Devolution
Member
You didn't even address my argument.
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Did women doom themselves by being technologically averse?
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You didn't even address my argument.
Orayn cited the null hypothesis, I believe. It acts as the default position until statistically proven otherwise, but it does require at least some measure of testing to be useful enough to draw conclusions.
I somewhat recall a documentary about how a boy's genitals were damaged soon after birth, after which he was raised as a girl. If I remember correctly, he became depressed, eventually committing suicide. Regardless, it would seem to me that gender also has some basis in the human neurophysiology, and it would be somewhat irresponsible to ignore the possibility, but I'm somewhat getting off topic.
The point is, I do agree that society should do away with the notions of what a certain gender can or cannot do. I'm just not so keen on the idea that a woman would shy away from engineering as a possible area of expertise primarily because she was forced with a Barbie rather than a Hot Wheels set as a kid, while denying that on an instinctual level, she might have somewhat preferred the Barbie. That isn't to say that societal pressures haven't shaped these desires as well, but any behavioral scientist can tell you that nature vs. nurture is a really false dichotomy. It seems to me somewhat presumptuous for the comic to just put that out there as if toys were the only problem, when other societal factors (lack of role models, discrimination, other forms of conditioning) might be at play.
I would think the role model situation as the echo of old ideas about gender roles in modern society, since women back then weren't even given much in terms of choice. Of course, my assumption is as unsubstantiated as any other...
Mammoth Jones
Member
If you're having fun then it's not a waste of time.
What argument? You seem to take issue with taking into "biological roots" account, because it is seemingly hard to prove and that it seemingly adds nothing to the discussion. I'm just saying that's short sighted. Just because you don't see the use, doesn't mean we should take out a factor out of the equation when we don't even know if it's insignificant.
I just used the whole gay/transgender as an example where "biological roots" did help. It's just analogy, which doesn't have to be exactly the same as the situation at hand.
You can establish that while also acknowledging the socialization that encourages differences and gender roles. It's not black and white. There are universal differences between men and women in brain structure and chemistry and hormonal balances that affect behavior. Ignoring them is just silly.
When it comes to differences in career decisions between the sexes (as well as performance in any given career), that's something that is the product, I'm sure, of mostly if not almost entirely a lifetime of socialization.
Devolution
Member
Let me spell it out, evopsych =/= studying the biology behind gender identity and sexuality.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
Oh, is evolutionary psychology not true? That's quite an interesting assumption that we probably don't all share.
But I don't think most of the biological arguments are evolutionary-based. Most of them are based upon direct studies of men and women in the fields of neuroscience, childhood development, etc.
Are you still focused on that analogy? Just ignore it.
The issue is that you seem think that biological reasons is a dropable factor when discussing a "human interaction". Demon seems to have worded my thoughts in a better way.
PezDispenser
Banned
The whole premise of this thread is fucking embarrassing, if you seriously think learning keyboard shortcuts and downloading Napster in windows 95 somehow trained you to be an elite computer detective any more than casual web browsing/facebook using does today, you are just lying to yourself.
If you want to talk about "power users" or whatever, granted they are mostly male, but they are such a small subset of the general population (even just looking at say, age 30 and under) that it doesn't really make sense to single out women; asking why and only why they in particular don't make up a larger part of the subset only serves to illuminate some deep-seeded sexism or frustration.
I'll also add that while STEM is obviously huge going forward, you may be surprised to learn that some important occupations will still require verbal and interpersonal skills, which, if I may cast my own lazy generalizations, most "power users" seem to have doomed themselves by becoming adverse to.
BTW, I'm a male in the STEM field who has built his own PCs for the past 10 years.
If you want to talk about "power users" or whatever, granted they are mostly male, but they are such a small subset of the general population (even just looking at say, age 30 and under) that it doesn't really make sense to single out women; asking why and only why they in particular don't make up a larger part of the subset only serves to illuminate some deep-seeded sexism or frustration.
I'll also add that while STEM is obviously huge going forward, you may be surprised to learn that some important occupations will still require verbal and interpersonal skills, which, if I may cast my own lazy generalizations, most "power users" seem to have doomed themselves by becoming adverse to.
BTW, I'm a male in the STEM field who has built his own PCs for the past 10 years.
charlequin
Banned
People always bring this up as if the cultural history of the world is still a secret. We know many things about gender in societies throughout human history -- enough to know that many of the things that people call immutable today are anything but.
