So says the highest-rated comment on a NYT op-ed by Jessica Valenti, "What Feminists Can Do for Boys/We fought for young women in the patriarchy first. But budding patriarchs could use some help too."
The second-highest-rated comment is:
How 'bout not referring to them as "budding patriarchs"?For decades, I've heard feminists say they don't care what happens to boys — their focus is on girls — and if their work in support of women and girls has an impact on boys, well, that's fair play turnabout for millennia of subordination. I have been on the receiving end of sharp words from feminists who don't even want to hear the argument — the one Valenti makes here — that you should at least be interested in boys doing well because it's relevant to whether girls do well.
You know, just for a start?
(Deep Thought: I'd love to elucidate for you how odiously sexist this term is, but it is so vile as to preclude any parallel which wouldn't be censored by the moderator, correctly, as hate speech.)
I never comment, but when I see someone attacking children...
By the way, the term "budding patriarchs" is in the subheadline and probably wasn't written by Valenti.
Long-term readers of this blog will remember that I got into an on-line squabble with Valenti and her supporters after I criticized her for posing happily in front of the well-known woman abuser Bill Clinton, when she and other bloggers were assembled to be massaged into blogging in the interests of the Hillary '08 campaign. I haven't kept up with the writings of Jessica Valenti over the years — it says in the NYT she is "the author of six books on feminism" — so I don't know if she's ever called Bill and Hillary to account for what they'd done to women.
Anyway... this new column doesn't have much to say about how feminists can serve — serve?!! — the needs of boys and whether they'd be any good at it. She thinks of relieving them of the obligation to be "strong and stoic" and of breaking "the silence" about male victims of sexual assault. She's more expressive about what she doesn't like: the "misogynist huckster" Jordan Peterson and "dangerous online extremist" "incel" support groups.
Posts
133 comments:
'We will tell you your place and we will raise you to like it, worm!'
You need to equip young men to deal with HR departments.
Misogynist = anyone who cares about all humans. Huckster = someone who uses capitalism and enterprise to do better than me. Welcome to Jessica's dictionary.
If they reshape boys into males, what woman will want to date them?
I recall an article by a Russo-American raised lady who was dating in Russia. He was presumptuous, arrogant, offended every single one of her Feminist Sensibilities...and her nipples could cut glass. (A paraphrase)
The money quote describing dating a Russian 'Where No means Yes and Yes means Anal.'
A bit outside the Althousian Overton Window.
She's the gal with the big fronts?
So a man can't have an opinion about abortion because he can never be pregnant. But feminists want to give us tips on how to raise our boys. Fuck off.
Its hard to find something constructive to say about either of the top rated comments or anything Valenti says. Plus, I thought gender was fluid nowadays?
In fifth grade Mrs. Pritchard had all us boys in girls hiking in the woods classifying wildflowers, engaged in needlepoint, cross stitch, then decoupage at Christmas, catching frogs and snakes, writing short stories, training for the playground olympic decathlon, cooking in the kitchen, building bird houses.
Feminist is a profession?
"training for the playground olympic decathlon"
That caused me to remember a dream I had last night. I found myself competing in the Olympics. The sport was boxing. I figured I'd just do it, and thought I had the distinction of being the first person to compete in the Olympics in a sport she had never participated in before.
That's very interesting in a Gump/Zelig/I Stayed in a Holiday Inn Express Last Night way.
millennia of subordination
Resentment is woman's chief emotion. It's wired in.
I was recruited out of the tech industry to become a science teacher. The idea was to put more women's faces into the STEM fields for kids to see. No one suggested reaching out to girls required discouraging the boys. I wanted all of my students to love science and to consider a career in a tech field. I hope having a good experience in the classroom with a woman who had worked for both the private and public technology sectors made it seem natural and normal to find women there when the boys went to work. We weren't trying to turn men away to make room for women. Feminism often treats the world like it's zero-sum. Empowering women doesn't require feminizing men.
"the author of six books on feminism"
Correction. Six unread books on feminism.
I hope you wore headgear in your dream. hard to believe Valenti and her ilk suddenly care about boys. seems more like Valenti has recognized that blatant and proud disregard for boys was a strategic mistake. she's scared of what will happen if the boys (and girls) continue listening to Jordan Peterson. too incongruous, this concern for boys, and too late in any event.
Resentment is woman's chief emotion. It's wired in.
It's not wired in, it's trained in.
Pavlov's feminists.
Valenti is the author of five books: Full Frontal Feminism (2007), He's a Stud, She's a Slut (2008), The Purity Myth (2009), Why Have Kids? (2012), and Sex Object: A Memoir (2016). She co-edited the book Yes Means Yes: Visions of Female Sexual Power and A World Without Rape (2008).
Valenti and other radicals only have relevance if they first teach and convince young girls that they are oppressed victims and that they should blame boys for it. Resentment and hate are learned.
