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Reading her comments it made me wonder if women might be disposed to scar more easily (or men are more defiant) from this kind of treatment, creating a negative

Reading her comments it made me wonder if women might be disposed to scar more easily (or men are more defiant) from this kind of treatment, creating a negative feedback loop in subsequent jobs and roles which negatively affects their careers. This is not intended to be a criticism of women, but rather it's question which may have important implications. Men may externalize this kind of sandbagging and stonewalling while women may tend to internalize it. If so it may be a much bigger deal than it may appear to a man because we're damaging our talent pool.

timmytokyo 10y ago
That's a whole lot of hypothetical generalizing about women and men, based on absolutely no evidence. Try swapping "men" for "women" (and vice versa) in your comment to see how obnoxious it sounds.
- sbmassey 10y ago
  It doesn't seem particularly obnoxious either way, as far as I can tell. Do people really have to be scolded for hypothesizing about correlations between sex and other characteristics?
- oneloop 10y ago
  What kind of argument is this? You seem to believe that if the reverse hypothesis "sounds obnoxious" then the direct hypothesis must surely be false. The fact is that if what the parent is saying happens to be true, then the reverse is bond to sound obnoxious.
- thenomad 10y ago
  Let's see: "Reading his comments it made me wonder if men might be disposed to scar more easily (or women are more defiant) from this kind of treatment, creating a negative feedback loop in subsequent jobs and roles which negatively affects their careers. This is not intended to be a criticism of men, but rather it's question which may have important implications. Women may externalize this kind of sandbagging and stonewalling while men may tend to internalize it. If so it may be a much bigger deal than it may appear to a woman because we're damaging our talent pool." Could have maybe used a couple more "tend to" statements, but doesn't seem horribly unreasonable to me. (And looks, in many ways, equally valid as a hypothesis. Not in all elements, but there is a culture of the "strong man" who simply internalises stress and conflict in a lot of places.)
reddytowns 10y ago
The difference is that our culture dictates if it's a woman's problem, it's the whole world's problem. If it's a man's problem, it's his alone.
- corin_ 10y ago
  I'd suggest that a more accurate line would be "our culture dictates that if it's a man's problem, it gets fixed, if it's a woman's problem then nothing gets fixed unless enough noise is made about it, which leads to people like you listening to the noise and thinking women's problems are the ones the world cares about". Not that it's at all that black and white of course. But for you to somehow paint our world as sexist against men is... hmm.
  - reddytowns 10y ago
    If women's problems are ignored, then who's making the noise? And who is broadcasting it across the news networks? Why is "Not enough women in tech jobs" a national story for months on end, and even the presidential candidates make it an issue, if our culture doesn't consider it everyone's problem. Why isn't that level of intensity of noise given to issues like men not going to university as much as women? Where are the men-only scholarships? Where are the university quotas for men? Why are only men drafted? Why are they almost always sent to the front lines to fight and die and women, if they decide to join the military, are given much safer support roles? Why are there more male suicides then women? Why are men almost exclusively put in jail for failing to pay child support even though there is a greater percentage of deadbeat moms than deadbeat dads. Who is supposedly "fixing men's problems"? The candidates don't care. The news doesn't care. The only one who can seem to do it is the man himself. I stand by my statement.
    - james-watson 10y ago
      You are a brave soul to bring such facts into this conversation my friend. Many, many users on HN have been hellbanned for stating facts without any political bias. For example, it is very likely that I will get banned for this statement: "The Y chromosome in primates results in sexual dimorphism, which leads to differences in physiology and behavior between the sexes."

timmytokyo 10y ago

That's a whole lot of hypothetical generalizing about women and men, based on absolutely no evidence. Try swapping "men" for "women" (and vice versa) in your comment to see how obnoxious it sounds.

sbmassey 10y ago
It doesn't seem particularly obnoxious either way, as far as I can tell. Do people really have to be scolded for hypothesizing about correlations between sex and other characteristics?
oneloop 10y ago
What kind of argument is this? You seem to believe that if the reverse hypothesis "sounds obnoxious" then the direct hypothesis must surely be false. The fact is that if what the parent is saying happens to be true, then the reverse is bond to sound obnoxious.
thenomad 10y ago
Let's see: "Reading his comments it made me wonder if men might be disposed to scar more easily (or women are more defiant) from this kind of treatment, creating a negative feedback loop in subsequent jobs and roles which negatively affects their careers. This is not intended to be a criticism of men, but rather it's question which may have important implications. Women may externalize this kind of sandbagging and stonewalling while men may tend to internalize it. If so it may be a much bigger deal than it may appear to a woman because we're damaging our talent pool." Could have maybe used a couple more "tend to" statements, but doesn't seem horribly unreasonable to me. (And looks, in many ways, equally valid as a hypothesis. Not in all elements, but there is a culture of the "strong man" who simply internalises stress and conflict in a lot of places.)

reddytowns 10y ago

The difference is that our culture dictates if it's a woman's problem, it's the whole world's problem. If it's a man's problem, it's his alone.

corin_ 10y ago
I'd suggest that a more accurate line would be "our culture dictates that if it's a man's problem, it gets fixed, if it's a woman's problem then nothing gets fixed unless enough noise is made about it, which leads to people like you listening to the noise and thinking women's problems are the ones the world cares about". Not that it's at all that black and white of course. But for you to somehow paint our world as sexist against men is... hmm.
- reddytowns 10y ago
  If women's problems are ignored, then who's making the noise? And who is broadcasting it across the news networks? Why is "Not enough women in tech jobs" a national story for months on end, and even the presidential candidates make it an issue, if our culture doesn't consider it everyone's problem. Why isn't that level of intensity of noise given to issues like men not going to university as much as women? Where are the men-only scholarships? Where are the university quotas for men? Why are only men drafted? Why are they almost always sent to the front lines to fight and die and women, if they decide to join the military, are given much safer support roles? Why are there more male suicides then women? Why are men almost exclusively put in jail for failing to pay child support even though there is a greater percentage of deadbeat moms than deadbeat dads. Who is supposedly "fixing men's problems"? The candidates don't care. The news doesn't care. The only one who can seem to do it is the man himself. I stand by my statement.
  - james-watson 10y ago
    You are a brave soul to bring such facts into this conversation my friend. Many, many users on HN have been hellbanned for stating facts without any political bias. For example, it is very likely that I will get banned for this statement: "The Y chromosome in primates results in sexual dimorphism, which leads to differences in physiology and behavior between the sexes."