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[Sir Pseudonymous]

[

You actually think that there's no such thing as race or sex based discrimination in the United States? I'm honestly not even sure what to say to that.

You actually go along with the assumption that of course the United States is just as much of a racist, sexist hellhole as it was before the Civil Rights Movement, because everyone knows that's true?

No, which is why I never said that in the first place. I know it's easy to argue against things you made up and that I never said, but it doesn't help matters.

I'm trying to point out that I never denied that racists and sexists existed in the United States, just not in the magnatude that they can be reduced through any other method than waiting for them to abandon their backwards ideas on their own, and that there seems to be some sort of assumption among people that the US is some horrifically racist nation on the whole.

Bullshit. You said that you've never seen cases where people "lose opportunity" because of race, and claimed that it isn't a problem that they do, and that you haven't seen evidence of it. Don't backpedal.

He at no point said there weren't sexists and racists, just that, living in what is generally considered the most offending area in that regard, has not himself seen anyone suffer the effects of it.

Westboro Catholic Church comes to mind. (The ones that protest at military funerals, telling grieving families that their children died because they were homosexual and hated by God)

Westboro Baptist Church.

Show me evidence of this, any at all, and I'll give your ideas more consideration, but otherwise I simply cannot.

In my high school, there was a girl running for class president.  Her opponent posted messages on facebook, saying: "Do you really want someone who bleeds once a month in office?"  When I told a male friend about this, they simply said: "Well, he does have a point, you know."  He wasn't making a joke.  He actually meant it.

Odd, throughout highschool, every class and student body president was female. In a school right on the edge between rural dumbfuckistan and the bubble of civilization around the nearby universities.

I have had professors tell me, in math class, as I did work in my head: "What, do you think computation isn't women's work?"

What? I've never had a math teacher who didn't rabidly fight against people doing everything in their head, except for the ones who didn't have to on account of that having been already beaten into the students in prior classes.

The Berkeley math department has no women's restrooms on some of the floors.  Every floor has a men's restroom.

Demographic analysis used to cut costs is bigoted? It's a bit odd, because in most cases bathrooms are built in pairs, but in an old building in which the vast majority of occupants are male, it stands to reason they wouldn't install nearly as many female restrooms.

I have never had a female math TA.

I have never had a female math professor.

I've only ever had one male math professor. Every other one, throughout highschool and three levels of calculus in college, was female. With the exception of physics and one level of chemistry, every science teacher/professor was female too.

In my martial arts class, I have heard other women be called "stupid lazy bitches" because they did not move fast enough.  I have never heard a man be referred to in this way, or equivalent, when he performs the same actions.  A woman who does not perform is insulted in her character.  A man who does not perform is told to straighten up and get his ass in gear, because he is a disgrace to the dojo.

I do not remember seeing men hit as punishment during their training.  I was.  I took martial arts from the same people for two years.  I came back four years later and they were still acting the same way.

In the same dojo, I was used to mock the rest of the students because I was small, and female, and I still fought harder than they did.

So anyone who didn't do well enough was degraded in a manner meant to be as offensive to them personally as possible?

I grew up with my (male) cousins actively making fun of women as weaker, stupider, more flaky people.

Kids are dumbshits. Who'd have guessed?

In my entire childhood, I only found two authors who presented strong, realistic female characters.  Only one of those authors used a female protagonist.  I'll note that I read books for perhaps 12 hours a day, from the ages of 5 through 13.

Perhaps you were just reading the wrong books? I've certainly never found a pronounced lack of strong female characters, protagonist or not, though how realistic they were written really just falls down on the quality of the author. And if you want to get all worked up over a fictional character being portrayed as weak, stupid, or otherwise loathsome, perhaps you should stop to look at how many more male characters are portrayed thusly. And at just how many weak, stupid, or otherwise loathsome people, of every race and gender, there are in the world. I'll give you a hint: there are a damn lot of them, and they're not exactly restricted to any one category.

You want to talk about women losing opportunity?

In an experiment proving the existence of stereotype threat, women who had to write that they were women performed far worse on exams than women who didn't.  Those who perform badly on standardized tests--like the AP tests and SAT--lose opportunity.

