12 ms·

I suspect a large part of this is down to 1. People defaulting to the nuclear option constantly, in their reactions, and 2. People not wanting to accept that

I suspect a large part of this is down to 1. People defaulting to the nuclear option constantly, in their reactions, and 2. People not wanting to accept that some issues are complex, and that a blanket approach doesn't work. The latter of these is the real issue. People love being outraged over the lack of women in STEM fields, and how those that are are treated, but few people talk about the lack of men in teaching it nursing roles. The former is seen as "a problem" and the latter isn't. I'd argue that both are issues, but one is something that political groups get behind and the other isn't. As a different example, you could look at the issue of badger culls it fox hunting in the UK. The most outspoken people against both aren't from the countryside, have never kept cattle or been on hunts, don't understand (or want to think too much) about the issues involved, but know that badgers and foxes are cute. It's the infantilism of understanding; people wanting things to be black and white and easy to understand, where pretty much everything contentious, when you dig, is complex. I suspect a lot of the blame for this is a combination of the short article and news industries, giving people the feeling of being informed without any of the substance to back it up, and the increasing politicisation of issues, where people hold views for reasons more tribal than rational. Once you start believing that issues are simple, it's easy to fit everything into that framework and to wander round being outraged or offended or insulted by things. Because you can read into life whatever you want.

