Well, that's fine for ordinary human affairs. But it cuts into the issue of academic freedom, and particularly, it stops certain kinds of research from being encouraged, and makes some downright impermissible. The free inquiry for truth cannot be fettered with prejudices against data which compels or refuses tout court particular conclusions...not without destroying the search for truth itself.Astro Cat wrote: ↑Thu Jul 14, 2022 1:43 amGotcha. Ok, point ceded, to an extent. Yet I can understand why people were up in arms. Some did it more eloquently by pointing out how the way he went about it was problematic. Of course there are going to be people that don't react so well, sure.Immanuel Can wrote: ↑Wed Jul 13, 2022 11:17 pm No, I only brought him in as an example of research that gets "tabooed." I have no particular interest in his thesis beyond the question of how academics are treated when they publicize politically-incorrect data.
Okay. That should be unproblematic to make happen. The media's very sympathetic to that sort of story.One way that this is being done is that the media picks up stories about women breaking out in fields. In a perfect world the response should be "so what," but for right now, I think it's a good thing.Immanuel Can wrote: Okay. "Increase representation" is your first idea.
How do we achieve that? What specific policies do we need to put into place to make that happen? Or is it more a matter of women having to change their own attitudes? I'm open to suggestions of all kinds.
I'm not really sure how.Women appearing in entertainment in more diverse roles is already being done as well, and I think that's helping.
You don't mean we should distort the truth, as through the classic "125 pound woman who beats up 250 pound men," or the classic "gay friend who is always wise and wonderful," or something like that, do you? Those are less "entertainment" than propaganda tools, and they always ruin the verisimilitude of any show they're in. They've become recognizable as stock-preaching characters, and such characters actually don't fool anybody much.
That's crucial, though.At the same time though, I'm not a policy-maker for a reason. I don't know what sorts of policies should be done.
Without a definite plan of reform, women's complaints stay just that -- complaints, and mere complaints without possiblity of remedy. Everything really hinges on our ability to change what needs to be changed.
It's a good question.My interest in this thread has been to answer the questions, "why are there fewer women in STEM, and is there something essential about being a woman that shoulders the bulk of the blame?"
My answer to the first has been because of the unequal psychosocial hardships women endure thanks to implicit biases in the culture both at home and at work.
And my response is that women's hardships at home are products of their own choices, not of STEM. And I still don't believe "implicit bias" means anything. An "explicit bias" would be useful to identify; we would be able to design strategies to deal with it. But this "implicit" thing handicaps us beyond remedy.
And I'd say I don't know what "cultural aspects" those are. Like "implicit bias," they seem to float away as generalizations, devoid of specifics or remedy.My answer to the second is that it sure seems a lot more like cultural aspects are more at play than anything essential to being a woman.
As I have argued before, I don't even outright reject the possibility that being a biological, phenotypic woman skews some kind of temperamental curve and might serve as a seed for the emergence of the biases that harm women overall. Maybe x out of y women, raised in a vacuum, would prefer a nurturing field over a STEM field, compared to some lower x out of y men that would prefer the same. I don't know. Yet I don't think the nature side of the effect is dominant, I don't think that on its own it would nearly account for the sorts of cultural biases that we see. My evidence for this is that many women show an initial interest in STEM, but something causes them to back out.
I get why you are drawn to that assumption. But the problem is that we don't know it's more than that. To tie this back to your idea of "biological, phentypic women," what if this thing they call 'the biological clock" or even "nesting instinct," is real? What if women don't WANT to work the 80 hour shifts every week, because they happen to feel that their families are more important than their money-making? What if they're right: that quality of life is better than career advancement? And would they be lunatic for taking that view? Should we criticize them for it? I think we'd both say, "no."
The deciding factor is going to be data, not ideology. What we "think" women should be or do is really less important than what they DO want to do, or what really will give them the fulfillment they're seeking. So it's possible that getting more women into STEM could actually be a bad thing -- if, say, we found it necessary to propagandize, bully or harass them into doing it, because really, they just didn't want to, at the end of the day.