There you go.

How is "women who had to indicate their gender perform worse on tests" an example of "omg sexist oppressors!"? That's a problem with an individual's own insecurity, which certainly can't be helped by people screaming about oppression and bigotry at every personal slight or failure.

[Vector]

Odd, throughout highschool, every class and student body president was female. In a school right on the edge between rural dumbfuckistan and the bubble of civilization around the nearby universities.

Good for you.  My point was more about the widespread viewpoint that women are incompetent due to their periods.

I have had professors tell me, in math class, as I did work in my head: "What, do you think computation isn't women's work?"

What? I've never had a math teacher who didn't rabidly fight against people doing everything in their head, except for the ones who didn't have to on account of that having been already beaten into the students in prior classes.

All right.  Did he pin it on their gender, or their laziness?  Did he tell the boys "what, you think this isn't work for a man?"

The Berkeley math department has no women's restrooms on some of the floors.  Every floor has a men's restroom.

Demographic analysis used to cut costs is bigoted? It's a bit odd, because in most cases bathrooms are built in pairs, but in an old building in which the vast majority of occupants are male, it stands to reason they wouldn't install nearly as many female restrooms.

And they couldn't make them unisex?  Or, you know... something?

So anyone who didn't do well enough was degraded in a manner meant to be as offensive to them personally as possible?

Woman = insult.  I believe that was the point.  My existence is an insult.

Perhaps you were just reading the wrong books? I've certainly never found a pronounced lack of strong female characters, protagonist or not, though how realistic they were written really just falls down on the quality of the author. And if you want to get all worked up over a fictional character being portrayed as weak, stupid, or otherwise loathsome, perhaps you should stop to look at how many more male characters are portrayed thusly. And at just how many weak, stupid, or otherwise loathsome people, of every race and gender, there are in the world. I'll give you a hint: there are a damn lot of them, and they're not exactly restricted to any one category.

Fictional characters are generally indicative of how we feel about a population as a whole.  What do you think of as a strong female character--River Tam?  I've found plenty of excellent authors who wrote great male characters and shitty female ones.

The thing is, that when you have perhaps nine male characters and one female character, with one or two of the male characters bad and the one female character just being window dressing, one can see that there is something of a bias.

How is "women who had to indicate their gender perform worse on tests" an example of "omg sexist oppressors!"? That's a problem with an individual's own insecurity, which certainly can't be helped by people screaming about oppression and bigotry at every personal slight or failure.

And if you have women being more insecure than men on a mass scale, what do we call that?

A negative effect of society's viewpoints and pressures.


I don't even know what you're arguing about, at this point.

[G-Flex]

He at no point said there weren't sexists and racists, just that, living in what is generally considered the most offending area in that regard, has not himself seen anyone suffer the effects of it.

Right, he thinks they exist but that it doesn't actually cause a problem. ¯\(°_o)/¯

It's like he thinks they're relegated to special trailer parks where they can't hurt anyone, as opposed to it being a pervasive sociological problem.

And they couldn't make them unisex?  Or, you know... something?

I don't blame them for not having unisex bathrooms because that's an extremely odd thing (at least in the US) that a lot of people would feel uncomfortable with. Hell, I can see those causing trouble on college campuses, sadly.

I can understand them having fewer women's restrooms than men's restrooms if they have far fewer women than men, generally. The issue, to me, is whether or not both genders have clear and easy access to one whenever they need it, rather than just numerical totals.

The thing is, that when you have perhaps nine male characters and one female character, with one or two of the male characters bad and the one female character just being window dressing, one can see that there is something of a bias.

Yep. Plus there's the fact that "she's a woman" winds up being used as an actual description of the character (or at least a sizable chunk of it), as if it's a novelty or something.

Granted, I'd say men are often treated unfairly in fiction as well as in society, but not with the sort of consequences as women have had to deal with. There are a lot of male stereotypical "strengths" and "weaknesses" (and even identities in terms of what those even mean; some things are considered strength in women and weakness in men and vice-versa), plus there are attitudes like "the man should always pay" or "female-on-male violence is better than male-on-female violence" or "male-on-male rape is funny, whereas female-on-male rape is impossible".

