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!
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.
Ok, I work in a stem field. A bit of background: I’m a geologist, I explore for minerals in northern Canada, which to these guys should be the manliest of manly job. Our shifts range from 2-5 weeks in the field and 1-2 weeks off or in the office. 12 hour works days but as the manager I am 24 on call. The drill calls at 3 am I have to answer and sometimes drive out to the drill to take a look at things. I have a few things to say about the hoops and hurdles I have to jump just to be a manager here. First off until like 10 years ago geology was probably more male-dominated than any other stem field. I have zero, none, nada bosses who are women. I am one of the highest “ranked” women in my office. I am under 30 years old. I have only once had a boss who was a woman and she had my position when I was a student. I have zero women I can use as a model for management styles. And let me tell you that if you think women are “allowed” to manage like men do, then let me fucking enlighten you. First off, male managers can delegate and tell people what to do if the situation requires. Female managers, not so much. If I tell anyone what to do there is whining and crying like little babies, from both the men and women I work with, or questioning every-fucking-thing. “Are you suuurrreee? Why can we do it like this?” Every goddamn time. I’ve learned to phrase everything by asking, to basically “trick” them all into thinking they made the decision to do what I wanted them to do in the first place. it’s tiring. I cross shift with a male manager. He never has to put up with this shit. They go and do their work, and maybe grumble to themselves but never is it daily outright confrontation. Also, apparently I have a “male” working style. I just put my nose to the grindstone and work when I need to. During those times I don’t care about your cat, your boyfriend or girlfriend, your car or whatever I’m trying to fucking work. Guys can do this and they are seen as diligent. When I do it? I’m a bitch or a crab. I allocate work and social time because typically there’s a lot to do. So these are just a few of the barriers to women getting ahead in a stem field. It a goddamn fight for anything above entry level. It’s like you’re allowed in the door but don’t try to climb the stairs. And I work for a pretty damn good company and I am not balancing a family either.
Another STEM lady here…biology & geography/environmental sciences, roughly. Whenever these rants pop up and the MRA types start complaining about tests and saying women arent’ really smart, it suggests a few of things…
1. Complaining that boys aren’t as good at tests (despite tests & memorising being used in education since forever, even in the absence of girls) because they don’t memorise as well and aren’t as detail oriented seems like an arguement against *boys* being suited for STEM fields, which require you to be detail oriented and able to remember things. The areas I am most interested in are, and have traditionally been, male dominated and require a whole crapload of memorisation and attention to detail. Maddening, tiny, mind numbing detail. Also, you do need to apply your knowledge to problems – you can’t just know stuff, but then not do work and say “Well i understand the concepts but I just have trouble working out problems”!
2. As well as the ‘tests are for girls’ crowd I have encountered the ‘coursework is for girls’ crowd (mostly offline, and before I ever heard the boys aren’t good at tests thing). The arguement here is that boys are disadvantaged by doing projects and coursework because they aren’t as good at planning and working on things over a period of time, and group projects advantage girls because girls are better at social stuff. This also sounds like an arguement against boys being suited to STEM because STEM jobs will most likely involve working on a project over a period of time and having to plan things out…and working with people
3. Finally, the way they talk about STEM does imply they don’t know what STEM fields and jobs are and think they all involve some brilliant loner, working alone on his briliiant ideas in some lab or dimly lit hacker den…oh, and all women work in HR, and HR doesn’t actually do anything because wages, sick pay, hiring etc just do themselves.
anyway, I think the boys vs girls in education is mostly an artifact of socialisiation. Different PEOPLE are suited to different working and learning styles. The way these guys talk about boys in education makes it sound like all boys are lazy, unfocused, and unemployable. What a great bunch to have on your side 😛
““Are you suuurrreee? Why can we do it like this?” Every goddamn time.”
I suppose telling them to STHU and get to work isn’t an option. :
I am always amazed by people who insist that the education system is stacked against boys and that if boys no longer have expectations of behavior or focus placed on them, they will magically do brilliantly. No. Focus, behaving according to rules, successful group work, respect for the space, etc. are all necessary social skills for the real world. They also help remove distractions so that you can, yano, LEARN THINGS. By removing those expectations from boys, we are setting them up to fail.
As a word nerd and as somebody who couldn’t have spent her life farther from the STEM realm (though my father was an engineer) I gotta say — this dude writes better than most of his peers. Though that’s not saying much.
My feeling is that even if this guy is right what he’s right about isn’t so terrible. It’s a handy thing to have a good memory and even the smartest men, I’ve noticed, often display a notable lack of understanding about the things they “know”. And if the guy’s mistaken, time will prove him wrong. This is something about which I feel optimistic because I’ve met so many intelligent women that the “women are dumb” claim doesn’t impress me.
