8 ms·
Professor tells student to 'get out of the Bay Area' if they want a girlfriend
- dotcoma 3y agoThe post by this professor was probably correct, and in any case should be submitted to debate, but one of many things one is not allowed to say anymore in 2024.
- kayodelycaon 3y agoIt’s one of those things you weren’t allowed to say in 2014. If any professor did that when I was in college, there would be a public apology within a week.
- ShamelessC 3y agoAccording to the (fairly short) article, the professor was indeed required to issue an apology.
- dotcoma 3y agoI thought it was almost agreed upon — but ideally always open to further debate — that some markets, both for men and for women, may be tougher than others. LA, probably. NYC, I imagine.
- jonfromsf 3y agoNYC is the promised land for men, because there's more women than men.
- gopher_space 3y agoThere’s never been a time when people haven’t been saying this, and there’s never been a time when the people saying this weren’t mocked as the losers they so obviously are.
- wilg 3y agoYou have a hilarious definition of "not allowed"!
- dotcoma 3y agoHow so? You say it, you are pushed to back-pedal otherwise you might lose your job. Isn’t that, more or less, the situation we are talking about?
- gotoeleven 3y agoAhh yes the hilarity of being forced to apologize and having your job threatened for having an unwoke opinion on something unrelated to your job. Ha ha ha!
- _zn8u 3y agoThis is wildly inappropriate in a professional setting. As a woman reading that, I'm shocked. For a woman hoping to get into tech, comments like that made by authority figures just reinforce prior beliefs about how hostile our field can be to women. I'm glad the professor apologized, at least.
- cyanydeez 3y agoHalf of HN is exactly this'
- kys_now 3y ago[dead]
- dotcoma 3y agoEECS = electrical engineering and computer science? I don’t think the professor was saying anything regarding the fact that women cannot do well in the field, not at all. That would have been terrible, I agree.
- _zn8u 3y agoYes, that's the name of Berkeley's department. If you're from a minority group in an area, it is _extremely_ unpleasant to hear yourself being talked about as if you're the object of a tactical military operation. "Artillery distance", really. Agree that if he'd said that women can't do well in the field, that would be much worse.
- dotcoma 3y agoI don’t think the professor was talking about his female students, but rather about the average woman in the Bay Area (but I don’t know for sure, of course). Artillery distance just means 100 miles or something like that. I agree that saying “keep 100 miles from the Bay Area” would have sounded better, but I don’t think it’s that important (again, just how I read it).
- 3y ago
- quickslowdown 3y agoYou can say whatever you want. There will be consequences to the things you say, but you can still say them. You just have to accept the consequences. Toddlers & children understand this.
- trothamel 3y agoThat's a two-edged sword. There are consequences to what the school says and does, and they _also_ have to accept the consequences.
- defrost 3y agoIndeed, and that's the crux of this story, a professor of the school giving advice to the student of the school cannot easily be seen as anything other than a representative of the school in such a context .. and the minimum consequence that has to be accepted here, as outlined, is for the professor to apologise.
- xyzzyz 3y agoThis is just obtuse. “Murder is one of the things not allowed in our society.” “Oh, you can kill whoever you want. There will be consequences to your killings, but you can still kill people. You just have to accept the consequences. Toddlers & children understand this.”
- quickslowdown 3y agoThe irony of your comment isn't lost on me, but to be clear, words can't murder you. The stakes are a bit lower. I've generally found people complaining about things they "can't say," especially around topics like this, are utter clowns who can't grasp the basics of communication. Again, you can say whatever the hell you want. Some people will love it, some people will ignore it or not care, and some people will get pissed at you. If you run crying to the hacker news boards about it, instead of reflecting on the reaction you got to the thing you said to understand why you were cEnSoReD, I don't have time or patience to hear your complaint.
- ShamelessC 3y agoThe post: > If you want a girlfriend, get out of the Bay Area. Almost everywhere else on the planet is better for that. I’m not kidding at all. You’ll be shocked by the stark differences in behavior of women in places where women are plentiful versus their behavior within artillery distance of San Jose and San Francisco I take issue with that last sentence which is vague enough to be a dog whistle of sorts and implies it is women who are somehow at fault and who need to change their behavior. I learned awhile ago that nuanced perspectives surrounding women are pretty lacking in this site, however. I expect this post to be flagged or downweighted within an hour.
