Professor tells student to 'get out of the Bay Area' if they want a girlfriend
sfgate.com
sfgate.com
It's probably more prominent in the bay area because of the status seeking cultures at Berkeley and Stanford, but it's everywhere. The culture has become more mercenary. The best thing I think young people could do is set the age of their dating profiles 20 years into the future and see what it's going to look like for them. Your relationship options are to work and adapt, or settle. No partner can sustain reinforcing your false narratives about yourself for very long, so find and drop those as fast as you can. As far as success goes, you're not a very good muse for yourself, and nobody else is going to shape you like a family, so have one. Also, stay fit. A lack of fitness is poverty after 30.
You have to pick up the bill.
Probably anyone who has spent significant time in an environment with a significant difference in gender ratios will have personally observed that this tends to change behave of people of both genders in those environments in regard to dating compared to people of the same gender in more balanced areas or in areas where the balance goes the other way.
[1] https://www.sfgate.com/lifestyle/article/Chart-using-Match-c...
Isn’t this literally just a commentary of the 104:100 male female ratio of SF & SJ? This is a commonly brought up argument regarding dating in the bay. It seems to be a statement saying “you’ll have an easier time dating when the demographic odds are in your favor.” Taking offense to that statement requires a lot of bad faith interpretation.
Blaming the inability of people to date on the "behavior of women" is uhm.. that's some card carrying misogynist talk right there...
Ironically, while there may be an overabundance of men in the Bay Area, with a particularly acute imbalance in center of the big tech industry, in Berkeley it's the other way around. Women have a +10% overrepresentation at the university, so at least numerically it is a piece of cake to find a female partner. At least, it should be for people who are normal and not creepy jerks with axes to grind.
90% percent of men that have dating experience outside the Bay Area will attest to the stark difference in women's behavior, and it's definitely not a good difference.
It is simple human psychology that we grow more entitled the more desirable we are. This is why balanced gender ratios are important.
You can't just call people's shared experience "misogyny." Pointing out commonly and repeatedly observed behavior differences is not that.
My point being, there seems to be some inconsistency in your comment. If simply changing location is helpful, as you claim, then that must have something to do with the dating pool (women in this case) in the two locations. (I don't have an opinion of my own on this, since I'm not dating.)
It depends on the kind of partner you're looking for. I met my now-wife (and many other great women) in the Bay Area. But some men are threatened by women who are as smart/capable (or moreso) than they are.
Thank god that women are different.
Shewchuk's comment is on the third image.
Both genders behave entitled and get an inflated sense of self worth when the gender ratio in the dating market favors them significantly.
If you have lived and dated in different places, it is 10,000% true that women in the Bay Area behave on average differently (to put it kindly) than women in say NYC or a Midwest town.
You can't just call people's experience misogyny if it you don't like it. This isn't misogyny, it's just straight up fact that nearly every guy in the Bay has experienced.
There is a vast difference between having equal numbers and large imbalance, and it does impact behavior.
If you were a senior SWE with sexy credentials in the Bay during its latest tech boom, say between 2010 and 2020, you were inundated daily with recruiter spam and offers to join sketchy early stage startups that were clearly never going to take off.
Were you nice to those recruiters? Did you take the time to gracefully let them know that you weren't interested in that specific opportunity, wishing them good luck in their search? Maybe the first time? Maybe the first ten times? But after hundreds, possibly thousands of those requests years later, it becomes a joke, you start seeing them at the same level as Nigerian prince scammers, they're not even fully human in your mind.
https://www.kqed.org/news/11231284/does-san-jose-deserve-the...
But all too often in the Bay Area, laypeople talk about it without the gravity that it deserves. Unserious comments, like the professor talking about "artillery distance", are what you can't make in polite society. And I think that's good.
That's a common phrase in the US. It's just a marker of distance, like "a stone's throw." That's not what most people are objecting to.
A large gender skew is really, really bad for society and needs to be taken extremely seriously.
In what way? How could he have phrased his statement to make it "extremely serious" in your eyes?
A serious comment would have also included an exhortation to the student to get their act together and stop thinking of life in terms of "looking for a girlfriend" -- the student he was replying to comes off as in some serious need of self-confidence, something that most well-adjusted people seek out in a partner.
> would have treated this as a systemic problem rather than commenting on any individual or group's behavior.
All systemic problems of the kind you're talking about involve the behavior of a specific group. Otherwise, you're talking about, what? All humans? All mammals? How is that useful to a guy trying to find a girl?
