I hope it’s understood that that was an attempt at humor rather than a serious question.* I agree entirely with you.
Except the bit about trans-Neptunian objects being sexy. That’s definitely true.
There is an aspect of this situation on which I have never seen anyone comment and I wonder if there are any actual studies that try to identify its source.
I get the feeling that men are genetically or chemically wired to make some sort of observation about a woman’s attractiveness. I have never told a co-worker, client, or customer that she was cute or sexy. I do not stand around in the back room or the lunch room commenting to other guys on the appearance of our co-workers, clients, or customers. (I am not marvelously superior to guys who do; I simply figured out early on that it bothered some women and, since I could not tell which women it would bother, I decided to avoid the embarrassment of being the boor who was bothering them.) However, despite having resisted that impulse for the 40+ years I have been in situations where I might have co-workers, clients, or customers, the impulse to tell a pretty woman that she is pretty is always there.
I have no idea why I have this impulse. My Dad was not given over to making remarks about the appearance of women. I cannot think of any other male influences who would have remarked on women’s appearances. My fellow male students in high school and college were either talking about women whom they actually wished to pursue, (moving the comments into the mating category), or they were so crude that they were off-putting. So, I don’t see any cultural influences encouraging that behavior. Yet, the actual impulse remains a strong one. It is not a strong impulse that I have to fight like an addiction; it is simply a “natural” reaction that when I see a woman who is beautiful or sexy or cute, I feel a brief impulse to make that observation aloud.
If the overwhelming majority of males on the planet have the same impulse, the probability is going to be 1 that a certain percentage of them are going to lack filters that would keep them from making those observations, verbally or in text. Similarly, if the overwhelming majority of males on the planet share that same impulse, some large percentage of them are going to feel it so “natural” that they are not going to understand why it would bother women. Particularly if they are not being crude, it is likely to be confusing to them why many women would find such comments offensive.
I am not arguing for giving a pass to the guy who constantly comments on the appearance of women. I am simply wondering if, since a lot of guys truly do not see a problem with such observations, especially if most guys share that impulse, that it might provide a more effective tack to discover why guys feel that need.
I doubt it’s genetic, I think it’s much more of a cultural thing. A lot of our culture seems to encourage the idea that being beautiful is one of the most highly valued things for women. So it would make sense to compliment women about something that is so important to them is the lesson that men would receive.
I disagree with this, simply because it’s not that hard to believe that our innate desire for “beauty” has shaped the culture we ourselves built over two millennia. I mean, it’s not like we found this strange culture under a rock, somewhere. 
We have just as many derogatory statements for people we don’t find attractive, and we act on the negative classifications just as much. You can find comments on the internet (and at the coffee cooler) about how this or that person is a “butterface”. Or just plain ugly. Comely. Frumpy. And so forth.
Women also participate in this sort of thing. I have chances to work within a group of women who are friends, and it can definitely turn into a sort of “Who’s hotter?” contest between celebrities. They make similar statements to men regarding the positive and negatives of attractiveness of their subjects.
Now for the hard part: Did their innate feelings and desires get expressed? or, Did culture stamp them to be “trampy” (or whatever label is better, here) in talking with other women about men?
For me, I consider the culture as basically an institutionalized version (thus, “older-fashioned” and “less dynamic” than general populace attitudes) of our innate desires. We are all wired with a basic desire to find a mate (or mates) and to couple (ideally, with the aim to produce offspring - at least for evolution/natural selection’s sake).
Well first, it’s possible that our desire for beauty is inherent, but our standards of beauty are not. They are different across different regions and time periods. Some things are probably always considered better, like symmetrical features, but a lot of other things aren’t, like how tan skin should be, what color and length of hair is beautiful, what weight and body shape is most desirable, and so on. None of these standards are inherent, they are shaped by our culture.
And I wasn’t saying anything about our drive for beauty being genetic or cultural. **tomndebb **said he thought that the drive to compliment women on their beauty was genetic, and I think it’s cultural because of our culture’s emphasis on beauty. I’m imagining a future where beauty is still prized, but equally or less than a woman’s intelligence and success. In this future, men will still want to blurt out things to get a woman’s attention, but it might be about how smart she is, or how impressive she is with the things she’s done, and wouldn’t first be about how pretty she is.
Thinking about it more, all of us might be hard-wired to blurt out lots of things. Kids have no filter, and will loudly comment on someone’s weight or weird clothes, or any number of things that will thoroughly embarrass their parent. But the kid is then taught that it’s not appropriate and they shouldn’t say that.
I’m an adult and there’s still plenty of things I’m tempted to say, but I don’t, since I’ve learned that they are inappropriate or offensive or would just cause awkwardness. Some of these things I learned as a kid, some in college, some more recently. Just a lot of men haven’t learned that they shouldn’t comment on a woman’s beauty in most situations. You can compliment your wife or girlfriend’s beauty, or maybe comment on how a friend is looking when she’s all dolled up, but not on a woman’s beauty when she’s talking about science on her Youtube channel.
