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Scott Adams of Dilbert fame has posted a blog entry on gender discrimination. His goal is to gather as many links as possible on all sides of the issue; he intends to try to summarize what's out there in a subsequent post. His blog entry includes a few interesting, possibly insightful comments, for example:
"Some men are bullies and assholes. And most men are assholes at least some of the time. When men are bullies and assholes to each other, we interpret it as exactly that. But if I observe those same bullies and assholes mistreating a woman, I interpret it as sexism. I assume others see it the same way.
"The other day a good friend who works as a massage therapist was describing a time in her past she was a victim of gender discrimination. The story sounded convincing to me. Then I asked if she knew I would not have considered her as my massage therapist if she were a man. Cricket noises."
"My larger point today is that any discussion of gender in the workplace is like two blind people standing on an elephant and arguing whether the elephant is a sandwich or a bar of soap. Both are 100% wrong. That includes me."
Personally, I find Adams' writing to be frequently interesting — he at least tries to find his way around traditional blindspots. Sometimes he even succeeds. Since gender discrimination is so often a topic in technical fields, perhaps Soylentils will find this of interest...
(Score: 4, Funny) by TLA on Monday March 16 2015, @02:13AM
That said, I could write a book on gender discrimination in English Law. Seriously, between that and minority-ism, if you're a white male agnostic (as I am) in this country, you are boned.
Excuse me, I think I need to reboot my horse. - NCommander
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @02:50AM
Everyone claims they are the victim of something. No matter what one's race, gender, or age is they will complain that they are being discriminated against. and perhaps there is truth to some of those complains. Perhaps we are all discriminated against in different ways. Not saying that we should be but it likely happens. I've been turned down to a bookkeeping job once and later found out from someone on the inside that it was because they wanted a female for that position. The owners of the company apparently think bookkeeping as a feminine job or something. I know someone who had a night shift security position for a gated community at an arm gate and was working that post for the longest time and was the most qualified worker. He wanted a daytime position instead and when a day shift female eventually left (because she was moving to another state) he asked about getting that position. The homeowners and the homeowner's association decided they wanted a female for that position and hired a much less qualified, new, person for the position (the person being denied the position said the general manager wasn't even discrete about their reasons for not giving him the day shift) partly because that shift saw a lot more traffic and they wanted a female to greet the guests and owners and partly because they prefer males for night positions since females maybe less able to defend themselves and being outside at night is potentially more dangerous. So it goes both ways.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @03:10AM
> if you're a white male agnostic (as I am) in this country, you are boned.
Well, you had a good long run.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Farkus888 on Monday March 16 2015, @04:35AM
Discrimination is discrimination. My grandparent treating your grandparent poorly has nothing to do with either of us. If you see anything in that description that you feel gives you a right to judge, you are as guilty as the people you are attacking.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @06:16AM
Lol. I'm judging you for not getting the joke.
Of course the joke was at the expense of the agnostic white guy, so you know, I was totally discriminating against him.
(Score: 4, Disagree) by sigma on Monday March 16 2015, @06:36AM
Discrimination is discrimination.
No, not quite. The Petrie Multiplier [blogspot.com] means a majority attacking a minority results in discrimination squared.
If you read the link, you'll understand why it's sometimes necessary to apply positive action (viewed as discriminatory) to counteract the effects of past discrimination.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Farkus888 on Monday March 16 2015, @06:56AM
I'm not disagreeing on that point at all. I specifically said between our grandparents. Punishing a person for their own actions is very different from punishing them for someone else's actions past or present. Only one of them has any place in a fair society.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Runaway1956 on Monday March 16 2015, @07:49AM
What a wonderfully imaginative way to justify YOUR OWN version of discrimination. MY VERSION of discrimination is evil, but YOUR VERSION of discrimination is good.
How about we just expose all bigots as exactly what they are? Sexist, racist, ethnocentric bigoted SOB's. And, yes, I believe that includes you.
I'm going to buy my defensive radar from Temu, just like Venezuela!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @01:49PM
How about we just expose all bigots as exactly what they are? Sexist, racist, ethnocentric bigoted SOB's. And, yes, I believe that includes you.