- standardUser 3y agoI don't think it is vague at all. He's commenting on the dating behavior of his female students in a clearly negative light.
- ShamelessC 3y agoHe doesn’t mention what the behavior is at all. I agree that it is clearly negative of course.
- dotcoma 3y agoI don’t think he is talking about his female students.
- standardUser 3y agoHe said "If you want a girlfriend, get out of the Bay Area" to female students who live in the Bay Area.
- gotoeleven 3y ago>>You’ll be shocked by the stark differences in behavior of women in places where women are plentiful versus their behavior within artillery distance of San Jose and San Francisco This is a positive statement which means that it is stating something that the author thinks is true, not something they think ought to be true. If you don't think it is true then offer a rebuttal. But people like you reading this sentence and then doing a round of mind reading and then responding to the fiction in your head is the reason we can't have debates anymore.
- standardUser 3y ago> one of many things one is not allowed to say anymore in 2024. Thank god. Imagine being a tuition-paying female student and having you professor tell you... "You’ll be shocked by the stark differences in behavior of women in places where women are plentiful versus their behavior within artillery distance of San Jose and San Francisco.”" The more that men in positions of power learn not to talk about the "behavior of women", the fucking better.
- dotcoma 3y agoI don’t think he was talking about female computer scientists, not at all.
- standardUser 3y agoHe said "if you want a girlfriend, get out of the Bay Area" to female students who live in the Bay Area.
- satisfice 3y agoHe’s saying that women in the Bay Area are highly valuable. Your outrage is very strange. Do you think women in the Bay Area are not very valuable? Why would you want to claim that? If you can’t afford a car, maybe stop car shopping at Mercedes dealerships, right? How can this possibly be controversial, unless you simply hunger for outrage.
- friend_and_foe 3y agoThat's one way to construe what he said, I think it's a little generous. What most of us get, and I think it's probably closer to his intent, is "women in the bay area expect you to make half a milliom dollars a year at google and do half the housework." That's a perfectly fine thing to advise a young man on if he's not in that position and doesn't want that kind of family life, but let's not pretend that he was calling them valuable. He was calling them too demanding for what they have to offer.
- deleted 3y ago[deleted]
- mattscar 3y agoIt's Jonathan Shewchuk, author of An Introduction to the Conjugate Gradient Method Without the Agonizing Pain. That guide saved me on multiple occasions. All the best, Jon.
- gotoeleven 3y agoWE BELIEVE IN SCIENCE* *except supply and demand, economics, evolution, biology and statistics
- djohnston 3y ago[flagged]
- standardUser 3y agoI don't even know what the fuck he's talking about. We don't all subscribe to the same Rogan-inspired newsletter.
- djohnston 3y agoYour milquetoast allusion to JRE indicates you know exactly what he’s talking about.
- standardUser 3y agoI have a vague idea, but not more than that. Either way it was a comment worthy of downvotes for it's lack of content or relevance if nothing else.
- djohnston 3y agoAnd here you are. Downvoting and flagging opinions grounded on things you admittedly have at best a vague understanding of. That is the difference. It’s what OP is highlighting. It’s why you will lose.
- standardUser 3y agoI downvoted it because it was a flippant, pointless comment that violates the rules of this site. Calling you a jackass would be another violation, so I won't do it. I don't flag comments ever.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y agoNGL, I don’t think the advice to gtfo the Bay Area was the offensive part. It was the part where he suggested to get out because the women of the Bay Area were categorically worse! If he just said it’s better to expand the geographical search due to not enough women in general that just makes sense. The additional step to insult all women in the area was wild
- lylejantzi3rd 3y agoHe's not wrong. You don't go to the lesbian capital of the USA if you're looking for heterosexual dating prospects.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y agoPlease read the original comment the professor made. He’s not talking like the women are just unavailable. He’s talking that they’re categorically bad. (FWIW I don’t believe lesbians are bad lol)
- lylejantzi3rd 3y agoI read it. I disagree with your portrayal of his statement.
