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

Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, the lovely IHaveALargePenis explains that it’s not sexism holding back women in science and technology. No way! It’s just that women are inferior at science and technology. No sexism involved at all!

IHaveALargePenis 10 points 1 day ago (15|6)      The fact that women are so underrepresented in many STEM fields indicates that there must be some educational, societal, or institutional force pushing them away.  There is. It has a lot to do with women though. First with STEM, the hierarchy in the workforce always favors the smartest/most knowledgeable people. This means you can't flirt your way to the top or simply just "make it" eventually.  The work is somewhat quantifiable, so people can be tracked in how much work they do. You can't sit around and chat or take extra time off and fuck around. People will find out.  Many fields have horrible deadlines and any person not finishing their work on time can slow an entire project and become the weakest link. When you're holding up something that thousands of people are working on, relying on, etc and they're all waiting for you, not fun. Additionally you'll be pushed to do overtime, heavy overtime. When it comes to software development for example, in the last few months leading up to release, you'll be better off bringing extra clothes and a sleeping bag to work. This can apply to virtually all other fields in different ways for different reasons.  Women and men study differently. Women are great and memorizing but don't focus on understanding. This is why there's a relatively equal amount of girls/boys in STEM the first year, but then it significantly favors the boys as time passes. The problem is that women do great on tests, but don't bother to understand that knowledge, which is fairly important later on and everything you learn will be used in the future (as you move from first to 4th year). This is why girls have been doing better (or so it seems) ever since standardized tests.  There are no problems in STEM for women. There's nobody out there trying to hold them back. My university cracked down hard on this shit, even had security cameras installed to ensure there was no harassment or sexism going on. And you know what changed? Nothing.      The key is attacking gender issues from both sides, rather than the BS of encouraging women to enter and just ignoring all problems men have.  What exactly is there to attack? There's 50% more women in college than men. Women have infiltrated every major out there outside of STEM. Do you know how HUGE STEM is? Let me tell you how huge it is. Go look up any non STEM focused University out there (MIT or Standord) and check the faculty for STEM or other majors. You'll find out quickly that the entire STEM curriculum has fewer faculty than a single major like business.

Maybe IHaveALArgePenis should have taken an English class or two and learned what “irony” is.

Also, uh, how exactly are security cameras supposed to guard against sexism? This is a new one to me.

Thanks to Wrecksomething on the AgainstMensRights subreddit for pointing me to this mantastic quote.

 

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kittehserf
11 years ago

@Wordsp1nner:

“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.”

FTFY 😉

LBT – ditto to what cloudiah said feeling conflicted, but think of it this way, if it helps: everyone is entitled to food, shelter, healthcare, among other things, and a decent society helps those in need. You are in need. Even if it’s a case of that horrible old line about the deserving poor, well, you wouldn’t be on disability if you didn’t have to be, and you know – you’ve made it very clear – that the alternatives are only going to make things worse, possibly MUCH worse. So away, jerkbrain of guilt, go pester someone else, like an MRA or some other twit!

CassandraSays
CassandraSays
11 years ago

I don’t think most MRAs have enough self-awareness to experience guilt.

cloudiah
cloudiah
11 years ago

I’m trying to upvote kittehserf. Where are the buttons! XD

kittehserf
11 years ago

Aww! ::shuffles feet::

That’s why I’d like to see Jerkbrain of Guilt work on ’em. It might combine with the jerkbrains they already have to cause an implosion, or something.

WalkingStickBug
WalkingStickBug
11 years ago

Come on, anyone with the username IHaveALargePenis must be a 14 yr old boy and unless they are Doogie Howser M.D. then I won’t be taking their rants about science very seriously.

Viscaria
Viscaria
11 years ago

What struck me as the silliest part of this whole thing is how he is supposedly describing aspects of STEM jobs that make them uniquely unsuitable for women, and yet ever pink collar job I’ve ever held has had those same expectations. Apparently Mr. So-Well-Endowed-He-Must-Announce-It believes that non-STEM positions do not involve the following:

1) Being judged on your merit
2) Actually working when you are at work
3) Working collaboratively
4) Being expected to meet deadlines
5) Being pressured to work overtime, sometimes extreme amounts of overtime
6) Understanding concepts. Like, any concepts at all.