estefan 11y ago
The problem is that we're meant to believe everyone's opinions are equally valid. Empirically, it seems to me, some people are just manifestly stupid and/or incompetent.
- manyxcxi 11y ago
  > some people are just manifestly stupid and/or incompetent Some are. Even more are just plain incorrect for all the many reasons human beings are incorrect. At least in the states, we've spent the last 30 years making people believe that simply because you feel it is so, it must be. That's got to be a huge factor in the degradation of discourse in the same time period- if instead of coming from the classical position of some attempted mutual understanding, people are essentially following their own religion of self. If what I feel is always correct, then you disagreeing with me means that you are wrong. Thus, I can't listen to you anymore or even attempt to see where you're coming from. This leads to the same types of responses you see when you are saying things that might make someone doubt their religion. You get the hyperbolic, emotional, even physical responses that go nowhere. Now look at the outbreak of safe spaces, refusing to let people speak that have a non-popular opinion, etc.
  - estefan 11y ago
    You put it so much more eloquently than I did. Yes, this is exactly what I mean.
    - manyxcxi 11y ago
      I recently stumbled on a podcast I found very interesting that relates: The Art of Manliness #189: The Classical Education You Never Had [0] They had an author (Susan Bauer) on discussing topics from her book The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had [1], where they discussed the differences between a classical education and today's modern education (in America). One of the salient points was where she described today's method of reading literature and stopping every few pages/chapters and discussing what you think/feel about it and your interpretation. She made the argument that these students are being taught to come to conclusions and judge things before getting the full picture, and human nature being what it is, we stick with that judgement even as we learn more. She went on to say that instead of this, a more classical approach would be to read the whole book first, then go back through and discuss those interesting sections and come to conclusions with the whole picture. I haven't read the book yet, but it's on my list now- the entire episode was very interesting and thoughtful and I'm going to check out more of their podcasts as well. [0] http://www.artofmanliness.com/2016/04/04/podcast-189-the-classical-education-you-never-had/ http://www.artofmanliness.com/2016/04/04/podcast-189-the-cla... [1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/039308096X http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/039308096X
      - dxbydt 11y ago
        Thank you so much for posting this!
      - tamana 11y ago
        > stopping every few pages/chapters and discussing what you think/feel about it and your interpretation. > students are being taught to come to conclusions and judge things before getting the full picture > I haven't read the book yet [, but I am happy to discuss my impression of it] Beautiful satire!
- rwj 11y ago
  People have confused a right to express their opinion with a right to their opinion. The first is a foundation for discussion and improvement, the second is a recipe for stupidity.
- sgift 11y ago
  I don't think we're really meant to believe that, it's just we haven't found a way to decide (on a big scale) who we should listen too and who not. Only intelligent people? Only moral people? Only people with money? Only .. I think you get it. Next you have the problem with "trust those with education" - sounds great, but .. what about those who have education but are paid for a specific point of view? Maybe without us knowing it. It's the classic "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me"-thing. People get told to listen to <some group> - great! People get mislead by <some group> - shitty. People get to to listen to <some (other) group> - no way. Last time you told me to listen to someone he lied to me! That's the reason we ended with "one person, one vote" in the first place (and governing is nothing else but constant exchange of opinions). A system where automagically the "best, brightest, morally fittest, etc." would lead would be vastly superior. Unfornately, outside of fairy tales, we have no idea how to do that and instead try to limit the damage one bad apple can do.
willvarfar 11y ago
> As a different example, you could look at the issue of badger culls it fox hunting in the UK. The most outspoken people against both aren't from the countryside, have never kept cattle or been on hunts, don't understand (or want to think too much) about the issues involved, but know that badgers and foxes are cute. So I'm guessing you are from the countryside and you think its ok to hunt foxes and badgers? Just to balance things up, I'm from Suffolk which is as countryside as you can get and I don't know anyone who thinks its ok to hunt. I also don't know anyone who'd say they "kept cattle" rather than "kept cows", so I guess we're not from quite the same countryside? :)
- alex_hitchins 11y ago
  >I don't know anyone who thinks its ok to hunt For fun or for necessity?
  - willvarfar 11y ago
    For fun. There really isn't any necessity in fox hunting.
  - DanBC 11y ago
    Hunt in this context is "ride to hounds", or fox hunting, on horseback, with dogs.
- petewailes 11y ago
  Suffolk boy myself (though Welsh by birth and parentage). I suspect that's more because Suffolk isn't traditionally a hunting area. However, where my fiancée is from, is, so I get both sides of the argument. Re. badgers, my problem is that the work that's been done on the trial culls has been so badly managed that it's hard to say one way or the other whether it's working or not. Quarantine and cattle culling in Wales seems to be having a positive effect on TB spread, but at huge economic damage to farmers. Re. foxes, my issue there is that the hunt ban is an awful piece of legislation, that neither protects foxes, nor helps those who have have dozens of hunt dogs. I'm fine with either legalising it (it's not a great past-time, but there's far worse and it's an effective way of controlling fox populations in localised areas), or with banning it (there's other ways to keep populations in check, although none are humane). My issue is with town and city folk who didn't grow up in the countryside not understanding that it's land which has to be managed.
pj_mukh 11y ago
I think you're right about most of this, especially the fact that news media coverage is "bite-sized" and incomprehensive. But, I'd like to point out that the lack of women in STEM fields is about decision-making power and not necessarily equity. Women aren't fighting for equity in garbage collection jobs either. If women are to have equal say on the goings-on's of society they need to partake in the upper echelons of power equally (Government, Corporate Leadership, STEM positions etc.).
- jules 11y ago
  I think this is the difference between a collectivist and individualist point of view. You can view women as a group or tribe, competing against other groups or tribes, or you can view each person as an individual with one of the characteristics being gender. The last sentence of your comment is from a collectivist point of view. I don't think this view is helpful. One woman isn't really helped by another woman being in the government. What matters is that each individual has equal opportunity regardless of characteristics such as gender that are not directly relevant to the position. The tribal point of view does the opposite: rather than de-emphasising characteristics irrelevant to the situation at hand, it amps up those characteristics in a tribal us-vs-them conflict situation. Complaining that there aren't enough women in STEM seems to me as silly as complaining that there aren't enough people with red hair in STEM. What we should strive for is a world where each individual has the same opportunity based on their merits regardless of irrelevant characteristics, not a world with an elaborate system of conflicting tribes that lobby top-down control to ensure that their tribe gets an equal number of tribes(wo)men in prestigious positions.