> get their act together and stop thinking of life in terms of "looking for a girlfriend"
What motivation do most men use to get their act together? Women. That's not a bad thing. It's human nature.
> the student he was replying to comes off as in some serious need of self-confidence, something that most well-adjusted people seek out in a partner.
And you don't think moving to an area where it's easier to get a date is going to help with that?
> All systemic problems of the kind you're talking about involve the behavior of a specific group. Otherwise, you're talking about, what? All humans? All mammals? How is that useful to a guy trying to find a girl?
You're not wrong at some level, but phrasing matters a lot when you're talking about sensitive topics like this! Someone commenting on "stark" differences in "behavior" comes off as much more of a creep than someone making the more general point that it can be harder to find someone with a gender skew.
By the way, the idea of a gender skew has been disputed -- apparently, Berkeley has more female students than male ones. You can find other comments pointing that out.
> What motivation do most men use to get their act together? Women. That's not a bad thing. It's human nature.
I don't think that's true -- I've never heard any of my male friends say they were inspired by anything like that. Even if it is the case, it doesn't seem that much like human nature.
Personally speaking, the idea of getting my act together so I can find a partner is completely alien to me. My main motivation for getting my act together has been so I can fulfill my responsibilities to the people (and animal) I care for.
> reply to a commenter (not the OP) dumping on an unrelated question about job advice.
Still an answer to a question. Do you see the direction this keeps going? You keep contradicting yourself.
> Someone commenting on "stark" differences in "behavior" comes off
And what does that matter? Do you think if he quoted some research it would have "come off" better? It wouldn't have. You fail to grasp why some people have an issue with what the professor said. It has nothing to do with how he said it.
> I've never heard any of my male friends say they were inspired by anything like that
Procreation is one of the if not THE major motivating factor in human behavior. I'm sure I could find a couple of dozen citations for that, if you'd like.
That's a common phrase in the US.
If he just said it’s better to expand the geographical search due to not enough women in general that just makes sense. The additional step to insult all women in the area was wild
That said, none of this has ANY bearing on his clearly misogynistic statements
What's clear is that you're not treating the man's actual words with any sort of grace or understanding. It's not sporting and it's against HN's guidelines. Assume good faith.
he never said there were not good life partner, only that they were INACECSSIBLE. he was literally answering to basically an (literal) incel complaining to not have luck with women
If there was an under supply of men, for example after a war, the same thing would be true of the few remaining men.
His mistake was apologising when I suspect he knows he is correct, or more broadly, not having sufficient opportunity or resources to leave an institution that would force him to retract a correct analysis of a market.
No. He did not use the words "worse" or "categorically" -- you did.
Yes he did:
“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.”
Slightly, but only in the 20–24 cohort. If you're looking for women 25 and older, there's a higher ratio of women than men in San Francisco County than there are in California as a whole, and nationwide as a whole.
People just hate to hear that the problem is them.
It doesn't mean women are bad. But the dating environment can be less advantageous to men in the bay area than other markets. Moving can be logical without implying anything wrong with women.
Again, he never said the word "all", and much turns on that word. It is you who is attempting to destroy nuance, by twisting what he did say into something more shocking, in the hope that more pearls will be clutched.
It is just not worth sifting through the sand to find the "normally" behaving women here. It is so much easier to date in literally any other city that it's not even funny.
Especially by something written on an Internet forum by somebody we don’t know who probably was not talking about us.
Doesn't seem to be going that way, though, does it?
And not only do we feel offended for things that are or even simply could be about us, but also for others, and even when those others do not feel offended themselves.
The argument made (or implied) is that when women are not "plentiful" (his words) then you have a skewed dating market where men will on average date less desirable women than they otherwise would (and the least desirable men will find themselves without any dates).
Anyway, I don't endorse the professor's statement (and it's certainly inappropriate in a professional context). But the professor is at least correct in pointing out that a gender imbalance on the dating market makes dating significantly harder.
https://www.bestplaces.net/docs/studies/solocities_gap1.aspx
When I was looking for a partner, I moved to DC.
This is a highly inappropriate comment for anyone to make, let alone a Professor.
Cal already has some issues with misogynistic professors, with one Prof at Haas recently getting suspended for inappropriate sexual relations with grad students
Edit: made quite clearer
I am an average looking PoC man and I've done fine, as have my peers of all races.
