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>I don't think all men are out to get you. I also don't think there's a huge misogyny problem in the industry in comparison to some other industries and culture

>I don't think all men are out to get you. I also don't think there's a huge misogyny problem in the industry in comparison to some other industries and cultures I've mixed with. (Perhaps my bad luck.) This is my opinion from listening to the perspectives of the people around me and watching their behaviour around women. However I do think we have a significant diversity problem and that it's altering the interactions between men and women in the tech industry in a very bad way. I think this is a fair assessment. > Finally of course there'll be a large percentage of misogynistic or bitter (MRA) jerks that want to make you feel small so they can feel good - and unfortunately with the current diversity levels they have a voice. I can imagine it's enraging. This is where the wheels come off, and the bias shows. There's a large percentage of men who are either misogynistic, and /or MRA jerks? Why aren't feminists characterized as jerks? Why are you painting MRA as jerks, but apologizing to feminists if you've accidentally offended them? This is where those of us who really hold no bias start getting annoyed about the portrayal of the male gender. Men who care about men's rights are jerks, but women who care about women's rights get apologies if they get offended by reasonable arguments? And this was done by a male. If the feminists were really honest they'd call this man to task for being biased towards women, and they would tell him they don't want to be held above the other gender either. The person who posted this goes into depth about the men who have an "ulterior motive" about hiring women. What is this person's ulterior motive for pandering to women in this way? Why do I have to be ok with being told how terrible my gender is in order to work in this industry anymore? For the more moderate feminists, consider that. You have a lot of would be allies who get just as tired of being told how terrible they are, and just want you go to away as a result. And folks like the person who posted the above are not helping, they are pandering. A rational person can look at it and think "this isn't right either".