In my limited experience, it’s quickly a waste of time dealing with ideologues (someone who must reduce all the world and all the people in it to a few narrow concepts; usually concepts these people didn’t generate themselves...complex enough to be a game they can absorb, manipulate and perhaps hope to write a few rules for....though there are people who also want to live within an idea-structure...personally or professionally...religions seem to have ideological elements but faiths tend to be something else).
Who’s especially likely to be attracted by ideology?
-A core of relatively sophisticated ‘intellectuals’ within the domain, higher IQ people in search of a cause, deeper meaning, purpose etc....on the bottom end, a core of people who suffer immediate injustice, often less sophisticated and educated.
Who’s especially likely to take up feminist ideology on the top-end, especially 3rd wave?
Women who often don’t fit anywhere else: Lesbians, abused and mistreated women, women with fewer dating prospects and male attention, writers in search of material, some genuine hustlers, some gay guys and a few, really, really desperate men (card-carriers).
First-wave?
More likely a deeper pool of women, some very smart, strong and in immediate need of removing injustice (jobs, more limited speheres of movement/freedom, legal status.). More people, who, long-term, are put off by the crutches and same old cant.
My two cents.
Ann Althouse said...
"training for the playground olympic decathlon"
"That caused me to remember a dream I had last night. I found myself competing in the Olympics. The sport was boxing. I figured I'd just do it, and thought I had the distinction of being the first person to compete in the Olympics in a sport she had never participated in before."
Althouse. Meet canvas. Canvas. Meet Althouse. You're going to be seeing a lot of each other.
The most terrifying thing a young man can hear: Hello, I am from the Feminists In Charge and I am here to help you.
“compete in the Olympics in a sport she had never participated in before.”
And now we’re back to the theme of the article.
By the way, the term "budding patriarchs" is in the subheadline and probably wasn't written by Valenti.
It reads like tongue-in-cheek irony to me. Not really appropriate to the article, but not all that offensive.
IMHO, in Western Civilization (where it is still allowed to exist) women are the shapers of the culture. While I think that makes sense a priori I will offer the shorthand notion that women have the biggest influence on children and therefore what the next generation will bring.
And for a few thousand years civilization has been a thin veneer placed over the necessary social arrangements to constrain the nature of men and shunt it in a direction for progress. Feminists tell us the marriage is bad for women, but the opposite is true. In caveman times the man with the best ability to conquer or kill other men had the most girlfriends. The opposite of marriage is not freedom but rather plural marriage, where women suffer and must compete with their sister wives to have a slightly better life than if they had no husband at all. Marriage created the social construct that each man got just one woman.
What the feminists (at least in my lifetime) have wanted is to gut the parts of culture that underpin EVERYTHING(without replacing them with anything else) while still benefiting from all of the features of the culture built upon that now missing foundation.
This *tinkering* with boys and how they are and how they should be is more of the same. Let us try to remove all of the features of men that actually make the world work but still expect all of the civilization amenities that we have come to expect.
I think the feminists discovered helping women up was harder and less immediately gratifying than pushing men down.
And the story about a pervasive and self-replicating patriarchy served to explain why their vision hadn’t materialized in short order.
Wasn't there a study where female teachers were given gender blind papers (no names), and suddenly the grades the boys got went up 1/2 to 1 letter grade from prior grades given by the same teachers on non-gender blind papers?
So this biased nonsense has already started?
I look very skeptically and cautiously at the desire to ‘equalize’ workplaces without discussion of costs and gender differences (using feminists as loudspeakers and bettering rams), but I tend to work well with actual individuals and try and temper all cruder impulses to ones of professional respect and moral decency.
If someone has a skill or aptitude (they probably can), and the ambition (they probably will), I aim to treat them as I’d want to be treated. If someone has more skills or aptitude than me and they have done or did, I try and learn and be the best I can (being around someone a few steps ahead or consistently smarter is the hardest)..
Life’s better that way.
“By the way, the term "budding patriarchs" is in the subheadline and probably wasn't written by Valenti.”
Why stop there? Why not “future domestic battery defendants”?
Found in Webster's under ... Bunk!
Let's take another look at those boys.
So Valenti is can offer authoritative opinions on this topic because...?
I read the Wikipedia article about her; nowhere does it mention anything about her work with or for boys. She and her husband have one child: a daughter. So her actual experience working with boys can't even begin to fill a thimble.
It may be true that on the internet, nobody knows you're a dog, but some people can pretty easily figure out when you're full of it.
Sorry, closer look at those boys.
This reminds me of that painful speech by Hermione at the UN when she had this shattering epiphany that men outnumber women by a small margin and not all women are 'WOMYN'.
So getting the World's Men to vote for a Feminist Agenda would mean (gasp) trying to entice men to support Feminist Ideals.
Considering the woeful words of the Jessica Valenti's of the world...this is a tough sale!
So best wait a generation after indoctrination.
But how to make the men already here have zero influence on their kids? No Fault Divorce just isn't enough.
After successfully denying boys to be boys for 2-3 decades now, plugging them with Ritalin to keep them tame and lame, refusing to call on them in class any longer, or shouting them out if they give an answer not 'approved', portraying men at every turn as evil, misogynists, rapists, destroyers of the world, and women as representing all the good in the universe, she's now back to 'help' boys?