  - pj_mukh 11y ago
    Yes, what you described is a pure meritocracy and all things being equal, that would be GREAT, unfortunately, all things are not equal. If all people got equal encouragement, inspiration, and opportunity (from the moment of birth) then we could simply focus at the moment of judgement (which btw, is also currently biased [1]). So that is basically what STEM advocates are working on, making sure women and other disadvantaged minorities have equal encouragement, inspiration and opportunity (specifically to learn) so we can claim to have an equitable meritocracy. [1] http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf
EliRivers 11y ago
While I don't disagree with the general thrust of your argument, as an aside, the lack of men in nursing roles (and teaching, especially to younger children) is seen as a problem and when you spend time in the nursing or teaching community it comes up a lot. Campaigns to attract more men into these professions have been running for a long time. While I'm here, speaking as a townie, I don't see any complexity in the fox hunting issue. If it's vermin that needs to be controlled, kill it. Fine. But to spend a day getting pleasure out of chasing it down with a pack of dogs? That's not the same question at all.
- Majestic121 11y ago
  "While I'm here, speaking as a townie, I don't see any complexity in the fox hunting issue." Well, that's the point the grandparent comment was making. The fact that there is multiple sides on this issue shows that it is not as black and white as you seem to see it. The people hunting foxes and badger are not devils made of pure evil, so there must be a reason why they are doing it. But the actual debate about hunting foxes does not matter here, the point is : the world is not as black and white as people see it.
  - EliRivers 11y ago
    Oh gosh no, nobody is pure evil. Many people who take part in lynchings, for example, go home to show tenderness to their spouse and children. Not being pure evil doesn't make it ok.
- jules 11y ago
  Now I'm wondering whether you are a vegetarian, or whether you pay others to kill animals for a few minutes of eating pleasure.
  - DougWebb 11y ago
    I'm not a vegetarian, and I gladly pay others to kill animals for me to eat. But I do not pay for the animals to be tortured in the process; I want them killed as quickly and painlessly as possible. Cats injure, torture, and play with their prey before killing it. Humans should not do that.
pvaldes 11y ago
> The most outspoken people against both aren't from the countryside, have never kept cattle or been on hunts, don't understand (or want to think too much) about the issues involved, but know that badgers and foxes are cute. You have your point, but is a common and too simplistic interpretation. We need to repeat this more: To have cattle or being able to shoot a rabbit is irrelevant and not a guarantee at all to understand science or modern biology. Seriously. Radically new ideas (like for example that wolves will generate money and provide basic services valued in millions of dollars, or that if you kill the alpha wolf in a pack there is an increase, not a decrease to cattle damages, or that to cull badgers will spread faster the cattle diseases that you want to stop and thus is a questionable investment of public money)... all those knowledge is generated normally in universities, placed in big cities, after years of painfully slow research done by experts in zoology, chemistry, genetics... And I'm talking of real experts. Some of the most fantastic environmental fails were incubated in the local pub by farmers and hunters that lobby to push the local silly politician hunting for votes. Or by people that do not understand how biology works. (Ask the Chinese people about the failure of the big sparrow cull in Mao times, for example). Farmers are experts in breeding cattle. Point. Not more, not less. Basic concepts in biology are often terribly misunderstood or just ignored stubbornly by them for decades, and there is a big inertia in small villages to accept changes. For some reason, all people are instead ready to follow the local hero, with his myth based ideas, and often lose money by this.
- reitanqild 11y ago
  > all those knowledge is generated normally in universities, placed in big cities, after years of painfully slow research done by experts in zoology, chemistry, genetics... IIRC, so are the ideas that wolves, an animal capable of eating sheep or even moose would not eat children if they happened to walk unprotected. Not saying we should get rid of wolves only that some realism need to be applied.
  - g_sch 11y ago
    At least in the United States, a non-rabid wolf has never killed a person in the lower 48 states. Ever.[0] And there used to be millions of wolves in the US. [0] from Vicious: Wolves and Men in America by Jon T. Coleman, Yale University Press, 2008
iamthepieman 11y ago
I saw this last night[1]. I looked hard to see if this was a spoof or if someone had mistaken The Onion for a valid news source. As far as I can though it's real. This is a prime example of #2 that you mentioned. People whose connection to animals is their kids nature shows and maybe a dog or a cat. [1] http://www.fios1news.com/longisland/protest-over-farm-cow#.VxeB3pwrLmH http://www.fios1news.com/longisland/protest-over-farm-cow#.V...
weberc2 11y ago
> I'd argue that both are issues I would argue that neither are issues, so long as the imbalances aren't due to discrimination (like real discrimination, not the "anything can be discrimination if you put your mind to it!" stuff we see today).
nmrm2 11y ago
> The former is seen as "a problem" and the latter isn't That's not true. There are organized efforts to increase the number of men in (especially elementary school) teaching roles as well as efforts to increase the number of male nurses.
hartpuff 11y ago
> The most outspoken people against both aren't from the countryside, have never kept cattle or been on hunts, don't understand (or want to think too much) about the issues involved, but know that badgers and foxes are cute. Where is your evidence that the the most outspoken people who oppose fox hunting and badger culls do so because they think badgers and foxes are "cute"? Why would people who oppose fox hunting go on fox hunts? Why is going on hunts or owning cattle or living outside of a city necessary to validate an opinion about killing animals? > Once you start believing that issues are simple, it's easy to fit everything into that framework and to wander round being outraged or offended or insulted by things It's also easy to write people off whose opinions you don't like/accept, by pretending they only hold them for ridiculously simplistic reasons.
DanBC 11y ago
I used to go hunt sabbing. everyone else that went had lived in villages for most of their lives. You're simply wrong about that - lots of people in HSA are by any definition rural people. You're wrong about nursing and teaching too. Lack of women in STEM comes up on HN because HN has a STEM focus. All the teaching / nursing unions, professional bodies, colleges, etc think that the lack of men is a problem. There are plenty of news paper articles about this too. It's weird that you call your opponents infantile yet present such a simplistic, and wrong, set of argument.

