Men And Women

An interesting discussion on sex differences, spurred by the Google kerfuffle.

It is very important to the Left to minimize them. This is one of the several areas in which they are not the “party of science.”

[Update a few minutes later]

Here’s sort of the tl;dr:

This seems to me like the clearest proof that women being underrepresented in CS/physics/etc is just about different interests. It’s not that they can’t do the work – all those future math teachers do just as well in their math majors as everyone else. It’s not that stereotypes of what girls can and can’t do are making them afraid to try – whatever stereotypes there are about women and math haven’t dulled future math teachers’ willingness to compete difficult math courses one bit. And it’s not even about colleges being discriminatory and hostile (or at least however discriminatory and hostile they are it doesn’t drive away those future math teachers). It’s just that women are more interested in some jobs, and men are more interested in others. Figure out a way to make math people-oriented, and women flock to it. If there were as many elementary school computer science teachers as there are math teachers, gender balance there would equalize without any other effort.

I’m not familiar with any gender breakdown of legal specialties, but I will bet you that family law, child-related law, and various prosocial helping-communities law are disproportionately female, and patent law, technology law, and law working with scary dangerous criminals are disproportionately male. And so on for most other fields.

This theory gives everyone what they want. It explains the data about women in tech. It explains the time course around women in tech. It explains other jobs like veterinary medicine where women dominate. It explains which medical subspecialties women will be dominant or underrepresented in. It doesn’t claim that women are “worse than men” or “biologically inferior” at anything. It doesn’t say that no woman will ever be interested in things, or no man ever interested in people. It doesn’t say even that women in tech don’t face a lot of extra harassment (any domain with more men than women will see more potential perpetrators concentrating their harassment concentrated on fewer potential victims, which will result in each woman being more harassed).

It just says that sometimes, in a population-based way that doesn’t necessarily apply to any given woman or any given man, women and men will have some different interests. Which should be pretty obvious to anyone who’s spent more than a few minutes with men or women.

Yup. But do read the whole thing, because it also describes just how toxic and (ironically, given the “punch a Nazi” commentary) fascist the environment in the industry has become.

[Update a while later]

The most common error in reporting on the Google memo:

To object to a means of achieving x is not to be anti-x.

The failure to apply that same logic to the author of the memo is straightforwardly frustrating for those who agree with many of the views that the memo expressed. And it should also frustrate those who disagree with the author but care about social justice.

Every prominent instance of journalism that proceeds with less than normal rigor when the subject touches on social justice feeds a growing national impulse to dismiss everything published about these subjects—even important, rigorous, accurate articles. Large swathes of the public now believe the mainstream media is more concerned with stigmatizing wrong-think and being politically correct than being accurate. The political fallout from this shift has been ruinous to lots of social-justice causes—causes that would thrive in an environment in which the public accepted the facts.

Given that many of their goals are actually terrible, I’m glad they continue to screw up like this.

[Update a while later]

The Google memo exposes a libertarian blind spot.

[Update a while more later]

Megan McArdle: As a woman in tech, I realized that these are not my people:

Thinking back to those women I knew in IT, I can’t imagine any of them would have spent a weekend building a fiber-channel network in her basement.

I’m not saying such women don’t exist; I know they do. I’m just saying that if they exist in equal numbers to the men, it’s odd that I met so very many men like that, and not even one woman like that, in a job where all the women around me were obviously pretty comfortable with computers. We can’t blame it on residual sexism that prevented women from ever getting into the field; the number of women working with computers has actually gone down over time. And I find it hard to blame it on current sexism. No one told that guy to go home and build a fiber-channel network in his basement; no one told me I couldn’t. It’s just that I would never in a million years have chosen to waste a weekend that way.

