UC Berkeley community condemns EECS professor's misogynistic discussion post | Hacker News Reader

UC Berkeley community condemns EECS professor's misogynistic discussion post

dailycal.org

11 pointsetc-hosts30 comments

I had Shewchuk back some 15 years ago. Most memorable of all the faculty that included a couple Nobel laureates. Guy is pure genius

I was expecting a much worse comment than that to warrant an official condemnation and news coverage.

I'm not seeing what he said wrong in the context of dating for men in the bay area. Anyone will be more choosy if they have plenty of options, so yes women act different in heterosexual dating when they have tons of options (like in the bay area) vs where they have to compete with other women.

It's funny that it's labeled misogynist when he wasn't condemning women in general, just women in Silicon Valley

You can be misogynistic towards any number of women, all the way down to 1. And geography isn't a differentiator here

For those who are not aware, dating in Bay Area is trash !!! Amen. I will take down-voting and ban. I had better luck dating in Switzerland, than SF.

I fail to see what is so wrong with the advice given. My wife has a good friend (a childhood neighbor, a woman) who's having trouble finding a man to be with and the advice given by my mother-in-law and her mother was to move to a place with more men than women. Various suggestions included Alaska, the Oil Fields of ND (she's a teacher, which I hear are in demand in these places), etc.

It seems to me that for some reason, any dating advice that might benefit men is automatically assumed to be misogynistic. Is this advice any different than telling a man to go somewhere with lots of women of the kind he'd want to marry? What's so wrong with it.

The problem with the advice wasn't that it suggested going somewhere with more women, the problem was that it implicitly suggested that the behaviour of the local women made them poor prospects for dating.

I can imagine this would be very alienating for the women in his class.

I’m a current student in his class and the response from women (students and course staff) has been strongly negative for the most part.

I wonder what the men in those classes really think if they weren't scared of being publicly flogged

Your comment is ambiguous. Could you clarify? Are they negative toward the behavior that is being condemned, or negative toward the condemnation? Are they pro- or anti-Shewchuk?

i think it plays into the whole “men are scared of smart women” trope

Also “smart women are not as interested in men” trope…

I mean everyone is a 'poor prospect for dating' for the majority of people on the planet. No one should be offended by not being a good prospect for dating by one individual man / woman. For example, I'm a married man, thus would be a real terrible dating prospect in general.

Again though, it's the generalism that is offensive. It's the difference between "I disagree" (not offensive) and "You're always wrong" (offensive).

The most obvious problem with it is that he used an official classroom forum to dispense dating advice specifically to his students. Students who were just there to learn couldn't really avoid it.

The student asking for the advice probably shouldn't have been doing it on that platform either.

But due to the Professor's unprofessional remarks, what could have been a friendly and valuable teaching opportunity about workplace norms in the US instead turned into a gross objectification of a section of the students.

Saying your dating prospects are likely to be better outside berkeley and the bay area is not an 'objectification' of women. Porn is objectifying (which I'm guessing Berkeley has no issue with, but what do I know). Dating advice is not. Oh goodness, what have we come to. Topsy turvy world, truly.

That's not all he said.

Also, look up the meaning of the word 'prospect' before claiming it couldn't possibly be 'objectification'.

prospect

Something expected; a possibility

Chances.

Financial expectations, especially of success.

I'm confused what is objectifying about that. You think the term 'marriage prospect' is objectifying?

two things here- it's the bay area so people are progressive/sensitive to anything about gender especially generalizations. But also it looks like this guy has set himself up as anti-woke so I suspect people are happy to take any infraction to leadership to get him in trouble.

Remember, in Alaska, the odds are good, but the goods are odd.

some more context not provided in the Dailycal article

https://www.reddit.com/r/berkeley/comments/1bitr75/another_d...

It sounds like he was trying to make a spiraling student in crisis feel better. I think the main issue is he did it in public.

Damn.. That guy in the linked images "anonymous giraffe" is 5'2 student with no job and no money. The image right before that is an Indian guy literally paying people $20 to be introduced to girls.

Goodness gracious, forget Professor Shewchuk's response, check out the guy he was responding too. Absolutely unhinged. Talking about relationships "expiring" and paying people to introduce him women? Couldn't waterboard that out of me, and the man is giving it out for free.

Why is it that technology that was meant to connect us, only seems to divide us? How can someone be this isolated? Anyone got any insight into this? Discounting things like mental disorders or trolling.

> “You’ll be shocked by the stark differences in behavior of women in places where women are plentiful versus their behavior within artillery distance of San Jose and San Francisco,” Shewchuk said in the post.

So, he basically all he said the Bay Area is a sausage fest?

> Shewchuk identifies as a “Smith & Wesson 460XVR .45 caliber revolver” and uses the pronouns “death/deathem/deathself,” according to his personal EECS web page

He's willing to provoke the woke. That said, I expect anyone in the sociology departments to basically agree with him. Mating strategies vary with the environment.

I'm not sure how this quote figures in:

> “It just made me feel very objectified and uncomfortable because it was basically the implication that women in CS are just there to be potential dates,” Dang said.

Absent knowing anything about a woman, they could be a potential date. But "just" seems completely out of the blue.

The student's quote is especially bizarre because the professor's statement does not specify or even suggest that it is specific to computer science.

I mean he explicitly said go elsewhere for dates... So no the women in that class are not there for dates. That's literally what he said to avoid.

I don't know if he's correct or not, but regardless, it seems obvious this type of comment would land anyone in hot water.

It seems obvious if you're being pragmatic about the world we're living in. If you're trying to make a better world, what's obvious is that we need more people willing to say what they think is true. Telling people "go where the potential partners you prefer are" shouldn't land anyone into hot water.

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