I wouldn't let my son near anyone who thinks like this. Our universities are full of people who think like her. Men are being kicked out of school and jailed for dating people like this (accuse of much worse, with the word of a woman being enough to remove the men from the U).
She, and people like her, have destroyed a generation and a half of boys/men. This is not the person to figure out what sort of man my son should turn out to be. He'll be a gentleman. He'll be smart, strong, self-reliant. But he won't be someone cast in her image. And he'll have nothing to do with women like her.
If you want a preview of the kind of men that current feminism asks for here is a recent story about a young poly-amorous woman and the level of negotiation that she has to go through to get an IUD and work it out with all of her boyfriends and their girlfriends:
https://www.buzzfeednews.com/article/rachelcromidas/polyamory-sex-iud-birth-control
Like most stories the author is her own protagonist (which is fine - I am the hero of my stories as well) but there are passages where boyfriend #1 and boyfriend #2 are presented as going through these difficult situations with her and "isn't that love?" without recognizing how she is humiliating and/or emasculating them (and they are presented as nearly clueless about this as well). She presents boyfriend #2 as being confused that he has always had to have protected sex but that new musician/dog-walker boyfriend #3 gets unprotected sex so she needs an IUD. In her tale she is empowered and she is considering #2 and his other girlfriend and golly isn't she responsible for getting the IUD. It never seemed to occur to her that at a minimum if the IUD is for #3 that #3 should be the one going to the doctor with her. So, she has a story about three different boyfriends none of which are exhibiting especially male traits. Spoilers: none of these relationships she has are stable or long lasting.
Valentini was famously budding for patriarchs. And that was swell back then.
The NYT gives space to a ludicrous brain-dead dingbat on their op-ed page. But enough about Maureen Dowd...
"male victims of sexual assault"
She's not implying gays could do anything bad, is she?
I mean, we all know Catholic priests were "pedophiles," right?
Mind your own business is really simple and good advice.
-sw
As the article confirms, the point of progressivism is to create the New Man.
Didn't work with New Soviet Man and New Mao Man, but New Girly Man is gonna be a great success, now what womyn are on the case.
I would really really like to hear the definition of misogynist that nets Jordan Peterson. I guess it's the part where he talks about boys becoming better men.
mezzrow: Misogynist = anyone who cares about all humans. Huckster = someone who uses capitalism and enterprise to do better than me. Welcome to Jessica's dictionary.
Yes. In what way is what Valenti does any different from what Peterson does, "huckstering" wise? (As for misogynist, she would beclown herself if compelled to give anything beyond a "point and sputter" accounting of the "misogynist" charge.)
You never heard Maureen Dowd defending a Clinton, so she is not 100% brain dead.
https://www.inquisitr.com/4965961/benevolent-sexism-attractive-to-women-study-shows/
Yes but is 95% much of a functional difference?
My name goes here: What the feminists (at least in my lifetime) have wanted is to gut the parts of culture that underpin EVERYTHING(without replacing them with anything else) while still benefiting from all of the features of the culture built upon that now missing foundation.
Progressivism in a nutshell. "These nice things that I take for granted while living in the West have having nothing to do with (ugh) 'Western Civ'."
I was recruited out of the tech industry to become a science teacher.
Funny how so many women who go into "STEM" leave it for a cushier job that doesn't require so many hours and such a strain on the cerebral cortex. I will be more impressed when I see women in tech staying in the trenches productively exercising their skills and powers as engineers etc wrangling with math, logic, and cold steel. Maybe it's happening now more, but during my career the women quickly became managers of one kind or another, and the men stayed in the STEM jobs that they actually liked.
“By the way, the term "budding patriarchs" is in the subheadline and probably wasn't written by Valenti.”
Why stop there? Why not “future domestic battery defendants”?
Splooge stooges is much more alliterative...it practically flows off the tongue....
Both of my daughters were good at math until one day, to my distress, they became bored of it, and there was no way that I could think of to get them interested again. I blame the patriarchy for this nefarious outcome, and yet they both seem pretty happy in their touchy feely careers.
Women raising our boys to be good feminists. Rise of the incels. Correlation isn't causation, but it's always worth a look.
Or how about building your own thing, lady STEMmers? I cheered Elizabeth Holmes- at last a STEM woman who builds things! A founder. A female maker who doesn’t cater exclusively to ‘unserved’ female markets!
Alas...
Never say never, to quote the great Ian Fleming, but I have unfortunately read a good bit of this literary harpy's harping drivel without finding a cross word on Clinton's transgressions.
I was once a democrat lobbyist and personally witnessed occasions of high-ranking political women declaring that Clinton could do what he wanted with them and to any backwater Arkansas mascara violator so long as he kept abortion safe.
It's not a myth: it was the common response to any accusation that emerged, accompanied always by a few gratuitous slurs against the 'white trash' status of the accusers. In board meetings unironically including silk-sock attorneys, six-figure nonprofit administrators, and trust fundy donors, only the ACLU representative objected, once, to such talk. Good on her.
