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I'd like to think society can truely embrace diversity instead of uniformity. Sadly, racial and sex discrimination still exist leaving society stuck with imper

I'd like to think society can truely embrace diversity instead of uniformity. Sadly, racial and sex discrimination still exist leaving society stuck with imperfect solutions to deep rooted problems.

d33 9y ago
Could you give an example of an "imperfect solution to a deep rooted problem"?
- rsmuckles 9y ago
  Affirmative action programs are like the canonical imperfect solution to a deep rooted problem, especially for college admissions. Although they certainly help handfuls of disadvantaged minority students achieve higher education and the success that results from that, those fortunate individuals rarely have the power to do anything to resolve the socioeconomic problems that plague the communities that they came from. Having a token minority on your Fortune 500 board is great, but it doesn't do anything to resolve the class struggle in the Americas.
- deleted 9y ago
  [deleted]
exabrial 9y ago
^ this ^ so much. It makes me very sad to see male masculinity being shamed and female empathy mocked as a weakness. The important differences should be celebrated, not viewed as a superiority contest.
- closeparen 9y ago
  How are you going to do that in a way that isn't shitty to "feminine" men or "masculine" women?
  - phaed 9y ago
    You can't save everyone from feeling shitty. It's a similar argument overweight people have against ads showing fit and healthy people, they want those ads removed cause it makes them feel shitty about themselves. What they need to do is analyze why it makes them feel shitty, and if they don't like what they see, rather than try to change everyone else, they should look into changing themselves. If you accept who you are and are content with it, there is no reason to feel shitty in the first place.
    - closeparen 9y ago
      Being a sensitive man, an ambitious/aggressive woman, etc. is not and should not be treated like obesity. Expecting conformity to these norms causes a great deal of real-world harm (for starters: repressed emotions creating mental health crises in manly men, timidity leading to poor career outcomes for feminine women), and it is right and proper that we ostracize and exclude people who are looking to do so. We should celebrate people displaying traits that are well-adapted to the situation at hand, not the traits they "should" have based on some immutable identity bit.
      - jules 9y ago
        What makes you think you can socially engineer people to appreciate sensitive men? The root of sensitivity is not a respect producing trait for men is because women do not find that sexually desirable on average. Properties that make men respected are the properties that women like: men compete physically (sports or physique), on social status, and on financial success. There is a reason why parents traditionally toughen up boys. The same applies with the genders reversed.
        closeparen 9y ago
        We already have done the social engineering by creating communities where it's not socially acceptable to reinforce gender roles. Now we're talking about protecting them from you.
- Moshe_Silnorin 9y ago
  Denial of sexual dimorphism is an odd shibboleth, but amazingly persistent. It always makes me laugh when any ideology claims to be pro-science, as the left has done recently. They deny natural selection when it encumbers on their domain just as quickly as the religious right does. Reality has no ideology. Natural selection is a search process that is literally powered by death and suffering; why should we expect it, that vast indifferent thing, to distribute desirable characteristics in the manner prescribed by our flimsy ideologies?
- ggggtez 9y ago
