This is an amazing discussion and it really needs to occur. What scares me is how much this conversation is being ruled by an angry emotive mob, at the expense of democracy and free speech. There is almost no fact in any of these comments.
Why MUST we have 50% of male and female in any industry? Have you noticed how almost every media outlet ignores female dominated industries (such as veterinary science) [0], where over 85% of vets in the western world are female? The strongest argument in this thread appears to be that there must be equal numbers for equality, but it's only EVER applied to male dominated industries (Google it if you doubt me). However, not only is this argument unjustified, it's continually selectively applied by most mainstream media outlets, again and again. There is no challenge or balance to any of these arguments from the mainstream media.
I am disappointed that Google sacked this engineer. To understand this mindset, you really need to watch this video on Yale. People being shut down from talking because they're male or white [1] or because angry mobs don't like what they have to say. People in this thread talk about sexism and yet they struggle to provide any evidence (while I can point at truck loads of evidence of misandry, eg. domestic violence, veterinary science, etc). This Yale video talks about this exact problem i'm describing. We have a society where you are no longer allowed to express selective views (even with evidence). Google have confirmed this with their dismissal of this engineer. What we've become concerns me deeply.
To all of the people who have stood up for free speech (and you're in the clear minority in this thread), I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you want to be able to sort out the media that's worth listening to, watch reporting on this topic closely over the next few days. Look for extreme prejudice and emotive language from the media. To quote an excellent quote from the Yale video, "these are moves of power, not reason" (3 minutes in, [1]).
So where are the rational arguments? What about the percentage of female university graduates with relevant skills? What about Dr Simon Baran Cohen's findings on very young children and trends to their thinking patterns? Where are the facts? Why are most people side-stepping facts?
Now please re-read this entire thread and ask yourself about freedom of speech. Ask yourself about democracy. Ask yourself about how many people have presented facts. There is something seriously wrong. You should be deeply concerned about the lack of debate, the lack of evidence, the number of emotive arguments and the message Google has sent to anyone who doesn't toe the politically correct line.
You're spot on about how scary the need for an echo chamber is. I was recently in Russia and the young, educated, and violently ideological foundations for the revolution are scarily parallel to some of the militant social "warriors" popping up in intelligencia today.
But a counter-point to the focus on male-dominated industries: I suspect it has a heck of a lot to do with the average salary of male-dominated industries compared to the salaries of female dominated industries. If vets were paid like anesthesiologists and vice versa (and across all industries), I think you'd see a lot more articles about equality in female-saturated careers.
Of course, personally I'd rather see a reduced pay gap between gender dominated industries instead of women being forced into jobs they aren't as interested in simply to earn as much as men who gravitate towards those fields. But I've no idea how you actually follow through on that, and "girl-code camps" are a heck of a lot easier to run and self-serving for the runners than "restructure the supply/demand labor market for 20-40% of all industries)".
I'm in agreement that the Yale incident is egregious.
I think that your argument needs further refinement.
1. The fact you have to dig to find a rare prestigious, yet women-dominated field (veterinary science) demonstrates the lack of equivalence between software engineering or any other men-dominated field. Most high-paying fields are dominated by men in most states. The essence of this controversy is not that there are men being kept out of veterinary science and nursing. It's that women are actively and passively discouraged from entering, staying, and succeeding in the field.
2. I don't think any of the credible stakeholders expects a 50%/50% women to men ratio in software engineering. I think this is a misrepresentation of your opponents.
3. Linking this to freedom of speech and democracy is going to generate "but freedom of speech is just from the government, not from consequences" responses.
4. Claiming this is a trend in Fortune 500 companies is likely to yield from your opponents a considerable amount of examples of liberal workers being terminated from Conservative-style companies for political actions taken on-the-job. Even excluding union agitation, there are many examples from the past ten years.
To further your point #1 - vet is the lowest paid medical profession, and the highest (anesthesiologists) is male-skewed.
But in general, he's right that we're in a scary age with the aggressive and dogmatic ideology that favors political correctness over intelligent debate and will defend that ideology with mob rule (even leading to professors being told by police that it's not safe for them to be present on campus).
I'm not looking forward to seeing the political result of this movement becoming a tea party to the left, which I fear is inevitable in the next few years.
