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Comment by grzm | Hacker News Reader

I understand what you're saying. To dig into it a little more, do you think there is structural (as opposed to intentional) gender discrimination, and if so, should it be corrected? Please don't hesitate to answer "no" if that's what you believe. My goal in conversations like this is to better understand each other, not score points or make judgements.

If it should be corrected, what specifically (i.e., what implementation) would you propose to do so? This whole issue is so contentious that I find people don't get much further beyond the surface disagreements.

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No.

At least in my country, all of the ways that females can be discriminated against in the workforce that are usually brought up are illegal.

(Pay gaps for the same work, promotions, sexual harassment, etc)

Yet people still complain they are problems. At this point, the onus is not on the rest of society to continue to try and make things easier for literally more than half the population. The onus is on the people being discriminated against to actually stand up for themselves and aggressively puruse legal action if they are the victims they claim to be.

For me personally, I find it quite ridiculous to hear people talking about all the gender stereotypes that exist today (and the discrimination that comes alongside them) and how we need action action action to solve them as if they are still problems.

My dad cooked more than my mum. I was picked on by girls at school. The girls always were told it's fine if they wanted to play a sport more dominated by guys, but god forbid a guy try to play sport with the girls. Rather than being discriminated against, the girls I know who went into software got given hugely preferential treatment over the guys and are routinely given better opportunities.

In everyone's effort to undo gender discrimination, they've forgotten that the aim is not to swing the pendulum to the other side, but instead to bring it back to the middle and treat people on their own individual merits.

At least in my country, all of the ways that females can be discriminated against in the workforce that are usually brought up are illegal.

For the sake of comparison, what country are you referring to?

Australia. It's all covered under the Sex Discrimination Act.

https://www.humanrights.gov.au/our-work/sex-discrimination/p...

Most importantly, I think that even if structural discrimination exists, artificially penalising other people is not the way to rectify it.

On whether structural discrimination exists, the question feels like a trap (even if not intentional) since we could probably spend hours arguing about what "structural" actually means.

But I'm going to go out on a limb and say that, in general, I don't think it does exist anymore, in the western world. Gender discrimination against women is now both socially taboo and illegal. And yet this perceived victimhood is increasingly used to justify very real (and openly practised) discrimination against men.

We're going to raise a generation of young men who are continually told how "privileged" they are, while feeling anything but privileged.

Thanks for taking the time to address the questions I raised.

the question feels like a trap

Would you elaborate as to how you mean, in particular how I could have phrased it better? I sometimes struggle with how much qualification is necessary when posing questions like this: not enough and a question can come across as pointed, too much and it's just tedious. I'd like to strike the right balance.

One issue your answers do point out is that in this discussion you and 'jen729w are likely working from different premises: I doubt 'jen729w would be talking about positive discrimination if they didn't think there was some sort of discrimination occurring that needed correcting. Given that, disagreeing over solutions is likely inevitable, as you disagree there's discrimination that needs to be corrected for at all. I think it would be better to be upfront about that, so you can either figure out a common understanding you're working from (whether or not there's an issue with discrimination to be solved) before discussing any issues with potential solutions. For example, there's no reason not to ask 'jen729w what their understanding of the problem is. I think this kind of problem happens quite often when discussing contentious issues, which is unfortunate because I think it tends to make the issue worse rather than better.

Thanks again! I appreciate it.

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