Also, assuming statistics implied ability to get laid is plain dumb, especially in a metro like the DMV which has a very robust lesbian community (according to my lesbian friends, it's their version of what SF is for Gay Men)
Furthermore, assuming that relationships or sex are a numbers game imply that deep down, you assume that you deserve getting sex or a relationship. This removes the onus on the individual to change themselves.
Plus who said anything about sex?
Basically, a guy making a qualitative generalization of all women in a specific area is just scuzzball behavior.
It's not as egregious as rape or inappropriate touching, but it's absolutely a Title IX violation, and just a bad thing for someone in an authority position to say.
The professor is just saying that some markets are tougher than other markets. The BA. LA, I imagine. NYC. I can surely add Milan to the list.
Good. It better not.
> some markets are tougher than other markets
Fundamentally that is the issue.
Assuming that relationships or sex are a numbers game imply that deep down, you assume that you deserve getting sex or a relationship.
This removes the onus on the individual to change themselves.
Otherwise, you get Trump.
Which is what is going to happen again in November.
And no, while I am not a fan of Biden either, Trump once is more than enough to me.
Telling people that to get what they want they need to go where it is is offensive now. You don't like the dating culture where you live? Go somewhere else. The dating culture where you live is objectively abysmal? Go somewhere else. If you're a man in Alaska you're bound to get similar advice, and nobody will complain.
Telling them they should go to Chicago [1] and that they will be shocked by the difference in price and ease of getting into deep dish pizza restaurants there is not going to be offensive to deep dish pizza chefs elsewhere.
[1] I've never been to Chicago. I'm just assuming that its reputation as the deep dish pizza capitol is at least partly due to having a lot of deep dish pizza places.
*except supply and demand, economics, evolution, biology and statistics
I'm not justifying what he said in any way, but he touched a sacred third rail which is going to make people not want to be associated with his name in any way, at least for a few years until everybody forgets this ever happened. Possible he will resign due to pressure or ostracism.
If any professor did that when I was in college, there would be a public apology within a week.
You say it, you are pushed to back-pedal otherwise you might lose your job. Isn’t that, more or less, the situation we are talking about?
I'm glad the professor apologized, at least.
I don’t think the professor was saying anything regarding the fact that women cannot do well in the field, not at all. That would have been terrible, I agree.
If you're from a minority group in an area, it is _extremely_ unpleasant to hear yourself being talked about as if you're the object of a tactical military operation. "Artillery distance", really.
Agree that if he'd said that women can't do well in the field, that would be much worse.
Artillery distance just means 100 miles or something like that. I agree that saying “keep 100 miles from the Bay Area” would have sounded better, but I don’t think it’s that important (again, just how I read it).
Old (and incorrect): the student explicitly asked the professor for dating advice.
Updated: the student sought advice for what to do with life after school. https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fpreview.redd....
The professor then replied to this commenter, not the OP, with his thought about how women in "artillery distance" of the bay area have stark behavior differences. Some of those women he was talking about were, presumably, his own students.
[1] https://www.reddit.com/r/berkeley/comments/1bitr75/another_d...
edit to add:
A model response from a professor who did want to weigh in on this might be something like "Stop thinking about life in terms of looking for a girlfriend, and start meeting new people and forming relationships with them, some of which may turn romantic." The student's attitude is just not a healthy way to go about life, and the general demeanor they have (that kind of response to a job-advice post) is not conducive to actually forming healthy relationships.
Here is the student asking:
“ Currently the only drive that makes me still want to try my best and fight for my future is knowing that getting a gf is even harder, like fr. I only know 4 girls (not counting the ones that are virtual or expired due to haven't talked to them for too long), 2 of them their parents know my parents so I can't do anything. One of them friendzoned + not interested, one of them about to expire cuz haven't talked since last month. I know for sure I'm not getting a gf at least till I graduate, 100% sure. For getting a job right after 1 graduate, I know it's still somewhat possible at this stage, as long as I try my absolute best not to get distracted too much, plan my days and use all possible time allowed, seek help when needed, and not get affected too much by anxieties and negative emotions.”
Full post: https://twitter.com/oliverjohansson/status/17702150244785482...
Edit due to rate limit: sorry you're right, Reddit was being odd on my phone. I've updated my previous post to say the student was asking for life advice after school, and was not explicitly asking for dating advice.
(You need to click on the right arrow to see the full series of images on Reddit.)
I happen to think this is terrible advice, for whatever my 2 cents are worth.
Also, the advice to focus on meeting people and making friendships first is what _I_ got, and it's worked out pretty well for me. Even at times when I was single, enjoying what I had rather than pining for things I didn't was a much healthier attitude to life.