estefan 11y ago

The problem is that we're meant to believe everyone's opinions are equally valid. Empirically, it seems to me, some people are just manifestly stupid and/or incompetent.

manyxcxi 11y ago
> some people are just manifestly stupid and/or incompetent Some are. Even more are just plain incorrect for all the many reasons human beings are incorrect. At least in the states, we've spent the last 30 years making people believe that simply because you feel it is so, it must be. That's got to be a huge factor in the degradation of discourse in the same time period- if instead of coming from the classical position of some attempted mutual understanding, people are essentially following their own religion of self. If what I feel is always correct, then you disagreeing with me means that you are wrong. Thus, I can't listen to you anymore or even attempt to see where you're coming from. This leads to the same types of responses you see when you are saying things that might make someone doubt their religion. You get the hyperbolic, emotional, even physical responses that go nowhere. Now look at the outbreak of safe spaces, refusing to let people speak that have a non-popular opinion, etc.
- estefan 11y ago
  You put it so much more eloquently than I did. Yes, this is exactly what I mean.
  - manyxcxi 11y ago
    I recently stumbled on a podcast I found very interesting that relates: The Art of Manliness #189: The Classical Education You Never Had [0] They had an author (Susan Bauer) on discussing topics from her book The Well-Educated Mind: A Guide to the Classical Education You Never Had [1], where they discussed the differences between a classical education and today's modern education (in America). One of the salient points was where she described today's method of reading literature and stopping every few pages/chapters and discussing what you think/feel about it and your interpretation. She made the argument that these students are being taught to come to conclusions and judge things before getting the full picture, and human nature being what it is, we stick with that judgement even as we learn more. She went on to say that instead of this, a more classical approach would be to read the whole book first, then go back through and discuss those interesting sections and come to conclusions with the whole picture. I haven't read the book yet, but it's on my list now- the entire episode was very interesting and thoughtful and I'm going to check out more of their podcasts as well. [0] http://www.artofmanliness.com/2016/04/04/podcast-189-the-classical-education-you-never-had/ http://www.artofmanliness.com/2016/04/04/podcast-189-the-cla... [1] http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/039308096X http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/039308096X
    - dxbydt 11y ago
      Thank you so much for posting this!
    - tamana 11y ago
      > stopping every few pages/chapters and discussing what you think/feel about it and your interpretation. > students are being taught to come to conclusions and judge things before getting the full picture > I haven't read the book yet [, but I am happy to discuss my impression of it] Beautiful satire!
rwj 11y ago
People have confused a right to express their opinion with a right to their opinion. The first is a foundation for discussion and improvement, the second is a recipe for stupidity.
sgift 11y ago
I don't think we're really meant to believe that, it's just we haven't found a way to decide (on a big scale) who we should listen too and who not. Only intelligent people? Only moral people? Only people with money? Only .. I think you get it. Next you have the problem with "trust those with education" - sounds great, but .. what about those who have education but are paid for a specific point of view? Maybe without us knowing it. It's the classic "fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me"-thing. People get told to listen to <some group> - great! People get mislead by <some group> - shitty. People get to to listen to <some (other) group> - no way. Last time you told me to listen to someone he lied to me! That's the reason we ended with "one person, one vote" in the first place (and governing is nothing else but constant exchange of opinions). A system where automagically the "best, brightest, morally fittest, etc." would lead would be vastly superior. Unfornately, outside of fairy tales, we have no idea how to do that and instead try to limit the damage one bad apple can do.

