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As a man, I'll say I absolutely agree. I went to an all-boys high school, and teenage boys simply do better without girls around. Boys are more likely to engage in not traditionally masculine activities when girls are not around because there is no need to impress. Furthermore, girls often mature faster than boys, and this leads to unnecessary stress for both girls and boys at this stage. Furthermore, a lot of what drives teenage boys is competing against other boys for attention from girls. This dynamic is messed up if there are girls around. This damages girls too. Girls often complain that boys are uninterested in competing with them. This is because beating a girl does nothing for boys. They want to compete with boys. If each gender has their space, they both get to flourish.

I don't think single sex environments harm future gender relations either. If anything, they make it better. Both genders need friends of the same gender uncomplicated by romantic feelings. Furthermore, from my own experience, the boys at my high school, and the girls at our sister school, found no trouble getting married, having kids, etc.

Speaking of our sister school, the women they produced were independent minded, competent, competitive, and had leadership experience. Without the need to compete with boys, the girls developed their own leadership and competitive structures that they excelled at.

> Without the need to compete with boys, the girls developed their own leadership and competitive structures that they excelled at.

I think there are several arenas where girls and women benefit when men are excluded; secondary education isn't the only one. A few others to mention:

- Sports and physical competition. Excluding men enables women to compete on their own plane, set world records, etc.

- Restrooms, locker rooms, and the like. Excluding men protects women from unwanted advances, privacy invasions, etc. I know this isn't a popular opinion, but the primary benefit of segregated restrooms is that women do not have to be afraid to go to the bathroom. Besides sanitation, this is one of the greatest benefits to society of having restrooms in the first place. (In areas with no restrooms, such as rural India, women often have to risk being molested when trying to relieve themselves.)

Another unpopular opinion: desegregation efforts in the above areas (including those motivated by wanting to achieve "gender equality" or allow transgender women into areas designated for women only) will result in harm to women.

Another one is public transport. I have been groped a few times during peak transit time in the BART. It was incredibly unpleasant and ruined the whole week for me. It’s creepy and the violation of personal space feels like rape.

So segregated public transport is the solution?

Apparently segregation is the new answer, according to progressives on HackerNews.

It’s not suggested as a ‘solution’. It’s an ‘option’ some of us women would like...that’s all.

Well, that seems to be the policy solution that Japan picked. In addition to the cultural development of well-intentioned men holding their hands in the air on crowded mass-transit to prove their good intentions, and thus throwing suspicion on men who don't do the same.

Though it's worth noting that mass-transit in Japan is frequently packed so tight that if you don't have your hands up, you're literally touching someone else anyway. Not hard to see how that amplifies the molestation problem significantly in Japan even if other countries (presumably) have the same % of men with a propensity towards such actions.

I really can't overstate how skeptical I am of all the supposed benefits of gender-segregated schooling when attendance of a gender-segregated school is so strongly correlated with socioeconomic class.

I agree that all of your explanations fall well on my metaphorical ears. They seem right, and I can nod along while I read them.

But I can't help but have a nagging suspicion that you'd get extremely similar results if you just tossed a random sample of kids into a school after filtering for household income > $XXX,XXX/yr.

I'd also argue that even if you compared gender segregated schools vs a mixed-gender private school of the same price, you'd still be left with a confounding variable of "whose parents clearly valued education enough that they either specifically picked, or tolerated (depending on their views on this matter) a gender segregated school.

Remember that parental involvement is a very powerful predictor of academic success (though I'll admit I don't know if it trumps the predictive power of just socioeconomic class).

Socioeconomic class wrt schools is directly related to people’s reproductive choices. What you say is absolutely correct.

How I see it is that the burden is on people who choose to bring children into this world. It’s an important decision. It is the basis of our evolution. The answer to the question re whether my progeny or kin can compete for the same limited resources. Economically lower classes of the population need cohesive and supportive communities that will act as the village..as it were..to collectively raise children. It is the strengthening secret sauce. Community and community support is everything here.

And of course..that’s wildly variable. There is no way to come up with standardized solutions. However, if we look at it as a resource issue..of resource allocation and resource density rather than a species encompassing human collective issue, we can find solutions for all.

It’s difficult to see this as a resource issue rather than a people issue, but smaller tight knit communities with minimal socio economic deltas work better than trying to homogenize large populations inefficiently.

