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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: 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?