4 ms·

This is pretty easy to word neutrally: "No boards where every member has the same gender." Is this really a problem, though? Do we really expect a situation in

This is pretty easy to word neutrally: "No boards where every member has the same gender." Is this really a problem, though? Do we really expect a situation in which men are systemically prevented from being board members?

FakeComments 8y ago
How about we just don’t pass sexist laws because we’ve somehow told ourselves that this particular instance of institutional sexism is okay? We’re already having enough trouble getting people to accept Title IX protects male students, after 40 years of females being the majority in student populations. I’m not nearly as optimistic about the outcome of intentional sexism as you.
- adamsea 8y ago
  Intentional sexism has worked quite well for the patriarchy.
  - deleted 8y ago
    [deleted]
- jakelazaroff 8y ago
  I'm not sure we could enact any policies that don't look like institutionalized sexism, though. As the Parable of the Polygons [1] shows, merely removing bias from a system isn't enough to break down structures that are already in place. We need to actively de-bias. Board seats are a zero-sum game, so that means we have to take some seats from men to give to women. This is a good faith question! It doesn't seem to me that there's any real way to remove bias against women without adding bias against men, but I'm genuinely curious as to how we might do so. [1] https://ncase.me/polygons/ https://ncase.me/polygons/
  - FakeComments 8y ago
    Board seats are literally not a zero sum game: we can make more in any of several ways. It troubles me that you’re factually mistaken on basic things like that — new board seats come into existence literally daily, to which every indication shows women are free to compete — but expect me to take your arguments seriously that we should institute bigotry at the highest levels. No, get your facts straight first. You’re also trying to respond to empiric failures in the real world with parables and abstract highly simplified models, which is somewhat silly: the decayed state of gender and race relations in the US and elsewhere is due to the sexist and racist policies enacted to “fix” things, and somewhere between 1990 and 2000 started stepping backwards decades of progress, with the situation the worst it’s been in a generation by 2020. Forcing the final steps of integration has been shown time and again to foster generation-scale resentment and undermine healing, particularly through forcing every interaction to be viewed through the lens of base racial or gender tribes. It literally teaches people to be bigots all over again. A rotten tree bears rotten fruits: I don’t believe you can cause a good outcome through institutional bigotry, and I challenge you to show me it works. It’s certainly been tried enough it should have produced positive results — show me those, and not a cheap game. Also, yes, merely removing bias in a dynamic system that shows a strong reversion to the mean on generational scales is enough to remove historical bias within just a few generations — a fact that comes directly from analysis of system dynamics and differential equations. Notice that if you drop the bias below 10%, there’s absolutely no problem — it just sort of wanders over long time periods. To me, you merely seem a fiddler: someone who knows very well that debiasing works on the 3-4 generation scale, you’re just not willing to wait a century because you believe you’re smart enough to use evil for good, and are willing to risk sure progress based on that belief. I think that’s reckless and immoral. Reckless because you’re endangering something important — the fixing of gender and race relations in society; and immoral because you’re knowingly doing harm and discriminating, out of some very strange logic that’s making the world “better”. Your model also has massive failures as a mechanism to explain social situations: it doesn’t, for instance, explain why Asian immigrants have thrived. Were the interned and destitute Japanese incomparably better off than other groups? If not, how does your model explain their recovery and integration compared to other groups? What the puzzle actually seems to say is that if people have a preference you don’t like, you feel entitled to overrule them because you know better, and your global vision for society is better than the emergent one from individual choices. (The conclusions really seem oriented around forcing people to integrate when their natural tendencies would have them live in more or less homogeneous clusters.) It’s tyranny gussied up with math: look at how if people have wrongthink preferences, we need to overrule them via force and targeted discrimination for the greater good!
sdinsn 8y ago
> Do we really expect a situation in which men are systemically prevented from being board members? I mean, this law sets requirements on board members genders. So I wouldn't think it's much of a stretch.
belorn 8y ago
Sweden made a similar law for sport clubs. 37% of board members are women, 63% are men. Yes, there are boards that is dominated by women. One of the ten largest sports, horse riding, has a national board with 23% men and 77% women. In the same top ten category, ice hokey has 82% men and 18% women. Football and Swimming, 56% men and 44% women. Skiing, 50% and 50%. Gymnastics, 44% and 56%. Golf and bandy, 57% and 43%. Athletics 60% and 40%. Those are the top 10 in the area which my government though was so bad it needed to implement affirmative actions in order to correct it. 37% sounds few but in reality, only two are considered gender segregated and it is one female dominated and one male.

