
Why feminists are so annoying - Mojah
http://www.felienne.com/archives/3230
======
mike_hearn
The article seems to say: "Feminists annoy me because they are right".

This is not why feminists annoy me, though. I don't think they are right at
all. So the title of the blog post seems to extrapolate her own views out into
a universal truth.

This sort of thinking is especially dangerous:

 _> With the same high school grades a white person has a 78% higher chance of
being admitted to a university than a person of color_

I do not know where this stat comes from as she provides a cartoon instead of
a reference, but assuming it's not a trivially bogus stat (e.g. because of
differences in application rates), it sounds a lot like it could be a
Simpson's Paradox:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Simpson's_paradox)

The very same argument was made to suggest a gender bias in admissions at an
American university (Berkeley): when you selected just people with the same
grades, more men were accepted than women. Sexual discrimination!!!

The problem is, when they tried to figure out which department was
discriminating, the bias disappeared (actually became slightly in favour of
women). It turned out to be a statistical anomaly caused by the fact that
women tended to apply for much more competitive courses than men, like English
Lit, so they were rejected more often due to overcapacity - not due to their
gender. When you select only application rates and gender, this type of data
abuse causes misleading conclusions.

I don't _know_ that the race stat is another example of this, but I find it
hard to believe that such a dramatic case of racism across so many
institutions could persist for so long without severe legal problems, if it
was as open and shut as Felienne suggests.

Final issue I have with this blog post:

 _> You believe God put dinosaur bones in the earth to test your faith, you
think vaccines cause autism? Yes, that’s crazy but also funny haha who cares?_

The first is harmless belief that doesn't normally impact other people, the
second triggers preventable outbreaks of exceptionally serious diseases. So
lots of people care and parents opting out of vaccinations is a very
controversial issue right now! It seems very strange to use this as an
example!

~~~
octatoan
Going against established scientific fact does hurt other people. What if you
have kids and turn them into young-earth creationists as well?

~~~
shoo
What you are saying is superficially reasonable!

But it is possible to argue the other direction in few ways:

* what if you raise kids to have a keen understanding of the scientific method, and other skills/knowledge that asist them in achieving their aims, but also encourage them to be selfish sociopaths? Would this be better than raising highly moral, altruistic young-earth creationists?

* What if the net result of our civilisation's scientific and technological development is that we kill off all of the species / generally wreck the planet? Perhaps it would have been better to live in a more "traditional" society that resists the adoption of new ideas/practices. Perhaps life would not be so comfortable as it is now, but it might be far more sustainable!

edit: I guess the overall point I am trying to make is that scientific
principles is but one of a set of tools that lets you more effectively learn-
about/predict/control your environment. Another example of a similarly useful
tool could be "negotation skills". But, in itself, having access to these
tools does not immediately make you less likely to cause harm. They merely
make you more potentially more effective. But is it a positive thing that that
you are now more effective? It depends what you're trying to achieve!

------
scrollaway
This post is weird. There are a lot of reasons to be annoyed and most of those
have nothing to do with the cause, but the means employed.

Riddle me this: Let's say some tech company has to match a man/woman quota of
at least 40% on a CS position. (This is a pretty common theme in various
places)

Going by the numbers in this post, there's a 1.6% ratio in the author's class.
Let's be _extremely_ generous and say there's a 9:1 male/female ratio in CS.

With those numbers, there's a 30% skew in favour of female employees. In a
sector with a 9:1 male ratio, that means one in three male employee is
rejected because of numbers. The real ratio is actually MUCH higher, remember.
And on the other side of the equation, female employees would be very
aggressively sought after because positions are not actually easy to fill and
just because you can find the bodies doesn't mean the employees are good. Is
this where we want to end up?

End sidetrack. There's a lot of causes out there. Discrimination, everything.
But feminism, I think, annoys more than others because it promotes unhealthy
"fixes" such as this one above. You don't want to _force_ people into a new
belief system, you want to _change_ their belief system. The former is super
awkward for places where discrimination doesn't happen, and imho just
perpetuates the issue.