But the “women can’t handle technology” claim bothers me for other reasons. It casts such a wide net. Humans are creatures who create “technology” almost without thinking about it and are so intensely bonded to the technology they create that, not only can they not survive without it, but without it, the idea of “humanity” itself isn’t conceivable. What isn’t “technology”? Speech is technology, words are technology, writing is certainly technology. Alphabets are technology and numbers are too. Weaving is technology, looms are technology, knitting needles are obviously technology, as are sewing needles, thread, clothes, and fires for cooking. Nothing could be more disastrous for a human creature than to be barred from the use or creation of technology, even if the human creature in question thinks math class is hard. Technology is something which predates math class by tens of thousands of years at least. Women inherit “technology” along with men and women, like men, can’t live without it. Telling a woman that she’s got no business messing around with technology is tantamount to kicking her out of the human race.
@ M Dubz
well, see, I just remembered that when Men get together, they Do Things. When females get together, they just talk about shoes and nail polish or something. Not like those Manly Men. Who get things done. Maybe the MRA education plan is to leave all the boys in a room together so they can come together and just Do Things, as is the natural way of the Man.
(I think this came from Reddit…I can’t remember which post though. I wish they would come together and actually make Reddit Island happen…)
We can leave all the structured learning environments for the females to ruin with their talking about fashion and TV and whatnot.
This is a late thank you to cloudiah, but thank you for the welcome package. The hard chair is quite nice. :3
I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again. Women everywhere are expected to be PRETTY and NICE. It doesn’t matter how awesome you are at your job, how brilliant you are, how well you lead, or how much you inspire others, if you can’t do it all while being PRETTY and NICE, it is all for naught.
But if your too PRETTY and NICE, than your playing hard to get. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told by the gentlesirs of the manosphere.
Hey- Pharyngula just cross posted this Manboobz thread!
@Dragon Lady
But if your too PRETTY and NICE, than your playing hard to get. Or at least that’s what I’ve been told by the gentlesirs of the manosphere.
Ugly or pretty, mean or nice, the only thing these guys really want is for women to simply disappear.
And why do they sound so much like the jealous younger brothers of older sisters that can’t stop whining about how she’s liked more, gets to do more, is free to stay out, etc..
I wonder how many of them have older sisters who were favored by their parents.
Thanks for all the congrats and well-wishes, everyone. I’m putting them all on my USB key so when I’m having one of those, “you’re a burden on humanity; please GDIAF” feelings, I can have proof otherwise.
RE: Argenti
And if it helps, officially batshit means it isn’t all in your head.
This is true, though it’s still weird accepting that. Funny how that works!
I’ll still do your keyboard, even if you don’t have to worry about carting it cross country.
Oh, I’m still doing that fucking trip. I’ve been wanting to do it for AGES. SSI coming in is a surprise, but it shouldn’t muck up the trip. If anything, it makes it easier to plan, because I have less fear of, “Oop, crash space flaked. Looks like bridge night for us!”
RE: Cloudiah
Okay! Once I have all the writing done, I’ll start working on the sketches. And the writeathon has been FRANTIC. Way bigger than the previous ones. All the excitement and work finally got to me, so my body called an emergency forced shabbat for me today, but I’m really pleased with how it’s going. A lot fewer people are waiting for the last minute too, which I appreciate. (My eventual goal is to do a writeathon every month, cleared in two weeks.)
They probably sound like jealous younger brothers because they are manbabies. If all the women disappeared off the face of the earth they would probably still complain about the ebil feeeemales.
I came here because I saw Pharyngula linked to this too, but I see rabbitwink is already on it.
@LBT, Glad it’s going well; take your time!
Oh and … I have a couple of newish posts up, featuring recent funny stuff from Dvärghundspossen and Cthulhu’s Intern that I thought needed to be highlighted. The Ctulhu’s Intern one is even about SCIENCE. XD
RE: cloudiah
take your time!
Alas, today, I don’t get much of a choice in the matter. : Stupid brain, giving me warnings…
The Five Stages of Girls Getting All Up in Your Boy Stuff
Denial
“Girls can’t be scientists! Their brains are too small and pink! Plus they’d always be shorting out the equipment by getting tears and menstruations on it!”
“Comics are made for men. Females have differently-structured brains that make it too hard for them to process words and images at the same time. Yes, there are countries where lots of girls read comics, but they probably receive special training to catch up with the boys.” (Actual online argument I had with an actual prominent comic-book artist.)
“Girls playing video games? Impossible! They’d get scared and run away as soon as the ghosts started chasing Pac-Man.”