These people don’t realize the degree to which their ideology is blinding them to reality. And they don’t realize the degree to which their behavior harms their own cause:

…you still have to ask whether shamestorming Damore and getting him sacked was really the best way to convince him — or anyone else — that he’s mistaken. Did anyone’s understanding of the complex quandaries of gender diversity advance? If there were guys at Google wondering whether the women around them really deserved their jobs, did anyone wake up the morning after Damore’s firing with the revelation: “Good God, how could I have been so blind?” No, I suspect those guys are now thinking: “You see? Women can’t handle math or logic.”

And as always, the Left is impervious to irony.

[Update just before noon]

Leftists: We worship science, except when we don’t.

[Update a couple minutes later]

Google has done a horrible thing to its employees, especially its snowflakes:

Google’s monoculture has turned these employees into snarling, hate-filled, censorious little thought-police who live under the misapprehension that their seething rage is virtue. It reminds me of what happened in the Soviet Union when neighbor turned in neighbor to ensure the regime believed in their loyalty to the Right Ideas.

And they are incapable of seeing it.

I may follow Roger’s advice to start using Dogpile. But I’ll have to wean myself from Chrome, because it makes it hard to automatically use other search engines.

34 thoughts on “Men And Women”

  1. Why woman shouldn’t vote: because they are naturally dems and socialists.

    Then call me a misogynist proving you don’t know what the word means. Because if there are real differences, it isn’t prejudice.

    1. I think Sarah Hoyt’s description of a female society is very similar to the structures at many of these tech companies. Didn’t Microsoft brag that they had only five hierarchical levels? If so, then a more fluid structure would rely on some other organizing principle take over, such as group identity? Just speculating.

      Always appreciate Sarah’s insights.

  2. We had our if-not-mandatory-but-strongly-encouraged Active Shooter Resistance training at work where we were told (in this order) to 1) flee, 2) hide and barricade, (and as a last resort, but it could come to that) 3) fight (where a police officer encouraged ‘fighting dirty’ — hitting below the belt, eye-gouging, whatever it took).

    The video we were shown where these three scenarios were acted out showed two college-student women subduing a college-student man posing as the shooter. The police officer running the session joked that the actor playing the shooter “took a lot of punishment” in trying to portray realistically the “fight” scenario, but still, political correctness had to be upheld. Do we really want to convey that two average woman from our student population can “swarm” a male student?

    In our if-not-mandatory-but-strongly-encouraged Implicit Bias training at work, the subject came up regarding women being qualified to become police officers. Mindful of the stakes, I began a question by admitting that I have known many women much stronger than I am, claiming that I am a “weakling” (I was thinking “nebbish” but one must be careful with words with an ethnic connotation) whereas that one woman I partnered in ice dancing later became an Olympic competitor. “Great point!” I was told, that one cannot judge the particulars from what is attributed by Implicit Bias to a group, when I didn’t get to the “but, but” that I am on the left-hand portion of the bell curve for male strength and many women competitive skaters were on the right-hand portion for female strength. I was trying to say that just as I probably would not qualify to be a police officer, most women probably don’t qualify apart from athletes at high levels of competition, but a different kind of Implicit Bias was at work here and I was not going to be Google Guy.

    1. Never discount the impact of ferocity. Your typical woman might not be toward the right end of the curve when it comes to physical power but its doubtful that shooter is either.

      1. Oh, c’mon. This is like telling every woman who had been assaulted that she had resisted strongly enough.

        As to a hypothetical shooter being a male “loser” and hence not very powerful to face resistance, well, OK. But the UW-Madison Police video was being politically correct rather than realistic in using two women students in their “scenario” of persons resisting a gunman.

        1. Feeling powerless is how contributes to woman getting raped. Fighting may cost them their lives, but more often will prevent the rape. Violent opposition also provides the evidence to convict.

          We need a culture where woman can feel safe anytime and anywhere (but be responsible where not so.) We used to have very close to that so you can’t tell me we can’t have that again. We are either civilized or not.

