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Comment by boredumb | Hacker News Reader

Good for you, if you kept going it goes on to complaing about... Antarctica being too white also. I'm sorry, a scientist in Antartica and you are spending your down time shadow boxing racism and sexism?

> Antartica: Is the harsh conditions and weather actually a form of redlining?

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As a non-white woman I appreciate she is sharing details about race and gender. If the ratios are so extreme, then these aspects would have been a relevant part of the experience. If you're a white man, I understand how you might be annoyed as it may feel like she's throwing jabs at your club.

It isn't a "club," I was born to my race and sex the same way you were.

It is a club in the sense that people self sort by ethnicity and gender in many social settings, and exclusion/discrimination against nonwhites & women is a well documented phenomenon.

this is speaking from the perspective as if that's all that happens, which its most definitely not

i can show you plenty of anti-white racism in the crime statistics, especially from people who are ungrateful to be allowed into the greatest countries where they're given better opportunities than 99% of the world population, isn't that crazy?

and all you talk about is exclusion

The whole ungrateful immigrant thing is really long in the tooth, man. Are their children supposed to be “grateful” too or can they be just as dissatisfied with their lives as the “indigenes”?

You sound like someone that either hasn't traveled the world or doesn't know what the word phenomenon means.

People sort into groups that have similar interests. This article is an example of it. Hey guys, who wants to go spend a year living in the middle of nowhere, in an ice cold region, dark enough to drive people insane, for mediocre pay?

For some people that sounds like an awesome adventure. For others its incomprehensible why anybody would even consider it. And these sort of interests, for both genetic and cultural reasons, are not going to be evenly distributed. It doesn't mean that e.g. hiphop or basketball is excluding non-blacks anymore than death metal and swimming is excluding non-whites.

There is a very obvious reason why “going on an adventure for mediocre pay” would be both more feasible and appealing, to members of a financially advantaged group.

It’s absolutely incredible that you’re ascribing this as a cultural phenomenon!

You're saying this as though the reason most people there are able to go is by living on savings. I don't think that's true - anyway with bread and board covered it's more likely to push away those with dependants than economic class. As someone who'd really like to work for my country's arctic/Antarctic program, I think the biggest barrier is getting qualified to work there, which is stuff like mountain leader courses etc. Mountaineering is not exactly a cheap hobby, but it's also fair that they only want to hire people with ice survival experience.

As for the sexism angle - yeah I can 1000% percent see being suck in a base for 6 months with nowhere else to go can be an extremely daunting prospect

It’s not just about being able to live on savings. When you come from a poorer community you can’t really afford to take on an expensive education and mediocre pay, because the outcome of that expensive education generally requires you also support your parents/family that helped you get there.

But moreover yeah, richer families can do more outdoorish activities like mountaineering and that feeds back into the loop of even being interested in something like this.

Many, and in America I'd dare say most, people just don't really like doing outdoor things. It's some of the cheapest entertainment you can have, as many parks and locations are completely free. You don't need to full on belaying to have a great time. All you really need is a tank of gas, a bus ticket, or a bike. There are just dramatic cultural differences that drive people in different directions.

Programs like ROTC/JROTC also offer countless outdoor opportunities alongside other possibilities for personal enrichment. I'm vehemently antiwar/hegemony, but I think training offered by ROTC/JROTC is extremely valuable for anybody and everybody. It's also completely free.

This is phrased as if you can't talk about the salience of a minority race and gender experience without racist and sexist deification of the minority and, as if by Netwon's third law, shitting on the majority. That's limited to the blurb, but it's still hurtful and inflammatory. It makes me wish we could just merge those forces back to neutral so we least seem like we're egalitarian (the pamphlet told me that was the goal, I recall).

I think it's difficult to dissociate this from the "how much can a banana cost?" style harmful ignorance. It makes sense to me that a woman who feels like she experienced sexism at the workplace from men have a poor opinion of the men there. Should she not say as such to make an appearance of neutrality, when she didn't experience a neutral or egalitarian environment?

>It makes sense to me that a woman who feels like she experienced sexism at the workplace from men have a poor opinion of the men there.

This does not make sense to me. I've experienced poor treatment from whites, blacks, men, women, straights, and gays. Should I have a poor opinion of whites, blacks, men, women, straights, and gays?

It seems a similar leap from her own experience and anecdotal reports from coworkers to tarnish the 700-ish strong male pop of McMurdo as "mediocre."

I mean, this is also obviously an anecdote. In her experience, she worked with mediocre men. I think we're all intelligent enough to recognize that she's obviously talking from her experience.

>I think we're all intelligent enough to recognize that she's obviously talking from her experience.

She is talking from her experience, sure, but she's certainly going well beyond that!

>There’s a phrase I heard tossed around that I think is pretty accurate: Antarctica: Full of badass women and mediocre men.

But even more than epistemology, this is uncivil. Polite society is made up of small restraints for the sake of others. This represents one more crack in that.

It's curious to me, that you're concerned she's extrapolated her experience to some set of men in Antarctica, and you've extrapolated her behavior to a crack in all of polite society in turn.

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