Valenti is a dishonest little worm. Thank goodness she has no sons. She would destroy male offspring.
She’s a ground breaker in her own way I suppose. Grand scale fraud used to be exclusively men’s territory.
I think the feminists discovered helping women up was harder and less immediately gratifying than pushing men down.
Defining the problem as a "gap" will always have this effect. Helping lower performers is hard. Further the ideology behind the program defines certain causes as nonexistent which makes addressing them (or accepting them to the extent they are benign) impossible. If you can't bring up the bottom the only path to reducing the gap is pushing down the top.
Defining the problem as a "gap" will always have this effect. Helping lower performers is hard. Further the ideology behind the program defines certain causes as nonexistent which makes addressing them (or accepting them to the extent they are benign) impossible. If you can't bring up the bottom the only path to reducing the gap is pushing down the top.
It's a common problem on the Left....see wealth/poverty; race/education; even healthcare.
Why stop there? Why not “future domestic battery defendants”?
"So, Johnny, when will you start beating your wife?"
She would destroy male offspring.
Akin to Hanna Rosin (I think I have the right person). She wrote a book on "ending men" and admitted she roots for her daughter to outperform her son. While she claims to "love him" and I'm sure that's true in some ways it must be wounding to realize your mother roots against you as some sort of cosmic retribution for what other penised people have done.
I ran out of (free) reads at the new, improved NYT.
I tried to find that specific opining elsewhere without luck.
But I did find her branching out into relationship counseling:
What would you say to women who feel the way you described, but are in relationships with people who voted for him or support his politics?
I’d say leave. I understand that may sound harsh, but I think that anyone who voted for Donald Trump obviously doesn’t respect women as full people or people of color as full people and is not worth spending time with."
http://time.com/4746935/jessica-valenti-feminism-politics-relationships/
---
Regarding STEM..from 2015:
Women preferred 2 to 1 over men for STEM faculty positions
"The only evidence of bias the authors discovered was in favor of women; faculty in all four disciplines preferred female applicants to male candidates, with the exception of male economists, who showed no gender preference."
Sam Neil did a mini series called Merlin.
The Villainess was Mab, the Fairy Queen. As men expanded and started to go toward the new faith of Christianity, her power diminished
Finally, to defeat her, Merlin and all the people did the one thing she could not withstand: they ignored her utterly.
There is a lesson there on how to react to Jessica Valenti
It also worked for the Daily Mail and Is working on CNN
..that search also yielded a companion to to the OED, the OHTFM:
The Oxford Handbook of Transnational Feminist Movements
Long-term readers of this blog will remember that I got into an on-line squabble
This is literally the only reason I recognize her name.
He may get weary.
Little boys get weary, wearing the same shabby dress.
If he gets weary, try a little tenderness.
"Valenti and other radicals..."
I don't see her as radical. She posed smiling in front of Bill Clinton and in service to his political goals. I've always seen her as a conventional Democrat. I haven't read the 6 books of course. I did skim "Full Frontal Feminism." It struck me as just women's-magazine type feminism — just the standard stuff young women encounter in the normal culture and nothing challenging. If I'm missing something, quote me some actual paragraphs from her books. I read Catharine MacKinnon circa 1990. That was some challenging writing, back when everyone had been reading Carol Gilligan. I haven't seen any radical feminism since then, just political activism on conventional feminism.
"She's not implying gays could do anything bad, is she?"
Are you revealing that you don't even see that it's possible that women sexually assault men?
A lot of people assume the man just always wants it — he's asking for it, implicitly, just by being a male. And if he isn't, he should keep quiet about that, because what kind of man isn't up for sex all the time?
Jordan Peterson should write some books for children.
“My mother, who has always lived in Queens and rarely has left, said she was considering taking a plane to Wisconsin to kick this blogger’s ass. My mother does not make idle threats; my father later told me she had researched flights.”
“From Ugly Duckling to Boy Toy: How Author Jessica Valenti Learned to Define Herself” in Glamour, 2016.
In response to concerns over the lack of minority educators in K-12, especially as schools are becoming more racially and ethnically diverse, Lewis argues that “the question of whiteness cannot be avoided if we are to continue to uphold the idea of educational equity and equality.”
To address this, Lewis urges educators to develop a deeper understanding of whiteness. Though previous scholars have conceptualized it as an “experience” or a “feeling,” Lewis suggests that whiteness is better understood if one considers its geometrical dimensions. - Campus Reform
Remember the old song from the Viet Nam era? "Waist deep in the Big Muddy and the big fool said to march on..."
“Because whiteness and maleness are geometric styles, aesthetic questions are intrinsically political and political questions are inherently aesthetic,” Lewis declares.
Kids are taking on decades of debt to listen to this nonsense.
Rusty said...
"Althouse. Meet canvas. Canvas. Meet Althouse. You're going to be seeing a lot of each other."
After she regains consciousness, of course.