You want more women in CS? Make technology look like less of a boy's club at
an early age (and leading into tech education) and wait 15 years for the
results. I think the Minecraft kids generation will yield some pretty
fantastic surprises on that level.

~~~
rayiner
Re: forcing people. One of the great victories of our time was the federal
government beating people over the head with racial equality. Broadly
interpreting the 14th amendment and commerce clause to make not just de jure
discrimination illegal, but trampling on peoples' core rights of association
to tell them they had to invite blacks into their restaurants and hotels. It
was ugly and a gross overstepping of the government's bounds, but necessary
because the people needed to be civilized and they weren't going to civilize
themselves in any reasonable timescale.

If the government hadn't brought down the hammer we might still have a
segregated south today. It's ugly and not always the right answer, but
sometimes you need to beat civilization into people.

I'm not suggesting we need the government to be involved. But sometimes you
need top down intervention to fix a problem, and the fix isn't necessarily
fair while its in progress. Sometimes top-down intervention is the only way to
fix a problem in the long run, because he actors with power have no incentive
to self-improve.

~~~
etherael
This argument could've been used to justify Belgian involvement in the Congo,
as well as criticise ever leaving Africa to it's own devices. Sometimes,
y'know, you've just got to beat civilisation into people.

I really wish you'd think more on this, and think long and hard. It's really
depressing to see someone who I know is intelligent and thoughtful, although I
deeply disagree with them, promoting such an abhorrent position.

Lastly, also;

> he actors with power have no incentive to self-improve. (sic)

Bring that to its logical conclusion with regards to the entity imposing the
top down violence in order to beat civilisation into people.

------
minot
OK, I'll bite.

> women ‘nagging’ about equal rights are so annoying

Now, let's talk about the three concepts OP introduced.

1\. Simply said: people want the world to be fair and they happily refute
evidence of the contradiction.

2\. People want to believe they are reasonable creatures themselves.

3\. Accepting that there is a bias against women, means you must accept there
is a bias in favor of men.

The problem here is not that women want equal rights. No rational actor wants
equal rights, only increased rights. It is very disingenuous to talk about a
"white privilege" or a "male privilege" without acknowledging there are
privileges that come from being $input_race and $input_gender. Of course,
people of $input_race and $input_gender will usually not complain about the
privileges they get.

It is absolutely OK to seek parity in terms of rights. It is understandable
that people seek greater rewards for themselves. Lets just not delude
ourselves into thinking that what we want is equality when what we really want
is better rights and greater rewards for ourselves.

If feminism is about equality in rights and responsibility regardless of
gender or sexual identity, there are a lot of people around who go by the
wrong name.

Downvoters: please leave a note.

~~~
bayesianhorse
Long story short: You believe that feminism has already gone so far that women
have more rights than men, right?

~~~
NotableAlamode
In the US and other western countries, women clearly have de-facto more rights
than men. They are much more leniently punished for the same crimes, they are
much more rarely homeless, they do get more attention (and money) from social
services. In divorce cases they more or less automatically get the children
and half of the husband's money. They commit suicide much less often, way
fewer workplace deaths. They are allowed to vote but not subject to the draft.

~~~
bayesianhorse
Still they make less money, bear the cost/burden of child birth, are more
likely to care for children, are more likely to be physically abused by their
partners, more likely to be killed by their partner, and the list probably
goes on...

~~~
NotableAlamode

       Still they make less money,
    

Wrong, they make more money for the same work.

    
    
        bear the cost/burden of child birth,
    

With modern contraception tech, children is a lifestyle choice, like playing
golf, a lifestyle choice they mostly volunteer for.

    
    
       are more likely to care for children,
    

That's a lifestyle choice that they mostly enjoy. Child rearing is best seen
as a long-term paid for holiday.

    
    
       are more likely to be physically abused by their partners,
    

Men are are more likely to be emotionally abused by their partners, and
emotional abuse is worse than physical abuse. Moreover, men don't complain so
much physical abuse of men is not reported.

    
    
       more likely to be killed by their partner,
    

The majority of all murder victims are men.

------
wanderer2323
That's one classic "pro-social justice" blogpost written in a didactic tone,
touting some anecdotes, making a point of a statistic without any references
and conflating all sort of social issues (women in IT? college admissions?
bachelor degrees?). Funny thing is, the post itself if a perfect answer for
why feminists are so annoying.