It's not that biology couldn't possibly play any role in the gender roles of our society today -- but whatever role it might play is far subtler and more complex than the picture painted by gender essentialists. There is indeed real science being done to investigate the intersection of biology with sex and gender, but it has nothing to do with "proving" that women are "naturally" disinterested in science or any nonsense like that.
Absolutely.
cutmeamango
Banned
First, this "argument" of belittling evolutionary psychology as the likes of a pseudoscience is amazingly ignorant.
Second, the attempts to explain or at least inquire these subjects do not happen exclusively on evolutionary psychology, since this is a branch of other studies.
As I replied charlequin:
All connect on understanding this.
But as shown in that topic you agree with:
Which gives stupidity a bad name.
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And of course, it seems that any question kicks the idea of our unnatural selection exisiting to the gutter.
I'm sorry, but I don't follow. In what way will most jobs be technological in nature?
If people will only be needed for tech roles who will be doing the non-technological jobs, such as management, legal, marketing, advertising, law enforcement, politics, etc?
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
I think the current generation of girls that are growing up will be just as versed in technology. Since the 2000s, I really think technology has grown beyond a world of nerdy male computer geeks. Between Nintendo reaching out to female gamers, social media, smartphones, tablets, etc, it is now a normal part of life for the younger generation of females. I have no doubt that a lot of them will see it as a legitimate "real world" career when they are older.
Extra Sauce
Member
I've been working for a major IT company since September, and my biggest shock has been to see how computer illiterate most employees are. They can draw fancy charts explaining computer systems, but don't ask them to figure out how to create a personal folder in Outlook.
Basically, computers will always be like cars. Most people don't know how they work under the hood. I used to worry about my job security as a tech support guy in a world where young people are raised with computers, but I have come to realize that I have nothing to worry about.
Basically, computers will always be like cars. Most people don't know how they work under the hood. I used to worry about my job security as a tech support guy in a world where young people are raised with computers, but I have come to realize that I have nothing to worry about.
charlequin
Banned
You're thinking of David Reimer, who was assigned as a girl after a botched circumcision. That case tells us quite a bit about how an individual's personal gender expression is affected by biological factors, but it doesn't tell us anything about whether there are any kind of innate differences between all men and all women.
The toy thing is a convenient representation for the real problem, but you're right that it's certainly not the whole of it. Factors of subtle expectation on the part of adults and other children, as well as institutional and social barriers erected throughout life, all combine to discourage women from these fields, much moreso than any one decision in childhood.
BocoDragon
or, How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Realize This Assgrab is Delicious
But where in history have there been examples of women who used computers? I don't think the "cultural history" angle can work here. If this was a matter of "can women be leaders" you'd have a point.. but here?
What if there is something more appealing about a solitary role poking around in a computer that is inherently more appealing to more men than women? I'm not arguing that it is, but what if?
Computers are a kind of introverted, left-brained activity. It highly appeals to that hyper left-brained condition: autism, and its higher-functioning cousin, aspergers. Autism is an overwhelmingly male condition. About 1 in 50 men has the condition in some form, compared to just 1 in 300 women.
So think about it. There might be something to figure out here. There is science to be done here. If you need to adjust society to promote females in technology careers, this is the step you need to figure out how to adjust it.
This is not to say there are no inherent biological preferences (however relevant it may be), but it would be a disservice not to mention that women did constitute most of the human computing force during WWII, and that a few of them went on to become some of the first programmers.
Femmeworth
Banned
Just because computers are sort of unprecedented means squat. How many women were engineers in the past?
Fixed that to apply to myself. Can go both ways.
For me personally it's not really about men or women though, just those who are into technology and those are aren't.
charlequin
Banned
But it is a pseudoscience. The core of evopsych depends on factually unsupported models of mind that are oft-derided by those engaged in more in-depth study of psychological, cognitive, and neurological functions; their theories rely primarily on untestable propositions that cannot be verified and often rely on treating culturally-specific behaviors as universals.
Lumping a whole bunch of categories ranging from neuroscience (a huge field with innumerable subcategories and many internal controversies and areas of ongoing study) to "sociobiology" (more or less a single person's stew of evopsych, biological determinism, and ideology) does a disservice to the actual complex study of how biology and psychology intersect.