2. Then what is the goal? the way many diversity policies are worded, it is not clear if there is any situation where success would be declared. This leads to many people feeling that they have in fact been bending over backwards to achieve diversity, but get called sexist pigs over and over again because gender balance didn't automatically happen.
4. So what? discrimination at conservative companies doesn't justify discrimination at liberal ones.
I pointed out #4 to illustrate that his claim of a pervasive trend of Conservative persecution wasn't consistent with the state of affairs in the United States.
I disagree with your premise; termination for political activity on-the-job is easily justifiable. I doubt you want to hear non-stop tirades from a PETA activist coworker.
I think your criticism of #2 is facile; which policies in particular are vague? Every corporate anti-discrimination policy I've ever encountered was essentially "don't discriminate against people in a way that will get us in trouble with the Feds."
Bingo. Feelings have replaced facts as a measure of righteousness. And, sadly, there are entire industries plugging feelings of injustice by "white cis-males" or some other group of people who are oppressors by dint of simply being a majority.
It's such a mess. And if you give a sht about the Western tradition of reasoning*, it's a cultural shame. Entire national narratives are being powered by lies and mistruths.
The least we could do is talk about it.
But look at what happens when you question this insanity? You're fired and ostracized.
Has anyone actually read the damn manifesto? It reads like it was written by the sort of person stupid enough to openly disparage his fellow employees using cited Wikipedia articles. This entire controversy is so unbearably stupid - political polarization blew this out of proportion.
While everyone discriminates, I think the older generation is more in touch with egalitarianism than your generation. I'll give you a few examples,
Today, people refuse to acknowledge that domestic violence has male victims. This has NEVER happened in history. It's a modern phenomenon to reject victims based on gender. Perform a Google search for the entire year of 2015. You will not find one single picture of a male victim of domestic violence. Yet, ABS puts the figure at about 30% of victims as being male. Some Australian politicians have tried to legislate DV based on gender!
My local magazine has pictures of only girls on the front cover almost every issue. 50 years ago, you would almost always have a girl standing next to a boy.
A government organisation in Australia called 1800respect bombarded the TV with ads saying that the root cause of domestic violence was young boys "it's a boy thing" was the catch cry. They purposely targeted the demographic with the highest suicide rates who are most vulnerable to criticism.
Or Hillary Clinton's exit speech. What about this gem that not one media outlet commented on. Hillary's message of exclusion was clear. If you're a young boy you are not even worth mentioning.
"And to all of the little __girls__ who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams."
http://www.vox.com/2016/11/9/13570328/hillary-clinton-conces...
These are all legacies that have been created within the last decade. Never in history have we played such nasty gender games. It is the older people that are banging the drums saying "what the hell is going on?", not the younger generation. I am yet to hear younger people chime in to the conversation. I've had some doozy arguments with younger people who talk about revenge (to which I say "for what?") or "no, that's OK, that's equality".
Now, you could argue that it's not the younger generation that's controlling the media. However, there are a lot of young people on Facebook and Snapchat. Where's the outrage at the extreme prejudice we see today from the younger people? It's just not there.
What may surprise you is that I don't support a men's movement because of how toxic feminism is as a gender based movement. What I reject is the extreme gender prejudice that is so popular today. Almost every media in the western world is in the collusion and there appears to be no bar too low they will stoop to.
When I see young kids in droves calling out The Verge, Ars Technica, The New Yorker, BBC News, Fores, Vox, Vulture, Beast and all of the other prejudiced media outlets, I will know that you are right. Until then, I will assume the majority of people who give two hoots about egalitarianism are the older generation of men and women.
Please don't take HN threads on tedious ideological tangents. There are other places on the internet for people who feel passionate about this stuff—here, its predictability makes it off topic. We've asked you to stop doing this before.
>And to all of the little __girls__ who are watching this, never doubt that you are valuable and powerful and deserving of every chance and opportunity in the world to pursue and achieve your own dreams."
No woman has ever got the position she was after. It may be a little disheartening as a female to see the only woman who has ever come close lose the way Hilary lost. Males have no trouble finding a role model for the position. You're finding a problem where none exists - males don't need role models for that job but females do.
> In fact, most Australian media will only talk about homelessness of women.
Horseshit. This Australian sees most public discussion of homelessness as not mentioning gender either way.
> Yet, ABS puts the figure at about 30% of victims as being male.
