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Do you believe that this "dick move" is absent in other fields with lots of women? Specifically, do you believe doctors and lawyers ask each other out less than

Do you believe that this "dick move" is absent in other fields with lots of women? Specifically, do you believe doctors and lawyers ask each other out less than techies? If "shit like this" is present in every field, it's a poor explanation of why women avoid technology but no those other fields. Now if you want to rescue this hypothesis, you could point out that doctors aren't a bunch of low status nerds. But that's a naughty hypothesis, so I'm sure you won't go there.

DrJokepu 12y ago
I was not making an hypothesis, I was describing how situations like this make people feel and then I described how that makes me feel. The irony is that even though you believed that you made a rational counter-argument what you really did is describing your very own feelings with a comment that is betraying your insecurities.
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  ...it's shit like this why many women shy away from participating in technology. That's a hypothesis, a claim about how the world works. That's the point I'm questioning. I don't much care about your feelings, nor was I commenting on them. You can feel whatever you like. If you want to make status lowering comments ("betraying your insecurities"), have at it. I'm well aware that personal attacks and the like are one of the results of questioning the orthodoxy.
  - DrJokepu 12y ago
    I don't much care about your feelings, nor was I commenting on them. But that's exactly the problem, bro! It's a good thing to care about other people's feelings.
tptacek 12y ago
No, you haven't shown the explanation to be poor. You've implicitly invoked one possible reason why unprofessional behavior among men might create obstacles for women, rebutted it, and declared the debate over. If this was an argument over the right way to interpret statistics over a website optimization scheme, you'd laugh at you. Considering only gender policy, what is the most significant difference between doctors and engineers? Obviously: distribution among genders in medicine is much more balanced than in technology. Stipulate that romantic overtures are as common in medicine as in technology. What basis do you have for your implied claim that the impact of such an overture is the same in medicine as it is in technology? It seems straightforward and reasonable to presume that the impact of an unwanted overture is much more powerful for someone who is part of a small minority, for whom the overture comes from a member of the overwhelming majority. Michael O. Church has conjured an entire ethos in which he's been oppressed not just by venture capitalists but the entire industry they fund. He believes it so strongly that he has advocated violence to address the problem. And he's a guy, who feels locked out of the industry not because of a gender bias that has persisted overtly through pretty much all of human history, but instead due to unfair performance reviews. From your comment history, you strike me as someone who has in his life actually talked to a woman. But comments like this force me to remind myself of that. Have you not talked to one who was shaken by being hit on by a guy in a work setting? I am not the suave, athletic bachelor you obviously are, and I've managed to hear this story from actual women repeatedly. If you have heard this story before, how are you managing to handwave it away so easily?
- yummyfajitas 12y ago
  The OP's explanation is indeed poor. You can possibly add additional hypothesis which rescue it (I suggested one in the post you just responded to), but that doesn't mean the original hypothesis by itself isn't poor. what is the most significant difference between doctors and engineers? Obviously: distribution among genders in medicine is much more balanced than in technology. The key word here is "is". This was not true in the past. Yet somehow, medicine attracted women but tech didn't. At this historical point, did boy doctors not ask out girl doctors, but boy programmers did ask out girl programmers? Same for law, etc? Your "minority + asked out" theory predicts women can never escape minority status, which is evidently false. If you want an explanation it needs to be specific to computing. Have you not talked to one who was shaken by being hit on by a guy in a work setting? I am not the suave, athletic bachelor you obviously are... I've heard this story before. I've heard of women being hit on in church gatherings also, yet church is full of women. Thus it fails as an explanation of why women are underrepresented in technology but not other fields. Also, can I suggest leaving Michael O. Church alone? It's not necessary to drag him into a random conversation on topic completely unrelated to VC-istan.
  - tptacek 12y ago
    I'm confused. The M.O.C. point was very simple. As it turns out from this comment, you empathize with the struggles of a white male with an established career history getting a fair shake in VC-funded technology. But for reasons I have not yet managed to unearth, you do not empathize with women whose careers are impeded by gender bias --- or, in a distinction that makes no difference, you're unable to acknowledge that gender bias exists. You seem like the kind of person who would be irritated by the knowledge that he's missing something. You don't have a gnawing feeling that maybe you're missing something in this conversation?
    - yummyfajitas 12y ago
      I said "don't pick on Michael O. Church" (something I've observed you do repeatedly). I didn't say "Michael O. Church's factual claims are correct." I get the impression that I'm discussing testable hypothesis about the world, whereas you are attempting to signal empathy and kindness. My very specific claim: if you postulate a theory why tech lacks women, your theory must distinguish between technology and medicine/law/catholicism (catholicism has lots of gender bias and lots of women). "People ask other people out" does not make this distinction. Incidentally, there is a third possibility which you seem to be glossing over. I believe gender bias exists but is not the cause of women being underrepresented in tech.
angersock 12y ago
So, easy enough way of testing this is to go and compare, across fields, gender ratio and percent dating within that field. A different field might be, for example, perhaps nursing--traditionally a very female-heavy field. I'm not aware of any such dataset, unfortunately.
- seanflyon 12y ago
  The problem is not dating within a field, but advances across a power imbalance.
  - angersock 12y ago
    That's perhaps a problem, but one of the other claims being made is that somehow same-level dating is harming the field.

