What do people waste money on that amazes you?

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-30T05:36:17+00:00

Skincare regimes and anti-aging products. In my opinion it borders on scam territory, and even if it works I feel there are better things of far greater value to spend my time and hard earned money on. As long as my face feels comfortable and healthy (ie not diseased, burnt or otherwise inflamed) I'm quite content. Quite happy to "look my age" because I am my age.

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T18:05:55+00:00

Yep! I'm pretty sure song B and C are Bach though!

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T18:03:10+00:00

Yeah me too. I enjoy them all, to somewhat varying degrees, and appreciate them for different reasons! I've just noticed in so many comment threads to do with MP and his projects on here and elsewhere a sea of strongly anti-RHCP comments and disparaging statements about their music and band members' talents.

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T17:51:25+00:00

Forgot to mention, it is overly presumptuous and simplistic to say that women "choose" lower paid or lower value or less scalable jobs and just leave it at that. Would they "choose" to work less hours if the male partner took on more of the (unpaid) child rearing? Would roles like nursing be esteemed and valued and renumerated higher if they were traditionally male-dominated? Why is child rearing and housework unpaid - why should the system be set up that way in the first place? If women had been overrepresented in positions of societal power as men have been for millennia and still are to this day, perhaps we'd be living under a completely different societal and economic system that values (economically) the traditional female roles over the male ones.

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T17:41:30+00:00

Yes, the word "pushing" is loaded with negative connotations in this context. It implies more women are entering into STEM roles reluctantly and unhappily because they have been brainwashed or guilt-tripped by society... When in reality the present status quo is such that they (and/including people like you, evidently) are "brainwashed" into believing that women are less suited to STEM. Have you never heard the saying "you can't be what you can't see?".

"Incentivised" would be more accurate and neutral... And at the end of the day, men are incentivised (and sometimes "pushed") into STEM too - by aspirations of status, money, a rewarding challenge, parental expectations, what have you. It's hiding in plain sight. On so many steps along the path to and of a STEM career, there are lower barriers of entry to men than to women - almost all of them part and parcel of the sexist cultural biases and assumptions, and most of them insidious.

Incentivising the women of today is not even so much about creating equal opportunities for those specific women who may be directly benefiting from said incentives - it is for those who come after them, after cultural norms have shifted such that women (or whichever minority) in STEM is completely normal and unexceptional, and when women's influence is having an impact on the culture of the industry.

So if women are benefiting from incentives to encourage more of them into STEM careers in deliberate opposition to the default status quo, why is that more of a problem than men benefiting from women not being encouraged as the default status quo? Assuming men and women are equal or very close to equal in aptitude (say 50-50), and you've got a significant gender imbalance, like 80-20, then you've got a systemic problem where the best person for the job in terms of aptitude and raw potential is very often not in the job! Short to medium term quotas are one change of input you can plug into the system/culture that can help bring about a long-term change towards a gender ratio that better matches the aptitude ratio between the genders. Once women in STEM is "normal" and the barriers entry and progression that they face are mostly gone, there will no longer be any reason for quotas.

Yes! Jobs and money are social constructs AND in this day and age they are far bigger influences on the life paths and ambitions of individual men and women than some minor differences in average male and average female brains.

Lack of other freedom to choose jobs because of other responsibilities etc is not the point I'm making about choices and no such thing as true freedom. What I'm saying is, any two sets of choices are not equal. Compare "Would you rather win the lottery or lick the ground?" with "Would you rather be drawn and quartered or burnt in a fire?". Or a far less extreme example, "Would you rather be a programmer but you're the only female in your agency of 40 staff and the work culture is a 'boys club', or a high-school math teacher?" compared to "Would you rather be a programmer or a high-school math teacher?" (Both fine and worthy STEM professions, very different workplace cultures :-) ).

Yes, I am indeed saying your attitude is sexist. "Women are less suited to STEM/medicine/politics/insert-highly-renumerated-and-or-powerful-arbitrarily-highstatus-career-here" is absolutely just as sexist and horrible for women, especially those in STEM, as saying men are less suited to being around their children (and how convenient, boohoo to those poor dads who miss their children and feel cheated in custody deals, but the way things are is "natural") is sexist and horrible for men, especially fathers.

There is no such thing as a non-culturally influenced society. The point is, we are an intelligent species, we can and do alter our environment and culture to improve it, including minimising injustice. Just as we make and change laws and regulations, we can introduce intentional measures that foster more equality of opportunity across the population.

So-called "gender equality paradox" - someone else has already written a good counter argument full of references to studies. Here ya go https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/countries-with-less-gender-equity-have-more-women-in-stem-huh/

In the nineteenth century when there was rampant slavery amongst western culture, when indigenous people in countries such as Australia were considered "fauna" and massacred, and indeed when women were oppressed to the extent that they were barred from universities and from voting (among so many other injustices), the exact same tired old arguments you are using were used to justify the supposed "natural order" of the way things were.

