Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Alex3917 | Hacker News Reader

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> the utility it offers the average user today is just a glorified photo album.

There are basically two kinds of Internet use that young people engage in -- hanging out with friends, and teaching themselves new skills.

The vast majority of young people though are mostly using the Internet to hang out with friends. The exception is apparently affluent white males, who have much higher rates of using the Internet to explore new ideas and teach themselves new skills. This is called the 'participation gap.' (It's perhaps also partly why, for example, there are more male entrepreneurs even though women do better in formal education.)

The important thing to note is that decisions about what to use the Internet for have a lot to do with who you are following in your social networks. E.g. this determines what new interests you're likely to discover, what opportunities are made available to you, etc.

source: http://www.amazon.com/Participatory-Culture-Networked-Era-Co...

I know you mention that women do better in formal education. That wasn't the case a few decades ago, when I believe there was far less prejudice.

I had lunch with a few female teachers several weeks ago. One of their conversations was around the over-enthusiasm of boys in class. They unanimously agreed that boys needed to "shut up" (literal quote) so girls could answer questions too. This view parallels that of my ex-girlfriend who is (and was then) a teacher who felt boys had some sort of natural advantage that needed to be suppressed.

I also made mention of code.org that had one link only on the main page "why girls should participate in IT" (or very similar words). My young son noticed this and asked if he was welcome.

I would not use today's metrics on boys vs girls in education as a basis for any measurements. If we stopped with the prejudice (which is extremely common today), the picture would look quite different.

I am fascinated by your theory that there was less prejudice a few decades ago. This graph, for example, does not look like a graph of increasing prejudice:

http://www.npr.org/sections/money/2014/10/21/357629765/when-...

I read that as decreasing systemic bias in education. At least in law, medicine, and physical sciences.

That graph doesn't look to me like something characterized by prejudice at all. Why would people suddenly become sexist in the computer technology field only, practically overnight?

The article even suggests that the drop started with the boom of the personal computer. That is not inconsistent with the hypothesis that women do better in formal settings, since that inflection point is essentially the moment it became possible for large amounts of people to teach themselves to be a computer programmer. It seems likely that some pre existing bias (either in interest our ability from girls or more likely an interplay of interest and culture) was just amplified when the flood of autodidacts joined the field, not that everyone decided to exclude women just as the field was getting hot.

My point is that the other three lines are indicative of decreasing prejudice in education, not increasing. The computer-science line is clearly different and why is an interesting topic, but it's not the topic at hand.

The computer-science line clearly indicates that 'prejudice in education' is not the only and may not be the strongest cause of that trend.

A pet theory I've been developing is the decline in the 80s began with a growth in self destructive behavior in the programming employment sector. Eating junk food, caffeinated energy drinks, lack of exercise, lack of good food, lack of sleep, lack of socializing, lack of overtime pay, lack of professionalism, obsessive game play, lack of life balance, lack of decent working environment. Before the 80s programmer culture felt very engineer / mathematician / academic, after the 80s its kinda felt like an introverts weird interpretation of an all night party, every night. Here have a hot pocket and type all night. A culture that prides itself on twinkies and monster energy drinks isn't going to fit the nearly 100% female readership of the typical health magazine. The stereotypical programming environment is nearly unique in the working world, isn't it? Are there any other job markets culturally like programming? If there were, we could compare how the two fields opposition to personal hygiene or opposition to dressing fashionably, or even dressing in clean clothes might not appeal to women at similar rates, for example. I've only found two work places kinda like programming/IT as defined above. One is military mechanic and the other is SOME trading desks at big finance. Both tend a bit male.

That's directly on topic. I suppose from an "eating your own (addictive) dogfood" perspective its kinda self inflicted.

It would be interesting to look at male/female relations and ratios for programmers at non-traditional employers, perhaps the government or military or maybe academic. I suspect the lifestyle at a unionized state government office is quite a bit different than "standard" programming environment and theorize almost anything would be an improvement WRT women's interest in that workplace. Perhaps addictive behaviors would vary in those circumstances.

Surely there must be some HR statistics buried somewhere at a giant corporation or government about % of programmers participating in the corporate alcoholism project by decade, or something like that, WRT trends in addictive personality by decade.