> I really can't overstate how skeptical I am of all the supposed benefits of gender-segregated schooling when attendance of a gender-segregated school is so strongly correlated with socioeconomic class.

I went to an all boys school with mostly working class boys of color (54% hispanic, 26% white, 13% asian, 6% black -- 75% non-white students ) next to Compton, though, so while I do agree that private schooling is associated with higher socioeconomic class, that was not my experience, and all I gave was my experience.

>This is not just in an intellectual setting. Last week I had a voice quivering, temple throbbing, blue vein screaming episode at a guy I hired to do some work. I just lost it. >It’s a constant battle of wits dealing with men that it’s exhausting. It’s even worse than in an office environment because men think the tasks that involve physical prowess is their domain. They simply will NOT take orders from a woman. And it’s exhausting trying to make every instruction sound like a ‘suggestion’. I am running out of time and honestly the man was just using brute strength to achieve what physics could do...

Female managers I know and under who I worked don't seem to face these problems. Did you consider the possibility, that the problems you face aren't caused by your gender but rather by your skills as a manager?

You could be right. I have considered that, but not wanting to be in a traditional manager position is one of the reasons I came to farming. I have since realized that it’s no better for women here too.

Curious: have you asked female managers if they have any grievances? How do you know that they don’t face ‘these problems’?

Most good employees do this quarterly at performance reviews. Asking for feedback is absolutely the norm, and good managers will give it to an employee in an honest fashion. I've seen truculent employees of either gender giving a hard time to managers of either gender.

I also don't think that the sort of screaming you described is ever an appropriate activity in which any manager should engage. If you don't like the work he's doing, fire him; a "a voice quivering, temple throbbing, blue vein screaming episode" is never appropriate.

I think yelling is a signal to attract attention in a fear inducing/adrenaline charged situation. I was a little fearful for my own safety and I figured that if I was loud enough, someone would hear me if things got out of control.

To clarify: this wasn’t an office environment. This person was a tradesman and we were working alone with a lot of heavy tools around.

> voice quivering, temple throbbing, blue vein screaming episode at a guy

Because of inappropriate touching, boundary testing conversation, bone headed adherence to defense of a lack of skill and zero inclination to accept sensible advice.

We don't know enough to form a useful judgement. But, taking your description at face value, it sounds like the employee needs to simply be let go.

I am not seeking judgement. Or asking that people believe me. That has no value to me. It was an example of my reality.

It’s an example of how I don’t have this added aggression and hassle if I worked with an all female team. Things just get done quicker if I work in all women team. It’s like we have a hive mind.

I don't know... I've met women very difficult to work with over the years. Men too.

I've heard some folks have difficulty working with one gender in particular, usually due to personality conflicts of some sort.

It’s always good to have options out. Many men and women work well together without conflict. But I don’t think work places should be forcing some kind of golden ratio for men and women.

What is important is that 1. Work gets done. 2. We extract maximum efficiency for maximum reward 3. Minimize conflict and increase productivity + work satisfaction.

If this can be achieved with gender segregation at work/school, then why fight it in the name of gender equality.

Yeah, it's an interesting idea. I don't think the current political climate would allow it however. Folks are likely too sore about past forms of segregation to entertain the concept.

So this is incredibly misguided and sexist. But I've lived as a man and a woman, I feel qualified to comment.

The problem is that society holds men and women to a different standard: women are expected to be in control of their emotions / self and men are not. If a woman's emotions come out (screaming or whatever) then she's unhinged, irrational. If a man does it, he's just blowing off steam or asserting himself. Men are not often held accountable for taking their emotions out on people, be they anxiety, depression or insecurity -- so it's not a skill that most men have a chance to develop. This is about societal attitudes held by both men and women, not anything that men have done wrong.

In reality, there are men who can control their emotions and not inflict them on others. It takes the right personality, a nurturing upbringing or lots of therapy, but they exist. It took me a lot of work to learn how to control my emotions to a degree that was considered appropriate for a woman -- even though my behavior hadn't changed. I'm still working on it. But I'm a better person for it regardless of gender, and I think everyone should be held to a high standard on owning their feelings and not inflicting them on those around us.