Actually, it includes you too. We all discriminate based on prejudice. Denying your own fallibility and putting it all on others would be ignorant.
Unless your goal is simply to feel righteous about yourself, the question that really matters is what are the results?
And that is what Ian Gent is getting at in that blog post. His ideas are not unique, nor new. For example, in 1971 Thomas Schelling [wikipedia.org] showed that even a small percentage of racists in a majority ethnic group can easily lead to fully segregated neighborhoods. Here's is an implementation of the classic Life automata modififed to show that effect in action, [mit.edu] and a more interactive demonstration here. [ncase.me]
By the way the definition of bigot is not just being racist, sexist, etc. It is someone, who is obstinately or intolerantly devoted to his or her own opinions and prejudices. [merriam-webster.com] So now you have a choice.
(Score: 1) by curunir_wolf on Monday March 16 2015, @02:35PM
Unless your goal is simply to feel righteous about yourself, the question that really matters is what are the results?
No - that's not the question that matters at all. Because if you're trying to control outcomes based on statistical variations based on race/gender/origin/whatever, you can always find something that looks "unfair" for one particular group or another, and an authoritarian way of making some "adjustment". And, of course, since you're only looking at groups, you're going to be harming some people and rewarding others based solely on an accident of birth.
And this leads to all kinds of moral hazards, not to mention the total effect of eliminating any motivation for individuals to make an effort to improve themselves and society. I refer you here to Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron [wikipedia.org] as an excellent illustration of the logical eventuality of your kind of thinking.
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @02:52PM
Because if you're trying to control outcomes based on statistical variations based on race/gender/origin/whatever, you can always find something that looks "unfair"
That's classic making the perfect the enemy of the good rationalization.
Just because it is possible to use bad judgment doesn't mean we will use bad judgment.
Furthermore, leaving it up to non-random chance based on the status quo is just the tyranny of the masses.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @03:04PM
> I refer you here to Kurt Vonnegut's Harrison Bergeron
Seems like Vonnegut's view of the lessons of Bergeron differs from yours. [ljworld.com]
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @02:55PM
Actually he proved it, with the sentence:
What's that, if not prejudice?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday March 16 2015, @11:31AM
Besides, its a good way to keep the grudges going and use divide and conqueror as a political tool.
The nightmare of all political activists of all kinds isn't losing, but winning, because that's a trip to the unemployment line and a loss of political power.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @01:18PM
Globally, white males make up a tiny fraction of the population. They out produce and have out produced all other peoples combined in situations good and bad, on every continent of the globe. Yet it is white males that are considered the majority that discriminates against others, it is they that are expected to give more to others while not taking anything in return. How absurd is that? A tiny minority that has been doing well for a very long time being told that they are the powerful majority and are responsible for the woes of every other people.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:12AM
They out produce and have out produced all other peoples combined
Semen production that does not result in population increase is nothing to be proud of. Wankers!
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday March 16 2015, @02:06PM
Actually, it totally does. I'll give you an example of this, comparing my life to the life of a co-worker of mine.
I'm a white guy from a fairly well-off background. Generations ago, one of my ancestors had come to an unknown little cow town in Illinois named Chicago and bought up a bunch of real estate - if he had been black, he would never have been allowed to do this. That left my family was loaded with cash. That cash, while definitely a much smaller pile since it was divided hundreds of ways among lots of descendants, formed a significant portion of my undergraduate college fund, which is why I graduated college with no student loans. That meant that after college, I started with several thousand dollars in graduation gifts and what I'd been able to save working over the summers, and my income was about $300 a month higher than my less well-off classmates'. That $300 a month eventually became the down payment on a car, saving me thousands of dollars in interest cost. Now I live a very comfortable life, especially for somebody my age.
A black friend of mine grew up in the inner cities of Cleveland. His family was living in that neighborhood not because they wanted to, but because of a combination of redlining, housing discrimination, and threat of terrorist violence against black people living in most suburbs and rural areas. Living in those neighborhoods, he had a very difficult time avoiding gang involvement and drug use, but managed to make it through school and graduate from college, the first person in his family to do so. However, he always had to take whatever decent job he could get in order to pay off his student loans, and because of that he's not had as much job or housing flexibility as I have. He's doing OK, and much better than his parents ever did, but his income is roughly half of mine and his expenses are much higher. And he also has the additional challenge that all his family lives in the 'hood, so when he goes to visit them he's putting his life at risk, and a fair amount of his income goes to try to help out his family.
