When dealing with large groups, generalization is the only way to analyze an issue. Generalization is invalid when talking about individuals or small groups, but perfectly valid when discussing large groups.
You just proved my point. Sure, there are lots of girls who don’t care if they are popular. If I was wrong, you wouldn’t have been in that position because of your interests.
Was Obama wrong to mention that a black kid who likes to read is often considered to be “acting white”? He went “straight to that”, because that’s one of the first things he ever said to a national television audience. Probably because he was a victim of that. While you can’t call it scientific, there is nothing wrong with talking about the things you see every day. Anecdote does not equal data of course, but in the absence of data it’s more than appropriate for discussion.
To annoy you with another anecdote, a friend’s daughter is just starting college and she’s studying genetics, which is her passion. Like you, she’s never cared whether or not she’s popular, and sure enough, she’s not. She does have friends, but it’s not like she can ever talk about her passion with them. Guys can generally find likeminded guys. It’s a lot harder for girls, and until that changes, there’s going to be less girls interested in STEM fields. And it’s not the guys their age that are at fault, because in my experience, guys are ecstatic to have girls join their geek group(and I don’t mean that pejoratively, the term is a badge of honor nowadays). The problem is other girls, and parents who try to enforce traditional gender roles, which in turn probably contributes to gender confusion.
Allow me to introduce you to my friend Carlos, actually Dr. Carlos, over half of whose coworkers are women. The only person in his group of friends with whom he can talk about his work in terms more detailed than “doing well” is me, a woman who can understand statistics and the woes of publishing (in fact I translated two of his articles, both successfully published).
Carlos can find likeminded guys so long as he sticks to his colleagues. Exactly the same problem that his colleagues of any gender have.
In professional life, this is true, but those critical years when you are growing up is when you find your interests, and finding people who won’t judge you for those interests can be a challenge.
Another sorta subtle thing I noticed when I was in school, not sure if it’s the same today, I’ve rarely if ever heard of a female student being regarded as an underachiever. If a girl isn’t doing well in school, she’s just a girl who isn’t doing well in school. When a boy who is regarded as having potential by teachers isn’t doing well though, it becomes an all hands on deck situation, parents, teachers, administrators, and constantly hearing, “You could be doing so much better, you’re so smart!”
Am I mistaken, or are girls often victims of lower expectations in schools?
Actually, NO, that’s not what you have in the google case. In the memo written by that google employee he starts out by pointing out the disparity in genders in the computer tech field. By the time one gets to college there IS a split something like 70/30 (forgive me if I get the numbers a little wrong) and this same disparity can be seen at the professional level (I think at this point it shifts slightly higher to the male side but not much). And no one disputes those numbers. But, he goes on to say that those numbers indicate a talent bias as well - that more men go into computer science and tech because they are genetically better at it. And this is where the argument goes off the rails. There is NO indication that men are BETTER at computer stuff than women and to say so is just wrong.
PS - whatever your definition of gender is, it’s likely based on information that is being updated at a dizzying pace these days, and there is likely someone who is more up to date who will come along and give you some of the new info. You can’t be wrong if you don’t have all the info, but you can’t be right either - it’s best to stay open on this topic for the foreseeable future.
IF young females are more aware of how society views them than young males, and are therefore less likely to take actions that may brand them as an outsider. And the computer tech field is considered by society to be filled with outsiders so young women are hesitant to engage in the field, that’s not a problem with women, that’s a problem with society. And that’s what diversity programs, like the one that inspired the Google memo, seek to do. They’re not trying to fix a problem with women by changing the industry - to make it easier for women to compete. they’re trying to identify problems in society that make the industry less appealing to women. And if women and men are truly different from each other, then that implies that they have a different approach to problem solving as well. And I don’t know about you, but I think that having more options in how to solve problems is a good thing for any industry, not just computer tech.
A fair number of women have left over the years because of the “Show us your tits!” posts. I don’t know many men that have.
Also, that “gold standard” gender questionnaire in your OP, the one that’s pushing half a century old? Are you kidding me? That survey is a sexist piece of shit.
Sure it is, but isn’t that pretty much what transgenderism is based on? Stereotypes of what gender is? Is there really any possibility of gender confusion once you accept that we can all be whatever we want to be and it doesn’t make us any less a man or woman?
I think of it like the abstraction layers in the OSI model.