Well, I'm open to that story. But I think the most useful feature of it will not end up being the feelings (the "I didn't feel appreciated," or "nobody gave me a hug when I balanced the accounts" sort of stuff), but rather the specific incidents of hostility and unfair treatment, however many and however small, that we can identify and remedy. Absent such specifics, as I say, we're all at a loss for fixing anything.My evidence includes the fact that they don't report they're leaving for greener pastures (answering some feminine call to nurture instead of analyze, so to speak): they report they're leaving because of workplace/school place gendered hostilities, both implicit and explicit. My anecdotal experience aligns with this interpretation.
In your own case? Plausibly. But why would we presume your experience to be average? Have you not already numbered your "spoons" and said your case is different from the average? So plausibly, nature might play a much more significant role in, say, somebody who was more drawn to traditional marriage and children. Either way, it's the data we'd need, not our hunches.My goal here is simply to combat the idea that nature plays a more significant role than nurture in the gender gap in STEM,
But maybe I can also ask you what inclines you to want more women in STEM? Perhaps you could be happy being extraordinary -- a real black swan, even -- would that be so bad? Is there some reason we need to usher women who are not going into STEM into the field against their wills? Or do we have to entice them to stay if they prefer to go? Why not just be fine with whatever they choose?
I've got something for you. You're going to love this, I think.Yes. But also the men. These implicit biases are held by both women and men. Women need to be more aware that they're making bad choices and men need to be more aware not to hold the biases themselves. This is really complicated though. A common problem I've noticed in heterosexual relationships is that men sometimes aren't straightforward about what kinds of beliefs they hold about women, or it just doesn't come up, or whatever, until the couple is emotionally invested when it finally rears its head.Immanuel Can wrote: Oh. So you mean, "Make the women more aware they've been making bad choices?"
It's a video conversation between a man and a woman, incorporating different styles. See what you think. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-4EDhdAHrOg.
"Relationships are tough." That's a phrase we can all carve over the mantlepiece.Relationships are tough because nobody's ever perfect. You have to kind of decide what negative things about your partner aren't dealbreakers in any relationship. So I can understand maybe how to some women, if a man holds some of these biased gendered beliefs while she does not, she may tolerate them. I think it's hasty to call her stupid or weak because of that. So none of this has a really clear cut answer.
And yet it is, for many, many more. You were asking about the suicide rates. We could add in the risk behavior, the violence, the addictions, the culture of gangs and guns, the fact that young men, in particular, are now told they're all misogynists and potential rapists and abusers, the nihilism that issues from the loss of teleology and faith,..all the things that are part of a man's world.These different burdens are often cultural, though. I know many fantastic men that could and would speak up about injustices towards men. I would join in with them. There is nothing un-masculine about addressing injustice: but cultural norms sure can make a man feel like it's un-masculine. It doesn't have to be that way. It isn't that way for many men.Immanuel Can wrote: I think men and women have different burdens. And they react differently to those burdens. But in the society we now have, men are massively discriminated against, though largely, they do not complain because complaining is not a masculine mode. So there are many men under all kinds of stresses, who could use lots of help, but do not ask for it because asking is a kind of defeat.
On top of that, they have no reason to expect any sympathy at all from a culture as feminized as ours clearly is. In fact, in the media and the academy, they've already been told that just for being born male, they're "complicit in oppressive patriarchy." They can't expect any help from people who accept that version of things, can they?
Now me, I have it good...I'm not world's wealthiest man, but I've had more than my share of successes in this world. I'm educated enough, have had a good career, and need no sympathy. And I have the Lord: I can't possibly be down. Moreover, if anybody wants to take a poke at me, they can try and see if it works. But I know a lot of men who are drifting, angry, embittered, demoralized, and down on their options; for them, I have sympathy. The business of being a man -- particularly a young man today -- are pretty heavy sometimes.
I don't see a lot of women who really get that. Most seem to talk as if men live blessed lives, sheltered under a golden umbrella called "The Patriarchy." Those who think that's a real thing should read more history, or try living for a few days in a man's world. They'd be very surprised.