DrJokepu 12y ago

I was not making an hypothesis, I was describing how situations like this make people feel and then I described how that makes me feel. The irony is that even though you believed that you made a rational counter-argument what you really did is describing your very own feelings with a comment that is betraying your insecurities.

yummyfajitas 12y ago
...it's shit like this why many women shy away from participating in technology. That's a hypothesis, a claim about how the world works. That's the point I'm questioning. I don't much care about your feelings, nor was I commenting on them. You can feel whatever you like. If you want to make status lowering comments ("betraying your insecurities"), have at it. I'm well aware that personal attacks and the like are one of the results of questioning the orthodoxy.
- DrJokepu 12y ago
  I don't much care about your feelings, nor was I commenting on them. But that's exactly the problem, bro! It's a good thing to care about other people's feelings.

tptacek 12y ago

No, you haven't shown the explanation to be poor. You've implicitly invoked one possible reason why unprofessional behavior among men might create obstacles for women, rebutted it, and declared the debate over. If this was an argument over the right way to interpret statistics over a website optimization scheme, you'd laugh at you. Considering only gender policy, what is the most significant difference between doctors and engineers? Obviously: distribution among genders in medicine is much more balanced than in technology. Stipulate that romantic overtures are as common in medicine as in technology. What basis do you have for your implied claim that the impact of such an overture is the same in medicine as it is in technology? It seems straightforward and reasonable to presume that the impact of an unwanted overture is much more powerful for someone who is part of a small minority, for whom the overture comes from a member of the overwhelming majority. Michael O. Church has conjured an entire ethos in which he's been oppressed not just by venture capitalists but the entire industry they fund. He believes it so strongly that he has advocated violence to address the problem. And he's a guy, who feels locked out of the industry not because of a gender bias that has persisted overtly through pretty much all of human history, but instead due to unfair performance reviews. From your comment history, you strike me as someone who has in his life actually talked to a woman. But comments like this force me to remind myself of that. Have you not talked to one who was shaken by being hit on by a guy in a work setting? I am not the suave, athletic bachelor you obviously are, and I've managed to hear this story from actual women repeatedly. If you have heard this story before, how are you managing to handwave it away so easily?

yummyfajitas 12y ago
The OP's explanation is indeed poor. You can possibly add additional hypothesis which rescue it (I suggested one in the post you just responded to), but that doesn't mean the original hypothesis by itself isn't poor. what is the most significant difference between doctors and engineers? Obviously: distribution among genders in medicine is much more balanced than in technology. The key word here is "is". This was not true in the past. Yet somehow, medicine attracted women but tech didn't. At this historical point, did boy doctors not ask out girl doctors, but boy programmers did ask out girl programmers? Same for law, etc? Your "minority + asked out" theory predicts women can never escape minority status, which is evidently false. If you want an explanation it needs to be specific to computing. Have you not talked to one who was shaken by being hit on by a guy in a work setting? I am not the suave, athletic bachelor you obviously are... I've heard this story before. I've heard of women being hit on in church gatherings also, yet church is full of women. Thus it fails as an explanation of why women are underrepresented in technology but not other fields. Also, can I suggest leaving Michael O. Church alone? It's not necessary to drag him into a random conversation on topic completely unrelated to VC-istan.
- tptacek 12y ago
  I'm confused. The M.O.C. point was very simple. As it turns out from this comment, you empathize with the struggles of a white male with an established career history getting a fair shake in VC-funded technology. But for reasons I have not yet managed to unearth, you do not empathize with women whose careers are impeded by gender bias --- or, in a distinction that makes no difference, you're unable to acknowledge that gender bias exists. You seem like the kind of person who would be irritated by the knowledge that he's missing something. You don't have a gnawing feeling that maybe you're missing something in this conversation?
  - yummyfajitas 12y ago
    I said "don't pick on Michael O. Church" (something I've observed you do repeatedly). I didn't say "Michael O. Church's factual claims are correct." I get the impression that I'm discussing testable hypothesis about the world, whereas you are attempting to signal empathy and kindness. My very specific claim: if you postulate a theory why tech lacks women, your theory must distinguish between technology and medicine/law/catholicism (catholicism has lots of gender bias and lots of women). "People ask other people out" does not make this distinction. Incidentally, there is a third possibility which you seem to be glossing over. I believe gender bias exists but is not the cause of women being underrepresented in tech.

angersock 12y ago

So, easy enough way of testing this is to go and compare, across fields, gender ratio and percent dating within that field. A different field might be, for example, perhaps nursing--traditionally a very female-heavy field. I'm not aware of any such dataset, unfortunately.

seanflyon 12y ago
The problem is not dating within a field, but advances across a power imbalance.
- angersock 12y ago
  That's perhaps a problem, but one of the other claims being made is that somehow same-level dating is harming the field.