Yes, men are subject to 30% of domestic violence, and it's an under-reported problem. But the women cop much more severe violence. The male victims don't need refuges in the proportions that females
> bombarded the TV with ads saying that the root cause of domestic violence was young boys "it's a boy thing" was the catch cry.
This is a gross misrepresentation of the DV ads. The core message of the ads wasn't "it's a boy thing", but "we socially train boys to disrespect women, let's do better".
> Never in history have we played such nasty gender games.
Nah, places like the US and the UK simply didn't give women the vote until a couple of centuries after men had it. Or let women own property freely, or so on and so forth. But since you're just talking about people saying 'girls' instead of 'kids', well, fuck, men/boys have been the default in public announcements for so long that it's ridiculous.
Yes, men have problems that feminism doesn't really recognise well (if at all), but you have a chip on your shoulder that is distorting your perceptions. It's bizarre that you get so worked up over a single utterance of Clinton's, yet pretend that the long history of "boy's clubs" excluding women from positions of power simply doesn't exist. As an Australian, are you aware that women were legally paid 2/3rds the rate of men as late as the mid 1970s? Or that as late as the 60s, women weren't allowed to secure loans without a male guarantor? Hell, in some states in the US, there's no such thing as rape if the couple are married. All of those things are a bit more than "girls, you can do it!"
By all means, raise consciousness for men's issues, but don't take the petty passive-aggressive swipe at women's issues in the process.
> Horseshit
> you have a chip on your shoulder
> It's bizarre that you get so worked up
Your account has a pattern of posting uncivil comments on HN, which we've asked you many times to stop. It's not cool, regardless of how wrong or annoying someone else is. It's also not cool regardless of how right your views are. Indeed, you discredit those by being a jerk, so if you care about these things, that is an extra reason to be civil.
Let's look at it another way. Ban all hate groups, or don't ban any of them. However, don't pick and choose.
I don't agree with Neo Nazis. I hold Neo Nazis with the same contempt that I hold feminists. Why not apply the policy for all hate groups?
For example, in Australia we refuse to acknowledge the approximately 25% of violence and abuse by females within the household. The worst case statistic is NSW ("Twice as many female victims (19,488) as male victims (9,261) in New South Wales."). Not one of these victims is given a voice!
http://www.abs.gov.au/ausstats/abs@.nsf/Lookup/by%20Subject/...
You will see that men who are victims of domestic violence are turned away from support groups. This doesn't surprise me as there is an aggressive campaign to ignore male victims from media, government and community support groups.
I conducted a Google search from 2015 to determine that 100% of references in the Australian media stated that domestic violence was a "male only" behaviour and the only victims represented were female. I checked over 2000 references! In other words, 2000 of 2000 references represented one gender with relation to violence.
If you listen to Cassie Jaye (the feminist who created the documentary The Red Pill), she says that feminists in media refuse to acknowledge male victims because it will take money away from female victims. In other words, if you are a boy or a man who is beaten or abused, feminists insist males get no representation or support. It's almost a complete media kibosh throughout the western world.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=itSTzV29bS0
So, why is Twitter not banning prominent feminists?
or, why isn't Twitter banning all media outlets who support such hateful messages that insist that some victims of violence should be ignored? This is a fundamental breach of human rights! You can't get much worse!
Check media references for an absence of any of the following,
80% of suicide victims are male
25% of domestic violence is by a female
90% of incarceration is male
You will also notice that Cassie Jaye said she was suppressed by feminists. Cassie also said that she was advised by feminists not to represent any issues that impact men. This would explain the media suppression across all western countries.
If you're going to ban a hate group, why not include feminism. It's certainly one of the biggest and most active groups today and actively violates human rights. I've given plenty of pointers in this single post alone to build evidence.
There is almost universal silence from the overwhelming majority of feminists on this topic. It's a sad indictement of the overwhelming majority of the feminist movement. Check media, documentaries from 2016, support groups, even discussion forums. The message is consistent and it consistently breaches human rights.
So, should Twitter ban hate groups? If you really must silence hate groups, then ban them all. And like you, I dislike spending so much of my time fighting hate groups like feminism because there is no impartiality on the topic. How extreme do you need to get before people will speak up?