Interesting. One way one could sum up the obsessive-dedication-at-the-expense-of-all-else culture you describe is "macho", which is a reasonable tie to gender.

High finance is as self destructive as the computing habits you describe, and far more boys clubby than computing industry.

I got the distinct impression that the parent comment was suggesting that there was increasing prejudice against men (or in favor of women), since all the stories are about a conscious effort to cater to women over men.

Yes, exactly. He's complaining about what he perceives as anti-male prejudice. He just didn't say it explicitly. He talked instead about "a few decades ago, when I believe there was far less prejudice".

I'm calling attention that rhetorical slight of hand. Reducing prejudice overall sounds like a noble goal, and it's one I share. But the stats I'm familiar with suggest that prejudice has decreased.

When prejudice in my favor decreases, it feels a lot like prejudice against me increases, so I can get why he feels that way. But I don't think that personal experience justifies a broad claim of increasing prejudice.

>When prejudice in my favor decreases, it feels a lot like prejudice against me increases, so I can get why he feels that way. But I don't think that personal experience justifies a broad claim of increasing prejudice.

You are leaving out the possibility that real prejudice is decreasing, but that prejudice against males is increasing, just not as much as prejudice against females is decreasing. Not appearance, actual prejudice.

The reason for the slight of hand is that being open about the possibility of prejudice against males increasing tends to get a number of quite negative reactions, from the common (and I'm paraphrasing here) 'you have too much privilege to be able to comment on the matter' to the far less tolerated (at least here) insults.

As for increasing prejudice against males, there is far more evidence than just personal experience that there is real increases, not just perceived. From the negative effects of lacking male role models in grade school (it doesn't matter why this happens, as it does and thus it creates a negative effect by society impacting young boys) to issues such as biased definitions being used in government reports to cover up or down play male victims of crimes.

It's an interesting point, although I think it's worth distinguishing 4 kinds of prejudice: pro- and anti- male and female.

I'm interested in decreasing total prejudice, and also decreasing the substantial imbalance in net prejudice benefit between groups. I don't think prejudice can be eliminated; System 1 thinking is too practically useful.

I think the reason people react negatively to dudes bringing up a possible increase in anti-male prejudice is that that it's usually brought up as an interruption to discussion of anti-female prejudice. That is, it's not used as a serious participation in a broad discussion of prejudice and how to reduce it, but a way of derailing discussion. And as I said, people are inclined to treat a reduction in pro-them prejudice as an increase in anti-them prejudice. So even sincere attempts can come across as ignorant.

Personally, I suspect anti-male prejudice is actually decreasing as we unwind patriarchy. I think it can be more visible, though, as a) women are more willing to be open about anti-male prejudices they have, and b) as we see women moving toward equality, we reexamine our own position. But I'm personally ok even if it's a temporary increase, as I see it as a backlash against the status quo. Honestly, given the number of women I know who have been sexually assaulted or physically abused, I'm amazed there isn't more anti-male prejudice. As we reduce the number of people who have those experiences, I expect we'll see dramatic drops in anti-male prejudice.

>Honestly, given the number of women I know who have been sexually assaulted or physically abused, I'm amazed there isn't more anti-male prejudice.

Would this work for anti-female prejudice if the stats were reversed. For example, once you look past how the CDC picks a specific definition of rape that excludes male victims of female rapists, you find that within a given year, men are raped at almost the same rate as women (if memory serves it was a .2% difference).

So given this, why are anti-male prejudice given an explanation based on male behavior while anti-female prejudices are not given an explanation based on female behavior?

You are claiming that women rape men basically as often as men rape women? I find that literally incredible. If you have stats, by all means post them, but there's a ton of evidence the other way.

As to your question, the short answer is patriarchy. We're slowly emerging from a millennia-long system of male dominance of women. I read a lot of anti-female prejudice as part of that system of control of women. Whereas I read a lot of anti-male prejudice as a) reaction to the experience of patriarchy, b) resistance to the system of patriarchy, or c) part of patriarchy itself. As we eliminate patriarchy and then have a couple of generations of people who haven't experienced it, I expect much of that to fade.