        2. This is like telling every woman who had been assaulted that she had resisted strongly enough.

          No, I am just saying that fighting back can work, not that it will always work. I certainly wouldn’t blame the victim if fighting back failed or if they chose not to fight back.

  3. Oh, but the police officer in the Active Shooter Resistance session let slip with something potentially politically incorrect; he disclosed something regarding police trade craft, his training. Maybe this is tactical information the cops shouldn’t share with the general public, but sometimes when a person has expert knowledge about something it is hard to keep that secret.

    The officer told us that if you are in a room with one door that you want to be up against the wall by the door rather than the wall away from the door. Intuition is that you want to be as far from a guy with a gun, not as close as you can to a guy with a gun. The officer explained as much that if he had to shoot someone, he would like that person at some distance where the gun was at an advantage rather than “close in” where the adversary could gouge his eyes.

    That explains much about the Michael Brown shooting along with a local shooting where a drunk (white) guy charged a Madison Police officer and was shot dead.

    Whatever you do, you do not want to charge at a police officer, especially when they are pointing a weapon at you — they are probably trained again and again to shoot first and ask questions later. If you are some distance away, the officer is in control of the situation, but if you get close enough, you may be able to fight hand-to-hand, perhaps grabbing the officer’s gun?

    My momma told me “don’t run from the police”, but under current police training and “rules of engagement”, running towards the police may be much more dangerous to you.

    Do you think that is what could have happened in Minneapolis? OK, OK, affirmative-action immigrant rookie officer, inadequate training, the officers were still in their car, blah, blah. But do you think after calling in a suspected violent felony heard from a dark alley, that rushing up to the police to “greet them at the scene and tell them what you think is going on” is not a great idea?

    Maybe the “police shot an unarmed person” must be put to rest and people need to know about getting to close to an officer with a gun makes you a threat?

    Or maybe this disclosed too much tactical knowledge without a need-to-know? I was going to ask the officer whether “a nut with a gun” will know to stand by the wall-by-the-door when the officers make their “dynamic entry”, but I thoughr that maybe too much was already said and I kept the thought to myself.

    1. Yes and, if you have a short reach, get inside the other guy’s punching radius. Disruption of the narrative in the other guy’s head is the goal. Gotta’ get inside his OODA loop.

    2. Come to think of it, the Minneapolis case was really three different cultures colliding. The dead woman expected an American cop or a Somali cop to react as an Australian cop would have.

      Not that she deserved to die, but it is never a good idea to surprise an armed man in an alley at night.

  4. I was not going to be Google Guy

    You’ve just nailed the problem. If people with the truth are afraid to speak. Who gets heard?

    I’ll go first… Woman and children should be protected by men.

  5. A couple of citations.

    From The Hobbit:

    “Then the prophecies of the old songs have turned out to be true, after a fashion!” said Bilbo.
    “Of course!” said Gandalf. “And why should not they prove true? Surely you don’t disbelieve the prophecies, because you had a hand in bringing them about yourself? You don’t really suppose, do you, that all your adventures and escapes were managed by mere luck, just for your sole benefit? You are a very fine person, Mr. Baggins, and I am very fond of you; but you are only quite a little fellow in a wide world after all!”

    A popular parable:

    A man was trapped in his house during a flood. He began praying to God to rescue him. He had a vision in his head of God’s hand reaching down from heaven and lifting him to safety. The water started to rise in his house. His neighbour urged him to leave and offered him a ride to safety. The man yelled back, “I am waiting for God to save me.” The neighbour drove off in his pick-up truck.

    The man continued to pray and hold on to his vision. As the water began rising in his house, he had to climb up to the roof. A boat came by with some people heading for safe ground. They yelled at the man to grab a rope they were ready to throw and take him to safety. He told them that he was waiting for God to save him. They shook their heads and moved on.