The way the professor put thing was less than ideal, to put it mildly. That was lacking in nuance and unprofessional. But "Stop thinking about life in terms of looking for a girlfriend, and start meeting new people and forming relationships with them, some of which may turn romantic" is excessively politically correct. That is: avoiding an unpleasant truth and coming up with platitudes instead to avoid it.
I've never been to the US, much less the bay area, so I can't vouch for the correctness of his views, but I have lived in different places in Europe, and there's definitely a difference in dating difficulty level between places. I don't entirely know why, there it definitely exists.
People want to have a loved one in their life. They want to have sex. They want to have that "special person" to laugh with. Your platitude sounds nice on the face of it, but it sounds a lot less nice if you've been without any of that for years, have dealt with uncountable rejections, and just feel lonely. "Friends" can only fill so much of that void. And not everyone is so extroverted they want to have lots of friends in the first place. And while some people may be fine without a partner for years, others really do have a need for it – different things work for different people.
I think it's reasonable to talk about all of this, and "dating is kind of hard here" is fair advice to give.
> The advice to focus on meeting people and making friendships first is what _I_ got, and it's worked out pretty well for me.
Yes, but you're a woman. This is significantly harder as a man. Women, especially, but also men, tend to treat you as hostile-by-default in the public sphere.
I've had plenty of girlfriends over the years, but by and large meeting one is work. "Just hang out and have the craic and end up with a girlfriend" can work, but is rare. Maybe if you're one of those very charismatic people, but most of us aren't. And again: not everyone wants to be doing this all the time in the first place.
People talk about "male privilege", but I like to call it "experience blindness": being blind for experiences of people outside of your own. This emphasises that it exists in both directions.
Related previous comment: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36473719 (not just the comment I linked to, also my reply to the top comment). While there are also ugly comments there, in general I found that to be an interesting discussion).
Rates of unmarried people are on a steep increase[0]. If a family is important to you, go somewhere where that's more likely to happen (e.g. good dating odds, other people with similar goals). The bay area is probably not that place for either sex.
[0] https://www.census.gov/library/visualizations/2021/comm/neve...
I'm not saying you should be careless, but I am saying that the way you put in effort is by having good, healthy relationships with others around you. I think the kid needs guidance and mentorship on how to become a self-confident person more than anything.
Completely agreed that it is harder to find people to meet. But also, the people you meet in your late 20s/early 30s will be much more mature than those you meet earlier in life, so it's not all bad.
Gender skew is a very serious problem -- but the student is primarily in need of guidance about self-confidence. And again, some comments have pointed out that there are more women at Berkeley than men.
It's not just about gender ratios though. In some areas, girls have no qualms about pursuing a Mrs degree in engineering; it's a practical way to achieve their goals and find a happy life. In the bay, you might find yourself on a petition to be fired if you suggest that a wise strategy for a boy who wants to pursue engineering and wants to find "marriage material" might be to find a school with the type of girls who are pursuing their Mrs in engineering.
It never ocurred to me to make a case out of it. What a missed opportunity.
But, as a woman, I don't think you ought to be offended. His point is in your favour. He is saying there are too few women in the area and the industry which puts pressure on the behaviour of both sexes. This says nothing derogatory about women, unless you are primed to look for it.
Toddlers & children understand this.
“Murder is one of the things not allowed in our society.”
“Oh, you can kill whoever you want. There will be consequences to your killings, but you can still kill people. You just have to accept the consequences. Toddlers & children understand this.”
I've generally found people complaining about things they "can't say," especially around topics like this, are utter clowns who can't grasp the basics of communication. Again, you can say whatever the hell you want. Some people will love it, some people will ignore it or not care, and some people will get pissed at you. If you run crying to the hacker news boards about it, instead of reflecting on the reaction you got to the thing you said to understand why you were cEnSoReD, I don't have time or patience to hear your complaint.
> If you want a girlfriend, get out of the Bay Area. Almost everywhere else on the planet is better for that. I’m not kidding at all. 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
I take issue with that last sentence which is vague enough to be a dog whistle of sorts and implies it is women who are somehow at fault and who need to change their behavior.
I learned awhile ago that nuanced perspectives surrounding women are pretty lacking in this site, however. I expect this post to be flagged or downweighted within an hour.
This is a positive statement which means that it is stating something that the author thinks is true, not something they think ought to be true. If you don't think it is true then offer a rebuttal. But people like you reading this sentence and then doing a round of mind reading and then responding to the fiction in your head is the reason we can't have debates anymore.