**6. Identity **- behaviour, mannerisms, interaction with society 5. Sexual Attraction - straight, gay, bi
**4. Phenotype **- hair, breasts, adams apple, genitals …
**3. Hormones **- estrogen, adrosterone, testosterone expression
**2. DNA **- genes
**1. Chromosomes **- XX, XY, XXY etc
Might be completely off the mark there, but it seems to cover the complexities of gender. Can this be improved on?
One of the definitions of machismo (what’s called male chauvinism in English) is actually esperar menos de los chicos que de las chicas; to have lower expectations for boys than girls.
You really can’t tell me this is the first time you’ve heard about women needing to be 3x as good as men to be considered even adequate; this begins in school, with things such as an understandable but not pretty handwriting being considered ok for a boy but not a girl, or a poster in bold colors being ok for a boy but not for a girl.
No, and I and others have written literally tens of thousands of words on the subject on this message board, and outside of it. Which begs the question why your “research”, as you call it, somehow missed that.
You also essentially admitted in your response to Left Hand of Dorkness that you knew your “gold standard” was a sexist piece of shit, but you posted it anyways. That bears some thinking, doesn’t it now?
You can guess whether you are male or female with a high degree of accuracy (but not perfect) based on your genitalia.
You seem to be confusing gender with sex. Sex is an objective fact, thought it’s even more complicated than most people assume, because not everyone is either/or.
I’m not confusing the two. I’ve been told that gender, while different from sex, is also an objective fact. If it isn’t, then it’s by definition a matter of opinion, which I am free to disagree with.
Why in the world would you want to disagree with someone else’s “opinion” of their gender? That sounds rude at best, as if you believe that you know what is in their head and heart better than they do.
“Male/Female’’ is a description of sex. ‘‘Man/woman’’ is a description of gender. If you want to understand what gender is, your question would be, ''How do I know if I’m a man or a woman?”
This is why I think you’ve got them confused.
Gender is much harder to pin down than sex. I don’t know how Una would define it, but I understand it as a social construct, maybe a population consensus about the roles of males and females in society. I’d accept a number of other definitions that don’t involve forcing labels onto other people against their will. Telling another person where they fit in that spectrum is just shitty.
Also, I think on average people place way too much emphasis on biology to explain gender differences, but this
[QUOTE=adaher]
Absolutely. Personally, and this is just my opinion, I don’t think there are any innate behavioral differences that are significant enough to generalize about, I think it’s 99% environment and societal expectations.
[/QUOTE]
is extreme even for me.
The problem is, to whatever extent population differences are biologically driven, we cannot quantify it. They aren’t even mutually exclusive concepts, because environment shapes genetic expression.
Whether or not we should be concerned about ‘‘women in STEM fields’’ in my mind depends entirely on whether women who want to be into STEM fields are able to be in STEM fields. If a young girl wants to be in STEM but can’t be because social or parental pressure makes the personal cost too high, that’s a problem. If young girls don’t want anything to do with STEM because it doesn’t interest them, that’s another thing.
Very difficult to quantify. But I know a shit ton of women in STEM fields who put up with a large amount of bullshit for having pursued their passion, including continually running into negative gender stereotypes at work, as well as sexism during their academic lives. Some researchers have made some attempt to quantify these obstacles so it’s not purely anecdotal. That suggests that sexism is a factor in our disproportionate outcomes in STEM fields.
The rape apologists are actually what drives us off. The show us your tits posts are juvenile. The rape apologists are disturbing.
And, as a woman formerly in tech as a systems engineer and architect, that’s one thing that drives us from tech as well. If women stereo-typically don’t like tech, the men in tech are stereo-typically the kind of “nice guy” who thinks that if they are nice to you, you should sleep with them, and commenting on boobs is a compliment. And mansplaining the importance of being a stay at home mom once you get pregnant is doing you a favor (but your husband is probably a jerk, because women only date jerks).
I think its easiest to try (which is hard) to stop thinking about three things as binary - sex, gender, and sexuality - and instead try and see all three things as independent sliders.
In a “Leave It to Beaver” world, men are male, masculine and attracted to women. Women are female, feminine and attracted to men.
In reality, all three exist more on sliders than on check boxes. And while they correlate, they are perfectly capable of operating independently. For some people, the sliders are static or mostly so - for others, they might change dramatically given circumstances or time.