Again, this isn't to downplay the fact that women are historically (and to a significant degree currently) treated as second-class, just that both sides of it need to be accounted for.

[Vector]

I can understand them having fewer women's restrooms than men's restrooms if they have far fewer women than men, generally. The issue, to me, is whether or not both genders have clear and easy access to one whenever they need it, rather than just numerical totals.

Dude, it's the tenth, ninth, and eighth floors of a building with female students, female professors, female department secretaries (because all of the low-level staff is female) and female TAs, some/many of whom have had children.  It is frankly not convenient to have to descend three flights of stairs (or wait for one of the two elevators, which service 11 floors) down to the econ department if you're either a. bleeding everywhere or b. pregnant, or hell, just c. need to use the bathroom.

Granted, I'd say men are often treated unfairly in fiction as well as in society, but not with the sort of consequences as women have had to deal with. There are a lot of male stereotypical "strengths" and "weaknesses" (and even identities in terms of what those even mean; some things are considered strength in women and weakness in men and vice-versa), plus there are attitudes like "the man should always pay" or "female-on-male violence is better than male-on-female violence" or "male-on-male rape is funny, whereas female-on-male rape is impossible".

Nope, I agree. Thanks for bringing it up.

[G-Flex]

I can understand them having fewer women's restrooms than men's restrooms if they have far fewer women than men, generally. The issue, to me, is whether or not both genders have clear and easy access to one whenever they need it, rather than just numerical totals.

Dude, it's the tenth, ninth, and eighth floors of a building with female students, female professors, female department secretaries (because all of the low-level staff is female) and female TAs, some/many of whom have had children.  It is frankly not convenient to have to descend three flights of stairs (or wait for one of the two elevators, which service 11 floors) down to the econ department if you're either a. bleeding everywhere or b. pregnant, or hell, just c. need to use the bathroom.

Yeah, I'd say that's a problem. I'm just saying the problem should be identified more in terms of access and less in terms of numbers. Obviously, access is an issue here; three floors is quite a lot.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

Odd, throughout highschool, every class and student body president was female. In a school right on the edge between rural dumbfuckistan and the bubble of civilization around the nearby universities.

Good for you.  My point was more about the widespread viewpoint that women are incompetent due to their periods.

I've never seen an instance of that outside of fiction, where it's used to paint the person cracking the joke as a dumbshit, aside from jokes about mood swings.

I have had professors tell me, in math class, as I did work in my head: "What, do you think computation isn't women's work?"

What? I've never had a math teacher who didn't rabidly fight against people doing everything in their head, except for the ones who didn't have to on account of that having been already beaten into the students in prior classes.

All right.  Did he pin it on their gender, or their laziness?  Did he tell the boys "what, you think this isn't work for a man?"

How old were the professors in question, because that sounds like the kind of off-color joke someone in their fifties or over (at this point in time, anyways) would crack?

The Berkeley math department has no women's restrooms on some of the floors.  Every floor has a men's restroom.

Demographic analysis used to cut costs is bigoted? It's a bit odd, because in most cases bathrooms are built in pairs, but in an old building in which the vast majority of occupants are male, it stands to reason they wouldn't install nearly as many female restrooms.

And they couldn't make them unisex?  Or, you know... something?

If the building's old, it's probably not something that seemed necessary/appropriate at the time. If they're not changing it, it's probably because there haven't been any/enough complaints about it, because that sort of thing costs money, and they're not going to spend that to accommodate a small number of people.

So anyone who didn't do well enough was degraded in a manner meant to be as offensive to them personally as possible?

Woman = insult.  I believe that was the point.  My existence is an insult.

You're talking about martial arts, a highly physical field. Men, by default, have an easier time building muscle, and thus engaging in such an activity, so it is rather humiliating for a man to be outdone physically by someone not only much smaller than them, but also female, because it shows that they, despite their natural advantage, are inferior, and thus reveals their own ineptness or lack of motivation, at least in their minds.

