"Maybe, Gender Wars," he thought, "don't come from a store. Maybe Gender Wars--perhaps--mean a little bit more!" And what happened then? Well, in /r/TIL they say that /r/SubredditDrama's popcorn grew three sizes that day! (np.reddit.com)
SubredditDrama
187 ups - 0 downs = 187 votes
162 comments submitted at 20:32:06 on Nov 17, 2014 by wilst
> i don't believe for a second that women are just "naturally" less interested in science
I don't understand how some people are so against the idea that men and women are different. Hormones are fucking powerful, ask anyone that's been through SRS, they make people act and think completely differently.
Of course social conditioning plays a big part, but to rule out the fact that men may just be interested in different things to women is retarded.
Edit: ok SRD, not everyone that doesn't join in the circle jerk is an evil misogynist. Maybe I phrased it badly, but I was calling out the commenter for dismissing something that could well be true, not saying it definitely was. And for people asking for my source for a claim I didn't even make, here you go:
http://news.psu.edu/story/155787/2011/09/01/sex-hormones-impact-career-choices
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/men-women-different-brains1.htm
Let's test your theory out.
You seem to be incapable of understanding science and basic human anatomy. Are you a woman? Maybe you just don't have enough man hormones.
Yes, that's exactly what I was saying. All women are useless at science and they should leave it to us strong men with our brains that are totally made for science to do it while they buy shoes because their brains are hardwired to like shoes and pretty things.
That's what you wanted to hear, right?
Dude even saying most women don't like math and science because "hormones" is pretty fucking sexist, you don't need to strawman your own position in order to make it sound bad.
Can you link me where I said that?
here you heavily imply that hormones influence an interest in math & science
also it helps not to use words like "retarded" unless you want to sound like an insensitive 15 year old
here you say that by generalizing you mean "most" and not all
> here you heavily imply that hormones influence an interest in math & science
Nowhere there I can see do I imply that. I give up. Maybe I'm just terrible at wording things.
You really don't see how you imply that? You specifically quoted a bit about women and science, and your very next sentence was about hormones influencing interest. It's a pretty clear implication that you believe hormones influence women not being interested in science. How can you not comprehend your own writing? Like, if you're going to be sexist, just own it. Maybe I'll make it simpler for you and just ask the question: do you believe hormones affect women's interest in science? If so, why?
I said it shouldn't be automatically be ruled out, like the person I quoted did. So for your last question, I don't know either way but it could be possible. It also could be brain structure: http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/men-women-different-brains1.htm
I'm not saying it definitely is, I just think it's silly to completely rule out the fact that men and women are different and so might tend to be interested in different things.
Saying something could be the case is not the same as saying it is the case.
And I think it's silly to think an interest in science and mathematics is dependent on sex hormones.
> Hormones are fucking powerful, ask anyone that's been through SRS, they make people act and think completely differently.
HRT (hormone replacement therapy) essentially induces a second puberty at first, which can cause emotional volatility similar to that of a teenager's until the body adapts. But this doesn't alter their personality or their thought process anywhere near as significantly as you claim, and certainly not more than anyone's personality is altered by going through any emotionally trying experience.
It's pretty uncool and insulting to use trans people's experiences as evidence for sexist hypotheses btw.
>It's pretty uncool and insulting to use trans people's experiences as evidence for sexist hypotheses btw.
Double whammies like that are so rare these days, it's always a special day for me. Sometimes it'll be a super-special day and you get the trifecta where they manage to work some homophobia in there too, but I've never seen a sexist/transphobic homophobic/racist combo yet. I'm very excited for it though and very much looking forward to my first.
I'm only going off what has been said by people on reddit that have gone through HRT from ask reddit threads and other places. They described that their relationships with people changed, they became much more visual, it even changed the way they appreciated music and the music they listened to.
Even if the changes are milder than that, I still think it's stupid to rule out the fact that men and women are actually different and may be interested in different things.
> It's pretty uncool and insulting to use trans people's experiences as evidence for sexist hypotheses btw.
What? It's sexist now to assume everyone isn't exactly the same? That's SJWish even for SRD.
Edit: Oh nevermind, I hadn't noticed it was you. I should have realised.
Sorry theone, you don't get to whine about SJWs in the same thread in which you are defending the long-debunked and incredibly sexist notion that women are naturally/inherently less interested in science.
> which you are defending the long-debunked and incredibly sexist notion that women are naturally/inherently less interested in science.
When and how was that debunked?
What is your answer as to why women vastly outnumber men in psychology, but not physics classes?
Trust me, don't waste your time with this one.
The same could be said for you and Bobby but hey whatever floats your boat.
I'm not doing this with you because you think everything is sexist.
If that's what you need to tell yourself to avoid introspection, go right ahead.
Hi, I'm a woman & a mathematician. AMA!
What's your focus?
Graph theory, but I've been out of the field for about 10 years. Are you in math?
Undergrad. In a battle with my crappy abstract algebra book right now, actually!
Cool, I love abstract algebra. If you're like me, you might not really get it until sometime in grad school when you struggle and sweat and doubt yourself, but then have an epiphany, everything reorders itself and you look at math in a whole new easier way. Don't give up!
How do you feel about statisticians? Engineers don't seem to like us...
I enjoyed statistics personally once I really understood it in context as a subset of analysis, and knowing stats has come in handy fairly often in my professional life whereas graph theory and topology hasn't so much, so I salute you, good Duck.
salutes
Yes, but where do you stand on frequentists vs. Bayesians?
Bayes all the way! GO BAYES! jumps up and down wildly
Hey now. This path only leads to esoteric and petty drama. I can already see the specter of the xkcd comic that deals with this...
Do you think I believe women can't be mathematicians?
