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I guess it doesn't need to be said that a lot of us are carrying baggage from adolescence. Even when I'm dating somebody, I easily fall into thinking that no w

by dkarl 16y ago

I guess it doesn't need to be said that a lot of us are carrying baggage from adolescence. Even when I'm dating somebody, I easily fall into thinking that no woman will ever want me and that deep down all women are fascists who despise weakness, want to see the strong humiliate the weak, and yearn to be instruments of this brutal hierarchy of male power. My therapist likes to remind me (and I'm paraphrasing heavily here,) "Dkarl, you've grown up, and the girls have grown up, too. You're not a dumb teenage boy trying to date dumb teenage girls anymore." I encourage the women on HN to say their piece on gender issues when they come up, even when your comments don't fit into the prevailing conversation. Don't worry about where your comments fit, how they influence the conversation, or how people misunderstand them or hijack your points. Just put them out there, because I think the majority of men here are well-intentioned and pretty self-aware when it comes to our own thinking about women; we just don't know how women experience working with us and what we can do to improve that experience.

yummyfajitas 16y ago
I guess it doesn't need to be said that people I disagree with are of low status and their opinions should be discounted for that reason. (I realize that the third paragraph of dkarl's post has substance, just picking on the fallacious part.)
sn 16y ago
I doubt that most men are self-aware about their own thinking. http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html
- dkarl 16y ago
  Well, okay, you've got a point there. The only woman on my team confided in me that she wants more challenging technical work, and she hasn't talked to our boss about it because she has an image of him as being unapproachable and moody, while all the men he has worked with think he's just the most easy-going and tolerant person imaginable. (The other women do, too, but my teammate is the first woman who has reported to him. The other women are peers.) But when I say self-aware, I mean that cognitive psychology is a favorite topic here, and people here have read a lot about the importance of intuition in every kind of thinking, and how everything about a person influences our intuition about them whether we want it to or not. Height, race, sex, age, attractiveness... and even worse, that our biases in intuition are mostly beyond the reach of introspection... and of course we can't dispense with intuition in dealing with people, so we can't really be fair, we can only be skeptical of our intuition, check it against evidence whenever possible, and try to observe our biases and compensate for them. At least, I'm pretty sure that picture emerges clearly from the various links that have been posted here, or anywhere else that geeky guys hang out. I think we have the problem of understanding the nature of bias licked. Honestly, I think the biggest two problems are 1) An attitude problem stemming from personal wounds and resentment over the perceived advantages of women. Some men really are deeply angry with women because of their own personal disappointments. 2) Sheer ignorance about how women experience our behavior in the workplace. Knowing how we might be screwing up isn't sufficient to recognize when we're screwing up, as the example of my boss shows. We need outside input. The internet is a perfect place for women to share their experiences, since they can be anonymous if they like, and they don't have to talk to people they have complicating relationships with.

by dkarl 16y ago

yummyfajitas 16y ago

I guess it doesn't need to be said that people I disagree with are of low status and their opinions should be discounted for that reason. (I realize that the third paragraph of dkarl's post has substance, just picking on the fallacious part.)

sn 16y ago

I doubt that most men are self-aware about their own thinking. http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html http://web.mit.edu/fnl/women/women.html

dkarl 16y ago
Well, okay, you've got a point there. The only woman on my team confided in me that she wants more challenging technical work, and she hasn't talked to our boss about it because she has an image of him as being unapproachable and moody, while all the men he has worked with think he's just the most easy-going and tolerant person imaginable. (The other women do, too, but my teammate is the first woman who has reported to him. The other women are peers.) But when I say self-aware, I mean that cognitive psychology is a favorite topic here, and people here have read a lot about the importance of intuition in every kind of thinking, and how everything about a person influences our intuition about them whether we want it to or not. Height, race, sex, age, attractiveness... and even worse, that our biases in intuition are mostly beyond the reach of introspection... and of course we can't dispense with intuition in dealing with people, so we can't really be fair, we can only be skeptical of our intuition, check it against evidence whenever possible, and try to observe our biases and compensate for them. At least, I'm pretty sure that picture emerges clearly from the various links that have been posted here, or anywhere else that geeky guys hang out. I think we have the problem of understanding the nature of bias licked. Honestly, I think the biggest two problems are 1) An attitude problem stemming from personal wounds and resentment over the perceived advantages of women. Some men really are deeply angry with women because of their own personal disappointments. 2) Sheer ignorance about how women experience our behavior in the workplace. Knowing how we might be screwing up isn't sufficient to recognize when we're screwing up, as the example of my boss shows. We need outside input. The internet is a perfect place for women to share their experiences, since they can be anonymous if they like, and they don't have to talk to people they have complicating relationships with.