Comment by YeGoblynQueenne | Hacker News Reader

Comment by YeGoblynQueenne | Hacker News Reader

YeGoblynQueenne

So, this is totally an ad hominem but the OP webpage has a post category titled "Political Correctness" [1] with one post titled "Claims that sexisim drives girls away from Computer Science are feminist bullshit." [2] and one link to an external site titled "Sex Differences in Mathematical Aptitude - By La Griffe du Lion." (a.k.a. "Lion's Claw") [3] starting off with this bit, styled like a research paper abstract (you know, to make it look seintifikal):

Mathematics is a man's game. A gender gap appears early in life, blossoms with the onset of puberty and reaches full bloom by mid-adolescence. It indelibly shapes women's prospects for doing significant mathematics. In this account of cognitive sex differences, Prodigy shows how sex-differentiated ability in 15 year-olds accounts for the exiguous female representation at the highest levels of mathematical research. A female Fields Medalist is predicted to surface once every 103 years.

I stress again that this is essentially an ad homimem: I'm absolutely flagging up this dude as a sexist baboon with brains the size of a small, frozen pea. And because I have much better things to do with my poor feminine brain (say, finish off my MSc dissertation, on a novel grammar induction algorithm) I'm not reading a single word of the OP.

________________________________

[1] http://harmful.cat-v.org/political-correctness/

[2] http://harmful.cat-v.org/political-correctness/girls-in-CS

[3] http://www.lagriffedulion.f2s.com/math.htm

Not that I agree with this persons opinions at large, I do recognize that he got some points. Perhaps he may be a bit sexist but so are most people and feminists at large are extremely sexist at large in my opinion.

A quote from the second link:

"The whole issue is being overcompensated now. On some technical forum I’ve seen somebody ask for advice on whatever. Another user replied with a link to women.debian.org. What the fuck? Do we have “men.debian.org”? If you’re no different wrt. technical matters, then you need no different website. If you need different treatment, then don’t be surprised if you’re treated differently."

Couldn't agree more on that point and matter, I do think we should treat each other with respect and integrity but why treat people differently because of their gender? Can't we just treat everyone the same?

Honestly, that is not what society is doing and especially not so in the IT sector. I think this is one of the points the OP is making with his post. Just because he has these views does not necessary render his views on nodejs or whatever else nil.

> but why treat people differently because of their gender? Can't we just treat everyone the same?

This is one of those well-intentioned questions that makes a lot of hidden assumptions. Since straight white men founded this country, wrote the laws, and hold a disproportionate number of positions as presidents, congressmen, CEOs, etc, this means that the directive to "treat everyone the same" in practice becomes "treat everyone like a straight white man"

Men and women and non-binary folks have different needs and are oppressed to varying degrees. Trying to treat them all the same ignore these important differences. This post discusses how conventional city planning of treating everyone the same is less effective than bringing those differences to the forefront: http://www.citylab.com/commute/2013/09/how-design-city-women...

> This is one of those well-intentioned questions that makes a lot of hidden assumptions. Since straight white men founded this country, wrote the laws, and hold a disproportionate number of positions as presidents, congressmen, CEOs, etc, this means that the directive to "treat everyone the same" in practice becomes "treat everyone like a straight white man"

I am sorry, but the last part just doesn't make any sense. First of, I am probably not from the same country as you are and treating everyone according to the golden rule doesn't mean treating everyone like a straight white man. You are accusing me of making assumptions when the irony is that you are making the assumptions.

I don't really believe that cities generally are being designed for any specific gender and I do not believe any gender is being oppressed in my country. But at last, I don't see how this is relevant at all for this discussion, I was simply talking about treating everyone the same and for sure if you can make data supported general statements about specific needs for men or women go ahead and design a better city.

Umm, I read the article from the Lion's Claw, and it seems internally consistent.

It cites an actual study on mathematical prowess, takes its results, and uses mathematics to demonstrate a banal fact - that a small mean deviation in ability combined with significant competition yields unintuitively disproportional results. shrug

You may consider that the study was flawed(perhaps - I haven't particularly dug deep into it), or that he cherry-picked a particular study(something readily admitted in the text, as it describes how difficult it is to execute a study on mathematical ability). Simply declaring the OP "a sexist baboon", however, seems like an emotional outburst rather than a rational takedown.

Edit: I read OP's article(his site was down when I wrote the comment), and it seems like a rant. Comparatively the Lion's Claw article is cleanly and concisely presented, so I wouldn't really put those two together as an example of sexism.

..I was going to write my usual long speech about how all humans are basically the same. but you know what ? Nah. There will always be narrow minded people. And to battle narrow-mindness one should read books (good books[0], that is).

If dismissing someones opinion not because of the opinion itself but because the author of that opinion linked in an unrelated opinion piece to a completely different persons opinion (edit: that, by reading it, may even be a satire) makes your boat float, then we have nothing to talk about really.

Have fun in your academic life. (sincerely!)

[0]http://lkml.iu.edu/hypermail/linux/kernel/0707.2/4230.html

edit2: I'm sorry if i offended you. I don't know anything about you really. I was just going a bit into the extreme to make my point.

I completely agree with you. While I think it would be pandering to universalism to say that "anyone who bemoans 'political correctness' is a dolt", I could instead perhaps say: "I have yet to encounter anyone who bemoaned 'political correctness' who were not in fact simply concerned about losing the privilege they have to treat other people poorly without feeling the guilt they should be feeling for treating other people poorly."

As to the research itself, any self-respecting scientific study of gender's influence on anything needs to start with "Step One: in order to obtain a reasonable comparison, we need to dismantle the Patriarchy." It is pointless (and exhausting) to "engage and refute" any research on a point-by-point basis, when that research is so transparently driven by a need to prop up that very construct which deforms the research landscape. I think we can pretty easily categorically dismiss such research as grounded in an incorrect paradigm. (others may disagree, of course, such is the nature of paradigms. I merely hope we outlast them).

So yes: perhaps an ad hominem, but it is a worthy one. This person's opinions are indeed tainted by the (objective) fact that xie is literally a sexist baboon with brains the size of a small, frozen pea.

> "I have yet to encounter anyone who bemoaned 'political correctness' who were not in fact simply concerned about losing the privilege they have to treat other people poorly without feeling the guilt they should be feeling for treating other people poorly."

> As to the research itself, any self-respecting scientific study of gender's influence on anything needs to start with "Step One: in order to obtain a reasonable comparison, we need to dismantle the Patriarchy."

> This person's opinions are indeed tainted by the (objective) fact that xie is literally a sexist baboon with brains the size of a small, frozen pea.

Poe's Law applies here, because I honestly can't tell if you're serious or trolling.

Thats just really the tip of the iceberg for cat-v to be honest.

It is usually best to just avoid it in general.

Just to clarify for HN-ers who didn't click the link: the linked page was apparently written by some reddit user in /r/programming, then deleted there, and "is preserved here for posterity."

I don't know if that changes anything for you, just thought I'd clarify that.

> And because I have much better things to do with my poor feminine brain (say, finish off my MSc dissertation, on a novel grammar induction algorithm) I'm not reading a single word of the OP.

By refusing to engage with the substantive arguments made by both uriel & La Griffe du Lion and instead committing the logical fallacies of argumentum ad hominem and appeal to emotion, aren't you actually just making their point? Why not engage & refute instead?

Cause that is tiring. Not every battle is worth fighting.

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