Anger
“What is this female doing in my IT department? I always imagined that when one of these creatures finally showed some appreciation for my field, she’d do it by begging me to set up her Facebook page in exchange for sex. Instead, this female is just sitting there waiting for her code to compile! She didn’t even ask me for help! And it’s just plain insulting that she chose not to be hot.”
“Comic-book conventions used to be safe havens where you could stop bathing for a weekend and swap hilarious Wonder Woman rape jokes. Now there are girls there ruining the whole vibe. I bet that girl doesn’t even know anything about Emma Frost, which is why she’s wearing an obsessively accurate handmade Emma Frost costume and carrying a stack of X-Men comics. Also, she’s hot, which makes me uncomfortable.”
“ARRRRRGH ANITA SARKEESIAN GRARRRGH ARRRR *hack* *koff* *choke*”
Bargaining
“Fine, we’ll just agree that any scientific field with a sizeable number of females isn’t real science. Psychology, obviously. And sociology, except for evo-psych essays about female inferiority, which are totes scientific. And anthropology. And biology. And chemistry. And oh my god they’re coming for the applied sciences! This was not part of the deal! We had an agreement! WE HAD AN AGREEMENT!”
“Any time I see a girl in a comic shop, I’ll assume she’s there for the manga. I will also complain loudly to everyone in the store about how dumb manga is, even though I’ve never read any. As long as everyone agrees that girls’ comics are different from men’s comics, and that difference is that they suck, I think I can maintain.”
“What do you mean, almost half of gamers are female? Then whatever games they play don’t count as games. Okay?”
Depression
“If we don’t stop females from doing science, they’ll destroy it. All human progress will cease, society will collapse, and we’ll go back to living in caves. What do you mean, humans never lived in caves? What did I say about anthropology not being real science?”
“Fake geek girls are ruining comics for real geeks, i.e. men. If our efforts to yell at them until they leave fail, our conventions will be overrun with sexy women dressed as our favorite characters. This will be terrible for some reason.”
“Every time a girl plays a video game, the Earth gets one degree hotter. This is one hundred percent true.”
Acceptance
…?
RE: Shaenon
(Actual online argument I had with an actual prominent comic-book artist.)
You gotta be shitting me. That’s the biggest horseload I’ve ever heard in my life. Christ.
I distinctly remember from back in the early 70s, in the IT field (my mother was a programmer), that there were men arguing that women shouldn’t be let into the same room as the big mainframes because their nylon undies would make static electricity that would cause damage.
If this was the 70s, those dudes were wearing plenty of synthetic fibers too, amirite?
You’re right, it was Polyester City!
My mother was also a programmer in the 70’s, and had a male boss for awhile that tried very hard to drive her out of her job with mental and emotional abuse.
It didn’t work.
Boo on him! And good for your Mom!
@Gendernuetrellanguage
You’re right! There is a difference besides being “iny or outy”. In fact, iny or outy isn’t terribly accuracte.
I will now tell you this huge difference I found.
…
wait for it.
….
The difference between men and women is men identify as men and women identify as women! (and non-gender binary persons don’t identify as either [or identfy as both? I don’t really know, sorry 🙁 ])
@LBT
Glad to hear you won’t be having to sleep under bridges anymore 🙂
@Shaenon
Um…that’s….baffling.
@Scarlettpipstrelle
um…Okay so far today I’ve learned that sexist people can also be really, really weird. And wtf? Does he think all women wear nylon undies? (ignoring whether nylon would actually be bad for it because I know nothing about this…)
@barbara
That sucks 🙁 Yay for your mom though.
What Shaenon said about sciences that have a large number of women working in them being dismissed really hit home for me. I’ve got my Bachelor of Science… in Psychology. And every time I bring that up, someone inevitably asks “Don’t you mean you got a B.A.? Because psychology isn’t real science, don’tcha know!”
It’s like, I’m sorry, asshole, but why don’t you consider the requirements I met for my degree, which included studying chemistry and biology (though I opted out of physics, since only two of the three were required, and it didn’t seem as relevant to me), and the fact that my labwork was in fucking neurology? As in, we got to fire up the equipment that measures electrical charges running through brains? Take my courseload, fucker, and tell me it’s not science when you fail the second semester of neuropsych… if you even pass the first.
But nooooo, of course it’s not a real science. Because Freud and stuff! He was on cocaine! And also committed a lot of fraud! It’s not like we haven’t been moving on past that for well more than a century at this point…
“and non-gender binary persons don’t identify as either [or identfy as both? I don’t really know, sorry]”
Either, both, neither, and a whole host of other things, depends on the person (my brain manages to make neither and both make sense, idfk)