Well it's a logical inference if hormones --> women aren't interested in math, right?
I said men and women might just be interested in different things. Nowhere in that sentence did I say no women are interested in math. Also as a mathematician you should know that is a very poor logical inference.
Your wording implies that men as a class are interested in different things than women as a class.
If you meant some men are interested in different things than some women, well of course I'd agree but that's a trivial, obvious statement.
> Your wording implies that men as a class are interested in different things than women as a class.
I thought it was clear I was speaking in general terms. Of course I wasn't saying all men like certain things and not a single woman does.
I think if you clarified what exactly you meant it'd help. I'm not sure what you mean by saying "speaking in general terms"?
Speaking in general terms means applying to most things, not necessarily all of them. I wasn't saying that no women were interested in math, of course some are.
OK, I don't know about "most" though. Shall we settle on "some"?
btw, lil googling on the subject
http://www.yourtango.com/201197282/are-women-genetically-wired-dislike-science#.VGqLs9EtCR0
And for the record, I hated dolls
> I said men and women might just be interested in different things. Nowhere in that sentence did I say no women are interested in math.
JLaw saying Oh Sure.webmOh .webm format, so fancy!
Look, believe what you want. Think I'm an angry, sexist, racist bigot if it makes you feel better and you want somebody to hate. I give up with this thread.
I don't care who you are or are not, I see that you totally used the Moonflower Pivot here, and I'm calling you on that.
I have no idea what a moonflower pivot is, but if you think I think no women are interested in math then I'm sorry but I don't think that and never said it.
Because there's no scientific evidence to suggest something like that? We've abandoned notions like that along with scientific racism because it's bunk.
Did a bit more googling and apparently there's a whole bunch of scientists studying the interaction between gender, hormones & what careers women go into.
http://www.genderandstem.com/about.html
So I'd say it's an active field of scientific inquiry with a conference, peer-reviewed journal & etc.
>> Because there's no scientific evidence to suggest something like that?
> Did a bit more googling and apparently there's a whole bunch of scientists studying the interaction between gender, hormones & what careers women go into.
Come on, that's not what science is.
Sorry, my hormones must have been peaking :(
http://science.howstuffworks.com/life/men-women-different-brains1.htm
Top google result. I don't know how valid the source is though but it seems fairly legit, if it's not then scrap it, im in bed on my i-pad so im not looking for more. And to say hormones don't play a part at all in how we act is also a bit silly.
I thought the same as you, had a google & was surprised to find this http://news.psu.edu/story/155787/2011/09/01/sex-hormones-impact-career-choices
I'm not in the field so I don't know what the state of research is, but I think it's clearly inaccurate to say the science is settled on the issue.
edit: lol @ downvoting because I linked to a study with results you don't like. guess what, I don't like the results either but denying the existence of the study doesn't change things
Now you know why I was getting wound up before :)
I too was irritated with the way you phrased things! But as someone who values science over politics I had to raise the existence of that study.
~Gets out official reddit phd~ Obviously I'm not an expert but this kind of genderwars stuff is weirdly interesting to me. There've been a few books and documentaries about this in the last few years that have been sort of summarising the whole debate and the upshot seems to be that nobody really knows and generally the difference might not be all that big if it exists at all. There also seem to be differences in preferences, interests and personality that might come from the order of children born and other just random stuff.
I do think that it would be hard to make the difference as it is now go away though and it might be kind of a 'weak force' that gets gender differences going in societies.
Yeah, you can't say Biology isn't real and that every person is born the same, because thats pretty much saying being gay is a choice, which is kind of well... Retarded.
/u/thisistheone is actually saying that men and women are born pretty much the same, just differently from each other.
Also, probably don't use the r-word when going around championing gay rights?
Are you calling gay people retarded? I'm offended now.
Of course not, I'm gay myself. I'm just questioning the choice of using that word.
Haha I know, I was just fucking with you. I love you, and your thread titles.
Oh, okay then! We cool
>I was just fucking with you
Are you calling gay people promiscuous? I'm offended now
So what, now retarded people can't be gay? That's fucking exclusionary, dude.
Oh come on, don't be a retard.
Actually, even if being gay isn't 100% biological (which it probably isn't), that in no implies that it is a choice. Socialized beliefs and preferences can be quite powerful, because you know, socialization is a thing and not everything that isn't imprinted in your genetic code is chosen.
I mean, this is really just an especially stupid comment, even for a gender essentialist.
You have people who dismiss any notion of social conditioning and say it's all biology. Then at the other crazy end of the spectrum you have people who think we're all the same and biology plays no part.
But what has led you to believe that this specific stereotype (women not liking science) is biological?
I never said it was, I'm just criticizing people who automatically rule that out.
And anyone who isn't an idiot or trolling (I'm hoping you're the latter) knows that it's both nature AND nurture, and it's really really difficult to pin anything on one but not the other.
Really this whole thing is easily solved by bringing up the fact that pink used to be a boys color and blue a girls color.
> (I'm hoping you're the latter)
Why would you hope I'm a troll? I never said it was just one or the other, if you read my comment I said it was both. I'm criticizing the people that think it's all nurture or all nature.
> Really this whole thing is easily solved by bringing up the fact that pink used to be a boys color and blue a girls color.
I don't know what that's supposed to solve or how it could solve it.
/u/thenuge26 means that just because the world is a mix of nurture and nature doesn't mean every single thing is both nurture and nature. Pink and blue are entirely socialized preferences, as we used to believe blue was passive and feminine and pink was aggressive and masculine.
As studies continue to state that women and men are, on average, equally able to doing science and math, and that women are actively discouraged from joining the field from a young age, people tend to believe that that's a nurture trait.
Oh right I understand now. Still, being capable of doing something and actually being interested in it are two different things.