- SamoyedFurFluff 3y agoWait how do you read that the advise to get out due to “the differences in the women” outside of the area vs the women in the area as not saying the women in the Bay Area are not suitable life partners?
- lylejantzi3rd 3y agoIt's a bad idea to pursue lesbian women if you want a heterosexual life partner. This should not be a hard thing to understand. Do you agree that lesbian women are different from straight women?
- probably_satan 3y agoBetter yet, get out of America
- suyash 3y agoUnder the current political climate and division, sound advice!
- gedy 3y agoStupid. A student was asking, so what's bad about answering this way?
- _zn8u 3y agoAt no point was a student asking for dating advice.
- gedy 3y agoArticle says "Shewchuk’s comments were in response to a student who was asking for advice about finding work in the Bay Area and dating in the area" If the prof wasn't personally asked and butted into someone elses convo, sure then I can see that being not appropriate
- _zn8u 3y agoThe full thread is here (click on the right arrow to see all the comments). https://www.reddit.com/r/berkeley/comments/1bitr75/another_day_in_berkeley_eecs/ https://www.reddit.com/r/berkeley/comments/1bitr75/another_d...
- neom 3y agoGetting out of the bay area to date might be great advice. Blaming the inability of people to date on the "behavior of women" is uhm.. that's some card carrying misogynist talk right there...
- LanceH 3y agoHaving lived in a series of places with far more men than women and seen the effects on the dating seen, he is speaking some truth. There is a vast difference between having equal numbers and large imbalance, and it does impact behavior.
- tacon 3y agoSure, just as advising a woman to move from D.C. to San Jose because of the "behavior of men" would be misandry. Not.
- jeffbee 3y agoYes, its obviously top-shelf misogyny. There's no amount of backtracking that can hide it now. Ironically, while there may be an overabundance of men in the Bay Area, with a particularly acute imbalance in center of the big tech industry, in Berkeley it's the other way around. Women have a +10% overrepresentation at the university, so at least numerically it is a piece of cake to find a female partner. At least, it should be for people who are normal and not creepy jerks with axes to grind.
- solenoid0937 3y agoStating obvious fact is not misogyny, just because you don't like it. 90% percent of men that have dating experience outside the Bay Area will attest to the stark difference in women's behavior, and it's definitely not a good difference. It is simple human psychology that we grow more entitled the more desirable we are. This is why balanced gender ratios are important. You can't just call people's shared experience "misogyny." Pointing out commonly and repeatedly observed behavior differences is not that.
- Buttons840 3y agoIf a man changing location improves his ability to date, what are the implications of that? Did the man improve his personal character just because he changed location? Or is he more successful because the pool of women he has to choose from is different? My point being, there seems to be some inconsistency in your comment. If simply changing location is helpful, as you claim, then that must have something to do with the dating pool (women in this case) in the two locations. (I don't have an opinion of my own on this, since I'm not dating.)
- afpx 3y agoStatistically, it's not a good idea. Bay area has the most men per women in the country. https://www.bestplaces.net/docs/studies/solocities_gap1.aspx https://www.bestplaces.net/docs/studies/solocities_gap1.aspx When I was looking for a partner, I moved to DC.
- alephnerd 3y agoThe issue is he said this - "You’ll be shocked by the stark differences in behavior of women in places where women are plentiful versus their behavior within artillery distance of San Jose and San Francisco" This is a highly inappropriate comment for anyone to make, let alone a Professor. Cal already has some issues with misogynistic professors, with one Prof at Haas recently getting suspended for inappropriate sexual relations with grad students Edit: made quite clearer
- dotcoma 3y agoI hope you understand that inappropriate sexual relations with grad students is in a different league than saying that dating may be a different and/or easier game to play in other areas of the country.
- alephnerd 3y agoSuch behavior might fly in Italy, but this side of the pond it is very inappropriate. Basically, a guy making a qualitative generalization of all women in a specific area is just scuzzball behavior. It's not as egregious as rape or inappropriate touching, but it's absolutely a Title IX violation, and just a bad thing for someone in an authority position to say.