willvarfar 11y ago

> As a different example, you could look at the issue of badger culls it fox hunting in the UK. The most outspoken people against both aren't from the countryside, have never kept cattle or been on hunts, don't understand (or want to think too much) about the issues involved, but know that badgers and foxes are cute. So I'm guessing you are from the countryside and you think its ok to hunt foxes and badgers? Just to balance things up, I'm from Suffolk which is as countryside as you can get and I don't know anyone who thinks its ok to hunt. I also don't know anyone who'd say they "kept cattle" rather than "kept cows", so I guess we're not from quite the same countryside? :)

alex_hitchins 11y ago
>I don't know anyone who thinks its ok to hunt For fun or for necessity?
- willvarfar 11y ago
  For fun. There really isn't any necessity in fox hunting.
- DanBC 11y ago
  Hunt in this context is "ride to hounds", or fox hunting, on horseback, with dogs.
petewailes 11y ago
Suffolk boy myself (though Welsh by birth and parentage). I suspect that's more because Suffolk isn't traditionally a hunting area. However, where my fiancée is from, is, so I get both sides of the argument. Re. badgers, my problem is that the work that's been done on the trial culls has been so badly managed that it's hard to say one way or the other whether it's working or not. Quarantine and cattle culling in Wales seems to be having a positive effect on TB spread, but at huge economic damage to farmers. Re. foxes, my issue there is that the hunt ban is an awful piece of legislation, that neither protects foxes, nor helps those who have have dozens of hunt dogs. I'm fine with either legalising it (it's not a great past-time, but there's far worse and it's an effective way of controlling fox populations in localised areas), or with banning it (there's other ways to keep populations in check, although none are humane). My issue is with town and city folk who didn't grow up in the countryside not understanding that it's land which has to be managed.

pj_mukh 11y ago

I think you're right about most of this, especially the fact that news media coverage is "bite-sized" and incomprehensive. But, I'd like to point out that the lack of women in STEM fields is about decision-making power and not necessarily equity. Women aren't fighting for equity in garbage collection jobs either. If women are to have equal say on the goings-on's of society they need to partake in the upper echelons of power equally (Government, Corporate Leadership, STEM positions etc.).

jules 11y ago
I think this is the difference between a collectivist and individualist point of view. You can view women as a group or tribe, competing against other groups or tribes, or you can view each person as an individual with one of the characteristics being gender. The last sentence of your comment is from a collectivist point of view. I don't think this view is helpful. One woman isn't really helped by another woman being in the government. What matters is that each individual has equal opportunity regardless of characteristics such as gender that are not directly relevant to the position. The tribal point of view does the opposite: rather than de-emphasising characteristics irrelevant to the situation at hand, it amps up those characteristics in a tribal us-vs-them conflict situation. Complaining that there aren't enough women in STEM seems to me as silly as complaining that there aren't enough people with red hair in STEM. What we should strive for is a world where each individual has the same opportunity based on their merits regardless of irrelevant characteristics, not a world with an elaborate system of conflicting tribes that lobby top-down control to ensure that their tribe gets an equal number of tribes(wo)men in prestigious positions.
- pj_mukh 11y ago
  Yes, what you described is a pure meritocracy and all things being equal, that would be GREAT, unfortunately, all things are not equal. If all people got equal encouragement, inspiration, and opportunity (from the moment of birth) then we could simply focus at the moment of judgement (which btw, is also currently biased [1]). So that is basically what STEM advocates are working on, making sure women and other disadvantaged minorities have equal encouragement, inspiration and opportunity (specifically to learn) so we can claim to have an equitable meritocracy. [1] http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf http://advance.cornell.edu/documents/ImpactofGender.pdf

EliRivers 11y ago

While I don't disagree with the general thrust of your argument, as an aside, the lack of men in nursing roles (and teaching, especially to younger children) is seen as a problem and when you spend time in the nursing or teaching community it comes up a lot. Campaigns to attract more men into these professions have been running for a long time. While I'm here, speaking as a townie, I don't see any complexity in the fox hunting issue. If it's vermin that needs to be controlled, kill it. Fine. But to spend a day getting pleasure out of chasing it down with a pack of dogs? That's not the same question at all.