From the Op-Ed:
In the last year, for example, we’ve seen young Americans flock to the work of Jordan Peterson, a Canadian psychology professor and YouTube philosopher who’s made his name refusing to call students by their preferred pronouns and suggesting that men are in charge because they’re just better suited for it.
Some of Mr. Peterson’s other claims include the idea that sexual harassment wouldn’t be such a problem if women didn’t wear makeup to work and that “enforced monogamy” would stop young men from committing mass murder. (He is notably silent on how women might fare being partnered to someone with a propensity for horrific violence.)
That is felony intellectual vandalism in the first degree; such grotesque mischaracterization of Peterson's arguments means she is either a liar or an idiot.
What's worse though, as if that isn't bad enough, is that Valenti and her ilk are science-denying creationists. That is, in order for this pile of syllables to have any worthwhile meaning, evolution must have stopped at the neckline. Considering the very different survival problems men and women have faced, that is a fantastic claim requiring incredible evidence.
This American Life, not known for its conservative bent, did a show title "Testosterone" a half-dozen or so years ago.
One of the segments was about a trans-man (female to male) who described her experiences after taking testosterone. He(?) described suddenly seeing women in a very urgent, objectifying way. And, for the first time, understanding physics.
Valenti, who, if she isn't a radical desperately needs some other excuse, meet reality.
Men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature. This is as diversity and sex neutral as Gaia will tolerate.
“Men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature. This is as diversity and sex neutral as Gaia will tolerate.”
Equivalency, not equality.
If you aren't a woman you don't have the right to comment on issues like abortion, equal pay laws, etc. You don't know what it's like to be a woman and you don't have the right to put YOUR laws on THEIR bodies. Obviously.
If you aren't a man please feel free to comment on issues affecting men and boys--you have a large role to play in shaping and molding boys and your ideas about masculinity must be respected and followed.
Men can't comment on women's issues.
Women can comment on men's issues.
That, friends, is what's called equality.
You don't need much expertise for the bobsled event. You can compete at the Olympic level after a few hours training. There's not much money in it though.
Blogger Hey Skipper said...
That is felony intellectual vandalism in the first degree; such grotesque mischaracterization of Peterson's arguments means she is either a liar or an idiot.
--
Embrace the power of "and".
'Prole,
Helluva find.
Momma bear protecting her cub. Papa bear saying Whatevah, honey.
She should have strapped on a diaper and road tripped it.
Curling would be a much more lucrative sport if they permitted a little downblouse action. I don't think you have to devote very much of your life to mastering the sport.
“Men and women are equal in rights and complementary in Nature. This is as diversity and sex neutral as Gaia will tolerate.”
Equivalency, not equality.
The former implies coercion, or congruence to fit a preferred model. No, it is, precisely, and, despite feminist protests, accurately, equal in rights and complementary in Nature.
By the way, the term "budding patriarchs" is in the subheadline and probably wasn't written by Valenti.
As I wrote above, I think that is intended to be read humorously. But maybe it is the headline writer's clumsy attempt at parallelism -- picking up the use of the word of the word "patriarchy" in the previous sentence and thoughtlessly reusing it:
We fought for young women in the patriarchy first. But budding patriarchs could use some help too.
Now comes my confusion. What does We fought for young women in the patriarchy first mean? Does it mean, "In the context of fighting the patriarchy, we fought for young women first"? Or does it mean "We fought first for young women to join the patriarchy"?
If the former, the "budding patriarchs" line does read like a condescending smear.
If the latter, it frames the Valenti form of feminism as a power grab. Gender diversity for oligarchs is the sum of Hillary Clinton's career and campaigns. Not radical at all, as Althouse says.
I did some work with one of those mental coaching outfits for a time-sports, pageants, etc. They trained many of our Olympic shooters. They believed if one fully committed to thier program and had the means to do so (competetive shooting is expensive) they could teach you to be an Olympic caliber shooter, a la they’re made not born.
Matriarchs bud. Patriarchs are more like shoots.
Tina Trent said:
Valenti is a dishonest little worm. Thank goodness she has no sons. She would destroy male offspring.
Raising the question of what her "parenting" is doing to her female offspring...
Don't get triggered, these little ladies need to blow off some steam. Real men are nonplussed by such petty distractions. There are too many jobs and tasks to do that women can't or won't do.
“Kids are taking on decades of debt to listen to this nonsense.”
The better to make them docile in the workplace, my dear.
“they could teach you to be an Olympic caliber shooter, a la they’re made not born.”
Have you seen the US Archery team? They look like people who spend their time between Renaissance Fairs practicing with their bows and arrows.
Real men are nonplussed by such petty distractions. There are too many jobs and tasks
That, yes, but also real women reconcile our differences, hopes and ambitions, with real men.
[Howard:] There are too many jobs and tasks to do that women can't or won't do.
Here is a list.
Why the Valenti's of the world don't gripe about how vanishingly few women are small engine mechanics is a real mystery.
Except that it isn't.
As it happens, I work in a very highly remunerated occupation -- pilot -- that, despite very active attempts to recruit women, and no upper body strength barriers, remains 94% male.
Jessica, over to you.