IHALP apparently thinks other people (or, at very least, women) just go to work and flirt with people, and then at the end of the refularly-scheduled day they collect their promotion and head home. Nobody minds, because they are not working projects with anyone else and have no deadlines.

Alice
Alice
11 years ago

It’s been well documented that MRAs think little of working women. To them, women sit around in air conditioned offices wearing $2,000 high heels gossiping all day and sleeping their way to the top. Women do not do actual work even when they collect a pay check.

katz
11 years ago

Also, no computer programmer has ever fucked around and not done real work. That NEVER happens.

kittehserf
11 years ago

The irony is that there’s been at least one study – alas, I don’t recall any details, this was in the paper – that showed men are more likely to be the ones doing the proverbial gossiping around the water cooler and generally doing not-work stuff. Not only that, but women who’re getting on with their work are judged for not being social enough, too work-obsessed, and so on. It’s the good old double-bind again.

Argenti Aertheri
Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

Katz — nope, no programmers ever have been given their own closed off section of office to contain the nerf, never happened. Not once did I ever have to duck while bringing them something. No programmer would ever even think about starting a nerf war while compiling. (Yeah, the programmers at my computer job were a fun bunch)

Idk if they goofed of more or less overall, but I’m utterly sure they were the only ones who might shoot you with nerf darts.

kittehserf
11 years ago

Gods, that reminds me of a couple of morons in an office I had to visit once – I think it was an ad agency or something – who were playing football in the corridoor. They didn’t feel the need to stop kicking the ball at head height when there was a total stranger walking through. Pair of fuckers.

marci
11 years ago

Viscaria: It’s sort of like they never actually worked at a job outside their own home. I know there are a lot of people who work from home, so maybe?

I have had a huge range of jobs (mostly due to my own lack of commitment) and I have never seen women behaving as they describe. Right now my job entails a lot of training and knowledge to basically sit at a desk and wait for something to happen. Some nights a lot of shit happens and I am busy all night. Other nights I get paid to read for my own pleasure. I do work on various projects and sometimes there are deadlines, but mostly it is a group thing. We all do projects to improve the functioning of our department. Oh and all of my co-workers are women, my bosses are all women, there are only 2 men in our whole department…and our work would be considered STEM. But like I said, I don’t think that these guys really ever worked outside their homes.

Deoridhe
11 years ago

Years ago I knew an incredible black hat hacker, worked for the government, top clearances, etc.. etc… She got interviewed for a programmer magazine and a picture of her was published. /. spent a ton of the comments either denigrating her as a programmer, or commenting on her looks. It was sickening. STEM remains really hostile toward women, and I don’t think the high populations of gamers and atheists and skeptics make that unexpected.

LBT: congrats on the deserved benefits. I don’t know if this’ll help, but I work with a lot of people on benefits and I tend to think of it as a combination of us showing the best parts of humanity by making sure everyone is taken care of (as we should), and giving people who need it the support and space to share how fantastic and wonderful they are with the people blessed to have them in their lives.

Deoridhe
11 years ago

black hat == white hat; opps its late.

Pear_tree
Pear_tree
11 years ago

Intriguingly I was thinking his description didn’t at all relate to what I had seen in science researchers. Then someone suggested that he is a programmer and it all made more sense.

amandajane5
11 years ago

Coincidence is a thing. I was just talking to my good friend and former art professor at the top level STEM university that I went to about why I dropped out of Computer Science. I couldn’t stand the pressure, I started programming when I was eight (LOGO FTW) I would write programs that were different from mine for my friends in AP CS, I just couldn’t handle it at the college level. I’d be on group projects and have to bring my own separate disk with me because the three dudes cut all of my work out of the final project and I wanted the professor to know that I’d actually worked on it, he just wasn’t seeing it.

Chie Satonaka
Chie Satonaka
11 years ago

Nobody’s talking about the Hugo meltdown?