------
danso
> _1 They remind us that the world is not a fair place, which contradict the
> Just World hypothesis. Simply said: people want the world to be fair and
> they happily refute evidence of the contradiction. So if girls in tech say
> they have less opportunity, we all love to believe they are wrong. The world
> cannot be unfair, could it? So: they must be wrong. This is, of course,
> untrue. There are many studies done proving that there is some subtle bias,
> like the one where resumes with a male name were rated as significantly more
> competent and hireable than the (identical) female applicant._

I've often wondered how much being Asian-American has contributed to my
current life of being a programmer. Throughout school and college, I've never
shown any particular passion or innate skill. But I got a lot of subtle
encouragement, such as from my immigrant parents who thought majoring in
computer engineering would be practical even though I was much more into
journalism. After college I didn't even bother looking for programming jobs,
but I gradually got moved more and more into programming roles...the
engineering degree helped, but I have to guess that some of it was a _lot_ of
benefit of the doubt given to me, based on me _looking_ like a computer nerd
or having the stereotypical math aptitude attributed to Asians (I'm also
pretty average at math). After enough years of this, I'm not a pretty
competent and passionate programming...but it seems hardly by active choice. I
believe the average young woman probably doesn't get as many chances or
benefits of the doubt that I have.

------
bayesianhorse
You don't need to be a feminist to want to make a programming community more
"diverse". Often the lack of diversity is a sign that there is toxicity in the
culture. Trying to attract more women, or people of color, or LGBTs rather
than chasing them off can only make a community more healthy, in my opinion.

Also, once you really take a look at "feminist" issues, they are a bit deeper
and more complicated than people who say they don't believe in feminism seem
to think.

~~~
MichaelCrawford
In the united states, it is unlawful for employers to discriminate for reasons
of age against people over forty. Even so, software engineers become
unemployable in their late thirties.

I am fifty-one.

Also in the united states, it is illegal for employers to discriminate against
the mentally ill, as well as those who are simply perceived as mentally ill.

I have quite sever bipolar-type schizoaffective disorder. I link to my essays
"Living with Schizoaffective Disorder" and "My Deepest Fear" at the top of
every single page of my website, including my resume:

[http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/schizoaffective-
disorder/](http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/schizoaffective-disorder/)

[http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/vancouver-
diaries/thought-...](http://www.warplife.com/mdc/books/vancouver-
diaries/thought-police.html)

"My Deepest Fear" concerns my vividly paranoid visual hallucinations. The
specific reason I work as a coder rather than as a physicist is that I still
write good code when I am hallucinating. I first realized that to be the case
in 1988, I wrote LwSD in 2003 and now I can't get a job.

How often do discussions of diversity include the mentally ill or the middle-
aged?

Among my deepest concerns is that I see many younger engineers - startup
founders are the worst, as well as the people who they employ - making many of
the same stupid mistake I did when I was their age, or the mistakes of my
young colleagues.

My aim these days is to find a job where I can teach the children not to fuck
up. Unfortunately I cannot get a job because all the young people think I am
incapable of writing code.

I did the storage and firewire for a wireless audio recorder that won a
technical academy award.

~~~
gaius
One day all the 20-something brogrammers are going to hit their 40s and thing
damn, the time to tackle ageism was 20 years ago.

~~~
bayesianhorse
I really don't think this will even be an issue 20 years from now.

------
hal9000xp
I'm from Moscow. I found feminists a bit annoying too. I worked for the second
largest tech company in Russia. Everybody complain about Russia. But I have to
say, that in my unit, there was many girls who works as developers. These
girls are good software developers and I didn't see any issues working with
them. Our HR and my team lead had no bias at all against women. It's
ridiculous to think that there are bias against women. If she is a good
candidate, she will be hired even in Russia. It's just a business, only skills
are important, nobody give a .... about your gender. Shareholders interested
in net profit, that's all.

By the way, I see curious little correlation between leftists and feminists
(hello to USA). I'm not leftist.

Girls usually care much less about career (at lest in Russia) that's why they
earn less in average. But those who care, do well (not only in tech).

P.S. I love this video about feminists:
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oqyrflOQFc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1oqyrflOQFc)
And this right-wing channel too.

------
etherael
Actually, no, it turns out this is in fact false.

[http://douglasernstblog.com/2014/01/17/white-privilege-
artis...](http://douglasernstblog.com/2014/01/17/white-privilege-artist-does-
it-exist-or-do-i-simply-lack-critical-thinking-skills/)

TLDR; a 4.0 GPA is not equal everywhere. Also, affirmative action means that
you actually get a _bonus_ for being a PoC, and if you are Caucasian or Asian,
you are discriminated against as a matter of admitted policy.

But hey, just world hypothesis makes people ignore that little tidbit too.

Quelle surprise.

