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.
Reddit’s resident group of hyper-geniuses, otherwise known at The Red Pill, explained that girls like biology and chemistry because there’s no math. It hurts to laugh and vomit at the same time.
Is there no level of stupid too low for the Red Pill to descend? I doubt it.
Red pillers remind me of a joke I read this morning (probably a very old joke) that ten out of nine accountants can’t count.
“Reddit’s resident group of hyper-geniuses, otherwise known at The Red Pill, explained that girls like biology and chemistry because there’s no math. It hurts to laugh and vomit at the same time.”
I’ve heard people say that about biology, ecology, geology and environmental sciences…
But chemistry too now? Do I laugh or cry at that ? I just can’t decide!
@Shaenon
LOL
The absurdity of MRAs is boundless.
Just read the Pharyngula thread on this. Some lovely take-downs of LargePenisSmallBrain there. It’s odd, these days, reading comments by people who’re unfamiliar with MRA stupidity. I feel like saying “Yes, yes they are all like that, they are that stupid and misogynistic, that’s their whole existence!”
Though interestingly, one person there is familiar with this idiot’s rantings, and despite the nym, no, he doesn’t seem to be a kid.
@Shaenon- My inner anthropologist thanks you for that. It was brilliant, truly.
… wait, chemistry has no math? tell that to senior year of high school me, who discovered her first applied use of calculus when calculating ph-balancing experiments. seriously. ugh. they’re not even wrong they’re so stupid.
Seconding what M Dubz said upthread. We are not doing boys any favors in the long-run if we allow them to opt out of learning discipline, time management, and so on. This dovetails with a lot of MRA stuff in an interesting way in that I get the impression that most of them are failures at work and socially isolated, and the majority of them are either Americans or Brits. Would they be in the position they’re in now if both British and American culture didn’t have a tendency to let boys off the hook for being poorly socialized, undisciplined, lazy, disruptive, and so on as kids? If society followed the recommendations of the people who whine about “male learning styles” then we’d end up with a lot more men in exactly the position that most MRAs are in now, because we live in a society and being a lazy, undisciplined, poorly socialized curmudgeon tends not to enhance anyone’s career or social prospects.
Add Australia to that list, Cassandra.
I think Australia, Canada, and New Zealand slip in under the “influenced by British culture, and particularly British sexism” banner.
(I don’t have enough experience with the French part of Canada to know how sexism tends to play out there, but the majority of Canadian MRAs seem to be from the historically Brit-influenced part and in fact sound a lot like stupid, sexist Brits. Sorry about that, non-asshole Canadians.)
Quebec? Eh, well… I’ll put it this way- the society has a lot of legal protections for women against sexism in hiring & so forth, abortion is legal, there’s some actual mat leave, women don’t automatically take men’s names while marrying, there’s no joint filing benefit, so many couples w/ and w/o kids are unmarried, but… on the ground there’s still a lot of leftover euro-macho & many women play into the “Mars & Venus” thing (mostly middle age and up), though the younger generation is much better.
Racism, xenophobia, homophobia, language panic, and nationalism is a much bigger problem. Oh- and in the name of “secularism” they try to ban religious headgear & customs & make no accommodations for non christian holidays, but then claim wearing crucifixes, the giant cross on the mountain, the cross in National Assembly and Christmas/Easter frenzies are exempt because they are simply “heritage”.
rabbitwink, there was an item in the paper here saying that there’s a push for it to be made illegal to use anything but French there, in things like restaurant menus. Is that true? It’s mind-boggling if so. “Visitor unfriendly” wouldn’t begin to describe it.
Meant to respond to this yesterday.
Apparently, women are better at standardized tests than men and are worse at understanding course material according to the great and knowledgeable YouHaveToKnowMyPenisIsLarge?
Isn’t it funny, then, that here where virtually all subjects in the faculties of science and technology have standardized tests that account for anywhere between 70-90% of the overall subject mark… more women are admitted into and are completing courses in humanities where standardized tests are rarely worth 30% or more and the remaining percentage is made up of research projects, essays and field reports?
You’d think, since by our very biology we would breeze through these science degrees, that we’d be getting more of them.
That said, there are still a hell of a lot of women in the sciences and that’s awesome, but I think the reason we are underrepresented has very, very little to do with DoYouKnowMyPenisIsBigYet’s argument..
Also, to all you ladies in fields that are traditionally and still often male dominated? *Air-five!*
Thankfully, the professors I’ve dealt with are very supportive of all their students regardless of gender identity. Even those in their 70s. They are awesome.
Oh! And the extreme male brain theory that was brought up earlier?
One of my close family members studies and assists those who have autism. The EMBT has caused them a lot of headaches. Look it up (or don’t, spare your forehead from the brutal beating against the keyboard).