This is the second time I’ve seen Hugo referenced this week. What happened?

Fibinachi
Fibinachi
11 years ago

Also, no computer programmer has ever fucked around and not done real work. That NEVER happens.

Hey, what do you want? My code’s compiling. I’m using the downtime to productively increase my hand to eye coordination by sniping by fellow programmers with this nerf gun.

Argenti Aertheri
Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

Chie — the really, really, really abridged version, with some general manipulative assholery and suicide trigger warnings:

Our favorite asshole decided he was quitting the internet because mean feminists wouldn’t drop the whole attempted murder thing, and we were making him suicidal. He posted an even more detailed version of his murder-suicide attempt, and then like a day later was back in the news talking about a far more recent attempt (like, last week recent). Then he came back tweeting up a storm about what a terrible person he is and how no he isn’t suicidal he’s manic.

Just type his name into google and hit search settings to limit it to the last month if you want all the excessively manipulative details. If you really want to read the longer version of his murder-suicide attempt, it’s on his blog (you don’t want to read it, nothing resembling taking responsibility, just more details, probably enough to ID her). And, of course, his twitter mess is on his twitter.

——

In cheerier things, my mother is making breakfast before we get started on the tank swap. I am very pleased to have extra hands for this!

Kitteh — nerf darts are just foam tubes with suction cups at the end, harmless enough I’d shoot ’em at the tanks. Unlike soccer // footballs which goddamned do those hurt to get hit with! And I doubt they shot at EVERYONE entering, the director, for example, would not have approved, but I didn’t give a shit.

Ah fuck, I didn’t rinse the rest of the fertilizer for the plants, guess that’s first on my list >.<

Viscaria
Viscaria
11 years ago

@Alice:

It’s been well documented that MRAs think little of working women. To them, women sit around in air conditioned offices wearing $2,000 high heels gossiping all day and sleeping their way to the top.

I guess we’re not even very good at that. If it is that easy for women to make it to the top, you’d expect to see a high number of women at, you know, the top. And yet…

The programmers where I work, bless ’em, have regular pizza parties. They also work hard most of the time. I don’t think they’re exactly a breed apart from anybody else with a job.

And I don’t just mean office jobs, either. Does duder up there think that construction workers are not given deadlines, that they are not required to work with others to meet those deadlines, and that under-performers do not stick out like sore thumbs? I know from direct experience that teenage minimum wage retail employees will be strongly pressured to work extra hours in certain circumstances (there was a labour shortage during my high school years). Can people working on assembly lines fuck around all day and accomplish nothing?

Argenti Aertheri
Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

1) it’s seroquel
2) it’s my sleeping pill
3) unless taking it before bed and being out cold in an hour is a problem, wtf is he avoiding?

——

Breakfast consumed. Fertilizer washed. Seroquel “hangover” mostly shaken off. Fish all curious already. Today’s gonna be fun!

Pear_tree
Pear_tree
11 years ago

Ugh, wanting to have sex with a porn star in front of your class is not a problem. Claiming that you having sex with a porn star in front of your class is necessary for their education is. Putting any form of pressure on your class to watch you have sex is wrong. I’d say that even suggesting it to the class is wrong. However the fantasy is not wrong. He is supposed to be an expert on these issues. He must understand the difference between wanting to do something and inflicting something on someone else. He is a dangerous and scary person. I hope I never meet him. Assuming he is bipolar and not just appropriating mental illness as an excuse, I hope for his sake he gets better. However even if he does I don’t think he will be a safe person.

Argenti Aertheri
Argenti Aertheri
11 years ago

Thank you for that. I’ve been trying to word that thought and just coming up with “I don’t care if he’s bipolar, he’s still an asshole”, but, well, I care to the degree that he’s human, and thus don’t really want him suffering. But if he pulls “but that was pre-medicated Hugo” *I’m* going to need an extra dose of ativan to deal with it.

sarahlizhousespouse
11 years ago

Seroquel is a hell of a med. Some of the patients at our care center would be out for sixteen hours or more after taking it.