What Women Don't Want

https://medium.com/ladybits-on-medium/3a01c7c65b71

by RickHull • 13 years ago

7 7 13 years ago

vacri2• 13 years ago

Focusing on one of Pax's tweets that's an all-too-common defence of misogyny: Defining misogyny as 'hatred of women' is a cause for a lot of misunderstanding, because it plays semantics with the definition of 'hate', which has a pretty clear definition in lay terms. A better definition would be 'contempt of women'.

You can hold someone in contempt without hating them - for example, when you condescend to or patronise someone, you're exhibiting contempt for them. You can quite easily like those people, but you're disregarding them in some way - their ability, their intellect, and so forth. That is much easier to explain than to explain to a misogynist how 'hatred' somehow applies to his preferred sexual partners.

pstack• 13 years ago

No, you just described sexism. An assertion of superiority or inferiority of one gender. Not misogyny. Words have meanings for a reason and it would be inappropriate for me to change the definition of "racism", just because I really really liked calling you a racist.

vacri2• 13 years ago

Yes, I agree that words have meanings for a reason. Please read my comment again and you'll see that that's the main thrust of what I'm getting at.

beloch• 13 years ago

Someone immature enough to make an app like titstare probably isn't mature enough to make an appropriate presentation for a general audience. Why is no rage being directed at the, presumably, responsible adult conference organizers who let them on stage? It's almost like letting young-earther's give a talk at a geology conference!

RickHull• 13 years ago

Just found Robinson's take: https://medium.com/glimpse-labs/4aa5b6a6a665

orionblastar• 13 years ago

I agree there is sexism in the STEM fields, not all organizations and not all men, but it does exist.

Pax's comments sort of have a sexist tone to them, and I guess he was trying to joke or troll. One can say they are misogynist to an extent as well.

I don't really see the value in a titstate or jerkoffmeter, it sounds like the sort of app that Reddit or 4Chan would make. I suppose someone has to make those sorts of apps for the 'Frat Boys' out there or immature men to use as jokes, but usually you don't give a demo of them to the public at a meeting with women and young girls present because it has male oriented adult themes border-lining on porn. To be quite honest most demos are not screened before they are given, so you never know if one comes up. This is why porno magazines are always behind the counter of a gas-station and then covered up so under aged customers and people who object to them cannot see them. It is just common decency.

I think the bigger issue here is how to hire women who have talent, skills, and experience in the STEM field for STEM careers and how to attract them to your organization to hire them. Doing stuff like Pax did just drives them away. Some organizations just hire women based on their looks, and then they end up with mostly untalented women who aren't qualified for the job, but got hired to avoid discrimination lawsuits of a low ration of STEM women employees. Eventually the talentless women get found out when they cannot even do the basics of their job, and then management moves them to something they can do, like a blogger and write the blogs as a technical evangelist.

My sister has to deal with this, she knows over 7 different programming languages and has a lot of talent. The talentless women harass her because they are jealous of her skills and abilities, call her tomboy, lesbian and other names. This sort of thing is not blogged about, and these sort of women are turning into social bullies. Most of them lack any STEM talent at all, and are in it just for the larger paychecks instead of learning new skills and developing great innovations like my sister does. Men bully due to their egos, but women on the other hand, bully for different reasons.

It is sad because some women who make it to the top, use a 'rope ladder' my sister claims, and then they pull the rope ladder up with them so no other woman can climb, and then they sabotage other women so they won't find success and it hurts their organization. Again even that is not blogged about either.

My sister is a humanist, she is for equal rights for everyone. She claims feminists only support women, and want women to become superior to everyone else. That radical feminism took over in the 1960's, and as a result told women not to take STEM classes or rolls because men will just cut them down and are all pigs. That this modern age is a humanist movement, and feminists seem threatened by that. Feminists attack humanists and atheists because they want equality for all. The feminists keep citing examples like Pax, for the real reason why more women don't take on more STEM classes and careers, but Pax is in the minority of men and feminists keep making excuses to cover up that they are the main people telling women to drop out of STEM classes and careers by painting all men as pigs and apes by citing a single example like Pax, and then say all men are like that and 'we need to talk'. But no, not all men are like that and it is unfair to keep saying that.

Feminists, some of them seem to suffer from a form of misogyny and won't admit to it. That needs to be blogged about as well. But nobody is brave enough to do that.

I would like to encourage women to take STEM classes and pursue STEM roles. To develop that talent, skills, experience and become like my sister and don't let some name calling and bad examples drive you from where STEM can take you. http://www.iseek.org/careers/womenstem.html

jamesmiller5• 13 years ago

A majority of what you said is true and needs to be openly discussed with the long term goal of equal and abundant opportunity for all.

I caution the definition of feminism is "to become superior to everyone else" as it is just plain untrue. A feminist advocates or supports the rights and equality of women.[1] It's not about superiority, simply equality.

I, as a male, have yet to read a piece of scholarly feminist literature that was based purely on misandry. In fact almost all of the literature I've read argues against the conditions and cultural values that both men and women are exposed to that allow them to identify and carry out sexist behavior in a justified manner rather than simply blaming the individuals. Instead most asks that we all think critically of our own responsibility to others, what we value culturally and why we value it.

The "rope ladder" example you mention can be related to a "BARGAINING WITH PATRIARCHY"[2] where women who are invested in a patriarchal system and receive some benefits are less likely to give up those benefits even if it improves their own situation in the long term.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feminism [2]: http://www.smi.uib.no/seminars/Pensum/kandiyoti,%20Deniz.pdf

What Women Don't Want

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