

But I did criticise the content? Everything after the first paragraph is directly criticising the content.

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#48

Post by nagrom »

return0 wrote: post #9
speeder wrote: post #5

Gender bias will never cease to exist, and for good reasons, the fight for equality happened many times before in history, and never ended well. Male and female are very dismorphic, we cannot change that easily, male and female have very specialized roles and purposes. Yes, I am happy that people now in general have more equal opportunity than ever, and that we can have awesome workers on some areas from any backgrou…

- The fight for gender equality is exclusively 20th century thing (correction 18+ century and limited to the industrial world); never happened before - Gender equality wasn't imposed in society by an external entity, it was brought about because it was essential (not only on moral grounds but economic as well) - Most societies for most of history were less hostile to homo/bi-sexuality than the modern (pre-1970s) West…

- The fight for gender equality is exclusively 20th century thing; never happened before

As another poster already commented, and you already acknowledged, the fight for gender equality has been continuing for at least three centuries. It certainly isn't exclusively a 20th century thing.

- Gender equality wasn't imposed in society by an external entity, it was brought about because it was essential

It's certainly not yet proven to be "essential" in any sense of the word that I recognise. Positive, perhaps, but the survival of the species doesn't rest on gender equality. For long periods of history the human race has not had gender equality, and we've survived it. No-one has ever proven that our continued existence (or even prosperity) rests on recognising the rights of others.

- Most societies for most of history were less hostile to homosexuality than the modern West

I'm fairly certain that this is simply wrong too. While there have been some societies in history that have been ambivalent or positive towards homosexuality, the vast majority of societies through history have treated homosexuality as deviant behaviour that should be shunned - most societies that are dominated by Christianity or Islam (which, for obvious reasons, tend to be the societies with the best and most available records) have treated homosexuality as a terrible sin. Even if you look at modern societies, the west is amongst the most inclusive - compare attitudes in Germany, Canada, the US and the UK with attitudes in Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Russia, etc.

This isn't to say that the west's attitudes to gender equality and homosexuality couldn't be improved! However, when you massively overstate the scale of the problem, people will generally find it difficult to take seriously whatever else you have to say. We have ways in which we can improve, but things are getting better.

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#49

Post by return0 »

andreasvc wrote: post #23
speeder wrote: post #5

Gender bias will never cease to exist, and for good reasons, the fight for equality happened many times before in history, and never ended well. Male and female are very dismorphic, we cannot change that easily, male and female have very specialized roles and purposes. Yes, I am happy that people now in general have more equal opportunity than ever, and that we can have awesome workers on some areas from any backgrou…

> Male and female are very dismorphic You mean sexually dimorphic. This is actually the subject of significant controversy (esp. with regards to intelligence), so you cannot state this so carelessly. An uncontroversial case of sexual dimorphism is a male spider which is three times smaller than its female counterpart.

It's only controversial with regards to sensitive issues like intelligence. Of course humans are indisputably sexually dimorphic (and culturally polymorphic) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sex_differences_in_humans

Re: Gender Bias 101 For Mathematicians

#50

Post by almost »

UnoriginalGuy wrote: post #33
almost wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's an extremely shallow criticism of the article. It uses the Myth/Fact device which is quite common in articles, read then as Point/Counterpoint or something if you must. But let's talk about the content, not the style.

The article is so shallow its self that I didn't feel it deserved my time for a deep criticism. The author just stop justifying their points after the first couple. It is like they starting writing a really good piece, then got two "myths" in and then switched to random opinion mode.

The underlying issues do deserve discussion though whether or not the quality of writing (in a blog post) meets your personal standards.
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