ZankerH comments on Open thread, Jan. 26 - Feb. 1, 2015 - Less Wrong

6 Post author: Gondolinian 26 January 2015 12:46AM

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Comment author: wobster109 26 January 2015 08:11:23AM 18 points [-]

I'm going to give you some advice as a professional woman. I very deeply resent when male colleagues compete with each other to put on a display for women. This goes for social contexts (rationalists' meetups) in addition to professional contexts (work meetings). Then women are trying to talk about code or rationality or product design. Rather than thinking about her contributions, the men are preoccupied with "projecting male presence and authority". What does male presence even mean? Why does authority have anything to do with men, instead of, you know, being the most knowledgeable about the topic?

I'll tell you how it comes across. It comes across as focusing on the other men and ignoring the women's contributions. Treating the men as rivals and the women as prizes. Sucky for everyone all around. Instead of teaching boys to be "sexually attractive", why don't you teach them to include women in discussions and listen to them same as anyone else? Because we're not evaluating your sons for "sexual attractiveness". We're just trying to get our ideas heard.

Comment author: ZankerH comment score below threshold [+] (12 children)

Comment author: wobster109 27 January 2015 02:02:51AM 9 points [-]

I agree with JoshuaZ. I find your solution to be a severe hindrance in real life. I am the SQL expert on my team, and my (male) coworker is the surgeries expert, and my (male) colleague across the hall is the infectious diseases expert. We all work together to make the best product possible. How can we get anything done if we are segregated by gender?

I don't see why I need "implicit agreement from all men". My ideas have merit because they reduce medical errors and save lives. Real-life results are the judge of that, not men. I also do not see why I need "agreement from all women". They are not my coworkers, and they are free to live their lives as they wish. That said, I am a developer in a project meeting at a tech company. Safe to say, I want to be treated as an equal.

Finally, I don't see what contributing to a great company has to do with "acting like men" or "pretending to be men". My goal isn't to "eradicate femininity"; it is to make a great product that will help people. If you think that is inherently masculine, then you'll have to explain. So why don't you start by telling me what "masculine" and "feminine" mean to you?

Comment author: JoshuaZ 26 January 2015 05:18:04PM 5 points [-]

You're presupposing implicit agreement from all men with the notion that women's ideas have merit, and the agreement from all women with your notion of wanting to be included in the company of men as equals.

Nothing in wobster109's comment presumed anything of the sort. Moreover, if there are men who are unable to see ideas coming from women as having merit then the problem seems to be with those men more than anything else.

But we can if you want steelman your statement slightly: If instead of the men having disagreement with the notion that women's ideas have merit, it is possible that some men have problems at a basic level with accepting ideas from women. In that case, maybe there is an actual problem that needs to get dealt with, but even then, you need a lot more of an argument that the best solution is complete gender segregation and not trying to teach those men to accept ideas from women. And calling a solution "elegant" doesn't make it so: indeed, this is a "solution" where we can empirically see what happens when countries like Saudi Arabia or places like Kiryas Yoel try to implement variants of it, and it isn't pretty.

Because that's what modern "gender equality" ideology amounts to - pressuring women to act like men, disregarding their actual ideas and aspirations for the goal of eradicating femininity

Aside from this being one of the most strawmanned possible notion of what constitutes gender equality, does it strike you at all as odd as that you are replying to an actual woman and telling her that what she wants is due to pressure from some ideology for her not act feminine? Do you see what might be either wrong with that or at least epistemologically unwise?

Comment author: polymathwannabe 26 January 2015 04:10:10PM 2 points [-]

So, in your world, men reserve the right to define what femininity is, whereas in a gender-equal world, women get to define it. I don't see why we should prefer your world.

