8 ms·

It's called "positive discrimination" for a reason. We're positively discriminating to the benefit of women (or minorities, or whomever) now, to make up for the

by jen729w 10y ago

It's called "positive discrimination" for a reason. We're positively discriminating to the benefit of women (or minorities, or whomever) now, to make up for the decades of negative discrimination that these groups have suffered. Don't think it's fair? Interesting feeling, eh. Not very nice, eh. Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life.

dsacco 10y ago
Something seems off to me intuitively about "positive discrimination", as you've described it. It doesn't really seem fair to be unfair to an individual because, in the aggregate, that individual's group has been unfair to others in the past (and even the present). Sort of feels like an emotionally charged way of righting the wrong, rather than a rational one...or even an effective one.
- owebmaster 10y ago
  This remembers me of how germans has to hear quietly about their nazi grandparents.
michaelmrose 10y ago
Given Male 1 and Female 1 wherein female 1 was unfairly discriminated against. How does it follow that if you unfairly privilege female 2 in favor of male 2 that you have somehow made up for the original injustice. A rational though process would be that this just adds to the sum of injustice in the world. I'm perhaps presuming to much but with a name that begins with Jen which is often a short or familiar form of Jennifer I would have to wonder if you yourself are in favor of "positive discrimination" because you yourself have suffered from plain old discrimination the bad and in fact only form of discrimination there is.
- jen729w 10y ago
  They're my initials. I'm a 40 year old white English guy called John. I believe my life thus far has been tremendously more easy than a 40 year old black woman's would have been. Do you disagree? Edit: here's a concrete example. I've basically been offered every job interview I've gone for. I'm good at my job, no doubt, but in some of those cases I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been the strongest candidate. But - forgive me if I sound like an asshole, I'm trying to make a point - I'm charming. I'm white, I smile, I dress well, and that makes me safe. I'm a safe option. Unsure who to hire? Hire that nice white guy. This is the systemic, subliminal discrimination that positive discrimination is trying to address. I shouldn't be the default option just because I'm the white guy. I've had my time. Let's give the "hey we're not sure, so if in doubt hire the black lady" option a go. Fuck it, it can't hurt. Now, I do absolutely disagree with PD where it favours a clearly inferior candidate just because of their race/gender/etc. That is clearly wrong, and gets people upset, and I see why and I agree. It's a nuanced issue. But if you deny that there's an issue, or try to sweep it under the carpet, I believe you're being disingenuous at best.
  - jimmy444 10y ago
    None is denying that there is a problem. But people are upset because there is a PD that is favouring inferior candidate. In this case woman who failed. Of course a lot of assumptions, but still it looks like this.
  - michaelmrose 10y ago
    If its not favoring the weaker candidate its not discrimination positive or otherwise its plain old judgement. You are saying that you are in favor of discrimination or somehow used as a sort of tie breaker which is kind of silly frankly.
  - discombobulate 10y ago
    I would fire someone for hiring based on a physical characteristic (for knowledge work). It's idiotic. It sounds no better than random.
    - OJFord 10y ago
      If you can distinguish it from the average, then it's worse than random (that is, going with or against the average case uniformly at random).
  - owebmaster 10y ago
    > I believe my life thus far has been tremendously more easy than a 40 year old black woman's would have been. Do you disagree? The "funny" thing is that we are heading to a situation where the "positive" discrimination in favor of women will affect the weak side, the black/brown man, and they are not privilleged, of course. Now we have double negative discrimination. BTH, if it wasn't so common for women to waste lot of hours everyday with cosmetic and aesthetic stuff, they would have more time to study computers and suffer less harassment. Win-win.
J-dawg 10y ago
>Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life. Modern feminism increasingly seems to be an ideology based on the idea that women are always victims. You've just described positive discrimination, and implied that you think it's a good thing. Then you imply that you think women suffer unfairness for "literally your entire life". Which is it? You've either been a victim your entire life or you've benefitted from positive discrimination, in which case you probably need to stop acting like a victim. The idea of giving someone an unfair advantage because someone like them possibly had an unfair disadvantage is ludicrous. Based on your logic, in a generation from now we're going to have to start positively discriminating in favour of men, to make up for the fact that men are currently being discriminated against.
- grzm 10y ago
  I understand what you're saying. To dig into it a little more, do you think there is structural (as opposed to intentional) gender discrimination, and if so, should it be corrected? Please don't hesitate to answer "no" if that's what you believe. My goal in conversations like this is to better understand each other, not score points or make judgements. If it should be corrected, what specifically (i.e., what implementation) would you propose to do so? This whole issue is so contentious that I find people don't get much further beyond the surface disagreements.
  - mhenr18 10y ago