- dotcoma 3y agoNo, unfortunately it would probably not fly in Italy either. The professor is just saying that some markets are tougher than other markets. The BA. LA, I imagine. NYC. I can surely add Milan to the list.
- jeffbee 3y agoWell, as a professor there's almost nothing this guy can do to endanger his future employment at Berkeley. There's another professor who is, arguably, responsible for the deaths of hundreds of thousands of people via decades of HIV/AIDS denialism, and he's still on the payroll. You can be whatever monster you want to be and they won't be able to get rid of you.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y agoThis is where the classic rhetoric of "the professor is creating a hostile environment / is making people feel unsafe / caused irreparable harm to underprivileged groups" will come in. I'm not justifying what he said in any way, but he touched a sacred third rail which is going to make people not want to be associated with his name in any way, at least for a few years until everybody forgets this ever happened. Possible he will resign due to pressure or ostracism.
- etc-hosts 3y agoThat would be really sad. Shewchuk is a great professor and cares deeply about teaching undergraduate and graduate students.
- 8f2ab37a-ed6c 3y agoThe gender skew is well-known, but it's one of those things you simply cannot say out loud in polite society. https://www.kqed.org/news/11231284/does-san-jose-deserve-the-nickname-man-jose https://www.kqed.org/news/11231284/does-san-jose-deserve-the...
- _zn8u 3y agoI come from a country which has been suffering from this problem for many decades. A large gender imbalance warps society, and is a real concern particularly for straight dating/marriage. There are many ways to talk about it that reflect the seriousness of the problem. But all too often in the Bay Area, laypeople talk about it without the gravity that it deserves. Unserious comments, like the professor talking about "artillery distance", are what you can't make in polite society. And I think that's good.
- lylejantzi3rd 3y ago> like the professor talking about "artillery distance" That's a common phrase in the US. It's just a marker of distance, like "a stone's throw." That's not what most people are objecting to.
- _zn8u 3y agoBe that as it may, the phrase, and the comment in general, just does not reflect the gravity of the issue. A large gender skew is really, really bad for society and needs to be taken extremely seriously.
- lylejantzi3rd 3y ago> just does not reflect the gravity of the issue. In what way? How could he have phrased his statement to make it "extremely serious" in your eyes?
- _zn8u 3y ago
- ralusek 3y ago> You’ll be shocked by the stark differences in behavior of women in places where women are plentiful versus their behavior within artillery distance of San Jose and San Francisco Isn’t this literally just a commentary of the 104:100 male female ratio of SF & SJ? This is a commonly brought up argument regarding dating in the bay. It seems to be a statement saying “you’ll have an easier time dating when the demographic odds are in your favor.” Taking offense to that statement requires a lot of bad faith interpretation.
- root_axis 3y agoThe quote in question: > If you want a girlfriend, get out of the Bay Area. Almost everywhere else on the planet is better for that. I’m not kidding at all. You’ll be shocked by the stark differences in behavior of women in places where women are plentiful versus their behavior within artillery distance of San Jose and San Francisco This reads to me like a reflection of his own difficulties with dating in the bay area, leading him to generalize. He's only human, and I don't think he should be burned at the stake for letting a bit of that humanity slip. At the same time, it's not surprising that a professor is going to face some scrutiny for publicly deriding a population he will inevitably have to teach. In his apology he says he didn't mean to disrespect women, but he definitely did, the point of his statement was specifically to call out the women in that region as being so undesirable that eligible men should move rather than date them. That's a mean thing to say, and an unfair generalization to all the lovely ladies in the bay area. I think an apology suffices, hopefully he doesn't get fired for it.
- davidguetta 3y ago"being so undesirable" I don't think he meant "undesirable". I understood it as "too selective", with the implication that there's too much male competition in the Bay.
- root_axis 3y agoPerhaps, but that's not the connotation I take. If someone is living in the bay area asking for dating advice, saying "seriously, don't even try dating, just leave", it heavily implies the type of behavior he's referring to is the kind you should run away from. If the problem was that they are "too selective" then the advice should focus around tips for making yourself more competitive in the dating market.
