6 ms·

Call me sexist, but I firmly believe there are three areas women should not generally be part of: military, cooking and teaching. All the best chefs are men, b

Call me sexist, but I firmly believe there are three areas women should not generally be part of: military, cooking and teaching. All the best chefs are men, best professors I know are men too. And military requires more endurance that women normally have.

potatolicious 16y ago
I know of many female chefs of great repute and talent - and I know some very good female professors. I don't see the link between "most good chefs are men" and "women should not be chefs". It's a bit like "no Black people ride at the front of the bus" and "Black people should not ride at the front of the bus" - you've conveniently assumed a level playing field where there likely is none, and you've also erroneously linked the current state of things to the ideal state of things. As for the military - not being a military man I'm not sure I am qualified to comment... but are there not many more roles in the military that do not require the massive amounts of brawn that "only men" can provide?
jtbigwoo 16y ago
Call me sexist, but I firmly believe there are three areas women should not generally be part of: military, cooking and teaching. Lawrence Summers? Is that you?
- yummyfajitas 16y ago
  Clearly not - Larry Summers never made any gender-based value judgements, nor did he even draw conclusions. He got into trouble for asking questions people didn't want the answer to.
  - pjscott 16y ago
    And yet, to this day, people remember what they thought he said, rather than what he actually said. Weird, isn't it?
orangecat 16y ago
I don't see how that follows. Most chess grandmasters are men; should women not play? If you accept the hypothesis that males have greater genetic variability than females, it shouldn't be surprising to see men overrepresented at the very top (and bottom) of just about everything. And military requires more endurance that women normally have. It also requires more endurance than most men have. But if an individual woman can legitimately meet that standard, why deny her the opportunity?
ScottBurson 16y ago
Okay: you're sexist. Looking back on my MIT undergraduate education (class of 1980), I'd say one of my best professors was a woman: Jeanne Bamberger.
- pjscott 16y ago
  You can't disprove a statistical assertion with a single counterexample. Kudos to Jeanne Bamberger, but she's not, by herself, statistically significant. I'm not saying that your conclusions are wrong, but "one of my best professors was a woman" is a very weak argument.
  - nl 16y ago
    The original assertion (All the best chefs are men, best professors I know are men too) is unprovable, because none of us are xentronium and the professor part of his assertion was based on personal experience ("I know"). However, the first part of his statement (I firmly believe there are three areas women should not generally be part of: military, cooking and teaching) can be argued against quite effectively by showing a single counter example. xentronium needs to either argue the counter example (ie, argue that Jeanne Bamberger is not a good teacher), or narrow down his argument (eg, argue that only women who's first name starts with "J" make good teachers). Both lines of response weaken his argument considerably.
JoeAltmaier 16y ago
You're sexist.
- xentronium 16y ago
  And I can live with it. Believe it or not, I deliberately didn't mention that I know there are areas where women are much better than men just for the sake of experimenting with HN public opinion. Why? Because I feel the smallest glimpse of non-tolerable way of thinking is going to get downvoted. Unless it is coming from Zed or DHH. If I am right, I am going to be told I am wrong with a wording like: "It's not because you say what you think[, it's because you're troll without proofs]" (last part is optional because people don't want their opinion to have a tiniest trail of subjectivity). Guess it's time to become one of them rockstars and have an ability to speak freely. p.s. Bye, lol.
  - deleted 16y ago
    [deleted]
  - JoeAltmaier 16y ago
    Hey, you asked for it. I don't mean anything by it. I am sexist too - I like women lots more than men.
  - pjscott 16y ago
    One of the reasons I got tired of Reddit was people claiming to be persecuted by the Hivemind. Here's a thought experiment. Suppose you had said that you firmly believe that women will be dramatically underrepresented in cooking, teaching, and the military, if selection for those things is based on merit. This is different from what you said; it implies that women are, on average, not as good at those things as men. For whatever reason. You seemed to be saying that there's such a huge difference between men and women in those fields that women might as well not even try, except for really exceptional cases -- a much less defensible statement. A question for everybody: how would you have reacted to the statement above? Personally, I would have attacked it for rashly generalizing from a small sample without proper controls, but not for thinking Damned Thoughts.
lsc 16y ago
>military requires more endurance that women normally have. my understanding (and experience) is that women tend to have better endurance than men. I remember a few years back I was running with a friend of mine, a girl who was probably 10" shorter than I am, who had a notably worse BMI than I did (at least, she did when we started running together. she improved significantly more than I did during the course of our efforts. Maybe she was just more motivated than I was?) All along, I could out sprint her, but when it came to distance running, from day one, half way through the run she'd start leaving me in the dust. Oh man, it was so humiliating, getting left in the dust by a short fat girl. (It was good for both of us, I think, really;) Now, if you loaded us both down with 100Lbs of equipment and had us do the same run? sure, I'd kick her ass. I don't think she could lift a pack of that size. So yeah, men are nearly always stronger but that does not mean we have better endurance.
- araneae 16y ago
  Anecdotal evidence. You are simply on the low end of the bell curve for men. Endurance is simply how long you can use your muscles before they give out; it's not independent of how much muscle you have. If you are very weak, you will have terrible endurance. Yes, there are things called fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers; the greater proportion of the latter, the better endurance you have. The greater proportion of the former, the faster you go. There doesn't seem to be evidence of gender difference in the ratio, but Google could have failed me. There is, however, an argued difference along ethnic lines. (East Africans have a much higher slow twitch/fast twitch ratio than other ethnicities.) Even if there were, though, a marathon is an endurance race. You rely primarily on your slow twitch muscles, except perhaps in the home stretch, if you have anything left. Men win the marathons.
  - kscaldef 16y ago
    > Men win the marathons Among those who run marathons, the top men put in better times than the top women. However, I know _far_ more female marathon runners than men. (OTOH, I know far more male distance cyclists, so I wouldn't jump to any particular conclusions from either data point.)
gchpaco 16y ago
Yup, you're sexist. Anecdotal, but fairly true in my experience; when I did water polo in high school, it was coed. We didn't have many women interested in putting in the effort to land on the varsity team, probably for social reasons, but the handful that did were terrifying. I would rather have gone up against any two other people on the team than play polo with one of the women, because as it turns out there are certain things that guys just won't do to each other.
nl 16y ago
Counter example: Grace Hopper. That would be Rear-Admiral Grace Hopper to you. I'm unsure about her cooking, but 2/3 ain't too bad.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]