So maybe **tomndebb ** is right in that it’s genetic for men to want to say something about women’s beauty. But only because it’s genetic for us all want to say a lot of things that we don’t end up saying, because most people learn that just because we think something, doesn’t mean we have to say it out loud. Some people still need to learn that general concept, some people know that concept but still need to learn what things are not appropriate to say.
scientists are hot. that’s just the plain truth.
there are some science media presentations that make an effort to present a non-science aspects of a scientist. i think to show young people that you don’t loose your personage by becoming a scientist.
though i think fashion is a distraction. fashion often selects jewelry, hats, color and cut of clothes; these are intended to catch your eye. in video of science or news stories, i find the glint/movement of jewelry or color/pattern and cut of clothes that is intended to catch your eye a distractor. if people have a serious message i think it’s better to appear plain.
So the things you want to say are innate, but the way it’s said (or withheld) is cultural? I could probably buy that as a general premise.
But then if sexist comments are innate, do we enforce filtering that comment? Ignoring the US-centric First Amendment issue with that idea, if we stay with the process we have now, the cultural change is going to come slow and some people will never get it. Is that an acceptable end game?
The only places online that I make comments are heavily moderated. Trolls and idiots show up but those involved in the discussion need only wait a bit and they are removed. The SD offers quite a bit more latitude for crude/stupid/insulting remarks than many, but it is still well and effectively moderated.
Unmoderated venues attract the dregs of society. If you take pleasure in blurting out grotesquely sexist comments, that’s the place for you, happily shitting on everything.
If you are a woman who wants to be respectfully treated online for your knowledge and accomplishments, do not post in unmoderated venues (like youtube). Because, dickheads.
If you as a male just cannot figure out for the life of you why women might be made uncomfortable or angry at your (to you) innocent admiring comments, just shut up and do a teeny weeny bit of homework on your own. It isn’t like no one has even written upon the subject. Don’t expect us to explain it to you, we could be so sick of trying we might brain you with a frying pan.
Depends on the enforcement. Obviously the government cannot do so (and I would argue, should not). However, Google/YouTube can certainly censor those comments, and I don’t know if content creators can do so, but they would be within their rights to do so.
Many blogs have a comment section set up such that all comments must be approved before they are posted. While designed as an anti-spam measure, it also ends up serving as an anti-bigotry and anti-“me to!” post measure. Although some complain that it could be a anti-disagreement measure as well.
“TITS or GTFO” type comments are just trolling and should be ignored, since they just want attention or to stir the pot and derail the topic.
For the genuine comments it’s not sexism per se, it’s just that’s how men roll. Guys would love it if a bunch of women were swooning over them in the comments section of their youtube account. That wouldn’t be a problem to be solved. That’s why empathy fails here. A guy trying to place himself in a similar situation would basically be living a fantasy if he was in a female dominated office and everyone was flirting with him and trying to get in his pants. Or so he imagines.
Another asymmetry is that for women status can make a guy much more attractive, so they want to be recognized for their own status climbing efforts. But men hardly care about a women’s status compared to her physical attractiveness. Waiter? Ph.D in chemical engineering? CEO? Meh.
What I wonder is if efforts to curb inappropriate comments in public and work environments has reached the point of massive diminishing returns or it’ll continue improving into the future.
The fact that there are far fewer women in the science media is surely just a consequence of the fact that there are far fewer women in science, period. And why is that? I and a lot of others would really like to know. It seems to be a leaky pipeline: If you ask a bunch of kindergarteners how much they like math and science, you’ll actually get more girls than boys who do. Somewhere around 4th grade, the numbers equalize. By high school, there are significantly fewer girls than boys who like math and science. By the time you hit grad school, you’re lucky to get 5 or 10%. At every step of the way, you lose more females than males. And through it all, we’re always short on scientists. If we could keep women in the pipeline at the same rate we keep men, we’d have plenty. But nobody really knows how.
As for comments about a woman’s attractiveness, I think it’s more complicated than people are making out. When I followed the link in the OP, I admit that I, too, thought “Hm, she looks pretty”. But on thinking about it, if she were instead blogging about, say, sports (incidentally another male-dominated field), I don’t think I would have noticed her (though a sports fan probably would have). She’s a young adult in good health and hygiene, but she also has interests and personality I find appealing, and I think that my brain is putting all of that together and sticking the “pretty” label on the whole package.
The guy who says inappropriate things in my workplace is in his late 60s. With one exception, all the other guys seem to know how to censor themselves. So I’m thinking the behavior is not genetic, but cultural.
Yeah, I’ve long felt that the claims that it’s the ability to be anonymous on the internet that’s causing the problems are rather overblown. It’s people with poor impulse control that are the problem, more than people being anonymous–go to a news website that allows Facebook comments, which are supposed to be people’s real names, and it’s still a cesspool.
Regardless, though, is this even remotely a cause of gender inequality in STEM areas? It seems unlikely that “someone might focus on my appearance in a Youtube video” is in any way a leading cause of girls choosing not to take engineering as an education path (and where else are they going? I can’t imagine they’re going to sales or marketing if they’re worried about being judged by appearance…)
The comment about STEM offices often being impromptu sci-fi conventions is a lot more interesting and may be more on the right track, but it would also have to be addressed a lot earlier–making the office more women-friendly doesn’t matter if women are still turned off in the education process because all the high school physics club “fun group” activities are Star Trek movie marathons.
According to this site, the majors that are most skewed to women are Fashion, Interior Design, Social Work, Nursing, and Occupational Therapy. According to this slideshow the majors with the highest number of women are business (also for men, incidentally), Health and Clinical Science, Social Science and History (also big for men), Education, and Psychology.