Feminism isn't a hate group. Feminists (at least the overwhelmingly vast majority) aren't trying to abuse or kill men. It's true that female-on-male abuse is ignored too often, but I don't think you can blame feminists for this: they're just focused on other issues.
They push a subtle hate for sure with sexist undertones.
I had a recent conversation w two feminists where I pointed out a fact as reported by Harvard that women are getting paid less because they don't negotiate.
I hadn't even made a comment on the underlying reasons and two women jumped all over me.
They lumped me in with the root cause, made simplistic comments like "oh so it's the women's fault!" and challenged me to start a class teaching women to negotiate.
While I don't think that's a bad idea, it's BS to put blame on me and challenge me to do more than they've done because I'm a successful man that owns a few companies.
Over half my primary company is women and if you asked any of them they'd say I'm the best boss they've had and I empower them to succeed. I trust them. I've also changed a life by hiring a homeless person. I take chances on good people making career changes.
I've got a small company of about 20 employees and a bunch of contractors. I've done more for women in business than both of the 2 feminists combined. Yet I'm the bad guy. Funny they consider themselves liberal and do little for their causes.
It's absolutely ridiculous how feminists push blame and are so divisive. They think everyone is out to get them. Facts mean nothing. They want to talk about prior injustices and ignore the first "why".
Merely pointing out the fact that women don't negotiate means you think it's women's fault to feminists. I recognize we've gotten here for a variety of reasons but if business rules currently dictate you need to negotiate, maybe learn to negotiate and use research from industry experts to tell a compelling story and make more money.
Sure there are asshole sexist males out there but the women I know that know negotiation are on par with men.
Feminists also ignore how women treat other women in business. Throughout the companies I've worked for and my own, something like 95% of issues with coworkers involved women with other women.
> but I don't think you can blame feminists for this: they're just focused on other issues.
The problem is, liberals are vilifying Trump supporters for exactly that, being focused on other issues instead of social justice. They say that it doesn't matter that you disagreed with Hillary's liberal policies, putting conservatism over social justice makes you a complicit racist.
The most prominent example I've seen has been with abortion. People say they voted for Trump because of Hillary Clinton's policy stance on abortion, so they end up being accused of racism because making abortion a bigger dealbreaker than social justice apparently makes them complicit racists.
That's not the half of it. This author deserves no respect based on that article.
She is typical of "me me me" and the continual flow of sexism we see from Australian journalists. The last few decades in Australian media have been a dark spot. This author is sexist, arrogant and takes pride in yanking a strange girl's hair (which is tantamount to assault).
"In two strides I was behind the schoolgirl. I reached up, seized her ponytail at the roots and gave it a sharp downward yank."
"My only regret is that I couldn’t see the Asian woman’s face at the moment the schoolgirl’s head jerked back and her insolent grin turned into a rictus."
>The society where "elders" were regarded as wells of wisdom probably never existed.
Historically, the Greeks (as one example) respected the opinions of wise elders,
"Monarchies in ancient Greece were not absolute because there was usually a council of older citizens (the senate, or in Macedonia the congress) who gave advice to the King."
From my own experience, I always sought adults that I felt I could learn from. Even as a kid, I remember thinking some older people gave bad advice and some showed great insight and used this to focus my attention. My own kids seem to echo similar sentiments to my own at the same age.
Pulling apart appliances is a great idea. I've had that in the back of my mind but pushed it back for too long. Thanks for the reminder.
This article reflects some of my own views. I moderate my kids' access time to electronic games very tightly. We have frequent group discussions on things we've seen, done, learned, etc. The conversations are really amazing and are a good lead-in to bedtime.
It shouldn't surprise me, but I often hear more intelligent conversation from my kids than I do from most media sources. In fact, we sometimes analyse places like The Verge for their prejudice as an exercise in critical thinking around flawed arguments and fallacies. We look at youtube for history, engineering and biology videos. We've developed board games, Rube Goldberg machines, flying craft, gone on bike hikes, looked at water safety...
If you live in the suburbs and you look in your local area, there are many free educational community activities too. We've looked at construction, robotics, software and sports activities to name a few.
We even make up our own learning activities. Eg. we went shopping together and discussed food priorities, food costs for equivalent items, set a budget, discussed buying local v/s imported food, etc.
There are learning opportunities all around. I feel that education on computers is over-rated and critical thinking outside of a computer is underrated. It just takes a lot of time and energy. I usually put in a weekend of planning about a month before school holidays.