potatolicious 16y ago

I know of many female chefs of great repute and talent - and I know some very good female professors. I don't see the link between "most good chefs are men" and "women should not be chefs". It's a bit like "no Black people ride at the front of the bus" and "Black people should not ride at the front of the bus" - you've conveniently assumed a level playing field where there likely is none, and you've also erroneously linked the current state of things to the ideal state of things. As for the military - not being a military man I'm not sure I am qualified to comment... but are there not many more roles in the military that do not require the massive amounts of brawn that "only men" can provide?

jtbigwoo 16y ago

Call me sexist, but I firmly believe there are three areas women should not generally be part of: military, cooking and teaching. Lawrence Summers? Is that you?

yummyfajitas 16y ago
Clearly not - Larry Summers never made any gender-based value judgements, nor did he even draw conclusions. He got into trouble for asking questions people didn't want the answer to.
- pjscott 16y ago
  And yet, to this day, people remember what they thought he said, rather than what he actually said. Weird, isn't it?

orangecat 16y ago

I don't see how that follows. Most chess grandmasters are men; should women not play? If you accept the hypothesis that males have greater genetic variability than females, it shouldn't be surprising to see men overrepresented at the very top (and bottom) of just about everything. And military requires more endurance that women normally have. It also requires more endurance than most men have. But if an individual woman can legitimately meet that standard, why deny her the opportunity?

ScottBurson 16y ago

Okay: you're sexist. Looking back on my MIT undergraduate education (class of 1980), I'd say one of my best professors was a woman: Jeanne Bamberger.

pjscott 16y ago
You can't disprove a statistical assertion with a single counterexample. Kudos to Jeanne Bamberger, but she's not, by herself, statistically significant. I'm not saying that your conclusions are wrong, but "one of my best professors was a woman" is a very weak argument.
- nl 16y ago
  The original assertion (All the best chefs are men, best professors I know are men too) is unprovable, because none of us are xentronium and the professor part of his assertion was based on personal experience ("I know"). However, the first part of his statement (I firmly believe there are three areas women should not generally be part of: military, cooking and teaching) can be argued against quite effectively by showing a single counter example. xentronium needs to either argue the counter example (ie, argue that Jeanne Bamberger is not a good teacher), or narrow down his argument (eg, argue that only women who's first name starts with "J" make good teachers). Both lines of response weaken his argument considerably.