Perhaps you were just reading the wrong books? I've certainly never found a pronounced lack of strong female characters, protagonist or not, though how realistic they were written really just falls down on the quality of the author. And if you want to get all worked up over a fictional character being portrayed as weak, stupid, or otherwise loathsome, perhaps you should stop to look at how many more male characters are portrayed thusly. And at just how many weak, stupid, or otherwise loathsome people, of every race and gender, there are in the world. I'll give you a hint: there are a damn lot of them, and they're not exactly restricted to any one category.

Fictional characters are generally indicative of how we feel about a population as a whole.  What do you think of as a strong female character--River Tam?  I've found plenty of excellent authors who wrote great male characters and shitty female ones.

River Tam, the schizophrenic, psychic, genius super-soldier? She's not a good example of a human character, having a completely alien mind and personality.

Perhaps male authors can't write a realistic female character, but that's hardly to assume "unrealistic" is degrading, because in most cases fictional characters are rather unrealistic, because reading about normal people doing normal things is rather boring.

The thing is, that when you have perhaps nine male characters and one female character, with one or two of the male characters bad and the one female character just being window dressing, one can see that there is something of a bias.

I don't believe I've ever read such a book that wasn't, say, over a century old, so unless you're proposing retroactively editing all of those...

How is "women who had to indicate their gender perform worse on tests" an example of "omg sexist oppressors!"? That's a problem with an individual's own insecurity, which certainly can't be helped by people screaming about oppression and bigotry at every personal slight or failure.

And if you have women being more insecure than men on a mass scale, what do we call that?

A negative effect of society's viewpoints and pressures.

And I'm sure being repeatedly told "you will be persecuted because SEXISM!" doesn't have any effect on that at all...

On a related note, I recall reading about a study on Ars Technica that determined that female teachers at the elementary school level who are afraid of or incompetent with math (and science, possibly; I can't recall if that was included in the study or not) have an extremely deleterious, permanent effect on the female students' attitude and ability in regards to math. If I recall correctly, male students were completely unaffected in the long term by incompetent male teachers.

I can understand them having fewer women's restrooms than men's restrooms if they have far fewer women than men, generally. The issue, to me, is whether or not both genders have clear and easy access to one whenever they need it, rather than just numerical totals.

Dude, it's the tenth, ninth, and eighth floors of a building with female students, female professors, female department secretaries (because all of the low-level staff is female) and female TAs, some/many of whom have had children.  It is frankly not convenient to have to descend three flights of stairs (or wait for one of the two elevators, which service 11 floors) down to the econ department if you're either a. bleeding everywhere or b. pregnant, or hell, just c. need to use the bathroom.

Well, that is rather unreasonable. The way you described it earlier it sounded more like only having one every other floor or something. Still, one would expect if there was enough of an outcry against it it would be fixed.

[G-Flex]

I've never seen an instance of that outside of fiction, where it's used to paint the person cracking the joke as a dumbshit, aside from jokes about mood swings.

A lot of men treat menstruation/PMS as this weird, pseudo-mystical force that they simultaneously don't want to learn anything about but will attribute women's behavior to completely at random. That's not exactly a good thing.

You're talking about martial arts, a highly physical field. Men, by default, have an easier time building muscle, and thus engaging in such an activity, so it is rather humiliating for a man to be outdone physically by someone not only much smaller than them, but also female, because it shows that they, despite their natural advantage, are inferior, and thus reveals their own ineptness or lack of motivation, at least in their minds.

There is no "by default". You're talking about statistical averages. Men usually have an easier time building muscle mass, but honestly, why should that matter? Why should the generalization be made when you're dealing with individuals? Should we also act like all women are short, even when the one you're dealing with is tall? There's no reason to judge people based on harsh generalizations when you're dealing with them directly. If you're humiliated that a girl is doing better than you at a physical activity, it should be because she's actually less inclined towards it than you are, not because "well, she's a girl, and girls suck at that".

Perhaps male authors can't write a realistic female character, but that's hardly to assume "unrealistic" is degrading, because in most cases fictional characters are rather unrealistic, because reading about normal people doing normal things is rather boring.