Have you seen the US Archery team? They look like people who spend their time between Renaissance Fairs practicing with their bows and arrows.
I only remember Geena Davis.
We do offer our suggestions; It's called Fathering
@Earnie, flying to Madison to lay hands on Althouse would not be wise as long as Meade is around. He looks like one of those wiry guys who are so dangerous in a bar fight, even more dangerous than the big guys who look as though they can bench press your car.
Not that I have ever been in a bar fight. Or even in a bar. 😉
Funny how so many women who go into "STEM" leave it for a cushier job that doesn't require so many hours and such a strain on the cerebral cortex. I will be more impressed when I see women in tech staying in the trenches productively exercising their skills and powers as engineers etc wrangling with math, logic, and cold steel.
It’s self-selection, Tim. I was a software developer for 15 years. Towards the end of that time I had my kids, and decided staying home with them was the best choice. (I was lucky to have that choice.) When the kids were all in school full time, I got into teaching, and like Eleanor, I teach science. I teach junior high — if I’m going to spend my days around people with a junior high mentality, I should be at least trying to help them grow up: working in software development was like being junior high.
The thing I really wanted to say is, teaching is a much harder job than coding. And I put in more hours teaching, even counting all those vacations, than I ever did coding. Even when we were putting in OT to get a release out the door, which was only four or so times a year, I never brought work home with me, and rarely went in on weekends. During the school year I work literally every day at home, including many “vacation” days, which really function as pressure valves so teachers can get caught up and plan for the next quarter! Actually teaching (so-called contact time) is the smallest part of the job. I love teaching chemistry but planning and prepping the labs is huge time sink.
Moving up to management or into teaching is not wimping out. These jobs require skills that most engineers don’t have, which is why tech companies are notorious for having bad management.
Misogynist, eh?
The people I follow who follow Peterson would not agree.
Makes me wonder if she's read him, or it's just What She Knows About Him, Because Everyone Says It?
(I have no opinion as such, having not read him, either.)
Have you seen the US Archery team? They look like people who spend their time between Renaissance Fairs practicing with their bows and arrows.
You mean to tell me that people who are world-class archers practice archery?
Thank you for that stunning insight into how the world works.
William -- you've made some great posts on this site, but you apparently know nothing about curling. If you had watched much of it in the Olympics, you might have noticed that few if any of the competitors had curled for less than 10-15 years.
I gotta say, my sister is the author of SEVEN books on feminism, but she isn't stupid like Jessica Valenti.
Ann,
Was your opponent a man or a women. Were you fighting the patriarchy or maybe third way feminism?
wave
""She's not implying gays could do anything bad, is she?"
Are you revealing that you don't even see that it's possible that women sexually assault men?"
Not at all. But since at least some of the sexual assaults on men are carried out by gay men, and criticism of sexual violence by gay men is rare, the insinuation seems perfectly reasonable. We'll leave aside the relative proportion of sexual assaults on men carried out by women vs. men.
and criticism of sexual violence by gay men is rare, the insinuation seems perfectly reasonable
Ironically, advocates in the press and elsewhere have managed a peculiar, uncivil framing of the people they ostensibly intended to help.
If Ms Valenti wants to understand the ways of manhood maledom etc across the centuries, she might remember the lines from The Boxer:
"Still a man hears what he wants to hear and disregards the rest,
La la lie la lie la la lie"
....although hmm maybe it is the subsequent verse that suggests the universal truth:
"I do declare there were times when I was so lonesome I took some comfort there..."
flying to Madison to lay hands on Althouse would not be wise as long as Meade is around.
When this all went down in 2006 I believe Meade was but a commenter living in another state.
Yes, I know. Just sayin’
I’ve now read some Valenti. She comes across as a woman with serious esteem issues — in both directions! — who could have used some better parenting in her prepubescent days.
flying to Madison to lay hands on Althouse would not be wise as long as Meade is around.
I'm guessing Althouse can handle herself.
@Donatello: Thank you for your kind comment. I did not mean to minimize the dedication and concentration that truly accomplished curlers bring to the sport. Still, unlike the the triple back flip on the parallel bars, it's something that a dilettante can do on weekends. I fear that many curlers are not truly committed to the sport and give the other curlers a bad name. The stories about them at the Olympic Village are not things I can repeat here. Also, that sweeping action they perform in front of the stone has unfortunate domestic implications, and many feminists want to ban the sport altogether. I go back to my original point. Curlistas should embrace their racy image and wear spandex bottoms and downblousable tops. The sport could be bigger than soccer.
at least some of the sexual assaults on men are carried out by gay men
At least some men can deal with a head in their lap when sober.
Louganis said he was raped by his boyfriend on a washing machine, so there's that.
From link @8:51 AM
This algorithmic embarrassment was the result of a 20-second interaction in which I took a group photo with President Bill Clinton and a handful of other bloggers. A law professor posted the picture online and later suggested I was posed provocatively. Soon hundreds of blogs were debating whether I was trying to stick my tits out, whether I had worn a tight sweater on purpose. One wondered if I’d been invited to this meeting for the sole purpose of enticing Clinton into an affair.