DUFFMCWALIN
Member
I agree. This makes the most sense to me. The way your raised is most likely how you will live your life.
Ada Lovelace is sometimes credited as the first computer programmer in history.
I agree too, and I also think it's how you are treated in context as well.
For example, I work in a small cohort of 10 people (just one male in the group) and I'm by far the techno guru of the bunch (I'm also the youngest, though). However, the one dude in the group is kinda obsessed with being the "fix-it technology guy" even though he is really incompetent and not very knowledgeable. Because he's so obsessed I just hang back and let him do most things because I think it really upsets him when he gets outdone by somebody, and being "the only male" is sort of part of his identity in the group.
He'll even race to where our meetings are and turn on the projectors and computers for guest speakers or whoever is leading the meeting so he can fulfil this role, lol.
There's also this weird kind of thing where it's hard to speak up when I do know how to fix something because there's always this expectation that I'm stupid when it comes to these things. It's hard to explain but it feels like there's this weird psychological barrier that's hard for me to break through, especially with people I don't know well, or if somebody has already made a disparaging comment towards me (about my abilities). I kinda feel like nobody will listen to me or take me seriously even though I know I have the correct solution.
Femmeworth
Banned
That's a pretty shallow way of measuring whether something's worth doing.
cutmeamango
Banned
Biology and Psychology are huge fields. Psychology does not function at the same level that Biology, their intersection will occur as far as psychology is contained in biology.
Evolutionary Psychology is not a pseudoscience. Their process is exactly trying to tie what we can understand separately from cognitive and neurological functions applying to pyschology. Working with other relatively new progressive areas, will certainly hinder what can be achieved, but it is not the intent of the subject to start proving hypothesis as concrete analysis of data but to pursue new understandments on what we have.
Seems to me you have a completely wrong understandment of the subject.
You could say there is a redundancy in listing neuroscience as a whole and having cognitive biology and ethology too, but for the latter their primary concern is not to tie with the function of the brain (nervous system, actually), hence the inclusion.
And once again, a not uncommon, but clearly misguided knowledge of a field. Social Biology is not the stew of one man. Certainly many fields start with the thoughts of one propositioner or the name is coined by a person, but the idea of relating environmental factors to the shaping of social relations, and the "mutation" of social relations due environmental factors is not new or dumb, studies of parental care prove that much. But oh Social Darwinism is a scary monster, so lets be ignorant on the subject as a whole.
I grew up around boys, which in turn made me very much a tomboy when I was a little kid. I never wanted Barbies and was very into Nintendo and Ninja Turtles. For this reason, I've grown up playing video games, and they will always be something I love. Since then, I've grown to enjoy a lot of girly things and I'm not as much of a tomboy as I used to be. I still tend to prefer the friendship of males because I end up having more interests in common with them. I do believe that how a person is raised has a lot to do with it.
charlequin
Banned
....really?
Why would there be? The way that interests and individual societal roles break down between genders is one of the things that's most fluid across the boundaries of different societies through history. Most jobs that aren't physically linked to one gender, including complex and intellectual ones, have been seen as exclusively male and exclusively female in different places and times -- take medicine, which was once seen as an exclusively female field before becoming male-oriented, or clerical work, which did the exact opposite.
Half and half
Member
I think the large breasted video game characters, E3 booth babes, and our sexist and often hostile society has a lot to do with this.
You have a pretty narrow definition of games then. Since there are plenty of games that are female friendly, contrary to popular belief.
Zoe
Member
Have you actually worked with any of these 20+ year old women?
Scratch that, have you ever worked, like, anywhere?
Devolution
Member
Not in the genres some of us are interested in.
Half and half
Member
Yes yes. Of course there are. I play quite a few myself.
Femmeworth
Banned
True, plenty of games like Cooking Mama, Imagine Babyz, etc.
Devolution
Member
Excuse me if I don't feel like cruising the Pink Ghetto Aisle as if women don't and can't have interests in things beyond point and click.
Because "female friendly" automatically means "Pink Ghetto Aisle." This is also the wrong thread to discuss this in. So I'm dropping the subject.
cutmeamango
Banned
This 10 year old article sheds some light on a few issues:
http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082-833090.html
I'd wager that this along with work/career prospects and normatives during development of area interests help to shy away even more.