  >male masculinity being shamed citation needed... When is the last time you saw an action hero movie with a man who was shamed for being too masculine? Western Culture as a whole views male masculinity as a good thing. Being non-masculine is viewed as weakness. On the other hand, if a woman is masculine, she's assumed to be a lesbian, and otherwise shamed. As a result, women are stuck between trying to be what society claims to like (masculinity) and what they are supposedly good at, but society doesn't value highly (femininity). CEOs and other officials are congratulated for making tough calls, being aggressive, taking risks, outsmarting and defeating their competitors. It's generally discussed in terms of battles, and the tone is almost always in rewarding the "masculine" approach. This is why startup culture is often in the news as very unwelcoming.
  - Sacho 9y ago
    Did you not just give an example yourself - the "masculine" startup culture is often in the news as very unwelcoming?
  - aianus 9y ago
    Who says femininity isn't valued? Doesn't the popularity of single income families where the woman stays home indicate that men value having their wives around so much that they're willing to effectively lose half their income?
    - forkLding 9y ago
      Saying that is feminity is like saying women valuing their husbands is masculinity. Unfortunately I don't associate the two.
jackcosgrove 9y ago
The problem is that diversity, when encountered in nature, is often accompanied by selection. Some diversity confers no competitive advantage, while some does. In our social species, selection of some and not others is...controversial. The easiest way to avoid controversy is to demonstrate that there is no diversity, as was the consensus on cognitive differences between the sexes that this article challenges. Acknowledging biological differences is opening a door that many don't want to walk through.
belorn 9y ago
Diversity based on grouping people together has several drawbacks, among others that "us and them" is strongly connected to hostility and dehumanization. Discrimination is only possible when people are sorted into distinct groups rather than embracing that all humans have some uniformable traits that define everyone as human. A "us and them" thinking is directly linked to our emotional reaction to security. Many (majority?) feel more insecure when isolated and surrounded by people they associated as "them", with the opposite feeling when surrounded by "us". "us and them" is involved in practically every war ever fought, and many conflict is resolved by having the distinction of "us and them" being erased, rather then embrace how different "them" are and later embrace it. I would like to think that society can truely embrace how similar people are and start to perceive everyone as belong to "us".
- kareldonk 9y ago
  The "us" vs "them" conflict between men and women goes back thousands of years and was introduced with specific purposes. My personal research on this can be found at https://blog.kareldonk.com/sexual-suppression-and-repression-i-definition-and-origin/ https://blog.kareldonk.com/sexual-suppression-and-repression... We'll start perceiving everyone as "us" as soon as most people realize what I discuss there.
  - VMG 9y ago
    from the link > Many thousands of years ago a technologically advanced race of extraterrestrial beings came to planet Earth to mine metals
    - kareldonk 9y ago
      Yes as strange as it may sound you may want to check my references and investigate.
      - gehwartzen 9y ago
        The references seem to try and poke holes into our current understanding of evolution (and I agree it's still very incomplete) and suggest that an alien arrival is the best reasonable explanation to fill the gaps. I'm not sure that's very convincing. What's even less plausible is an alien visitor, having all the technology necessary to get to earth, somehow needing humans for the purely physical task of extracting metals. I mean we ourselves are now almost capable of automating mining yet haven't made it past our very own moon.