FakeComments 8y ago

How about we just don’t pass sexist laws because we’ve somehow told ourselves that this particular instance of institutional sexism is okay? We’re already having enough trouble getting people to accept Title IX protects male students, after 40 years of females being the majority in student populations. I’m not nearly as optimistic about the outcome of intentional sexism as you.

adamsea 8y ago
Intentional sexism has worked quite well for the patriarchy.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
jakelazaroff 8y ago
I'm not sure we could enact any policies that don't look like institutionalized sexism, though. As the Parable of the Polygons [1] shows, merely removing bias from a system isn't enough to break down structures that are already in place. We need to actively de-bias. Board seats are a zero-sum game, so that means we have to take some seats from men to give to women. This is a good faith question! It doesn't seem to me that there's any real way to remove bias against women without adding bias against men, but I'm genuinely curious as to how we might do so. [1] https://ncase.me/polygons/ https://ncase.me/polygons/
- FakeComments 8y ago
  Board seats are literally not a zero sum game: we can make more in any of several ways. It troubles me that you’re factually mistaken on basic things like that — new board seats come into existence literally daily, to which every indication shows women are free to compete — but expect me to take your arguments seriously that we should institute bigotry at the highest levels. No, get your facts straight first. You’re also trying to respond to empiric failures in the real world with parables and abstract highly simplified models, which is somewhat silly: the decayed state of gender and race relations in the US and elsewhere is due to the sexist and racist policies enacted to “fix” things, and somewhere between 1990 and 2000 started stepping backwards decades of progress, with the situation the worst it’s been in a generation by 2020. Forcing the final steps of integration has been shown time and again to foster generation-scale resentment and undermine healing, particularly through forcing every interaction to be viewed through the lens of base racial or gender tribes. It literally teaches people to be bigots all over again. A rotten tree bears rotten fruits: I don’t believe you can cause a good outcome through institutional bigotry, and I challenge you to show me it works. It’s certainly been tried enough it should have produced positive results — show me those, and not a cheap game. Also, yes, merely removing bias in a dynamic system that shows a strong reversion to the mean on generational scales is enough to remove historical bias within just a few generations — a fact that comes directly from analysis of system dynamics and differential equations. Notice that if you drop the bias below 10%, there’s absolutely no problem — it just sort of wanders over long time periods. To me, you merely seem a fiddler: someone who knows very well that debiasing works on the 3-4 generation scale, you’re just not willing to wait a century because you believe you’re smart enough to use evil for good, and are willing to risk sure progress based on that belief. I think that’s reckless and immoral. Reckless because you’re endangering something important — the fixing of gender and race relations in society; and immoral because you’re knowingly doing harm and discriminating, out of some very strange logic that’s making the world “better”. Your model also has massive failures as a mechanism to explain social situations: it doesn’t, for instance, explain why Asian immigrants have thrived. Were the interned and destitute Japanese incomparably better off than other groups? If not, how does your model explain their recovery and integration compared to other groups? What the puzzle actually seems to say is that if people have a preference you don’t like, you feel entitled to overrule them because you know better, and your global vision for society is better than the emergent one from individual choices. (The conclusions really seem oriented around forcing people to integrate when their natural tendencies would have them live in more or less homogeneous clusters.) It’s tyranny gussied up with math: look at how if people have wrongthink preferences, we need to overrule them via force and targeted discrimination for the greater good!

sdinsn 8y ago

> Do we really expect a situation in which men are systemically prevented from being board members? I mean, this law sets requirements on board members genders. So I wouldn't think it's much of a stretch.

belorn 8y ago

Sweden made a similar law for sport clubs. 37% of board members are women, 63% are men. Yes, there are boards that is dominated by women. One of the ten largest sports, horse riding, has a national board with 23% men and 77% women. In the same top ten category, ice hokey has 82% men and 18% women. Football and Swimming, 56% men and 44% women. Skiing, 50% and 50%. Gymnastics, 44% and 56%. Golf and bandy, 57% and 43%. Athletics 60% and 40%. Those are the top 10 in the area which my government though was so bad it needed to implement affirmative actions in order to correct it. 37% sounds few but in reality, only two are considered gender segregated and it is one female dominated and one male.