- anamax 3y ago"improving" can't work for everyone when there are a limited number of slots. The solutions are win, polyandry, do without, leave, and change the demographics.
- motohagiography 3y agoControversial sure, but if your role is to help students succeed, and pretty much every quality of life indicator shows part of that is raising a family, he's commenting on a cultural change that pretty much everyone has noticed. It's probably more prominent in the bay area because of the status seeking cultures at Berkeley and Stanford, but it's everywhere. The culture has become more mercenary. The best thing I think young people could do is set the age of their dating profiles 20 years into the future and see what it's going to look like for them. Your relationship options are to work and adapt, or settle. No partner can sustain reinforcing your false narratives about yourself for very long, so find and drop those as fast as you can. As far as success goes, you're not a very good muse for yourself, and nobody else is going to shape you like a family, so have one. Also, stay fit. A lack of fitness is poverty after 30.
- dotcoma 3y agoCould you please elaborate further on the 20 years into the future part? It seems interesting.
- tzs 3y agoHere's an article from a few years ago about the high male/female ratios in the dating population in the Bay Area. San Jose ("Man Jose"!) was particularly high [1]. Probably anyone who has spent significant time in an environment with a significant difference in gender ratios will have personally observed that this tends to change behave of people of both genders in those environments in regard to dating compared to people of the same gender in more balanced areas or in areas where the balance goes the other way. [1] https://www.sfgate.com/lifestyle/article/Chart-using-Match-com-data-shows-just-how-many-13833667.php https://www.sfgate.com/lifestyle/article/Chart-using-Match-c...
- 1vuio0pswjnm7 3y agohttps://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=3321677578490&w=QNU7VvKkbQ18_UEx6Uc8iqTecs32JEx9 https://cc.bingj.com/cache.aspx?d=3321677578490&w=QNU7VvKkbQ...
- satisfice 3y agoNothing about what he said disrespects women. Matehood is and has always been an economic enterprise. It’s astonishing how gender politics has completely blinded people to the nature and history of their own species. Enough is enough. Stop backing down when a power group sets out to intimidate you to get more than its share. The reason some people are acting like this is misogyny is because it’s a convenient trope that motivates shallow women. There is real misogyny, you know. This kind of reaction to someone saying “play in a different league if you want to win more games” just hurts the cause of dealing with real misogyny.
- satisfice 3y agoIf a man said “how can I meet millionaire women who are perfect 10’s?” One might say back to him “Well are YOU a millionaire and are YOU a perfect 10? Maybe set your sights lower, kid.” Would that be advice that women would consider misogyny? Hard to believe it would. This is basically the same sentiment that then professor uttered: seek to court women who want what you offer.
- friend_and_foe 3y ago"If you want a good deep dish pizza you need to go to Chicago" is offensive to pizza chefs everywhere but Chicago. Telling people that to get what they want they need to go where it is is offensive now. You don't like the dating culture where you live? Go somewhere else. The dating culture where you live is objectively abysmal? Go somewhere else. If you're a man in Alaska you're bound to get similar advice, and nobody will complain.
- pg_1234 3y ago"good deep dish pizza" is offensive to pizza chefs everywhere
- friend_and_foe 3y agoEverywhere but Chicago.
- tzs 3y agoThat analogy doesn't really fit. To make it fit the setup needs to be you are in a city with only a few restaurants that offer deep dish pizza, and are advising someone who wants to have deep dish pizza three meals a day every day but is having trouble with that because the price for deep dish pizza is high and the restaurants are often full. Telling them they should go to Chicago [1] and that they will be shocked by the difference in price and ease of getting into deep dish pizza restaurants there is not going to be offensive to deep dish pizza chefs elsewhere. [1] I've never been to Chicago. I'm just assuming that its reputation as the deep dish pizza capitol is at least partly due to having a lot of deep dish pizza places.
- foogazi 3y agoWhy hasn’t the market corrected the imbalance: more women moving to Bay to get access to these high income men ?