> women are expected to be in control of their emotions / self and men are not

> Men are not often held accountable for taking their emotions out on people, be they anxiety, depression or insecurity

I think a more accurate framing is that women are not allowed to be angry or aggressive, and men are not allowed to be sad or vulnerable. In public, at least. Consider how much more tolerable, and therefore common, it is for a woman to cry in public than a man.

So when men feel anxiety, depression, or insecurity, they express it in the socially acceptable way for men: anger and irritability. Presumably women feel angry a lot more frequently than they show, and have to find other ways to channel it. However, the latter is changing, because it is becoming much more acceptable for women to be angry and aggressive than it used to be.

Angry or aggressive behaviour is not socially acceptable for men, at least where I come from. Men are mostly expected to just not exhibit emotions publicly.

I guess part of my point is that men's emotions end up coming out whether they want them to or not. In trying to suppress one type of expression, it surfaces in other ways (anxiety disguised as "high standards" or "hard working" is a huge one here).

I had a Saudi colleague in mathematics who said she'd never experienced discrimination in mathematics in Saudi Arabia, simply because every mathematician she worked with on a daily basis was also female.

Saudi culture is sort of orthogonal to American culture, but it was an interesting comment.

I think you are probably right, though you could have left your diatribe about the men who work for you out. One could easily come up with equally typical scenarios to ridicule neurotic, shallow and emotionally unstable women. Each gender has its set of typical pathologies. But somehow we made it work, together, as a species, so there is some magic in the balancing the two.

Why is it a ‘diatribe’? It is my life. It is my work.

That each gender has its own set of pathologies is exactly my point. When they don’t complement each other, why not create an environment where each of us can be our best?

I am with you. I was just triggered by your unflattering, though probably accurate enough, characterization of the male psyche.

I didn’t mean to paint all men like so..I was giving an example of one instance in my own life experience..one of many that has shaped my opinion re gender segregation in higher education and work place. It was the most recent example that explained my own motivation to evangelize gender segregation.

Sure. I don't understand the competition argument though. In my HS and College years it did not matter if the top student was a man or a women, it just mattered if it was you or someone else. And as far as I recall men and women were fairly evenly matched. Why do you think they should compete separately?

I had to think about this. As a heterosexual, I want to say chemistry.

(Others have brought to non binary individuals but I have to confess that I can’t make assumptions about their dynamics.)

Sometimes I feel the same way with problem solving as I do when I am attracted to a person. It makes me wonder if competition and inter personal romantic chemistry are related wrt how our brain perceives it.

And there is limited/fixed mental bandwidth that we can only focus on one at a time? Just wool gathering..off the top of my head. What do you think?

> I think that in formative years, children should not be gender segregated, but when rubber hits the road at specialized and advanced education, it’s better if there is gender segregation because there is so much competition and rivalary between genders when both are at peak reproductive phase.

That's probably the right general idea, but I think you have the time frame wrong. Separate classes starting around 5th grade (10 years old), joining back after high school.

I base this on brain development stages. After several years of childhood, your brain starts reorganizing itself. It prunes a bunch of connections, and strengthens others. This processes takes several years. It generally starts earlier in girls, around 10 or 11 years old, and later, around 15, in boys.

So starting around age 10 or 11, we have boys and girls of the same age at significantly different stages of brain development, which I suspect means that teaching methods that are best for the boys aren't best for the girls, and vice versa. Hence, separate classes would be better.

Once it starts in boys, the initial changes are more rapid than they were in the girls, so boys do catch up although in some areas it does take a long time. So probably no need to separate classes by gender at college or beyond.

What you are saying is that since you prefer something everyone should do the same.

And what you prefer is the correct choice for everyone ...

Of course not... I am soliciting opinions.

What do you feel about what I said? TIA.

You just said you advocate gender-segregated education.

How is that not a statement on what you believe to be correct for everyone?

I did say that ‘this is a BS theory of mine’ and that I would like to know what others feel about it.

It’s right at the beginning of my comment. Do you want to read it again?

very trumpian actually, similarly how he says:

"some people say", "so I heard" then spews off things to argue a point and convince you. Then there is an easy escape, I "just heard that"

same way, no one writes so many lines of arguments, in such detail, then say, oh it is all BS

Ok. I don’t know what you want me to say. You made queries about my comment. I attempted to answer it. How you interpret it is not my concern. But thanks for your feedback.

Work places discriminating based on gender would be terrible. There shouldn't be "male only" work places just like there shouldn't be "female only" work places.

