Men’s Rights Redditor: It’s not sexism that holds back women in STEM. It’s just that women are inferior.

@ AK

My dad is actually far more nurturing than his sisters. He’s one of those men who kids stick to like glue, and I’ve known lots of men like that (and I’ve lived on 4 different continents, so my sample size is a lot bigger than average).

Hell, even in the most rigidly patriarchal cultures I’ve known men who were super nurturing. It’s a personality characteristic that’s not in any way related to gender, as far as I can tell. In fact the only connection I’ve ever been able to see is that people who themselves had very nurturing and affectionate people surrounding them as children seem to be more likely than average to grow up to be very affectionate and nurturing themselves, which makes me think that it may be partly a learned behavior too.

*nurturing is a good thing, that is.

In biology, the undergraduate population is slightly more female, IMO, and stays that way the entire time. At my college, the professors were roughly 50% female, too, and women have been well-represented for a really long time. The group at my new job is way male (grumble grumble–I like having other women around) but there are female scientists around.

I also get the sense that people who babble about STEM as the last bastion of male dominance (a) don’t know much about science, (b) completely forget about biology, and (c) think computer programming is the height of logical STEM-iness.

@ Lady Sunami–I’m also terrible at memorizing, which is why I didn’t go into chemistry. (Well, that and I love biology). O-chem seemed to be nothing but memorizing random chemical reactions, where things like evolutionary biology and ecology were all about principles.

I think there are two things going on with that:

First, I think these misogynists also tend to be the kind of people who disregard anything regarded as feminine, so they actually don’t respect biology, and therefore don’t consider it part of STEM, which they do respect.

Second, I think most of them them (from what I’ve seen from SRS, and above) are into programming (see “coding” reference above) and so when they say STEM they mean programming.

Also, I don’t see most of them having patience for “random crap not working right”, which is an integral part of actually doing science, particularly biology. (The big boy of Evo-Devo, Sean Carroll, opens “Endless Forms Most Beautiful” talking about finally finding an antibody stain that works for the protein he wanted to look at.)

I love how as soon as women start doing better than men on the ways we historically have used to tell intelligence and academic ability (like grades and tests) those aren’t *real* markers of intelligence. Instead, intelligence is marked by not bothering to do the work, because they shows how little you need to!

Two recent experiments that provide strong evidence of unconscious sexist bias in STEM hiring (I’m linking to articles that reference the studies):

http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/12/27/gender-and-biased-perceptions-scientists-rate-job-applicants/

http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jan/14/sexual-discrimination-science

BTW I heard about these studies last year from Sean Carroll (the physicist, not the biologist,) who discussed sexism within STEM during a talk on the search for the Higgs Boson for CFI-Los Angeles.

Hmmm, whose argument do I give more weight–Sean fuckin Carroll (backed by evidence) or a dude who calls himself “IHaveALargePenis” (backed by assfax)?

Also, ZOMG, we got our disability letter today. We have to go into the Social Security office with a bunch of papers, but we meet the medical requirements.

I’m still really conflicted about my feelings on being officially Too Batshit To Work… but I’m also relieved that it looks like soon, I won’t have to scope out bridges for sleep space anymore.

You know who milks the “girls pass tests, but boys understand” thing for all it’s worth? Boys who are bad at tests. Any science teacher you’d care to ask could probably share stories of boys who complained about their poor grades, saying “But I understand the concepts, I just don’t know how to do the actual problems.”

It’s an excuse to divorce the vague feeling that the explanation the teacher gave made sense from the ability to crunch numbers, AKA actually doing science for real.

A troll came to play. Is this the kind that sticks around or runs away?

Why are the ability to learn and the ability to memorize mutually exclusive? When it comes to math, remembering times tables, strategies and formulas is useful for problem solving. It’s vocabulary for speaking math.

So I’m (thankfully not literally currently) elbow deep in designing and installing a box with all sorts of plumbing and physics and organic chemistry involved (to be fair, I do not get the latter besides the ammonia cycle in fish tanks)…what’s in my pants GNL? Besides the PVC cement on them.

It all works btw, preliminary run went uh, not swimmingly because swimming in it would’ve been a failure. All water goes where it should, siphon on the overflow doesn’t break if the pump stops, venturi port trick works, float switch works, need to test the siphon break on the return line, but there’s no way in hell it doesn’t work. Also need to attempt to measure a puffer and confirm that they are bigger than the holes on the return line, but I’m pretty sure they are (and if not, they’re close enough that I can’t see them trying to squeeze in there).

In sort, SUCCESS! But I’m rubbish at STEM tests (knowledge of chunks of it is only so useful). So GNL, just what’s in my pants? And my puffers, one’s all inquisitive and comes right out to greet me and is damned near fearless, the other tends to hang out in relatively hidden places and skitters off when I put my hand to close. What’re their genders?

“Nobody’s talking about the Hugo meltdown?”

On this particular thread, no. But try any of the past 4~ for various bits of that mess.

LBT — not scoping bridges is good, yes. And if it helps, officially batshit means it isn’t all in your head (well, other than your brain being located there, but you get what I mean). I’ll still do your keyboard, even if you don’t have to worry about carting it cross country. Absolute failure on electronic tests, but put an actual machine in front of me and I’ll fix it 🙂

Expect pressure washers, that one I couldn’t solve, but I’m not allowed to take it apart.

@LBT, for La Curandera would be great! I hope the writeathon is going well!

@Shaun, That is so awesome I almost can’t even…