I don't know, I opened up (too) many toys and appliances as a kid and the only thing I learned was how to open things up. As far as I was concerned, the resistors in there were lined up in a pentagram to summon the proper amounts of electrical current. Guided disassembly would have been much less frustrating for me (in terms of learning) and my parents (in terms of me not being able to reassemble everything quite perfectly... or playing bomb defuser)
I don't discount this theory, i've wondered it myself a few times in recent years. However, i'm not sure of the data to back that theory. The article itself says that the job situation has improved in the US. The question is around the opportunities that open and close based on having a degree (eg. over qualification vs under qualification vs expectation).
It also mentions that the data is from 0.1% of students. While that's still a fair number, there's room for error.
No one should get away with abusing anyone else. Yet, this term (domestic violence) has been coined as a man's thing. It also neglects mental abuse that are very destructive. If you search Google, you'll find plenty of links re-enforcing this view (eg. men need to be told to stop doing it, we need raise money for women who are impacted, etc).
There is no doubt that there's an agenda behind this particular term. Unless there's a very good reason, nothing should be attributed to one gender, yet, it happens all the time.
I did manage to find this link about the incidents with Bill Murray in question. I suggest you read these articles as they paint somewhat of a different picture.
Here is one quote "The police report continues, 'I then had the complainant meet me at the police station to talk with the juveniles. They informed me that their mother had been drinking heavily and had (become) physical with them.'"
I will never change my perspective about Facebook. They sell data to the highest bidder and almost certainly use that data to exploit Facebook users.
(this contradicts my positive post about respecting Mark for posting the letter).
It's similar to Standard Oil. Rockefeller screwed over many businesses and jacked up the price of fuel to great detriment of society (at least in some ways). Then, he donates the money to help society.
There are at least two sides to this. Mark is speaking openly and stating his view to set an example to others. I applaud that. There may be better ways to achieve this, but I feel this personal approach is a very positive gesture.
On the other hand, you have the Leonardo Di Caprios of the world who are very philanthropic and try to make the world a better place without open letters like this.
I personally am not offended by Mark's approach (and I'm not a fan of Zuck). I'd rather see someone express benevolent intentions than just about any other alternative (including silence, or prejudice/hostility/etc that seems so common today).
Why MUST we have 50% of male and female in any industry? Have you noticed how almost every media outlet ignores female dominated industries (such as veterinary science) [0], where over 85% of vets in the western world are female? The strongest argument in this thread appears to be that there must be equal numbers for equality, but it's only EVER applied to male dominated industries (Google it if you doubt me). However, not only is this argument unjustified, it's continually selectively applied by most mainstream media outlets, again and again. There is no challenge or balance to any of these arguments from the mainstream media.
I am disappointed that Google sacked this engineer. To understand this mindset, you really need to watch this video on Yale. People being shut down from talking because they're male or white [1] or because angry mobs don't like what they have to say. People in this thread talk about sexism and yet they struggle to provide any evidence (while I can point at truck loads of evidence of misandry, eg. domestic violence, veterinary science, etc). This Yale video talks about this exact problem i'm describing. We have a society where you are no longer allowed to express selective views (even with evidence). Google have confirmed this with their dismissal of this engineer. What we've become concerns me deeply.
To all of the people who have stood up for free speech (and you're in the clear minority in this thread), I thank you from the bottom of my heart. If you want to be able to sort out the media that's worth listening to, watch reporting on this topic closely over the next few days. Look for extreme prejudice and emotive language from the media. To quote an excellent quote from the Yale video, "these are moves of power, not reason" (3 minutes in, [1]).
So where are the rational arguments? What about the percentage of female university graduates with relevant skills? What about Dr Simon Baran Cohen's findings on very young children and trends to their thinking patterns? Where are the facts? Why are most people side-stepping facts?
Now please re-read this entire thread and ask yourself about freedom of speech. Ask yourself about democracy. Ask yourself about how many people have presented facts. There is something seriously wrong. You should be deeply concerned about the lack of debate, the lack of evidence, the number of emotive arguments and the message Google has sent to anyone who doesn't toe the politically correct line.
[0] http://career-advice.careerone.com.au/career-development/pro... [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xK4MBzp5YwM