This would be a regression to the dark ages of grouping and separating people based on biological identity, not a good idea and honestly not helpful.

There is zero evidence that shows these ideas actually make students or working environments healthier and more productive.

I disagree. I think pay scale disparities would also disappear if women had gender segregated work spaces. It would be a more supportive environment and less conflict. I suspect efficiency would also improve at work places. Throw a picnic or party or twice a week meeting or something for everyone to meet up...but having equal strength and equally compensated and mirror hierarchies of gender segregated work places would be a good experiment.

I don’t know how non binary people would feel about this and would like to hear more from them.

> pay scale disparities would also disappear if women had gender segregated work spaces.

Okay so here's the thing. Even with my typically-European limited view into the salaries of others at my work places, from what I've observed and from the statistics I have consulted the actual "pay scale disparities" between genders are tiny / non-existent if you compare the same jobs. There is a major difference in gender-split GDP (~15-25 % depending on the country), but that is mostly down to women and men having different distributions of jobs, and not down to women getting paid less for the same work. Whether, globally speaking, different job distributions are a major issue, is an open debate.

Yes. It is a limited view.

> I don’t know how non binary people would feel about this and would like to hear more from them.

That it reeks of biological essentialism and is exclusionary by its nature.

Well..we could always give it a try as an experimental space and see if it works. No harm in learning more. Obviously it’s not the dark ages anymore. Why shouldn’t we adopt practices and check what works if it makes the world a better happier place?

I think I've heard of this separate but equal idea before. Can't quite remember, but I don't think it worked out too well.

I'm not understanding what the gender segregation during advanced/specialized education is meant to accomplish. Also, can you expand on this: "I believe that there will be equality between the genders and less conflict if they don’t compete with each other in the same space". Is that space referring just to school or even further than that?

I want to preface with ‘only in my experience’, ok?

Men are a distraction while trying to focus on work/studies. And they are constantly vying for attention too and it’s flattering.

From my perspective as female, it took a lot of my mental space and time to engage male attention. First we take a lot more time to groom ourselves. Physical attractiveness is time consuming for women(just trust me on this) and there is also competition amongst women ..but in a different way than how men compete with each other.

At the risk of generalizing, I would say that women/girls are more mental/emotional than men..these emotional space shares the same mental bandwidth as the focus and concentration required to do work at hand.

Again..I am generalizing and I want to say that this is my opinion only.. women need to learn how to compartmentalise their mental spaces. I would likely have several mental ‘rooms’...one for work..one for family..one for fun..one for men(or more depending on how many men catch my interest etc). The key is to manage traffic of thoughts and bandwidth to each of these rooms.

I won’t pretend to know how men think. (But would like to know more!), but my gut instinct suggests to me that men have different thought processes and mental modes than women.

So your hypothesis is that all of this `overhead` (mental space/time) would be removed or at least reduced if men only worked with other men and women only worked with other women? I guess the first thought is that this only considers heterosexuality. Then there's the fact that these are generalizations, and so the premises don't apply to everybody. Do you put more effort into your appearance just because there will be men there or because it's a work environment and you want to be professionally presentable?

I guess the traditional thinking is that we want to have different thought processes and mental modes all working and collaborating together as much as possible. Wouldn't it be limiting to a lot of people to cut off interaction just because of their sex? Is there really a certain way that only men think and a different certain way that only women think?

I'm trying to think of my own work environment where I, as a man, am actually in the minority on my team. I just can't think of a project where I think that gender or sex made any difference to anything. Maybe since we're programmers and not dealing with lifting heavy things it's different? We also have a good mix in the leaders. I've had both female and male project managers, tech leads, team members, etc. I've seen all kinds of mixes of personalities between the genders too. I guess, only in my experience, I can't find a time where I feel a team of only men or only women would have done something better.

This is very strange to me. Have you asked the women in the team? I feel like no one would say that they prefer to work in segregated environments. Which is why it easy for me to say it as an outsider without any consequence. I say it because I have heard both genders have reservations about working as a team with the other gendered colleagues and peers.

There is no coming back from a politically incorrect comment after it’s out in the open. Gender segregation at high school/college was my original position..not at work necessarily. Altho that would be suitable for some group dynamics. This is just one such position.