JoeAltmaier 16y ago

You're sexist.

xentronium 16y ago
And I can live with it. Believe it or not, I deliberately didn't mention that I know there are areas where women are much better than men just for the sake of experimenting with HN public opinion. Why? Because I feel the smallest glimpse of non-tolerable way of thinking is going to get downvoted. Unless it is coming from Zed or DHH. If I am right, I am going to be told I am wrong with a wording like: "It's not because you say what you think[, it's because you're troll without proofs]" (last part is optional because people don't want their opinion to have a tiniest trail of subjectivity). Guess it's time to become one of them rockstars and have an ability to speak freely. p.s. Bye, lol.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- JoeAltmaier 16y ago
  Hey, you asked for it. I don't mean anything by it. I am sexist too - I like women lots more than men.
- pjscott 16y ago
  One of the reasons I got tired of Reddit was people claiming to be persecuted by the Hivemind. Here's a thought experiment. Suppose you had said that you firmly believe that women will be dramatically underrepresented in cooking, teaching, and the military, if selection for those things is based on merit. This is different from what you said; it implies that women are, on average, not as good at those things as men. For whatever reason. You seemed to be saying that there's such a huge difference between men and women in those fields that women might as well not even try, except for really exceptional cases -- a much less defensible statement. A question for everybody: how would you have reacted to the statement above? Personally, I would have attacked it for rashly generalizing from a small sample without proper controls, but not for thinking Damned Thoughts.

lsc 16y ago

>military requires more endurance that women normally have. my understanding (and experience) is that women tend to have better endurance than men. I remember a few years back I was running with a friend of mine, a girl who was probably 10" shorter than I am, who had a notably worse BMI than I did (at least, she did when we started running together. she improved significantly more than I did during the course of our efforts. Maybe she was just more motivated than I was?) All along, I could out sprint her, but when it came to distance running, from day one, half way through the run she'd start leaving me in the dust. Oh man, it was so humiliating, getting left in the dust by a short fat girl. (It was good for both of us, I think, really;) Now, if you loaded us both down with 100Lbs of equipment and had us do the same run? sure, I'd kick her ass. I don't think she could lift a pack of that size. So yeah, men are nearly always stronger but that does not mean we have better endurance.

araneae 16y ago
Anecdotal evidence. You are simply on the low end of the bell curve for men. Endurance is simply how long you can use your muscles before they give out; it's not independent of how much muscle you have. If you are very weak, you will have terrible endurance. Yes, there are things called fast twitch and slow twitch muscle fibers; the greater proportion of the latter, the better endurance you have. The greater proportion of the former, the faster you go. There doesn't seem to be evidence of gender difference in the ratio, but Google could have failed me. There is, however, an argued difference along ethnic lines. (East Africans have a much higher slow twitch/fast twitch ratio than other ethnicities.) Even if there were, though, a marathon is an endurance race. You rely primarily on your slow twitch muscles, except perhaps in the home stretch, if you have anything left. Men win the marathons.
- kscaldef 16y ago
  > Men win the marathons Among those who run marathons, the top men put in better times than the top women. However, I know _far_ more female marathon runners than men. (OTOH, I know far more male distance cyclists, so I wouldn't jump to any particular conclusions from either data point.)

gchpaco 16y ago

Yup, you're sexist. Anecdotal, but fairly true in my experience; when I did water polo in high school, it was coed. We didn't have many women interested in putting in the effort to land on the varsity team, probably for social reasons, but the handful that did were terrifying. I would rather have gone up against any two other people on the team than play polo with one of the women, because as it turns out there are certain things that guys just won't do to each other.

nl 16y ago

Counter example: Grace Hopper. That would be Rear-Admiral Grace Hopper to you. I'm unsure about her cooking, but 2/3 ain't too bad.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]