Also, this.
http://www.news.com.au/money/banking/girl-11-has-higher-iq-than-einstein/story-e6frfmcr-1226695454418
Not that a person’s IQ determines much about them at all. Glad to see she acknowledges it, too. High aspirations, let’s hope they happen 🙂
Off topic but my parents get The Express, yesterday there were two articles that seem worth mentioning on here
1) How foreign brides are crying rape to get citizenship
http://www.express.co.uk/news/uk/421170/EXCLUSIVE-Government-urged-to-probe-bogus-migrant-brides-crying-rape-just-to-get-UK-visas
2) How the teenage girls sexually assaulted by several famous people were asking for it and deserve no sympathy. Anti-Operation Yewtree article.
I’ll look for the title so I can link to this later.
It upsets me that this MRA stuff is so mainstream.
LBT – thought of something else today while I was doing pick-up at work. I don’t know if this will exist where you are, but in my city the Housing Authority has housing that is single occupancy, a third of your income housing that SSI makes you a semi-shoo-in to get. Usually if you go to the local Housing Authority office you can ask about available low-income housing. I do a lot of housing in those, and they can be really freaking awesome. I have some experience with the ins and outs of SSI and some benefits, so feel free to ask David for my email if you want any help or an extra set of eyes.
Actually wait… the email associated with my G+ is a dead end. My user name at gmail is my main email.
@ Pear_tree I’ve not read the article but I am aware of a spate of victim blaming news stories in the UK.
Did I ever mention I studied economics in college? (yes probably)
Anyhow, my teacher informed us ladies (all 4 of us) that we were the largest amount of women he had ever had in his class.
…………………………………
Interesting right?
Well, after a continuous barrage of “jokes” about the female gender from our male classmates only 2 of us came back for the next quarter.
It was a very hostile environment. I eventually talked to my teacher about it. We had a discussion in class. Some of the men responded very well and realized that they were being sexist and inappropriate. However, the other men couldn’t decide if I was a bitch for complaining or if I was a thin skinned pussy. It made for a relaxing rest of the quarter.
Anyway, I am clearly a glutton for punishment because the next year I came back for the more advanced class. The class was much smaller and while some hassling did happen it wasn’t as distracting.
Finance classes were similar, but I think because several of those courses were taught by a retired financial adviser who just happen to be a woman things weren’t so bad. She was quick to tell us of the sexism in the workplace. And told us she was called a bitch because she was good at her job. She kinda painted a bleak picture though. She appeared to be of the mind that there was no changing this….
I’m a copy editor, and a while back I worked on an article about the decline in uptake of STEM education and careers in the US. At the end there was a series of statistics aimed at highlighting the problem and also showing the benefits of pursuing a STEM career. The last of these was: ‘95% of women say they’d prefer a man who knows about computers and engineering than one who’s a fitness buff’, complete with a cheesy, ‘ironic’ clipart illustration of a woman in a 50s-style dress and heels running to kiss a bookish-looking but handsome man. Remember, this was in an article bemoaning the fact that more Americans (by which the author presumably meant American men) weren’t pursuing careers in STEM.
I swear it took me at least an hour to rework my original comment to the production editor – which was basically a long-winded version of ‘Are you fucking kidding me?’ – into something more diplomatic. The story has a happy ending, however – I was told that the offending stat had been flagged up by everybody along the production process, and that with my voice added to the chorus, it was pulled from the article.
@argenti aertheri
🙂 thanks, I just wasn’t sure (hence the asking).
@youllneverguess
While I’ll admit I hate math with the fiery passion of 1000 suns, but my sister is a girl who also doesn’t so I’m 99% sure this is just a me-thing. I also hate chemistry though. (or more of not hate, just hated that I had to study). And biology, at least when they make you learn about everything going on at the microscopic level, which I couldn’t care less about. This probably makes my parents grimace, since one’s a biochemist and the other is a microbiologist XD
@pear_tree
blargh. I need to cleanse my brain. 🙁
I am also a girl who is rubbish at maths.
But my brother is a boy who is not very good at maths.
And if anyone says that Biology or Chemistry doesn’t involve maths they’re talking hokum.
My brother wanted to study Biology at University, but his maths wasn’t good enough to do the Chemistry which you need for Biology.
He’s going to do Geography now which is actually what he is really interested in so it ended well.
I’m okay at math. I also had no trouble grasping Newtonian physics, the actions of macroscopic objects and linear forces.
Nuclear physics just totally escaped me, despite hours with the professor after class. While the professor was explaining it, it seemed reasonable, but then my problem was adapting the knowledge to the problems I was asked to work.
Similarly, I can’t balance a chemical equation to save my life, and that’s totally math. Multiplication, even, which I can do under any other circumstance, but ask me to find how much oxygen and how much hydrogen produces how much water, and I run up to the test time limit and beyond.
Um, even I know that one 2:1. Now, the real question is, how many hydrogen atoms are on my floor. I have a leak somewhere.
I’m absolute rubbish with calc and actual physics. I get the concepts well enough for simple problems (like water flow) but ask me to calculate it instead of guesstimating the range? *hides in a corner*
Stats I’ll eat for breakfast though!