    No. At least in my country, all of the ways that females can be discriminated against in the workforce that are usually brought up are illegal. (Pay gaps for the same work, promotions, sexual harassment, etc) Yet people still complain they are problems. At this point, the onus is not on the rest of society to continue to try and make things easier for literally more than half the population. The onus is on the people being discriminated against to actually stand up for themselves and aggressively puruse legal action if they are the victims they claim to be. For me personally, I find it quite ridiculous to hear people talking about all the gender stereotypes that exist today (and the discrimination that comes alongside them) and how we need action action action to solve them as if they are still problems. My dad cooked more than my mum. I was picked on by girls at school. The girls always were told it's fine if they wanted to play a sport more dominated by guys, but god forbid a guy try to play sport with the girls. Rather than being discriminated against, the girls I know who went into software got given hugely preferential treatment over the guys and are routinely given better opportunities. In everyone's effort to undo gender discrimination, they've forgotten that the aim is not to swing the pendulum to the other side, but instead to bring it back to the middle and treat people on their own individual merits.
partycoder 10y ago
Not the right mindset either. Positive discrimination is actually negative for the groups that you are leaving out. Just focus in looking for candidates that are objectively competent at what they are supposed to do and fit in your culture. If you do it in an unbiased way then most groups should be represented. Have you heard of the Equal Employment Opportunity commission? call them and tell them about your positive discrimination idea, they will surely like it... since you are in violation of EEO laws (sex discrimination = preferring females to males is as illegal as preferring males to females). https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sex.cfm https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sex.cfm If you do, you will have a hard time proving that setting higher requirements for male employees is not unfavorable discrimination against them.
exclusiv 10y ago
That's nonsense. It's illegal to discriminate based on gender. Your idea of a "make good" policy doesn't align with the laws nor does it make sense to punish people that have nothing to do with any prior discriminations made against the group you are advocating breaking the law for.
- OJFord 10y ago
  > It's illegal to discriminate based on gender. And yet, it's only seen as a problem if it's to favour the incumbent advantaged.
doyoulikeworms 10y ago
Men can suffer from discrimination too. You sound like you read some bad, echo-chambery stuff TBH.
patrickg_zill 10y ago
Alt view: for at least the last 500 years of Western civilization, women have always had a more comfortable and safer life than an equivalent man living at the same time and of the same class. Men died in wars, suffered injury and death in jobs, etc. There's money in software development and women want it. Note the lack of "positive discrimination" for jobs like coal mining, or any other profession on the top ten most dangerous jobs..?
- OJFord 10y ago
  > Note the lack of "positive discrimination" for jobs like coal mining, or any other profession on the top ten most dangerous jobs..? You don't even have to go to the 'top ten most dangerous' - when did you last see a female plumber, electrician, gas technician, builder? I was recently telling someone (female) that I was waiting in for an electrician. I said something like 'so when he comes', then said 'or she, sorry I don't know' - but then I realised actually, you know what I do know, the electrician is going to be a man and not because it's so hard to 'break into', but because women/feminists don't care about doing it. Of course there are similar examples the other way around - male nurses or primary school teachers are examples to a lesser extent. It's not really a problem, but we should at least be honest about what we mean.
- DanBC 10y ago
  > Note the lack of "positive discrimination" for jobs like coal mining, Come on, that's lazy and dishonest. You can do better than trot out that well worn, dumb, troll point.
  - owebmaster 10y ago
    You are the real troll here. What he said is right. Don't you think men in coal mining would also prefer work with software development?
    - DanBC 10y ago
      The troll point is that there are no programmes to get women into mining (or other high risk / low pay industry) - that's untrue, and it's easy to check with a simple web search. It's lazy, and it's so frequently used and debunked that it's indistinguishable from trolling at this point.
beachstartup 10y ago
> Don't think it's fair? Interesting feeling, eh. Not very nice, eh. Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life. unfortunately, positive discrimination also are discriminates against people who are negatively discriminated against, like asian men trying to get into college or get a good job. but you probably don't really care about that because it doesn't fit neatly into your oppressor/oppressed classification system. hey, at least you're honest about throwing people under the bus to further your social justice agenda though. i appreciate that.
OJFord 10y ago
> Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life. I am. I'm young enough, though, that I'm acutely aware that the roles are going to be completely reversed for men not that much younger. I've been unable to attend technical talks at my university that sounded interesting, because they're 'women-only'. There are exclusive events, clubs, networking for women - but of course there aren't equivalents for men! Disassociate yourself from the poor fool who dare suggest such a horrid thing! I'm all for equality, but manifestly not for 'positive discrimination'. At some point, the tables will turn, and the generation of men below me will perhaps have this feeling of having 'suffered it for literally [their] entire life', and will want to positively discriminate back. Or, we could just consider people on their merits, rather than their gender. Y'know, what women say they want?
- gone35 10y ago
  I'm all for equality, but manifestly not for 'positive discrimination'. Control theory-wise, perhaps it's demonstrably impossible to obtain the former without some measure of the latter, unfortunately.
- JoeAltmaier 10y ago
  My car pulls to the right slightly, I turn the steering wheel slightly to the left to adjust. We do that in society, folks start to complain. I have to suspect they're not out to fix society, but rather to preserve their good position in it.
  - slededit 10y ago
    Or instead of a band-aide solution you could just get an alignment and solve the underlying issue.

