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I really don't like the framing of this article. The framing (to me) is as if the fault is with the men, and the solution must come from men. Many activist gro
by bArray 4y ago
I really don't like the framing of this article. The framing (to me) is as if the fault is with the men, and the solution must come from men.
Many activist groups have spent generations influencing almost all systems (education, industry, politics, etc) to promote minorities, but instead of raising females to the level of males, they instead removed opportunities from males. I can give tonnes of examples. There are scholarships at schools only for females, there are job application events where only females can attend and there are now positions in political office where only females can apply. There are no opposite example I'm aware of. These are not additional opportunities, these are removed from men and given to women.
Anecdata for schools: I know multiple teachers (read: more than 6) that thought it appropriate that they purposely bias their attention in classrooms towards the girls in their classes to "correct the balance". I heard in some cases they would even say "I don't want to hear from a boy", or purposefully pick any girl over a boy to answer a question. In a room full of teachers, not a single one objected to this.
In modern times we are told that systemic bias is bad and that more should be done to stop it. And yet, we systematically see bias in the name of "positive discrimination" and simply ignore the extremely obvious fact that young boys and subsequently men have been suffering for a long time as a result.
Let's go back to basics. We know how to treat people fairly and promote desirable behaviour. We used to live in a meritocracy and we apparently stopped it to address historic bias. Surely this is now done (for females vs males)? When can we return to a meritocracy?
- tuatoru 4y agoI don't know about fault. The article says that boys and men have less motivation, less persistence, and less ability to plan. These are synthetic facts being pointed out. The article repeatedly says that no-one knows why these things are so: they are symptoms, not causes. The article also says figuring out the causes is a fairly urgent and important problem, yet it is being ignored. > Let's go back to basics. We know how to treat people fairly and promote desirable behaviour. We used to live in a meritocracy and we apparently stopped it to address historic bias. Surely this is now done (for females vs males)? When can we return to a meritocracy? This was never true. That is pure nostalgia.
- bArray 4y agoMaybe 'fault' is too strong, but it appears to at least lay the burden on men. > The article repeatedly says that no-one knows why these things are so: they are symptoms, not causes. Well, I have some ideas as I suggested. I'm not going to claim it fully explains the current situation we are in, but I think it could be at least partly be attributed to these biased systems that were supposed to address bias. I'm mostly against the use of "positive discrimination" (putting 'positive' in front of something terrible doesn't make it good), but one of the largest concerns is that there is no plan in place to either measure acceptable levels of balance or a system to transition into after. For example, if we now find men are struggling (which they are), do we now implement "positive discrimination" until men are equally represented in education? Do we reject perfectly capable females from the application process in order to address the balancing, eventually over correcting and needing to re-balance again? Where does this end? > The article also says figuring out the causes is a fairly urgent and important problem, yet it is being ignored. And it will continue to be ignored. The many systems involved have zero incentive to change. They quiet the small vocal activists by implementing their bias. You may ask "well, why don't men become activists?". They tried, look at how the men's rights activist groups were treated. > This was never true. That is pure nostalgia. I'm not suggesting meritocracy was implemented fairly across all people everywhere in the past, but for small pockets of society it has been. Like many systems, it cannot work without some oversight, but the nudges should be minimalist.
- dc-programmer 4y agoThe grading system is fairly meritocratic - essays are graded off syllabi and fixed points are deducted for wrong math answers. The girls and boys in a school are coming from the same cross-sections of society, so if the girls get better grades maybe they are just winning at the meritocracy? I have a hard time believing there is an actual inequality of opportunities across genders past maybe a superficial level. I am skeptical interventions actually help - the students who do the right things in their own time will get better grades.
- origin_path 4y agoIt's not really meritocratic. There was a clever study on this some time ago that proved female teachers systematically give higher grades to girls. There's a prevailing culture that women help women get ahead by fair means or foul, and that this is "moral". So it starts early and the result is a systematically sexist society Inc which women are constantly being given quiet or not so quiet benefits, usually by blocking out discriminating against men. It's definitely not that women benefit from meritocracy. Indeed what I've seen over my whole life is that many women are determined to eradicate meritocracy of any kind.
- bArray 4y agoI agree with most of this. > It's not really meritocratic. There was a clever study on this some time ago that proved female teachers systematically give higher grades to girls. To add anecdata, I did some marking of written and typed work, and I found I was extremely accurate in determining whether the writer was a male or female. > It's definitely not that women benefit from meritocracy. We really don't know yet. There was a time when females were kept out of education (and poor males too). The claim is made that "women bias to counter historic bias". Based on this, now that females now perform better than males in education, is this not now a completed task? > Indeed what I've seen over my whole life is that many women are determined to eradicate meritocracy of any kind. Equality was simply never the goal. We don't see surges of females becoming construction workers or hauling trash. We don't see males encouraged to enter into female dominated fields such as sociology or language studies. What we see almost exclusively is females encouraged into historically male dominated fields - that's all.