I feel like somewhere along this thread it morphed from gender segregated educational environment(the original post was about STEM and gender) to work. I probably am partly responsible for that with my subsequent comments. Altho..I will read your comment again in leisure, consider my response and get back to you as soon as possible. Regards.

No, I don’t think I could present that question appropriately. The work part came up because one of your anecdotes in your original comment referred to a work scenario. I guess I assumed that you wanted segregation there, also, because of that.

How does this apply to nonbinary people? Not trying to poke holes just genuinely curious.

I don’t know. I have a few non binary friends. I find them more artistically inclined rather than STEM inclined.

I feel like creative pursuits tend be more collaborative and thrives better when there is more inter personal energy. Study(for me at least) is solitary. Artists and creative people flourish when there is a lot of back and forth of energies and they birth something from those interactions.

Within my circle of friends and acquaintances, I find that Uber-STEM thinking people are either asexual and/or autistic.(is there a correlation there? I don’t know..I haven’t looked into any studies about that) In my mind, I visualize both characteristics as though it is the blunt end of the emotional/social quotient. Obviously there are many who are in the middle and balanced, as it were..I am just picking on the ones see-sawing on both spectrums.

And I'm just kind of confused on, if there are specific gender-specific education, what happens to people who are agender, third gender, etc. Do they get to choose their own education, or is it assigned to them? How would they even know before self-actualization is fully realized in the brain for them to explore their own identities?

Good point. I don’t know.

To clarify: I am not saying that education must be segregated. I am just saying that spaces...personal spaces must be segregated. I am suggesting this because how/what women consider ‘personal space’ is different from how/what men consider ‘personal space’.

Speaking for myself..I can focus and concentrated better when my personal space is my domain..physical space as well as emotional/mental domain. I draw concentric circles around me and assign people there so they won’t cross the threshold of their boundaries. I have noticed that if they cross the assigned boundaries, my sense of everything becomes confusing and I am befuddled. There is tremendous loss of mental energy and time to rearrange everything back to where it belongs for optimal functioning.

But does this mean nonbinary people shouldn't get personal spaces, or their own personal space, and what happens when someone is genderfluid, etc, do they have to shift their personal space each time they feel more male/female?

I'm mostly just trying to understand how this is applicable within my circle of friends.

I don’t know. I haven’t given it much thought, but would like to know more. I am listening.

I'm confused- what are you listening for? I'm actually trying to listen to you and applying this philosophy that different gender identities require different spaces with my reality that there is a sizeable portion of the population that do not fall strictly on "male" or "female" identity.

Right. Like I said throughout this exchange, I don’t know.

I also think gender segregation should be an option. It is not a clear line demarcating the genders and separating them at the work place. Many men and women work well together in the same work place. My original comments were towards higher education in high school and college to remove the distraction of genders competition with different core strengths towards the same goal/standard.

I am listening = I am not contradicting you.

I am not advocating gender segregation but just gender segregated education.

That's quite literally what you're arguing for. Doesn't "jobs board and work spaces for JUST WOMEN" sound familiar to you? You're advocating for bringing us back the 1960s, and worse, the argument you're using is eerily close to "separate but equal." The format of that and "separate water fountains" is identical.

It’s a constant battle of wits dealing with men that it’s exhausting. It’s even worse than in an office environment because men think the tasks that involve physical prowess is their domain. They simply will NOT take orders from a woman. And it’s exhausting trying to make every instruction sound like a ‘suggestion’. I am running out of time and honestly the man was just using brute strength to achieve what physics could do...

And for every grudging acceptance of my way of doing things, I had to endure dumbass flirting. I just couldn’t stand it anymore. And then after every attempt to puff his chest, I have to listen to him talk about his wife because now he feels guilty for flirting. And it’s stuff I don’t need to hear.

Why not fire him?

Granted, given the obnoxious use of caps lock and lack of critical thinking skills, you probably run a small business. If so, you should be aware that companies are legally allowed to segregate for any reason under a certain level of employees.

https://www.eeoc.gov/employers/smallbusiness/requirements.cf...

> given the obnoxious use of caps lock and lack of critical thinking skills, you probably

If you post in the flamewar style to HN like this we will ban you.

If you attack another user personally like this we will ban you.

You're extremely familiar with HN. Don't do this again.

On the off-chance that I was spam-filtered again: I sent a message to hn@yc to keep my comments about metadrama off the site.