detcader 12y ago
There's no such thing as the "male gender" ('male' refers to sex). You have a bias. For one thing, it's your years of socializaton as a boy and now a (young?) man. Understanding what feminists are trying to say takes work. You haven't done enough work yet. No one in 2014 is saying that it's terrible that you're male.
- user24 12y ago
  > There's no such thing as the "male gender" Maybe it's a cultural thing but here in the UK at least I think male and female are seen as genders... What word should the parent commenter have used? "man gender" is not grammatical, so I can only think of one other option; "male". (edit: and in case I'm misunderstood, I don't mean any kind of subtext on the wider debate here, I'm just asking because I think 'male' is a gender and am confused). (edit: right, found this: http://www.med.monash.edu.au/gendermed/sexandgender.html http://www.med.monash.edu.au/gendermed/sexandgender.html so basically it's the difference between sex and gender. I wasn't acutely aware that the words male vs masculine carried such an important distinction. I'm not sure if they are commonly used in that distinct way).
  - detcader 12y ago
    Thanks for asking, it's an important point: In U.S. medical and feminist academics (and elsewhere,) "male/female" refers to sex: XX/XY chromosomes and the resulting organs, body type, etc, resulting in human sexual dimorphism, to which there are rare, exceptional cases, where the person is called intersex. "man/woman" are common terms colloquially referring to male/female people (you probably know this). In the context of certain feminisms, the words refer to people born male or female, and then raised into the gender roles defined by society as appropriate for male and female people. These gender roles are what are invoked by words like "manly", "womanly", "sissy", and other "gendered" words and insults. In other feminisms, the words refer to people who "identify" as one or the other, where this identity is either "innate" or otherwise fluid or something. Full disclosure, I sympathize with the former sort of feminism, so I'm not exactly the best person to give a comprehensive synopsis here. Judith Lorber's "Gender Inequality" is a book that goes over individual feminist movements and waves, without necessarily pushing any of them on the reader. It's not too long, I recommend it.
  - mreiland 12y ago
    The poster was just trying to find something to attack. If you read the wiki article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender You can see the following quote: _Depending on the context, the term may refer to biological sex (i.e. the state of being male, female or intersex), ..._ LGBT has a tendency to use the term gender to mean gender roles, where the lines are a bit more obscure. I believe psychologists do as well. But in every day vernacular, gender refers to sex for most people, and as the wiki article suggests, it's completely acceptable to use it in that manner. I'll repeat what I said before, the poster was just looking for something to attack.
lhnz 12y ago
I'm not pandering to anybody. I actually believe what I wrote. But I do have a bias: I have a bias towards diplomacy. We all have biases and the sooner we admit that we're fallible minds that have lived just one life, not the objective thinkers we wish to present to our audience, the sooner we can begin to respect and listen to each other. > There's a large percentage of men who are either misogynistic, > and /or MRA jerks? Why aren't feminists characterized as jerks? > Why are you painting MRA as jerks, but apologizing to feminists > if you've accidentally offended them? Not all MRA are jerks. Not all feminists are jerks. I certainly didn't mean to imply that a large percentage of men were misogynists. I meant to say that it was a slightly larger percentage than is normally visible and that this was mostly because in a 50/50 male/female environment they would self-censor as well as have less reason to feel the way they do while in the current 90/10 environment (or whatever it is) they do not need to. I think the article was unusually fair and diplomatic for a tech gender piece. I wanted to repay this by commenting on my own opinions in as careful, constructive and fair way as I know how to. If I was to have posted an inflammatory rant about how angry feminists were just as bad as misogynists and then have tried to equate them using some ridiculous objective-appearing seesaw as if I was the divine judge of a gender-war then I'd be completely arguing against what I was arguing for: diplomacy and the acceptance and understanding of each other's problems as a result of there being a lack of diversity. I want a better way of acting together, not to win a battle. You are absolutely entitled to your opinions but you are way too confident of the truth of what you're saying to signal rationality.
- mreiland 12y ago
  If there's one thing I've learned in my 35 years on this planet, it's that telling someone they're irrational is not diplomatic. But it wasn't men you were talking about being diplomatic to, was it? It was women. I wonder if that diplomacy should also include men, and if so, how do you feel about the way feminists have been vilifying men? Or the way you just did, with your comment about MRA. Fair is fair, after all.
  - lhnz 12y ago
    > If there's one thing I've learned in my 35 years on this planet, > it's that telling someone they're irrational is not diplomatic. Well, you did it first, I just pointed out that we'd all do better by listening to each other and having less certainty of our rationality. > I wonder if that diplomacy should also include men, and if so, > how do you feel about the way feminists have been vilifying men? I feel like it's a bad 'weak men' argument as stated by my two paragraphs I wrote on it referring to the article by @slatestarcodex. * * * I also feel that some aspects of feminism in technology can be neatly framed as rent-seeking behaviour. But, I think anybody that gives their wealth over to another because they have been guilted into believing that they should not truly own it (privilege narrative) are fools who should be parted with their money. Also, I think that many in the MRA community are just too whiney to attempt to defend men. I could barely mount an argument for men like that. I'm not a feminist. I listened to the article because it wasn't shouted at me, and I responded saying that some of the behaviour annoys me, that the normal lack of diplomacy normally makes me stop reading after 5 seconds, and that diversity is a problem because of the social interactions it creates but there isn't much misogyny to see. There's enough shared belief to be tapped here, and I'm pretty good at not jumping in with my own strong opinions when I can see a benefit in solving an underlying problem with others.
chc 12y ago
"Men's rights activism" is seldom more than bashing women and attempting to shout down and dismiss any issues they might raise. I think this is sad, because there are some interesting issues a "men's place in society" movement could address, but unfortunately whatever reasonable folk there might be under the "men's rights" label, they're drowned out by a flood of really hateful people.
beat 12y ago
"Why aren't feminists characterized as jerks?" Are you characterizing people who identify as "feminist" as jerks here? Perhaps you should reconsider your phrasing. And consider how "hold no bias" you sound when you say something like that.

detcader 12y ago

There's no such thing as the "male gender" ('male' refers to sex). You have a bias. For one thing, it's your years of socializaton as a boy and now a (young?) man. Understanding what feminists are trying to say takes work. You haven't done enough work yet. No one in 2014 is saying that it's terrible that you're male.

user24 12y ago
> There's no such thing as the "male gender" Maybe it's a cultural thing but here in the UK at least I think male and female are seen as genders... What word should the parent commenter have used? "man gender" is not grammatical, so I can only think of one other option; "male". (edit: and in case I'm misunderstood, I don't mean any kind of subtext on the wider debate here, I'm just asking because I think 'male' is a gender and am confused). (edit: right, found this: http://www.med.monash.edu.au/gendermed/sexandgender.html http://www.med.monash.edu.au/gendermed/sexandgender.html so basically it's the difference between sex and gender. I wasn't acutely aware that the words male vs masculine carried such an important distinction. I'm not sure if they are commonly used in that distinct way).
- detcader 12y ago
  Thanks for asking, it's an important point: In U.S. medical and feminist academics (and elsewhere,) "male/female" refers to sex: XX/XY chromosomes and the resulting organs, body type, etc, resulting in human sexual dimorphism, to which there are rare, exceptional cases, where the person is called intersex. "man/woman" are common terms colloquially referring to male/female people (you probably know this). In the context of certain feminisms, the words refer to people born male or female, and then raised into the gender roles defined by society as appropriate for male and female people. These gender roles are what are invoked by words like "manly", "womanly", "sissy", and other "gendered" words and insults. In other feminisms, the words refer to people who "identify" as one or the other, where this identity is either "innate" or otherwise fluid or something. Full disclosure, I sympathize with the former sort of feminism, so I'm not exactly the best person to give a comprehensive synopsis here. Judith Lorber's "Gender Inequality" is a book that goes over individual feminist movements and waves, without necessarily pushing any of them on the reader. It's not too long, I recommend it.
- mreiland 12y ago
  The poster was just trying to find something to attack. If you read the wiki article here: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender You can see the following quote: _Depending on the context, the term may refer to biological sex (i.e. the state of being male, female or intersex), ..._ LGBT has a tendency to use the term gender to mean gender roles, where the lines are a bit more obscure. I believe psychologists do as well. But in every day vernacular, gender refers to sex for most people, and as the wiki article suggests, it's completely acceptable to use it in that manner. I'll repeat what I said before, the poster was just looking for something to attack.