by jen729w 10y ago

dsacco 10y ago

Something seems off to me intuitively about "positive discrimination", as you've described it. It doesn't really seem fair to be unfair to an individual because, in the aggregate, that individual's group has been unfair to others in the past (and even the present). Sort of feels like an emotionally charged way of righting the wrong, rather than a rational one...or even an effective one.

owebmaster 10y ago
This remembers me of how germans has to hear quietly about their nazi grandparents.

michaelmrose 10y ago

Given Male 1 and Female 1 wherein female 1 was unfairly discriminated against. How does it follow that if you unfairly privilege female 2 in favor of male 2 that you have somehow made up for the original injustice. A rational though process would be that this just adds to the sum of injustice in the world. I'm perhaps presuming to much but with a name that begins with Jen which is often a short or familiar form of Jennifer I would have to wonder if you yourself are in favor of "positive discrimination" because you yourself have suffered from plain old discrimination the bad and in fact only form of discrimination there is.

jen729w 10y ago
They're my initials. I'm a 40 year old white English guy called John. I believe my life thus far has been tremendously more easy than a 40 year old black woman's would have been. Do you disagree? Edit: here's a concrete example. I've basically been offered every job interview I've gone for. I'm good at my job, no doubt, but in some of those cases I'm pretty sure I wouldn't have been the strongest candidate. But - forgive me if I sound like an asshole, I'm trying to make a point - I'm charming. I'm white, I smile, I dress well, and that makes me safe. I'm a safe option. Unsure who to hire? Hire that nice white guy. This is the systemic, subliminal discrimination that positive discrimination is trying to address. I shouldn't be the default option just because I'm the white guy. I've had my time. Let's give the "hey we're not sure, so if in doubt hire the black lady" option a go. Fuck it, it can't hurt. Now, I do absolutely disagree with PD where it favours a clearly inferior candidate just because of their race/gender/etc. That is clearly wrong, and gets people upset, and I see why and I agree. It's a nuanced issue. But if you deny that there's an issue, or try to sweep it under the carpet, I believe you're being disingenuous at best.
- jimmy444 10y ago
  None is denying that there is a problem. But people are upset because there is a PD that is favouring inferior candidate. In this case woman who failed. Of course a lot of assumptions, but still it looks like this.
- michaelmrose 10y ago
  If its not favoring the weaker candidate its not discrimination positive or otherwise its plain old judgement. You are saying that you are in favor of discrimination or somehow used as a sort of tie breaker which is kind of silly frankly.
- discombobulate 10y ago
  I would fire someone for hiring based on a physical characteristic (for knowledge work). It's idiotic. It sounds no better than random.
  - OJFord 10y ago
    If you can distinguish it from the average, then it's worse than random (that is, going with or against the average case uniformly at random).
- owebmaster 10y ago
  > I believe my life thus far has been tremendously more easy than a 40 year old black woman's would have been. Do you disagree? The "funny" thing is that we are heading to a situation where the "positive" discrimination in favor of women will affect the weak side, the black/brown man, and they are not privilleged, of course. Now we have double negative discrimination. BTH, if it wasn't so common for women to waste lot of hours everyday with cosmetic and aesthetic stuff, they would have more time to study computers and suffer less harassment. Win-win.

J-dawg 10y ago

>Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life. Modern feminism increasingly seems to be an ideology based on the idea that women are always victims. You've just described positive discrimination, and implied that you think it's a good thing. Then you imply that you think women suffer unfairness for "literally your entire life". Which is it? You've either been a victim your entire life or you've benefitted from positive discrimination, in which case you probably need to stop acting like a victim. The idea of giving someone an unfair advantage because someone like them possibly had an unfair disadvantage is ludicrous. Based on your logic, in a generation from now we're going to have to start positively discriminating in favour of men, to make up for the fact that men are currently being discriminated against.

grzm 10y ago
I understand what you're saying. To dig into it a little more, do you think there is structural (as opposed to intentional) gender discrimination, and if so, should it be corrected? Please don't hesitate to answer "no" if that's what you believe. My goal in conversations like this is to better understand each other, not score points or make judgements. If it should be corrected, what specifically (i.e., what implementation) would you propose to do so? This whole issue is so contentious that I find people don't get much further beyond the surface disagreements.
- mhenr18 10y ago
  No. At least in my country, all of the ways that females can be discriminated against in the workforce that are usually brought up are illegal. (Pay gaps for the same work, promotions, sexual harassment, etc) Yet people still complain they are problems. At this point, the onus is not on the rest of society to continue to try and make things easier for literally more than half the population. The onus is on the people being discriminated against to actually stand up for themselves and aggressively puruse legal action if they are the victims they claim to be. For me personally, I find it quite ridiculous to hear people talking about all the gender stereotypes that exist today (and the discrimination that comes alongside them) and how we need action action action to solve them as if they are still problems. My dad cooked more than my mum. I was picked on by girls at school. The girls always were told it's fine if they wanted to play a sport more dominated by guys, but god forbid a guy try to play sport with the girls. Rather than being discriminated against, the girls I know who went into software got given hugely preferential treatment over the guys and are routinely given better opportunities. In everyone's effort to undo gender discrimination, they've forgotten that the aim is not to swing the pendulum to the other side, but instead to bring it back to the middle and treat people on their own individual merits.

partycoder 10y ago

Not the right mindset either. Positive discrimination is actually negative for the groups that you are leaving out. Just focus in looking for candidates that are objectively competent at what they are supposed to do and fit in your culture. If you do it in an unbiased way then most groups should be represented. Have you heard of the Equal Employment Opportunity commission? call them and tell them about your positive discrimination idea, they will surely like it... since you are in violation of EEO laws (sex discrimination = preferring females to males is as illegal as preferring males to females). https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sex.cfm https://www.eeoc.gov/laws/types/sex.cfm If you do, you will have a hard time proving that setting higher requirements for male employees is not unfavorable discrimination against them.

exclusiv 10y ago

That's nonsense. It's illegal to discriminate based on gender. Your idea of a "make good" policy doesn't align with the laws nor does it make sense to punish people that have nothing to do with any prior discriminations made against the group you are advocating breaking the law for.