So yes, that history makes a big difference. And yes, a white friend of mine who was born dirt-poor in Kentucky had some of the same challenges due to being dirt-poor, but nothing like what my black friend went through and is still going through. Among other things, my dirt-poor friend eventually wasn't dirt-poor and began being treated accordingly, whereas my black friend is still black no matter what he does.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Monday March 16 2015, @04:03PM
One more follow-up to this: Ever wonder why there's a whole lot of dirt-poor white people are concentrated in Appalachia? Those are, for the most part, descendants of Scotch-Irish indentured servants brought into the Virginia colony to work in conditions that were only slightly better than those of the black slaves. The minority of that population that survived their indenture period then went west to get land (they had to steal it from the American Indians, of course), because all the good land nearer the coast was already taken.
And because they were on lousy land, their land was nowhere near as productive as those who were on good land, which kept them dirt-poor until the late 1800's. They bore the brunt of much of the Civil War, too. And then they struggled along until coal was discovered in the area, at which point various forms of force were used to prevent them from getting paid a decent wage. Many of them still are either farmers or coal miners, and are still dirt-poor.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 1) by albert on Monday March 16 2015, @04:34PM
The people with the culture/DNA/values/whatever to succeed went west to get land. Those remaining are descended from people without the culture/DNA/values/whatever to succeed. It's no surprise they don't do well. Sit on your ass, without imagination and without taking risks, and this is the result.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @09:32PM
If you want to say "It's a just world, you get what you deserve," then why don't you just say that?
Even if it's a fallacy.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @07:47PM
For that to hold true, every white person would have to have demonstrable privilege while black persons would have to have a demonstrable disadvantage. In your case this is correct, you should feel guilty and help out your fellow human being. What of white people that come from an impoverished family that has always been so? Is it fair to expect them to be called privileged in relation to a black family of otherwise identical means? To answer anything but no would not be sane.
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Tuesday March 17 2015, @04:42PM
That's a definite "yes". Some reasons why:
- An impoverished white person will escape punishment for many crimes that will land a black person a criminal conviction and jail time. That criminal conviction will effectively bar that black person from most kinds of jobs, most public assistance programs, and most places to live.
- An impoverished white person with a high school diploma has roughly the same career prospects as a black person with a college degree.
- An impoverished white person who eventually gains some wealth and career success is able to "pass" as someone with my kind of privileges and thus gain access to many of the advantages I have.
- An impoverished white person can rent or buy a place to live in more and nicer neighborhoods than a black person of equivalent wealth (and yes, a trailer park is better than the 'hood in a lot of respects). If a white person chooses to buy a home, they will pay a lower interest rate and thus get a better price than a black person with equivalent income and assets.
- Just a name more popular among white people like "Michael" or "Anne" gives a person a significant advantage over a name more popular among black people like "Tyrone" or "Latisha". The white-sounding named person is likely to get more interviews for jobs, for example, even with otherwise identical resumes.
"Think of how stupid the average person is. Then realize half of 'em are stupider than that." - George Carlin
(Score: 2) by Joe Desertrat on Wednesday March 18 2015, @01:05AM
I would like to add to Thexalon's reply that none of this is ever a 100% either/or situation. It is statistical in nature. You can always find exceptions. But statistically, the scenarios Thexalon proposes are overwhelmingly the case.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @01:10PM
well no, it's been that way all _my_ life
(Score: 2, Insightful) by curunir_wolf on Monday March 16 2015, @02:21PM
> if you're a white male agnostic (as I am) in this country, you are boned. Well, you had a good long run.
Thank you for pointing out the fallacies to today's group politics mentality. Your assertion only works if the "you" is a reference to a group the OP is identified with. It apparently wouldn't matter if the individual had been a victim of oppression and discrimination his whole life - since the group you put him in "had a good long run", it's okay that he struggles with unfairness.