lhnz 12y ago

I'm not pandering to anybody. I actually believe what I wrote. But I do have a bias: I have a bias towards diplomacy. We all have biases and the sooner we admit that we're fallible minds that have lived just one life, not the objective thinkers we wish to present to our audience, the sooner we can begin to respect and listen to each other. > There's a large percentage of men who are either misogynistic, > and /or MRA jerks? Why aren't feminists characterized as jerks? > Why are you painting MRA as jerks, but apologizing to feminists > if you've accidentally offended them? Not all MRA are jerks. Not all feminists are jerks. I certainly didn't mean to imply that a large percentage of men were misogynists. I meant to say that it was a slightly larger percentage than is normally visible and that this was mostly because in a 50/50 male/female environment they would self-censor as well as have less reason to feel the way they do while in the current 90/10 environment (or whatever it is) they do not need to. I think the article was unusually fair and diplomatic for a tech gender piece. I wanted to repay this by commenting on my own opinions in as careful, constructive and fair way as I know how to. If I was to have posted an inflammatory rant about how angry feminists were just as bad as misogynists and then have tried to equate them using some ridiculous objective-appearing seesaw as if I was the divine judge of a gender-war then I'd be completely arguing against what I was arguing for: diplomacy and the acceptance and understanding of each other's problems as a result of there being a lack of diversity. I want a better way of acting together, not to win a battle. You are absolutely entitled to your opinions but you are way too confident of the truth of what you're saying to signal rationality.

mreiland 12y ago
If there's one thing I've learned in my 35 years on this planet, it's that telling someone they're irrational is not diplomatic. But it wasn't men you were talking about being diplomatic to, was it? It was women. I wonder if that diplomacy should also include men, and if so, how do you feel about the way feminists have been vilifying men? Or the way you just did, with your comment about MRA. Fair is fair, after all.
- lhnz 12y ago
  > If there's one thing I've learned in my 35 years on this planet, > it's that telling someone they're irrational is not diplomatic. Well, you did it first, I just pointed out that we'd all do better by listening to each other and having less certainty of our rationality. > I wonder if that diplomacy should also include men, and if so, > how do you feel about the way feminists have been vilifying men? I feel like it's a bad 'weak men' argument as stated by my two paragraphs I wrote on it referring to the article by @slatestarcodex. * * * I also feel that some aspects of feminism in technology can be neatly framed as rent-seeking behaviour. But, I think anybody that gives their wealth over to another because they have been guilted into believing that they should not truly own it (privilege narrative) are fools who should be parted with their money. Also, I think that many in the MRA community are just too whiney to attempt to defend men. I could barely mount an argument for men like that. I'm not a feminist. I listened to the article because it wasn't shouted at me, and I responded saying that some of the behaviour annoys me, that the normal lack of diplomacy normally makes me stop reading after 5 seconds, and that diversity is a problem because of the social interactions it creates but there isn't much misogyny to see. There's enough shared belief to be tapped here, and I'm pretty good at not jumping in with my own strong opinions when I can see a benefit in solving an underlying problem with others.

chc 12y ago

"Men's rights activism" is seldom more than bashing women and attempting to shout down and dismiss any issues they might raise. I think this is sad, because there are some interesting issues a "men's place in society" movement could address, but unfortunately whatever reasonable folk there might be under the "men's rights" label, they're drowned out by a flood of really hateful people.

beat 12y ago

"Why aren't feminists characterized as jerks?" Are you characterizing people who identify as "feminist" as jerks here? Perhaps you should reconsider your phrasing. And consider how "hold no bias" you sound when you say something like that.