Again we end up at this question: how. How are we going to change something as nebulous as a "culture of discrimination" or some vague "oppression" when it has no specific cause or origin? Absent any pratical strategy, or even the possibility thereof, where does all that get us?We have a choice to either live in a society that oppresses women by allowing discrimination on the basis of gender or sex (which is already illegal in much of the Western world, though as I have said this is only de jure), or to live in a society where women are able to have good careers because they aren't discriminated against unfairly based on a perception of what they "might" do, even if (for a time) they are "more likely" to do it.Immanuel Can wrote: On the other hand, if the majority of working women continue to get pregnant, have bad home-life balances, work shorter hours and take too many leaves, you can't blame the employers for hedging their bets. They never know, going into a job interview, whether the woman they're looking at will turn out to be a work dynamo or a "fertile Myrtle" in a year or two. With the male candidates, they have a much higher chance of getting a worker that will not be leaving soon. But there are never any guarantees, of course.
Now, I'm not saying women are wrong for working less. I don't say they're wrong for having children. I don't even make them out to be wrong if they have an uneven balance of domestic duties. That's their life choice. It might even be a good one: Lord knows many men work far too much, and don't give enough psychological energy to the family. I believe that.
But I do say that if women are complaining about the work world, they cannot use their domestic decisions as a reason.
They will be less likely to do it if efforts are made by the society to weed out the implicit biases:
And again: which "efforts," and "made by" whom, how, when? That's what we need to know.
We can be sure it won't happen without a specific diagnosis, and a consequent strategy. It's not like these things just dissolve with time: you're talking about traditions that, in some cases, go back thousands of years, at the very least. And arguably, you may even be talking about trying to fight down biology, as well.I like to think that society can step up to the plate and do what needs to be done to break the negative feedback cycle.
Actually, a man's conversation style is to call out things he regards as untrue, and to do so fairly bluntly. It's not unmanly to debate, argue, or even contend vigorously. What's unmanly is to point out an "injustice" and whine for sympathy. And as I said, I have no interest in being given sympathy, and no need for any.It's not a prejudiced phrase (though I notice: you have detected what you feel is an apparent injustice. Aren't men supposed to be silent and manly/stoic when confronted by this? I'm of course just teasing you again, but does it make you wonder whether that's really true?)Immanuel Can wrote:Ugh. What a prejudiced phrase.Astro Cat wrote: This goes back to toxic masculinity:
Masculinity is not "toxic." Some forms of behaviour performed by some men are bad. Just like some women are bad. They're differently bad, maybe; but they're both bad.
Much that is masculine is very good. It's different from the feminine, but it's a good thing it is. Women don't like feminine men.
But "toxic masculinity" is an idea that is toxifying our society. It's as unhelpful as if we referred to all women as the "b" word. It demonizes literally half the population, in the name of the other half. And anybody who imagines that's good for society had better think again. What women who use it need to remember is that there is about an even chance that half of their own children will live with the label they're slapping on men. That should draw them up short.
Interestingly, as Soh has pointed out, the transers do problematize masculinity in women; they interpret it as evidence of BEING a woman, instead of a normal range of feminine or masculine actions possible to a normal female or male. And in a similar way, the encourage "tomboy" women and lesbians to assume they are secretly men....and to opt for chemicals and surgeries.Indeed, masculinity is not toxic.
As the meme notes, not all masculinity is toxic. Not even most masculinity is toxic. We've spoken elsewhere about how there is toxic femininity as well, and I wouldn't be arguing femininity is toxic either, being a mostly feminine person myself.
I have a plethora of friends that are men. Some of them are gay, some of them are more feminine (and those two don't always overlap, and that's OK! My male friends that aren't super macho or have more feminine traits still identify as men, and they are fine, wonderful men!), but most of them are masculine or very masculine. All of them, though, do not exhibit toxic masculinity. Their masculinity isn't any kind of problem.
Will it do them any good? If it will, then maybe. But anger rarely leads to much but violence. A better response might be either to find a practical, specific solution, so women don't have to be angry, or else to be more reflective on what might be different about being a woman in the first place, and work with that to produce some new pattern of life that works better for them. Both options require us to get specific, though.Well, now that you say it out loud. Maybe women should be a lot more pissed about this.Immanuel Can wrote: Perhaps. But again, what's the solution? To make women more angry?
But anger's an option too, if you think it's productive of something. I'm skeptical.
Good thoughts. Any more to say?