As I read post after post, I cried in the living room of my parents’ house. My mother, who has always lived in Queens and rarely has left, said she was considering taking a plane to Wisconsin to kick this blogger’s ass. My mother does not make idle threats; my father later told me she had researched flights.
Jessica, you’re prettier, far smarter and much more accomplished than Ann Althouse, your mom needn’t have been upset by this relatively unknown blogger.
Jessica, you’re prettier, far smarter and much more accomplished than Ann Althouse, your mom needn’t have been upset by this relatively unknown blogger.
Ah! Troll. Go nuts, sugar tits! Maybe you and Trumpit can exchange recipes.
As I read post after post, I cried in the living room of my parents’ house.
If you've never seen the viral youtube video of Jessica Slaughter Valenti crying over her internet torment at the hands of Althouse and her commenters, it's a hoot.
Ya dun goofed.
If you can't stand the heat, you should stay in the kitchen.
In the freezer with the other snowflacks.
Well if she's prettier than Althouse, I guess she wins the argument.
19th Amendment...
"The thing I really wanted to say is, teaching is a much harder job than coding. And I put in more hours teaching, even counting all those vacations, than I ever did coding."
You must have been working for the government then, or were likely highly resented by the guys putting in the hours.
When Valenti has in the past talked about payback for millennia of oppression, this is simply a recipe for unending war. The point should be about equality and opportunity--if you have those you can stop with the hate--but of course they don't. Very noble of her to offer a hand to boys, those budding patriarchs.
A stable family is the best environment for the mental, sexual, and physical health of men and women, and for the raising of children. Children without a father have all sorts of problems in life. The claims during the campaign for easy divorce that it doesn't harm children was without data and was simply self-interested jabber.
Because women may be physically tied up with pregnancy/children for potentially decades, women deep down (and maybe they admit it or not) want a man who is a good provider and will protect them. If a snarling dog or mugger confronts a couple, what does the woman do? She hides behind her man (except on TV of course). What happens if she makes more than him? Divorce. What happens if he loses his job? Divorce. So don't tell me that the fate of men is irrelevant to the ladies.
There are many ways in which women simply cannot grasp men's reality. For example, it is possible for a man to fail utterly, be ruined. He can build a business and then lose it, and when he does he loses his house and his wife takes the kids, and since women make the social life for most couples, he even loses his friends. A women cannot lose like that. No job? Still a wife and mother.
Men must compete. Women can choose not to--they can work as a hobby or stay home.
These are big differences.
Jessica Valenti — my mind recoils at the thought of being the son of that witch or worse, being married to her.
You must have been working for the government then, or were likely highly resented by the guys putting in the hours.
I could tell you where I worked (I wouldn't have to kill you), but you don't care about that, you just want to slag on me because I left STEM (and all that sweet, sweet cash) to be first a stay-at-home mom and then a teacher.
I don't regret that choice. I just wanted to let you know that teaching, particularly science teaching, is not a cake walk. You should try it! We have a severe shortage of science teachers in the country.
The best coder I ever worked with was a Black African woman who was educated in Uganda by guys from India. Her work was quite elegant. She chose not to accept the opportunity to get into Management. I miss her.
to Our Most Gracious Host, Ann, of the House of Alt:
perhaps this goes without saying, that should things turn to fisticuffs w/ that pesky Valenti b!tch, please know that we all are squarely in your corner!
Kick her ass!!
Ms. Valenti owes Madam Althouse a debt of gratitude for highlighting her best attributes and giving Ms. Valenti the excuse to use her wails of high dundgeon to elevate her into some prominence.
Ms. Valenti would still be a mere blogger if she were a 5 and an B cup.
but you don't care about that, you just want to slag on me because I left STEM (and all that sweet, sweet cash) to be first a stay-at-home mom and then a teacher.
I am not slagging on you. I don't blame you a bit. I am slagging on the people that think that the only reason that most STEM jobs in the trenches aren't 50-50 male female is outright sexism and whatever it is that is misogyny. I respect your choice. I am sorry it sounded like a personal attack.
Oh yeah, and your comment about "coding"... "Coding" is a small aspect of software development and in my experience, not the most demanding aspect, once a language has been mastered. It really depends on how neatly tied in a bow your assignments are, and how much of the process of turning an idea into working code is left to the "coder." We always used the term developer because it was very rare for a programmer to get an assignment that was purely involved in "coding" some complete and error free design handed down from above.
We used to call the guys who limited their work to "coding" between the hours of eight and five "semi-retired."
Hard work is hard to quantify.
But results...that is something very different. To paraphrase the difference, we look to the need of the Breakfast Club.
He spent HOURS and DAYS building an Elephant Lamp.
But when he pulled the trunk, the light did not go on.
If you are in the STEM field, you are fired or STRONGLY questioned.
If you are a teacher and Jerome's light doesn't come on...you have the New York School System.
I did take it personally, so I appreciate your response. Thanks.