I'd like to think society can truely embrace diversity instead of uniformity. Sadly, racial and sex discrimination still exist leaving society stuck with imperfect solutions to deep rooted problems.

d33 9y ago

Could you give an example of an "imperfect solution to a deep rooted problem"?

rsmuckles 9y ago
Affirmative action programs are like the canonical imperfect solution to a deep rooted problem, especially for college admissions. Although they certainly help handfuls of disadvantaged minority students achieve higher education and the success that results from that, those fortunate individuals rarely have the power to do anything to resolve the socioeconomic problems that plague the communities that they came from. Having a token minority on your Fortune 500 board is great, but it doesn't do anything to resolve the class struggle in the Americas.
deleted 9y ago
[deleted]

exabrial 9y ago

^ this ^ so much. It makes me very sad to see male masculinity being shamed and female empathy mocked as a weakness. The important differences should be celebrated, not viewed as a superiority contest.

closeparen 9y ago
How are you going to do that in a way that isn't shitty to "feminine" men or "masculine" women?
- phaed 9y ago
  You can't save everyone from feeling shitty. It's a similar argument overweight people have against ads showing fit and healthy people, they want those ads removed cause it makes them feel shitty about themselves. What they need to do is analyze why it makes them feel shitty, and if they don't like what they see, rather than try to change everyone else, they should look into changing themselves. If you accept who you are and are content with it, there is no reason to feel shitty in the first place.
  - closeparen 9y ago
    Being a sensitive man, an ambitious/aggressive woman, etc. is not and should not be treated like obesity. Expecting conformity to these norms causes a great deal of real-world harm (for starters: repressed emotions creating mental health crises in manly men, timidity leading to poor career outcomes for feminine women), and it is right and proper that we ostracize and exclude people who are looking to do so. We should celebrate people displaying traits that are well-adapted to the situation at hand, not the traits they "should" have based on some immutable identity bit.
    - jules 9y ago
      What makes you think you can socially engineer people to appreciate sensitive men? The root of sensitivity is not a respect producing trait for men is because women do not find that sexually desirable on average. Properties that make men respected are the properties that women like: men compete physically (sports or physique), on social status, and on financial success. There is a reason why parents traditionally toughen up boys. The same applies with the genders reversed.
      - closeparen 9y ago
        We already have done the social engineering by creating communities where it's not socially acceptable to reinforce gender roles. Now we're talking about protecting them from you.
Moshe_Silnorin 9y ago
Denial of sexual dimorphism is an odd shibboleth, but amazingly persistent. It always makes me laugh when any ideology claims to be pro-science, as the left has done recently. They deny natural selection when it encumbers on their domain just as quickly as the religious right does. Reality has no ideology. Natural selection is a search process that is literally powered by death and suffering; why should we expect it, that vast indifferent thing, to distribute desirable characteristics in the manner prescribed by our flimsy ideologies?
ggggtez 9y ago
>male masculinity being shamed citation needed... When is the last time you saw an action hero movie with a man who was shamed for being too masculine? Western Culture as a whole views male masculinity as a good thing. Being non-masculine is viewed as weakness. On the other hand, if a woman is masculine, she's assumed to be a lesbian, and otherwise shamed. As a result, women are stuck between trying to be what society claims to like (masculinity) and what they are supposedly good at, but society doesn't value highly (femininity). CEOs and other officials are congratulated for making tough calls, being aggressive, taking risks, outsmarting and defeating their competitors. It's generally discussed in terms of battles, and the tone is almost always in rewarding the "masculine" approach. This is why startup culture is often in the news as very unwelcoming.
- Sacho 9y ago
  Did you not just give an example yourself - the "masculine" startup culture is often in the news as very unwelcoming?
- aianus 9y ago
  Who says femininity isn't valued? Doesn't the popularity of single income families where the woman stays home indicate that men value having their wives around so much that they're willing to effectively lose half their income?
  - forkLding 9y ago
    Saying that is feminity is like saying women valuing their husbands is masculinity. Unfortunately I don't associate the two.

jackcosgrove 9y ago

The problem is that diversity, when encountered in nature, is often accompanied by selection. Some diversity confers no competitive advantage, while some does. In our social species, selection of some and not others is...controversial. The easiest way to avoid controversy is to demonstrate that there is no diversity, as was the consensus on cognitive differences between the sexes that this article challenges. Acknowledging biological differences is opening a door that many don't want to walk through.

belorn 9y ago

Diversity based on grouping people together has several drawbacks, among others that "us and them" is strongly connected to hostility and dehumanization. Discrimination is only possible when people are sorted into distinct groups rather than embracing that all humans have some uniformable traits that define everyone as human. A "us and them" thinking is directly linked to our emotional reaction to security. Many (majority?) feel more insecure when isolated and surrounded by people they associated as "them", with the opposite feeling when surrounded by "us". "us and them" is involved in practically every war ever fought, and many conflict is resolved by having the distinction of "us and them" being erased, rather then embrace how different "them" are and later embrace it. I would like to think that society can truely embrace how similar people are and start to perceive everyone as belong to "us".

kareldonk 9y ago
The "us" vs "them" conflict between men and women goes back thousands of years and was introduced with specific purposes. My personal research on this can be found at https://blog.kareldonk.com/sexual-suppression-and-repression-i-definition-and-origin/ https://blog.kareldonk.com/sexual-suppression-and-repression... We'll start perceiving everyone as "us" as soon as most people realize what I discuss there.
- VMG 9y ago
  from the link > Many thousands of years ago a technologically advanced race of extraterrestrial beings came to planet Earth to mine metals
  - kareldonk 9y ago
    Yes as strange as it may sound you may want to check my references and investigate.
    - gehwartzen 9y ago
      The references seem to try and poke holes into our current understanding of evolution (and I agree it's still very incomplete) and suggest that an alien arrival is the best reasonable explanation to fill the gaps. I'm not sure that's very convincing. What's even less plausible is an alien visitor, having all the technology necessary to get to earth, somehow needing humans for the purely physical task of extracting metals. I mean we ourselves are now almost capable of automating mining yet haven't made it past our very own moon.