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The 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
by dotcoma 3y ago
The 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.