381–390 of 434 posts
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The predominant gender role seems to be: men and boys are more things-focused and women and girls are more people-focused. So girls aren't willing to sacrifice social capital just to play with computers the way boys are.
It's also the predominant gender role in monkeys, and in human girls that get an usual amount of male hormone in the womb: http://www.livescience.com/22677-girls-dolls-boys-toy-trucks...
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Ok I grudgingly started to read some of your links to procrastinate. The first one is rather useless. The second again shows the bias I am talking about. It starts with the example of more men than women being given teaching assignments. It turns out less women asked for them - the dean tries to give one to everyone who asks. Then the bias: they conclude that "women don't ask for the things they want". But that is a…
>The first one is rather useless. No it isn't. It answers the questions you asked about why teachers favor boys in the classroom. >But that is a bias - it is also possible they simply didn't want those things, and therefore didn't ask. >Likewise with higher salary, perhaps women simply care less. Read the damn book. The authors go on and give a class about negotiation in the school and starting salaries for women inc…
No it isn't"
Sorry, I meant the first one from the long list - the second one you linked to. The one about the classrooms at least gives a good summary, but it doesn't say anything about the "why". And I get the impression the reality might have looked very different from what you imagine if you read the summary. For example they mention some stars might get all the attention - in that case most boys and girls would be neglected, except for some stars. That would be different from "girls are neglected vs boys".
I find that research interesting, as I said I just think people are jumping to conclusions from their observations.
"Read the damn book. "
What book - you mean the third link? I'll try, unfortunately it is not loading for me atm. Will try again tomorrow.
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For the longest time I harbored the biggest crush on a girl from my high school. The thing that made me fall in love with her (and it was love -- as much love as a 14-year-old could feel) wasn't that she was pretty or cute or popular -- though she was all these things. (Head cheerleader. Literally. Dated a football player and everything.) It was that I had the good fortune to peek over her shoulder at some BASIC code…
>But the thing about pretty girls is that they often find it is more immediately profitable to be pretty than to be bright. 100% agree with you. I also think a lot of the difference in the gender ratio can be attributed to the fact that women simply have far more options.
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Really? Aside from rather extreme or contrived situations, the average person in the real world simply does not witness multiple graphic deaths or see thousands of women naked. Can we at least consider that there might be a psychological impact of the fact that in one afternoon you can see more horrors and more nudity than 99.999999% of the world would have seen in a lifetime two decades ago? That there is so incredi…
I think you're committing a naturalistic fallacy here. Yes, there might be a psychological impact... but who's to say it's a bad psychological impact? The rise of access to both porn, and violent video-games (for which I'd assume gory imagery/videos would substitute) have been found to have an interesting correlation to a drop in real-world violence.
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>Which feminist told you to dress or look a certain way? In my experience, feminists are more obsessed with making sure other women are dressed "correctly" than just about any other demographic outside of conservative christian republicans. Have you never read an article by a feminist about X or Y movie character is demeaning to women because she dressed too sexy, or wore something that the feminist herself would nev…
> In my experience, feminists are more obsessed with making sure other women are dressed "correctly" than just about any other demographic outside of conservative christian republicans. Dress and body policing of women is a reflection of misogyny, of which women and men both participate. However, it is definitely wrong to do so whether one considers themselves feminist or not. > Have you never read an article by a fe…
Except that in many cases, it's actual women being criticized.
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Well, you could take everything incredibly personally for no obvious reason, or you could consider that no one is actually saying you have to be a "hacker" so-called to participate in the industry.
I think you misunderstand me. I said that I would end up as a "corporate programming drone" - clearly a programming drone is part of the industry. What I'm saying is that, while I could probably get into the industry (if I could stay there for my whole professional life I'm a little uncertain about - see my OP), it seems that I would forever be an inferior programmer because I don't have the necessary passion to beco…
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>Which feminist told you to dress or look a certain way? In my experience, feminists are more obsessed with making sure other women are dressed "correctly" than just about any other demographic outside of conservative christian republicans. Have you never read an article by a feminist about X or Y movie character is demeaning to women because she dressed too sexy, or wore something that the feminist herself would nev…
Criticizing how fictional women are dressed is not the same as criticizing how real-life women are dressed. When a man draws or designs a female character with "sexy" clothing, it's likely sexualizing that character for male viewers to ogle. When a woman decides to dress that way, it's personal expression. When I see feminist criticisms of how female characters are dressed, they're not criticizing three dimensional a…
Who do you think portrays them on tv and in movies? Fake women? Give me a break.
>When a man draws or designs a female character with "sexy" clothing, it's likely sexualizing that character for male viewers to ogle. When a woman decides to dress that way, it's personal expression.
I like how if a man does it, it's sexist, but if a woman does it, it's "empowerment." I guess men aren't allowed to write empowered female characters. And yet, if they don't write them--that makes them misogynists, too.
>They're criticizing usually stock characters that perpetuate stereotypes about women and objectify.
In my experience, this is just very elaborate justification for plain old jealousy of another woman's looks.
>Parents are warned to keep kids off the computer This point cannot be overstated. I'd never have been a hacker without vast quantities of unsupervised, unfiltered internet time around age 9-12. The largest enabling step for me was when I got my own laptop which I was free to break (software-wise) and free to take into my room so I could focus away from the distracting noises of the kitchen/living room. Much of even…
>I'd never have been a hacker without vast quantities of unsupervised, unfiltered internet time around age 9-12. While starting early is obviously a tremendous advantage, it's a shame that it's often discussed in such an exclusive way. For reference, I am a female programmer who got a /relatively/ late start. I took my first cs class because I was embarrassed that I used my computer like an Internet Explorer box. Bar…
I do, constantly. Most people who haven't started by now do so because of lack of interest/motivation/dedication, though. I think people like you and me who come to programming late are definitely rather rare. I don't think the author was really being exclusionary--it's the case for most people.
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I think you're committing a naturalistic fallacy here. Yes, there might be a psychological impact... but who's to say it's a bad psychological impact? The rise of access to both porn, and violent video-games (for which I'd assume gory imagery/videos would substitute) have been found to have an interesting correlation to a drop in real-world violence.
I can tell you the first time a joker got me to click on a Goatse link, it had a pretty unpleasant impact. I don't particularly want my 9 year old gazing at that.
People ask me all the time how I know what's safe online versus what's not, and the only thing I can say is experience. I've fallen for enough scams and clicked enough malicious links to know what they're going to look like.
>Parents are warned to keep kids off the computer This point cannot be overstated. I'd never have been a hacker without vast quantities of unsupervised, unfiltered internet time around age 9-12. The largest enabling step for me was when I got my own laptop which I was free to break (software-wise) and free to take into my room so I could focus away from the distracting noises of the kitchen/living room. Much of even…
> Young women don't magically become technologists at 22. It depends. There is no strict requirement onto starting at the early age. Yes, there is a correlation, but no strict requirement. I knew someone, who had really started coding only at around 22, after she had finished a computer science / engineering degree. She was not a tinkerer/nerd, just a regular bright girl, her dad was not an engineer [was an architect…
I think what the author was saying with this is that you can't just throw them in a women's special ed program and expect them to become creative problem solvers in a few weeks if that wasn't (to at least some extent) their personality type to begin with.