~~~
colomon
Huh? I mean, I think the stats as presented in that cartoon are complete BS
[1] too, but that link is in no way a meaningful refutation of it.

[1] First hint: note that both pairs of stats presented add up to 100%, yet
are described as relative odds of getting in. The second pair is even
explicitly labeled "percentage of bachelor's degrees." Second hint: There have
been multiple major lawsuits against affirmative action where both sides
agreed that (some) minorities were being favored in college admission
processes; the debate is over whether that is just. Third hint: Those lawsuits
have stated that some PoC get boosts from the admissions process and other PoC
get docked points. Yet this cartoon treats all PoC as a single homogenous
group.

------
jpgvm
At the end of the day the issues with apparent female/male biases are mostly
(but not purely I don't think) a matter of culture.

If you don't perpetuate an image that a man should be a certain thing and a
woman something else you won't have these problems.

Fix TV, fix magazines etc, fix other women telling women they can't be
programmers/engineers/other male dominated jobs. Fix other men telling men
they shouldn't be manicurists/nurses/other female dominated jobs.

It's not men telling women they can't be programmers usually. Just like like
it's not women telling men they don't want men doing their nails.

The fact it's always framed as men vs women is just dumb.

There are still some bias issues left over once that is resolved but it's not
clear if they wouldn't just resolve themselves once the above is corrected
(salary gap for one).

------
benaston
No, feminists are annoying because the most vocal ones take a simplistic
rather literal view of equality, which is a distortion of the more nuanced
truth behind the ideology.

Men and women have clear differences which should be celebrated. This means
men and women can never be literally equal.

It so happens that women are significantly over represented in nursing. It is
not obvious that fighting this imbalance is worth the effort.

~~~
joepie91_
In the Netherlands, this difference is actually part of the typical school
curriculum, in what I guess is called 'civics' in English. 'Gelijk' vs.
'gelijkwaardig', which translates roughly to 'identical' vs. 'equal'.

------
auganov
I hope a day comes when the mainstream figures out there's no generic
"feminism" and "feminists". Whenever I hear people say "feminists bla bla
bla", it's like - ummmm who exactly? It's pretty much like ranting about some
imaginary "leftists".

------
sputnikus
I watched [https://youtu.be/pPcMZX8OCP8](https://youtu.be/pPcMZX8OCP8) before
reading the article and I find the video to be a very appropriate response.

------
sergioz
Well, if women are underpaid (all else being equal), why companies doesn't
prefer their labor as low-cost substitute?

------
lclarkmichalek
Part of it, to me, has always seemed to be due to the institutional/personal
divide. I enjoy watching people playing video games professionally, and yet as
a feminist, I can say that it is ridiculously sexist scene. I can condemn the
institution without condemning its members, and my saying it is a sexist
institution is not my apportion blame; I simply would like to see the system
improved.

See also: gamegate

~~~
tshadwell
Where's the sexism in e-sports? I don't really have a position here, I just
wanted to know.

My gut feeling is that there will be a very high percentage of e-sports
players who are men because the majority of competitive video game players are
men.

------
jbssm
Well, because they usually lack coherence in their reasoning.

It's not fun to argue with someone that shouts equality when it suits them,
and then are willing to accept an all world of specially tailored laws that
specifically benefit them.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
That's zero-th level thinking on the topic. Read some, get some perspective on
the problem and its possible correction.

------
richmarr

      the country that first legalized gay marriage
    

Out of curiousity I started reading... depending on the interpretation this is
either Canada, Denmark, or Mesopotamia. I'm guessing she means Canada.

Good post though, spot on.

~~~
dghf
Netherlands 2001, Canada 2005, Denmark 2012 (though recognised same-sex
"registered partnerships" from 1989).

Source: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-
sex_marriage#Contemporary](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Same-
sex_marriage#Contemporary)

------
kungfooman
Imposter syndrome.