I mean, here in Brazil computer science has really low candidates/seat rates compared to engineering majors. So even 'guys' don't like the field that much, as the text says, it fits a "narrow slice of males".
http://news.cnet.com/2008-1082-833090.html
I'd wager that this along with work/career prospects and normatives during development of area interests help to shy away even more.
I mean, here in Brazil computer science has really low candidates/seat rates compared to engineering majors. So even 'guys' don't like the field that much, as the text says, it fits a "narrow slice of males".
Devolution
Member
I'm not dropping it. It's totally indicative of the whole subject and how some people want to ignore the things staring them right in the face. The way games are developed "Female Friendly" is the "Pink Ghetto Aisle." If you have a problem with the assertion you should be directing that ire at developers, not me.
Femmeworth
Banned
If something can be described as "female friendly" then there is a problem.
cutmeamango
Banned
Does "female friendly" automatically means "male hostile"?
Or is the assumption that "female friendly" means games are meant for males at first?
Those are separate things, and only one is reasonable.
The games that tend to have bad portrayal of females tend to be shooters games, so called block buster games and RPG's. Which is just a piece of a a much larger pie. If you consider that the entire gaming industry, I think you are looking down on a lot of games. Even then are games in that genre, that are female friendly. Some might not have women in them, but that doesn't make them offensive either.
In a perfect world those games would be female friendly as well(for the most part), but those games are aimed at men and for the most part made by men and a certain portion of men do like their eye candy. I'm not the target demographic for a lot games as well, but it isn't rational to expect a fair representation, when you aren't the targeted audience.
I think the underlying culture of encouraging boys to become computer whatevs and girls to become nurses has definitely changed in the last 10-15 years. Mind you all I can speak from is personal experience, but it seems like one of the most influential factors (parents) are less picky about associating gender with careers.
I think maybe the decreasing health of the job climate is forcing people to be more practical about career choices for themselves and their family - if I look at my college, the lower down you get in the comp sci classes, the more girls you see - basically, won't be surprised if in a few more years the gender gap in comp sci goes away, or at least is less significant.
That being said, I do think that for a long time, especially back when people were more carefree about career prospects - these gender roles in jobs were really enforced, often by parents. I remember a girl in grade 4 class who wanted to do something techy 'when she grew up' (can't remember what exactly) but said that her parents were going to make her be a veterinarian instead - because that was what girls did.
I think maybe the decreasing health of the job climate is forcing people to be more practical about career choices for themselves and their family - if I look at my college, the lower down you get in the comp sci classes, the more girls you see - basically, won't be surprised if in a few more years the gender gap in comp sci goes away, or at least is less significant.
That being said, I do think that for a long time, especially back when people were more carefree about career prospects - these gender roles in jobs were really enforced, often by parents. I remember a girl in grade 4 class who wanted to do something techy 'when she grew up' (can't remember what exactly) but said that her parents were going to make her be a veterinarian instead - because that was what girls did.
Devolution
Member
And so the answer is to create things in which they assume we're more interested and thus we get "why aren't more women interested in X?" It's all the same deal. Assume we're not part of the demographic who is interested or wants something as per usual. It's the same here, create expectations or have issues that keep plenty of us at a distance, then chide us for the results. It's a nice cyclical bunch of bullshit really.
shanshan310
Member
It certainly implies that games are for men, and this 'female friendly' section has been cornered off for the women folk, and adapted to suit their clearly different tastes in gaming.
Well that's a bit of a stretch. autistic people like computers, autistic people are more likely to be men, therefore men are more interested/better at using computers? Really?
Escape Goat
Member
How would women get the VCR to stop blinking 12:00 without men?!
charlequin
Banned
Okay, fine, we can call it something less generous. It's certainly not actually a scientific field as actually realized in practice.
There are quite a few ways of tying the study of cognition and neurology back to the psychological realm. Evolutionary psychology is a problematic subset thereof. By granting the presumption of universality to entirely contextual and mutable local constructs, and by attempting to tie said constructs back to set of presumptive beliefs about a prehistorical time of human evolution, evopsych short-circuits any potential for rational analysis. All it's good for in its current state is building out a lot of silly metaphors for how the modern world is no different from that of the caveman.
Is the evolution and construction of the human mind worthy of study and scientific inquiry? Are there inevitably fascinating and stunning conclusions to be drawn from doing so? Certainly. But the Panglossian edifice of evolutionary psychology as practiced is not going to deliver it.
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