I'll leave this quote from Thomas Sowell here because I think it's a pretty insightful statement: ""Racism does not have a good track record. It has been tried for a long time. You would think by now we would want to put an end to it instead of putting it under new management."
I am a crackpot
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @04:00AM
No, you really aren't boned.
You are still substantially privileged and likely reaping the benefit from a massive amount of historical privilege as well.
If you aren't able to recognize this then it's high time you learn more about the world others have to contend with before making more wah wah persecuted white male complaints.
(Score: 4, Informative) by Kell on Monday March 16 2015, @06:27AM
historical privilege
Historical privilege, like all other past abuses, belongs in history. We should learn lessons about it, but not let it become a cause for perpetuating injustices. When eye for an eye is the rule of the land, everyone is blind. Holding modern individuals responsible for the past wrongs their specific races, genders, creeds or whatever is as unjust as as discriminating against other individuals of whatever race, gender, creed or whatever. If we can't get past playing the blame game, we'll never move forward.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by sigma on Monday March 16 2015, @06:51AM
If we can't get past playing the blame game, we'll never move forward.
Blame and redress are not the same thing.
Inherited wealth, including wealth of nations, hasn't always been gained honestly or ethically. The descendants of those it was taken from are entitled to feel aggrieved that they're living in poverty while the children of thieves enjoy a life of luxury.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Kell on Monday March 16 2015, @10:02AM
While redress is a noble idea in general, it's a naively simplistic appeal to an abstract sense of justice. For example, where do you draw the limit of redress? Do we go back and make right the wrongs of Mongol invaders? Are children responsible for the action of their forefathers? How do you determine who benefitted from what wrongs, and what is just redress? Who should pay to make that redress?
While sometimes it's obvious (eg. the plunder of thieves), often times it's not obvious at all. For example, should a white man descended from slavery abolitionists living in a slave state still pay to right the wrongs of other people? Clearly he benefits from "white privilege" but neither he nor his ancestors were part of the problem. What about people who moved to that country long after the fact? As a white Australian who moved to Connecticut for my post-doc, I've been told by Americans that I am somehow a beneficiary of black slavery, even though neither I nor my forebearers had ever even been to the US*.
When it is something as nebulous as "patriarchy", where women have historically been just as involved in asserting gender norms as men, where do you even begin? Sadly, the world is not just, and fighting for social justice will not succeed. Instead of saying "get even", we should be saying "never again".
* And before anyone starts, my Australian forefathers were Lutheran missionaries who were opposed to mistreatment of aboriginals. They served in the Logan Germantown mission, before going out past Toowoomba preaching to black and white alike.
Scientists ask questions. Engineers solve problems.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by VLM on Monday March 16 2015, @11:34AM
For example, where do you draw the limit of redress? Do we go back and make right the wrongs of Mongol invaders?
Even better example is the middle east. That is so dense with historical mistakes, that the movie quote of "nuke it from orbit just to be sure" applies quite well. I honestly think there is no other endgame for them other than that, if its declared to be time to right all the wrongs. However, none of the players likely want to be nuked from orbit.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @06:41PM
> I honestly think there is no other endgame for them other than that,
Why is black-and-white thinking so seductive to geeks?
It seems especially so when the geeks have only the most superficial knowledge of the topics they opine on.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @01:56PM
When it is something as nebulous as "patriarchy", where women have historically been just as involved in asserting gender norms as men,
Woah nelly!
When the oppressed go along to get along that doesn't make them "just as involved" unless by "involved" you mean living with it instead of making the enormous personal sacrifice of going against the entire tide of their society - defying friends, family and neighbors.
(Score: 1) by albert on Monday March 16 2015, @04:42PM
Men start life as boys, raised primarily by women. They are getting their values mainly from Mom. They see how Mom celebrates the birth of a boy, but aborts a daughter. They see how Mom is strict with girls. They see how Mom gives the girls less food.
It's all on the Mom, and thus on women.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @06:39PM
> It's all on the Mom, and thus on women.
Wow. I can't tell if you are Poe's Lawing or not.