OJFord 10y ago
> It's illegal to discriminate based on gender. And yet, it's only seen as a problem if it's to favour the incumbent advantaged.

doyoulikeworms 10y ago

Men can suffer from discrimination too. You sound like you read some bad, echo-chambery stuff TBH.

patrickg_zill 10y ago

Alt view: for at least the last 500 years of Western civilization, women have always had a more comfortable and safer life than an equivalent man living at the same time and of the same class. Men died in wars, suffered injury and death in jobs, etc. There's money in software development and women want it. Note the lack of "positive discrimination" for jobs like coal mining, or any other profession on the top ten most dangerous jobs..?

OJFord 10y ago
> Note the lack of "positive discrimination" for jobs like coal mining, or any other profession on the top ten most dangerous jobs..? You don't even have to go to the 'top ten most dangerous' - when did you last see a female plumber, electrician, gas technician, builder? I was recently telling someone (female) that I was waiting in for an electrician. I said something like 'so when he comes', then said 'or she, sorry I don't know' - but then I realised actually, you know what I do know, the electrician is going to be a man and not because it's so hard to 'break into', but because women/feminists don't care about doing it. Of course there are similar examples the other way around - male nurses or primary school teachers are examples to a lesser extent. It's not really a problem, but we should at least be honest about what we mean.
DanBC 10y ago
> Note the lack of "positive discrimination" for jobs like coal mining, Come on, that's lazy and dishonest. You can do better than trot out that well worn, dumb, troll point.
- owebmaster 10y ago
  You are the real troll here. What he said is right. Don't you think men in coal mining would also prefer work with software development?
  - DanBC 10y ago
    The troll point is that there are no programmes to get women into mining (or other high risk / low pay industry) - that's untrue, and it's easy to check with a simple web search. It's lazy, and it's so frequently used and debunked that it's indistinguishable from trolling at this point.

beachstartup 10y ago

> Don't think it's fair? Interesting feeling, eh. Not very nice, eh. Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life. unfortunately, positive discrimination also are discriminates against people who are negatively discriminated against, like asian men trying to get into college or get a good job. but you probably don't really care about that because it doesn't fit neatly into your oppressor/oppressed classification system. hey, at least you're honest about throwing people under the bus to further your social justice agenda though. i appreciate that.

OJFord 10y ago

> Be glad you haven't suffered it for literally your entire life. I am. I'm young enough, though, that I'm acutely aware that the roles are going to be completely reversed for men not that much younger. I've been unable to attend technical talks at my university that sounded interesting, because they're 'women-only'. There are exclusive events, clubs, networking for women - but of course there aren't equivalents for men! Disassociate yourself from the poor fool who dare suggest such a horrid thing! I'm all for equality, but manifestly not for 'positive discrimination'. At some point, the tables will turn, and the generation of men below me will perhaps have this feeling of having 'suffered it for literally [their] entire life', and will want to positively discriminate back. Or, we could just consider people on their merits, rather than their gender. Y'know, what women say they want?

gone35 10y ago
I'm all for equality, but manifestly not for 'positive discrimination'. Control theory-wise, perhaps it's demonstrably impossible to obtain the former without some measure of the latter, unfortunately.
JoeAltmaier 10y ago
My car pulls to the right slightly, I turn the steering wheel slightly to the left to adjust. We do that in society, folks start to complain. I have to suspect they're not out to fix society, but rather to preserve their good position in it.
- slededit 10y ago
  Or instead of a band-aide solution you could just get an alignment and solve the underlying issue.