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Comment by hasenj | Hacker News Reader

> So another way to figure out which of our taboos future generations will laugh at is to start with the labels. Take a label—"sexist", for example—and try to think of some ideas that would be called that. Then for each ask, might this be true?

Might it be true that women are just naturally much less attracted to STEM than men?

For the record, I think even among men, being attracted to STEM or even good at it is rather rare. It's probably even rarer among women.

EDIT: I wonder if the downvotes are because I'm going offtopic or because I can't say that?

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> Might it be true that women are just naturally much less attracted to STEM than men?

No.

In India in 2015, 45% of CS undergrads were women[0]. In the US, in 1984, it was 37%[1], as opposed to 18% in 2010. The downvotes are because you can tell the answer to your question in about 5 minutes of Googling.

[0]: http://www.hcixb.org/papers_2017/hcixb17-final-37.pdf [1]: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/what-happened-all-w...

I've noticed in third world countries more women go to STEM than in the west. It's probably because of economic or social pressure. There's also no culture of "following your passion"; instead people follow what they think will give them a good career.

There's less economic or social pressure in the west so people tend to choose more to their liking and "follow their passion".

> people tend to choose more to their liking and "follow their passion"

Not to have a go at you personally but this is revealing of a highly middle class bubble that a lot of people are trying to reason from within (including that silly kid at google). It's like a moral and socio-political version of the Blub paradox. It's the same reason that it isn't possible to be racist against whites (in the West) or sexist against men, and why that is hard to understand if you are white or a man (you don't know you are in the privilege bubble and it seems inequitable).

Not having a go at you personally, but saying it's not possible to be racist against whites is an obvious tell that you want to make policies that discriminate against whites, and therefore you are probably racist.

(I'm not even white).

Yeah that's what I thought until a black friend very kindly and patiently spelt it out and it still took me a while. It's counterintuitive and nominally smart people don't get it - and are much more adept at finding justifications as to why their thoughts are right, and taking down anything which challenges that. 'Honky' doesn't carry the offence of 'nigger' and there's a good reason for that. (I'm white and I don't really care what people call me.)

Have you ever considered the option that your black friends was wrong? (Hint: if he was saying you can't be racist against whites, he was wrong and, funny enough, racist.)

Edit: to expand on the above point, the funny thing is, people peddling this kind of bullshit know it's bullshit. For example, feminists want "social justice", and try to redefine "racism" as "institutional racism". But, obiously, by prefixing other adjectives to the words, they're modifying the words themselves - "justice" is just "justice", if you're talking about "social justice", you're obviously not talking about actual "justice", because if you were, you'd simply use the word "justice" without any additional qualifying adjectives. But then, most people respond to emotional arguments way more than to rational arguments, so that's where the war is fought, and it keeps escalating until we get Trump.

> Have you ever considered the option that your black friends was wrong?

Yes of course, it was the first thing I thought and I held onto that. If both parties were on equal ground you would be quite right and there would be equivalence so you could just flip the roles, but they aren't. Middle class white men have greater opportunities in society. Racism and sexism are oppressive by definition, and redressing inequality of opportunity isn't oppression.

And btw talking about institutional racism is the opposite of an emotive argument. It's a more precise way to highlight that the issue is systemic and not the result of individuals being deliberately racist.

> Middle class

That's the key word, not "white" or "men". I fully support redressing inequality of opportunity... as long as it's not sexist or racist.

But black people are more disadvantaged than white people, so obviously any programme aimed at reducing inequality will have more focus on black people.

https://www.brookings.edu/blog/social-mobility-memos/2017/01...

That's fine. I'm in strong support of any such program, as long as skin color is not an explicit factor. Such program won't be unfair (e.g. Obama's daughter won't benefit from it, but the poor straight white orphaned guy from the worst neighborhood will), and automatically self-adjusting (at the beginning it will be disproportionately aimed at black people, but eventually - if the programme succeeds - the representation of its beneficiaries will tend to reflect the wider society).

Edit: in other words, if you want to help poor people, help poor people. If you want to help black people, help black people, but don't pretend you're helping poor people, and don't be surprised when you're called racist (like white supremacists, who help white people) or when you receive backlash from non-black people.

Sounds like your "friend" emotionally abused you into thinking you are a bad person. How else would someone think it's ok to be discriminated against?

Well this is the thing, you can't really discriminate against somebody with privilege, simply by definition. You have to actively promote those who don't in order to come anywhere near a remotely fair and efficient system that gives opportunities to those who qualify on merit.

It's because it's bullshit.

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