There's something wrong with the fact that I can immediately tell which parts of her posts you're ignoring even as a third party. She said that many authors can write good/realistic male characters, but not good/realistic female characters, i.e. the issue is not symmetrical between genders.

On a related note, I recall reading about a study on Ars Technica that determined that female teachers at the elementary school level who are afraid of or incompetent with math (and science, possibly; I can't recall if that was included in the study or not) have an extremely deleterious, permanent effect on the female students' attitude and ability in regards to math. If I recall correctly, male students were completely unaffected in the long term by incompetent male teachers.

That's likely because men are conditioned by society to do well (and that they CAN do well) in those subjects, so a positive role model is less necessary. Positive role models are more necessary when it is implied that you can't achieve that role to begin with.

[PenguinOverlord]

How did this go from a discussion of a woman cheating on a man to a discussion of muscle mass and how men (The OP included?) are all sexist babies who are conditioned to do well in society?

[G-Flex]

It didn't, because nobody is saying that "all men are sexist babies" and muscle mass was an extremely incidental point of one small part of discussion.

[PenguinOverlord]

Cool.

[smigenboger]

I had multiple female math teachers in high school, most of the English, biology, and all of the French ones were female. I'd say in my high school there were slightly more female teachers than male, and they centered more towards the AP level Language Arts classes.

The girls who identified strongly with dark clothing and mainstream non-mainstreamness in my group were independent and really fun to hang out with, an ex of mine was awesome because of the sheer determination and opportunities she took to make herself a more interesting and cultured person (and having rich parents who enabled her to make the most of herself). I've already said most of the girls in my high school were on par with the boys, though self-application was the deciding factor and not anyone's gender.

The AP courses were even with gender.

Considering the proportion of men and women I associate with, there's an equal amount of those who are strong, self-driven individuals, and strange, emotionally unstable ones who can only think about sex and who they're going to date next.

My most recent couple of friends are husband and wife, with the wife working overtime at my work and the husband taking care of the house and two kids (she's my age and he's your age, with a 2 year old and a three year old). Once they have enough money, she's going to finish her degree and he's going to work part time.

In terms of restrooms in college, there's more women's restrooms in Sinclair than men's.

I don't see a huge barrier. I do see people treating others as special in order to not seem like they are singling them out. I was declined a job where the employer said they would gladly hire me, but they have to adhere to diversity and wait to find the most qualified person who fits that mold.

I can see a problem where forced hiring practices force employers to hire under qualified women who make other women look bad, but in society in general, I don't think the gender inequality mindset is embraced by the majority.

[Sir Pseudonymous]

It didn't, because nobody is saying that "all men are sexist babies" and muscle mass was an extremely incidental point of one small part of discussion.

Actually, Virex said just that, and you, DJ, and Vector leapt to support him.


Also, what smigenborger said, except for the bit about hipster/goth/punk/emo/whatever the hell he's referring to with "dark clothing and mainstream non-mainstreamness" chicks, of whom all that I've known (and the men who fit the mold too, for that matter) have been unstable, manipulative, pretentious but actually quite stupid, or some combination of the above. Perhaps ironically, the only intelligent girls I've known (and again, men too for that matter) have fallen into the "not explicitly part of a subculture" category, though it should be mentioned that there too, most people really aren't all that great either.

[G-Flex]

Actually, Virex said just that, and you, DJ, and Vector leapt to support him.

I'm not supporting people, I'm supporting ideas, and if Virex said anything like that, either I didn't support it or I didn't intend to.

[DJ]

I blame parents for most of the women's problems. Everybody gets prejudiced against, but men overcome prejudice more often sons they're taught not to take shit from anybody while daughters are taught to be meek.

[Vector]

It didn't, because nobody is saying that "all men are sexist babies" and muscle mass was an extremely incidental point of one small part of discussion.

Actually, Virex said just that, and you, DJ, and Vector leapt to support him.

... What I agreed with was that even women are prejudiced against women (not all, but enough).  It's really hard to argue with you when you accuse people of taking positions and expressing ideas that they never espoused.