The post by this professor was probably correct, and in any case should be submitted to debate, but one of many things one is not allowed to say anymore in 2024.
If any professor did that when I was in college, there would be a public apology within a week.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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).
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 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).
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.
Why would you want to interpret this as an insult to women? Does it make you happier than the alternative?
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.
> 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.
> 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.
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.