Majestic121 11y ago
"While I'm here, speaking as a townie, I don't see any complexity in the fox hunting issue." Well, that's the point the grandparent comment was making. The fact that there is multiple sides on this issue shows that it is not as black and white as you seem to see it. The people hunting foxes and badger are not devils made of pure evil, so there must be a reason why they are doing it. But the actual debate about hunting foxes does not matter here, the point is : the world is not as black and white as people see it.
- EliRivers 11y ago
  Oh gosh no, nobody is pure evil. Many people who take part in lynchings, for example, go home to show tenderness to their spouse and children. Not being pure evil doesn't make it ok.
jules 11y ago
Now I'm wondering whether you are a vegetarian, or whether you pay others to kill animals for a few minutes of eating pleasure.
- DougWebb 11y ago
  I'm not a vegetarian, and I gladly pay others to kill animals for me to eat. But I do not pay for the animals to be tortured in the process; I want them killed as quickly and painlessly as possible. Cats injure, torture, and play with their prey before killing it. Humans should not do that.

pvaldes 11y ago

> The most outspoken people against both aren't from the countryside, have never kept cattle or been on hunts, don't understand (or want to think too much) about the issues involved, but know that badgers and foxes are cute. You have your point, but is a common and too simplistic interpretation. We need to repeat this more: To have cattle or being able to shoot a rabbit is irrelevant and not a guarantee at all to understand science or modern biology. Seriously. Radically new ideas (like for example that wolves will generate money and provide basic services valued in millions of dollars, or that if you kill the alpha wolf in a pack there is an increase, not a decrease to cattle damages, or that to cull badgers will spread faster the cattle diseases that you want to stop and thus is a questionable investment of public money)... all those knowledge is generated normally in universities, placed in big cities, after years of painfully slow research done by experts in zoology, chemistry, genetics... And I'm talking of real experts. Some of the most fantastic environmental fails were incubated in the local pub by farmers and hunters that lobby to push the local silly politician hunting for votes. Or by people that do not understand how biology works. (Ask the Chinese people about the failure of the big sparrow cull in Mao times, for example). Farmers are experts in breeding cattle. Point. Not more, not less. Basic concepts in biology are often terribly misunderstood or just ignored stubbornly by them for decades, and there is a big inertia in small villages to accept changes. For some reason, all people are instead ready to follow the local hero, with his myth based ideas, and often lose money by this.

reitanqild 11y ago
> all those knowledge is generated normally in universities, placed in big cities, after years of painfully slow research done by experts in zoology, chemistry, genetics... IIRC, so are the ideas that wolves, an animal capable of eating sheep or even moose would not eat children if they happened to walk unprotected. Not saying we should get rid of wolves only that some realism need to be applied.
- g_sch 11y ago
  At least in the United States, a non-rabid wolf has never killed a person in the lower 48 states. Ever.[0] And there used to be millions of wolves in the US. [0] from Vicious: Wolves and Men in America by Jon T. Coleman, Yale University Press, 2008

iamthepieman 11y ago

I saw this last night[1]. I looked hard to see if this was a spoof or if someone had mistaken The Onion for a valid news source. As far as I can though it's real. This is a prime example of #2 that you mentioned. People whose connection to animals is their kids nature shows and maybe a dog or a cat. [1] http://www.fios1news.com/longisland/protest-over-farm-cow#.VxeB3pwrLmH http://www.fios1news.com/longisland/protest-over-farm-cow#.V...

weberc2 11y ago

> I'd argue that both are issues I would argue that neither are issues, so long as the imbalances aren't due to discrimination (like real discrimination, not the "anything can be discrimination if you put your mind to it!" stuff we see today).

nmrm2 11y ago

> The former is seen as "a problem" and the latter isn't That's not true. There are organized efforts to increase the number of men in (especially elementary school) teaching roles as well as efforts to increase the number of male nurses.

hartpuff 11y ago

> The most outspoken people against both aren't from the countryside, have never kept cattle or been on hunts, don't understand (or want to think too much) about the issues involved, but know that badgers and foxes are cute. Where is your evidence that the the most outspoken people who oppose fox hunting and badger culls do so because they think badgers and foxes are "cute"? Why would people who oppose fox hunting go on fox hunts? Why is going on hunts or owning cattle or living outside of a city necessary to validate an opinion about killing animals? > Once you start believing that issues are simple, it's easy to fit everything into that framework and to wander round being outraged or offended or insulted by things It's also easy to write people off whose opinions you don't like/accept, by pretending they only hold them for ridiculously simplistic reasons.

DanBC 11y ago

I used to go hunt sabbing. everyone else that went had lived in villages for most of their lives. You're simply wrong about that - lots of people in HSA are by any definition rural people. You're wrong about nursing and teaching too. Lack of women in STEM comes up on HN because HN has a STEM focus. All the teaching / nursing unions, professional bodies, colleges, etc think that the lack of men is a problem. There are plenty of news paper articles about this too. It's weird that you call your opponents infantile yet present such a simplistic, and wrong, set of argument.