And apparently it is no longer possible to check a user's posting history to see if they have expressed such amazingly ignorant misogyny before.
(Score: 2) by aristarchus on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:29AM
It's all on the Mom, and thus on women.
Wow. I can't tell if you are Poe's Lawing or not.
Evidently, we are dealing with an extreme, and perhaps literal, case of the Oedipus Complex. If you do not know what this is, I suggest you turn yourself in to the nearest psychiatric hospital. No need to be to specific. Just texting the post you have made here will be sufficient. Trust me. Because you are obviously a literal motherfucker. Get help, bro!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @07:21AM
Do we go back and make right the wrongs of Mongol invaders?
It's your father, you bastard descendant of the noble Khan that fucked you great, great, and not so great-grandmother. Represent! Stand up and take responsibility for your line of patriarchy! You sniveling son of a whore!
(Score: 1) by curunir_wolf on Monday March 16 2015, @02:42PM
Luckily we have historical events like the French Revolution to show us how to properly implement "redress".
I am a crackpot
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 16 2015, @10:00PM
Well that's nice to know. I am a white male.
In my lifetime, I've been not hired for a number of jobs because I'm a white male. One of them, at a local body government facility, was for a data entry job. I was pitted against a woman, who got the job because she was a woman. She could type around 5 words a minute, I can type more than 100. She did nothing but cause trouble, and then left the job because of the resultant stress a few weeks later. I was also punished for not getting this job by the local unemployment office - I should have tried harder! Not sure how trying harder would help, it wasn't effort that cost me the job but in their eyes, it was my fault.
Affirmative action cost me a job that I would certainly have been much more efficient at than the other person, regardless of sex.
I've been (and am presently) denied government assistance because I'm a white male, meanwhile my present job pays less than the unemployment benefit in a town with at leat 4000 others unemployed (probably more like 30,000 once underemployment is taken into account) and around 100 jobs available. Were I female, or Pacific Islander, I'd have support groups crawling on their bellies through broken glass to try and help me, but no.
I'm a while male.
Apparently, I've had it too good for too long and need to be discriminated against.
Number of full time jobs I've had in my life (I'm presently 40):
two. One of those was temporary, filling in for someone. The other, the boss didn't like me so kept assigning blame to me for everything he'd done, and then fired me for it. Motherfucker's going to like the visit he gets from law enforcement as soon as I've distanced myself from him. He doesn't even realise that I know what goes on at his house...
Number of part time jobs I've had in my life:
six. Each and every one of these promised that if we worked hard, we'd get more hours. So I worked hard, and I got more hours alright - unpaid hours, that lead nowhere.
And that's it. Discrimination in favour of minorities (especially the female minority, which makes up 53% of the population) has lead me to a life of low-wage or, as happens every couple of years, no-wage and hunger.
But just remember, it's because of all of those benefits I had! I came from a wealthy family.
Well, perhaps a wealthy family if you compared us with Afghani peasants in the 70s and 80s. We didn't have enough food, didn't have new clothes, didn't have a heater when the snow was half a foot deep outside, but I was a lot better off than the families who were on benefits.
No, wait, I was in one of those families.
I had relatives come up to me at one of my schools (I went to nearly a dozen because we couldn't afford to live in one place for too long before our rent fell behind, and I'd lived in 19 houses by the time I was 18) and tell me that I wasn't rich enough to be their friend. I had another relative throw a tantrum about how hard she's worked her whole life and how she didn't get nearly as much as I did - rather difficult to see her point of view, her husband was highly paid as a bottom rung engineer at a meat plant, so was getting more than $60k for six months work while the national average wage was $25k and the regional average wage was $15k.
I didn't have any of the advantages ascribed to white males, but I've certainly got all of the disadvantages ascribed to the poor, and you can add to that the discrimination against the white males because they clearly had all the advantages, as well as the discrimination against the poor.
Your assumptions already make you out to be a fool. Shall we now throw in my disability and the rampant discrimination I've suffered against that?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday March 17 2015, @08:23AM
Wow. I guess now you have some idea what it was like to be black, without the burning crosses and lynchings. You pansy. Grow a pair, you are embarrassing the rest of us white males.