Comment author: ZankerH 26 January 2015 07:22:32PM 8 points [-]

That's not what I'm saying at all. I'm speaking of femininity as ordained by Gnon, not any human attempts to define or constrain it - in that sense, indoctrinating women into behaving like men and aspiring to masculine achievements does not amount to "gender equality", but the systematic eradication of femininity.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 26 January 2015 09:31:35PM 6 points [-]

There are several worrying, unquestioned assumptions in your argument: namely, that authority and competitiveness are exclusively male traits, that competition among men is inevitable in the presence of women, and that women who try to obtain and use power are "pretending to be men". Actually, by restricting the admissible examples of femininity to those that best suit your ideal society, you are introducing your preferred definition of femininity. Shifting the blame to "Gnon" doesn't succeed in hiding the fact that you're the one defining "Gnon".

But nature (because I refuse to anthropomorphize impersonal forces by giving them silly names) does not ordain a specific way of femininity or masculinity. The seahorse fish are gestated by the male, which during that period is full of prolactin. The jacana birds have a peculiar calendar of reproductive availability that resulted in the bigger and stronger females being selected by fighting over available males. The definitions of male and female aren't cast in stone.

I'll grant that those examples have little bearing on human societies, but even appealing to our primate past is no use: are you going with the patriarchal chimpanzee, or the matriarchal bonobo? Better, we could just abandon the naturalistic fallacy and let individual humans decide what patterns of behavior actually make them happiest.

Comment author: ZankerH 26 January 2015 10:16:20PM 10 points [-]

There are several worrying, unquestioned assumptions in your argument: namely, that authority and competitiveness are exclusively male traits

Not exclusively, primarily. There's certainly been little selection pressure for women to compete or lead as opposed to men, be it in the context of mating rights or broader societal interactions. Men are better adapted for such purposes, therefore, by taking them on, women are, by definition, acting like men.

That's all I'm talking about - recognising the fact that men and women have certain complementary, non-overlapping aptitudes, are not literally the same, and, are better off apart in certain situations in which modern western societies force them together.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 26 January 2015 10:38:10PM * 2 points [-]

The environment we live in constitutes a new, different set of selection pressures. Features which were adaptive in the past (like dominance or aggressiveness) no longer ensure differential mating success. Willingness to negotiate roles and seek consensus is more incentivized now. Instead of promoting nostalgia for an ancestral environment that is not coming back, you could do what makes the most biological sense---adapt.

Comment author: ZankerH 26 January 2015 10:58:41PM * 12 points [-]

We disagree over how much it's possible to adapt in a single generation then. Anyway, ideologies that force absurd levels of pretence at gender equality at us aren't about adapting away these differences, they're about pretending they don't exist - and if you really wanted to reverse them, there are far more efficient processes to do so than ignoring them, given modern technology - but most would require acknowledging the inherent inequality in the first place. The only conclusion I can draw from the fact that nobody is pushing for this is that the gender equality movements are content to pretend to have accomplished anything by forcing people to pretend that the concept of gender equality corresponds to reality in any way.

Comment author: polymathwannabe 27 January 2015 04:33:16PM * 1 point [-]

Adaptation is actually quite efficient within one single generation: those who don't mate, don't mate. If enough women decide that they don't want cavemen but feminist men, differential reproduction will sort out the results, and the next generation will feel more comfortable with a state of equality.

Edited to add: that is, assuming that opinions are genetic. They're not. Memetics is even faster than genetics at changing attitudes toward gender roles. The son of a caveman can learn to become a feminist, and vice versa. Change can happen in less than one generation.

Comment author: Viliam_Bur 28 January 2015 09:59:16AM * 1 point [-]

There will also be competition among the feminist men. Seems to me that the loudest of them are often... uhm, former cavemen who have "seen the light" and became extremists for the other side. Or guys like this one. If there is a genetic component, these guys would bring it to the future.

More generally, Goodhart's law also applies to men signalling feminism.

Comment author: Luke_A_Somers 27 January 2015 07:32:37PM -2 points [-]

As bad as that comment was, this isn't one of its problems.

Comment author: CellBioGuy 28 January 2015 12:11:15AM * 0 points [-]

Wow, the notion that "women's ideas have merit" is an "absurd level of gender equality"?

Riiiight...

ZankerH comments on Open thread, Jan. 26 - Feb. 1, 2015 - Less Wrong

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