    The man continued to pray, believing with all his heart that he would be saved by God. The flood waters continued to rise. A helicopter flew by and a voice came over a loudspeaker offering to lower a ladder and take him off the roof. The man waved the helicopter away, shouting back that he was waiting for God to save him. The helicopter left. The flooding water came over the roof and caught him up and swept him away. He drowned.

    When he reached heaven and asked, “God, why did you not save me? I believed in you with all my heart. Why did you let me drown?” God replied, “I sent you a pick-up truck, a boat and a helicopter and you refused all of them. What else could I possibly do for you?”

    The Lord works in mysterious ways.

  6. Only 2% of car mechanics are women. I demand an investigation.

    Is it that women aren’t allowed to drive? Even if they aren’t, they could still be a mechanics. Most aircraft mechanics aren’t pilots, so the lack of women drivers wouldn’t explain the dearth of female automotive mechanics. Even in Saudi Arabia, a place with no female drivers, women could be mechanics. In fact, most mechanics there should be women because the men are all busy driving around. But they’re not.

    Is it that women’s smaller stature leaves them too weak to break a bolt free? Perhaps, but most mechanics use pneumatic tools for that.

    Is it that women lack the intellectual capacity to understand cars? Doubtful, because a lot of mechanics aren’t the sharpest tool in the shed.

    So the disparity must be due to bigotry and sexism. Let the lawsuits fly.

      1. Couldn’t we simply solve the problem by having 100 kg male mechanics self identify as 50 kg woman? Google could have perfectly equal gender ratios overnight!

  7. I’ve switched from Google to DuckDuckGo a couple years back.
    Also I never stopped using Firefox. But if you also have issues with them you can try Chromium or Vivaldi.

    1. I saw that some people were trying out Brave as a browser and Startpage as a search engine. Startpage is just a right click in the search bar away on chrome.

      1. Right. Brave is also an option. I haven’t tried it yet but it seems it should be good. I prefer DuckDuckGo to Startpage but I suppose that’s also an option.

        Google just tracks way too much info. I still use their e-mail but I’ve searched for other options and considered ProtonMail at one time for example. But most of the things I do aren’t that important to begin with. So far I haven’t switched but I might eventually.

        1. I’ve given Brave a try, but (and can’t put my finger on it) didn’t like it. Which is strange since I prefer clean interfaces.

          1. Their android version doesn’t have a speed dial type of function. Most visited doesn’t really work for me because some places I like to visit wont be on my most visited list and I find typical bookmark systems cumbersome.

  8. whatever stereotypes there are about women and math haven’t dulled future math teachers’ willingness to compete difficult math courses one bit.

    Did anyone think that it could be the stereotypes that the tech industry has? Long hours, tedious work, hordes of neck beards, endless Monty Python jokes, paid time off for LARPing, ect ect?

    Maybe it isn’t a problem with the industry or with men but with women’s own negative views about other people and industries?

    It is more polite to just say women are interested in jobs in different fields. We don’t really need to dig too deep.

      1. Did ya ever play the one where ya posted messages on the bartenders back with a knife for other patrons to read?That was a tough bar (for a bunch of glasses wearing nerds.)

  9. The only stereotype I care about is the one about people who believe every stereotype despite the individual exceptions they encounter every day.

    Nothing limits your options like a complete lack of curiosity.

  10. If Google’s problems were kept internal it could remain a simple philosophical debate. However it goes way beyond to how all SJW operate. What’s insidious about Google:

    Several managers have openly admitted to keeping blacklists of the employees in question, and preventing them from seeking work at other companies. There have been numerous cases in which social justice activists coordinated attempts to sabotage other employees’ performance reviews

    It’s not just that they filter access to information. It’s not just widespread, it’s almost universal and coordinated. It’s existential war and should be responded to in kind.

  11. Were that browsers were to allow one to randomly pick a search engine from a list of allowable choice for each search. Call it spread-spectrum searching. Oh but how can you monetize that? A quick Google search turns up nothing… lol… Color me cynical….

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