Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wpietri | Hacker News Reader

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This is the heart of your ignorance:

> They just happen in smaller numbers compared to men.

Black people just happened to perfect slaves, unsuited to life as free people. [1] Women just happened not to want the vote. [2] Those were dumb arguments then, and it's a dumb argument now. Things don't just happen; they happen for reasons. And given our multi-millennial history of male dominance over women, these reasons are often historical.

You can dress it up however you like, but your vigorous defense of the historically biased status quo is inevitably sexist in result. Any woman seeing this is going to immediately have to prepare to be treated like this: https://xkcd.com/385/

If you really care about helping women into STEM careers, you'll learn some history and stop talking like this. Given the number of anonymous dudes who spend their time arguing against fixing historical sexism who also claim to be super-dedicated to helping women, you can probably work out what I think you'll actually do.

[1] See, e.g., https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornerstone_Speech#The_.27Corn... or https://www.tsl.texas.gov/ref/abouttx/secession/2feb1861.htm...

[2] E.g.: https://ehistory.osu.edu/exhibitions/1912/womens_suffrage/wo...

You keep saying the same thing, and I keep telling you why you're wrong, and for some reason you keep saying the same thing, as if somehow rewording them changes anything.

I'll repeat myself for a change, since you don't seem to get it:

"All this theorizing, and you still don't explain to me why we see the distribution of the AP testing that we do, why at gender-blind universities the rate of females in STEM is lower than that of those practicing affirmative action (which essentially amounts to bar-lowering), and why you think discriminating against qualified men is an appropriate solution.

Until you provide feasible arguments to each of these, no amount of implicitly calling me a sexist is going to change my mind."

>> Those were dumb arguments then, and it's a dumb argument now.

Back then, there were laws that actively prohibited African-Americans from attaining freedom and women from voting, and government backed frameworks in place to enforce these laws.

Name a SINGLE law today that actively restricts women but not men from choosing any career path.

>> you can probably work out what I think you'll actually do.

Can you tell me some of YOUR efforts in helping educate and tutor young kids in STEM?

Quit stroking yourself by claiming to be morally righteous, get your ass off the internet once in your life, and go tutor a young girl in trigonometry this weekend.

Buddy, based on your behavior here I'm explicitly calling you an active supporter of systemic sexism. You may or may not be personally biased, and I certainly have a guess, but that's irrelevant to my point here.

Your insistence that the only way that sexism and racism work is through the law is ignorant and ahistorical. They preceded the laws that expressed them; they also survived the demise of those laws. I've told you repeatedly that you are harming people through your ignorance. You don't care, and have never cared enough about this topic to actually learn about it. There is no point to arguing the minutiae of your weird little self-constructed justifications. My extensive experience with MRAs, etc, is that when proven wrong on point A will just drag out points B-Z. Or they'll go quiet. Or start introducing irrelevancies, like exactly how many young kids I've tutored in STEM this week. I've got better things to do.

If you're serious about helping women, you'll go take a women's studies class and learn something about this. Either way, I'm done.

I'd written a paragraph explaining why your arguments are wrong and asking you to reevaluate your viewpoint. But forget that.

I'll ask you this: UC Berkeley, a school that does not consider gender in applications per California law, has a EECS department makeup of 4:1 M/F.

UC Berkeley is required by law to not consider gender when evaluating applicants, is extremely liberal/left, and has an overall population of 52% female.

Explain to me what UC Berkeley is doing wrong, and how we should change it.

If you think UC Berkeley should lower the bar for female applicants to achieve parity, then our conversation is over, because we have fundamentally different ideals. I want meritocracy. You want to parasitically feed off of someone else's merits - I guess they call it "socialism" but that word has become so mainstreamed it doesn't do justice to how despicable your utopia is.

If you think increasing outreach efforts to get more children interested in science so (and therefore, there will naturally be more female applicants as a consequence) , you'd stop dismissing me as a "sexist" and think critically about why it is that I'm doing what I'm doing.

>> My extensive experience with MRAs, etc,

I'm not a mens right activist, nor have I once suggested that the system is designed against men, so you can throw aside your straw mans now.

>> I've got better things to do. If you're serious about helping women

Sounds like to me you don't actually want equality, you just pretend you do so you can "feel" like you're part of a new Civil Rights movement while actually doing nothing about it. Except occasionally tapping away at your keyboard calling others sexist.

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