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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: 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.