>If you have stats, by all means post them, but there's a ton of evidence the other way.

CDC 2010 NISVS. But you can't look at the summary, because they use a definition of rape that doesn't involve most cases of male victims of female perpetrators. You need to read the stats on male victims of contact sexual assault which aren't in the summary.

I've taken a look, but I can't find what you're talking about. If you'd like to make a case for something that sounds absurd, by all means make it. But some anonymous guy waving vaguely at hundreds of pages of documents and telling me to go fish is definitely not making a case. Note also that just claiming the experts who interpret the data are wrong is not making a case. Extraordinary claims, etc.

>Note also that just claiming the experts who interpret the data are wrong is not making a case.

The experts are making very specific claims based on biased definitions. If we were to use those biased definitions, then their claims are not wrong. The problem is their definitions, and on a deeper level, why they went with such definitions.

Full report:

http://www.cdc.gov/violenceprevention/pdf/nisvs_report2010-a...

From page 20 of the pdf, 10 of the report

>Questions on sexual violence were asked in relation to rape (completed forced penetration, attempted penetration, and alcohol or drugfacilitated completed penetration), being made to penetrate another person, sexual coercion, unwanted sexual contact, and non-contact unwanted sexual experiences.

Notice that being made to penetrate is not listed with the group that includes rape?

Page 27 (17) goes into more details and once again clearly lists that being made to penetrate doesn't count as rape.

On page 28 (18) we see the number of victims for women raped within a 12 month period is 1.27 million.

On page 29 (19) we see the number of victims for men made to penetrate (aka raped) within a 12 month period is 1.267 million.

And now we're into the "extraordinary claims" section of the discussion.

Pulling out two numbers from a large report and saying, "aha, proof of the grand conspiracy" is not compelling to me. You're claiming that you personally have discovered a major revolution in understanding the nature and impact sexual violence. But the numbers are weird on their own (1-year and lifetime rates are oddly different, apparently no examination of the gender of user of force, no description of what force was used). You claim that the definitions are biased, but you don't demonstrate it. You imply that the levels of trauma are equivalent, but I don't see a reason to believe that. This doesn't seem congruent with other research. And it also doesn't match what direct knowledge I have of the topic. I know a number of women who have been raped, and it was a deeply traumatic experience for them. I've never heard of a woman similarly forcing a guy to penetrate with, say, knife in hand. I'm having trouble even imagining how such a crime would work.

The reason we take rape seriously is not one number in one box somewhere in one PDF. It's the great array of studies and personal narratives demonstrating the crime and the severity of its impact on people's lives. Now it could be that you have uncovered a vast new area of crime that people were somehow unaware of. Or it could be that, as happens all the time in research, a couple of numbers came out odd because they made a mistake, or because subtle implications of study design produced unexpectedly misleading results.

If it's the former, presumably we'd see other evidence besides a couple of odd numbers. After all, this report has been out for years and there's been plenty of time for followup research. Plenty of time for people to come forward with stories of how this crime ruined their lives. Are we seeing that?

If not, then maybe the explanation here is not, "OMG CONSPIRASY AGAINT THE MENZ!" but "anonymous guy on the Internet does not understand a topic as well as a (mixed-gender) array of doctors who have spent years in the field".

> That wasn't the case a few decades ago, when I believe there was far less prejudice.

Keep in mind that in HS men are discriminated against in terms of their GPA. But then the ones that make it to college get some affirmative action in the admissions process, which partly makes up for it. Though there are still way more women who make it into and through college. But then Ph.D. programs arguably favor men.

I guess my point is that there are lots of different types of participation in the education system, and lots of different types of discrimination. So saying that discrimination has on the whole increased or decreased, even in the limited area of gender issues, is probably difficult.

Compared to the past standard of 'you are a woman, you aren't allowed here', discrimination has decreased. The problem is when you focus on more recent history, say in the last 10 years. How has discrimination changed in the last decade and who are the winners, the losers, and the ones not impacted either way?

I think there is a third kind too; consuming media (music/video). I'm not sure how that compares to the hanging out by time-spent, but by dollars-spent I would imagine it's the biggest one.

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