And for what it’s worth, when someone is vague in this fashion, some amount of inference is required.
> I take issue with that last sentence which is vague enough to be a dog whistle of sorts and implies it is women who are somehow at fault and who need to change their behavior.
We read this very differently. I read it as basically a reminder that people don't put in effort if they don't have to and that people respond to incentives. To take an example, how many devs were pretty lazy at work before the market tightened up vs right now? A change in scarcity can sometimes lead to some pretty big changes in behavior.
I also didn't read it as women need to change their behavior, as it was the student that the professor was explicitly telling to change (specifically their choice of location). If you want it to generalize it, it could be taken as advising men to change their behavior (and move out of SF en masse).
But it read to me that the professor in question thinks that women have a stronger position in the dating market than men in SF right now. If that's true (I have no personal knowledge about this), it seems unlikely that women would want to change that. I'm actually struggling to see how this could be a call for women to change their behavior. Would you mind elaborating on how you read this? It could be that I'm missing some subtext.
Thank god. Imagine being a tuition-paying female student and having you professor tell you...
"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.”"
The more that men in positions of power learn not to talk about the "behavior of women", the fucking better.
If you can’t afford a car, maybe stop car shopping at Mercedes dealerships, right? How can this possibly be controversial, unless you simply hunger for outrage.
What if he made a similarly broad judgment about all Asians or all Black people? It would be similarly fucked up.
Also he didn't generalize all women, he disparaged the local culture. It's not like he told the dude to turn gay because women suck or something like that.
I think it helps to not default to outrage and then examine things critically and unemotionally.
I'm not defending anything, just discussing details.
Why would you want to interpret this as an insult to women? Does it make you happier than the alternative?
If the prof wasn't personally asked and butted into someone elses convo, sure then I can see that being not appropriate
https://www.reddit.com/r/berkeley/comments/1bitr75/another_d...
Would that be advice that women would consider misogyny? Hard to believe it would.
This is basically the same sentiment that then professor uttered: seek to court women who want what you offer.
It’s astonishing how gender politics has completely blinded people to the nature and history of their own species.
Enough is enough. Stop backing down when a power group sets out to intimidate you to get more than its share.
The reason some people are acting like this is misogyny is because it’s a convenient trope that motivates shallow women.
There is real misogyny, you know. This kind of reaction to someone saying “play in a different league if you want to win more games” just hurts the cause of dealing with real misogyny.
> If you want a girlfriend, get out of the Bay Area. Almost everywhere else on the planet is better for that. I’m not kidding at all. 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
This reads to me like a reflection of his own difficulties with dating in the bay area, leading him to generalize. He's only human, and I don't think he should be burned at the stake for letting a bit of that humanity slip.
At the same time, it's not surprising that a professor is going to face some scrutiny for publicly deriding a population he will inevitably have to teach. In his apology he says he didn't mean to disrespect women, but he definitely did, the point of his statement was specifically to call out the women in that region as being so undesirable that eligible men should move rather than date them. That's a mean thing to say, and an unfair generalization to all the lovely ladies in the bay area. I think an apology suffices, hopefully he doesn't get fired for it.
I don't think he meant "undesirable". I understood it as "too selective", with the implication that there's too much male competition in the Bay.
The solutions are win, polyandry, do without, leave, and change the demographics.
The issue is relative numbers. If there's more demand for women than there is demand for men in the relevant cohort, some men's demand must be unsatisfied (barring polyandry). That's as true for 10M men and 8M women as it is for 10 men and 8 women. (After those 8x women are matched, there are 2x men left over.)
Moreover, single is the wrong characteristic - available is the right one. The ratio of available women to available men is even more lopsided than the ratio of women to men (in the relevant cohort). (It doesn't matter what definition you use for available as long as it's the same on both sides.)
And regarding the behavior yeah it's def said in a misognistic tone, but It's the same tone than women complaining a guy treated them like sh** because he had too many option.
Nothing new, nothing to be extra offended of even if it was radically unprofessionnal (as would be a women saying stuff like that)
That's not what I got from it at all.
What I got from it is: there is a gender imbalance in the Bay area. This gender imbalance favors women. That has an impact on women's behavior - presumably allowing women to be pickier. This makes the experience frustrating for men, hence the recommendation to go elsewhere.
Note, it's not the women who are the undesirable ones in this interpretation...
I'm pretty sure the professor is married.
LETS LOOK AT THE DATA