“Coding” is shorthand much the same way “teaching” is. Both teaching and coding come after planning and before assessment, although I’ve never really thought about testing my students as QA before. I was in appdev but “applications development” means something different now. And “software engineering” is longer than I felt like typing.
AppDev types (including me) were vaguely looked down upon because we had to implement what the clients wanted and not just what was cool. Of course the Tools and Engine groups often failed to realize that licensing the apps kept them employed. That business model may have changed by now, too. Slicing and dicing Big Data will never go out of style, and I doubt those companies put their stuff in the cloud. I can’t imagine what it’s like now.
I don’t miss that culture. Casual profanity was rampant for no reason I could ever figure out.
So do you think that the predominance of men in programming is due to sexism?
Absolutely not, as I said above - it’s self-selection, exactly the same reason why there are so many female pre-school teachers. Two of my kids had the same male kindergarten teacher, and he was awesome, but also an anomaly. They were lucky to have him.
Of all the women I worked with in software development, and there were several, only one was what I would call a feminist SJW type. She was a QA manager and made all our lives miserable with her drama. Everyone else was fine, with the typical varied levels of competence and quirks. I’d also guess every one of us (both sexes, including me) was/is somewhere on “the spectrum”, mostly high functioning but with a few really obvious cases of ...odd ... socialization.
I’d say the biggest self-selection factor is not wanting to spend so much time hanging around poorly socialized geeks of either gender. Second would be not enjoying the problem-solving aspects of the job enough to want to do it full time. There is a certain mindset that fits well with software development, and in my experience, few women have that mindset, and therefore fewer women pursue the profession. It has nothing to do with intentionally or even unintentionally discriminating against women. I’ve heard several anecdotes involving less qualified candidates were hired because they were women, inevitably causing problems down the line.
Every time I see that construct "payback for millennia of oppression", I want to slap the insipid twat using it.
Oppression? Really? Gee, let's review the actual facts of the matter--Who was doing all this oppressing, and why? Did men wake up some morning, back in the Late Stone Age, and decide to "oppress" women? How'd they get all the women on board with that, and keep them there, do you suppose? When you stop and think about it, this whole "oppression" thing has to be supported by the majority of women, because exactly who the hell is raising all those young men into oppressive patriarchs? Who has most of the input into raising children, and a huge amount of ongoing influence throughout their lives...? Yeah; mothers. So, why did all those generations of mothers raise their boys to oppress women, again? How does this work? What idiot believes this BS?
You go to the most ridiculously patriarchal societies in the modern world, which are mostly Muslim, and what do you find? The women have as much to do with "oppression" of their sisters and daughters as the fathers do, and the women mostly create and enforce the norms which the feminists regard as "patriarchal". You look into the details behind most of the so-called "honor killings", and there's often a mother or other woman who's stirring the pot, and insisting on maintaining the "family honor". So, without going into why this happens, and what reinforces this crap happening, I think we can safely stipulate that all this "oppression of women" would not be happening without significant participation and approval of a solid majority of women. Or, those kids wouldn't be raised to become patriarchs or victims, in the first damn place, now would they?
The other bit of stupidity about this that just plain pisses me off is the idea that men somehow benefit from all that patriarchy. Remind me again--Who is still subject to the draft? Oh; that's right: 18 year old men. Only.
For most men, throughout most of history, the sole benefit they ever received from this so-called "patriarchy" was the chance to die early and unpleasantly. Take a look at the stats, and tell me that the average male is benefiting from it all--Per genetic studies, only 40% of men alive in history have successfully reproduced and passed on their genes, while the equivalent female number is 80%.
This points to a level of fantasy and delusion on the part of these idiots espousing this crap that is truly breath-taking. Think about the numbers, there--If men are supposedly the over-class, running things, why the hell is it that their reproduction rate is half that of women? This points to a far different conclusion, namely that women are the real "power" in societies, both ancient and modern. Elsewise, more men would be passing their genes on into the future, no?
Nobody had it good, back in the day. Women who thought they were "oppressed" were merely only paying attention to the "cool things" that they thought men were doing and getting, and ignoring all the crap those men had to suck up in order to do them. You think the average male would prefer to be out in the working world, where odds were really excellent that he was going to eventually get kicked to death by a horse? Or, have a steam engine blow up on him? Look at the rates of workplace death, compared between the sexes; overwhelmingly, the deaths are male. Even today.
The differences created by our sexually dimorphic natures are what lead to this stuff, and the majority of the time, there are good and sufficient reasons that societies of old organized themselves the way they did. It wasn't some vast conspiracy to "oppress womyn", it was what worked for the conditions obtaining at that time and locale. And, men were usually equally "oppressed", just in different ways that the silly little bints who became feminists chose to ignore or never learned about in the first place. There were iniquities, to be sure, but their existence was not indicative of some conspiratorial plot, nor were they there because men hated women. It was just the way things were, because societies generally adapt to their conditions, or they die out. The features that we look back at and say "Oh, that was bad..." are things that were there for a reason, and the fact that those reasons no longer obtain today does not mean that there weren't justifications and explanations for why they once held sway.
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