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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: 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.