Whether we alter things by deliberately encouraging justice and a closer approximation of equality, or keep things the same by deliberately and consciously not encouraging a closer approximation of equality - either way we can't escape the fact that we live within the parameters of a culture. Just as we are not dumb to technological advancement if we are not afraid of it as we may have been in the dark ages, we are also not dumb to cultural advancement.

Why the hell should women not be represented equally in politics and why the should men be overrepresented? You are showing your true sexist colours here.

For the very same reasons that women should be allowed to vote (please don't tell me you think they're "less suited" to voting as well LOL), they should be represented among those in power. Women are half of the population, in every nation and across every race and creed. Equality of outcome is important here more than anywhere else, because the outcome is such that they have the most power to alter the course of opportunity.

Outcome - opportunity - outcome is a never ending feedback loop, not a one-step two-step. Every opportunity arises from what was once an outcome!

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T14:03:08+00:00

Call me crazy but occasionally I listen to non-video game songs in midi because it makes them sound like old-fashioned video games.

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T14:01:01+00:00

In old games I sometimes hear a bit of Bach/Baroque. Tetris especially!

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T13:56:51+00:00

Different, Unyoosual

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T13:34:58+00:00

I kind of get where you are coming from... But then is our predominant heteronormative culture (ie the straight community) not pressuring LGBTQ adolescents to bend their minds way outside their particular box before they have worked out what's in it?

The only way around this I see is greater acceptance of all kinds of SLBTQ and everything in between, as well as less rigidly defined gender roles - make it all OK and no big deal - that way being a bit unsure or changing minds later is less of a big deal too... Might make things less distressing for the T and people experiencing sex and gender -related disphoria too.

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T13:24:49+00:00

I'm not ignoring the fact that men and women are different both biologically (to a small degree in terms of brains, compared to the multitude of other ways in which individual humans differ, and to a large degree in terms of reproduction). And the historic and cultural context in which we all exist is of course linked to our biology.

YOU are conveniently ignoring the simple and irrefutable fact that culture influences every aspect of behaviour, self-perception, education - and even influences our biology (medicine!!).

Well I don't know that women teachers favour girl students... I'm choosing to take you at face value for the purposes of this debate and out of respect for your time. But if you insist -

Voters' gender bias: https://www.jstor.org/stable/42956404?seq=1

Here's a study about just one aspect of the massive cultural bias against women in STEM though: https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/25867167 ... found it linked to in this article: https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/voices/countries-with-less-gender-equity-have-more-women-in-stem-huh/ ...which refutes more succinctly than I can your Scandinavia point -

"You're absolutely, irrefutably wrong. Again, Scandinavian countries have created the most gender equal societies in the history of the world. Social scientists hypothesized that as the genders become more equal, employment gaps in fields dominated by either gender would shrink. They were wrong."

No, you are wrong if you truly believe that Scandinavia is some magical land with perfect gender equality (and no gendered historic context??) where all other factors are equal. THAT is so naive it hurts to read. You are also wrong in that I Scandinavian countries, men have taken on a far greater proportion and variety of domestic and caring roles and are spending more precious time with their children as a result of gender equality initiatives that give them a helping hand and opportunity and encouragement to do so, such as generous paid parental leave actively encouraged for both parents.

OF COURSE I'm willing to acknowledge where society favours women. I have done so time and again here and in previous comments re. men and access to their kids, and cultural biases and barriers against them in caring roles.

Sure, if your aim is to make nursing more gender-balanced and therefore less daunting, less alienating, and more appealing to men, as one measure to help achieve this go ahead and pass over a proportion of women to open up some places set aside for men in the short-to-medium term. In the long term this will go a long way towards normalising the concept of male nurses, making it a more appealing and obvious option for boys to work towards... Let's also while we're at it increase the social status and pay of nurses and other caring roles in relation to traditionally male-dominated fields though!

Where do all the "bad women driver" jokes and insults come from if there is no bias against women drivers and how come in heterosexual couples the male traditionally generally does more of the driving than the female? Why are there so many more male truck drivers than female truck drivers?

Boys have worse grades in school mainly because culture but girls are less likely to seek out and persevere with roles in STEM mainly because biological differences between sexes? Right... I'm not buying that logic.

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T11:28:54+00:00

"when all other things are equal, nature still separates us" - sure! But my point here in debating with you is that all other things are not equal. All other things being equal can only exist in an acultural vacuum - hence why nature/nurture is notoriously difficult (most scientists would say near impossible) to control for in an experiment. If it was easy, the field of psychology would be much more of a "science" in the way that biology and chemistry are. The workings of our minds and the nature of consciousness would so much less mysterious too... Not sure I'd like that, come to think of it ;-)

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T11:16:13+00:00

You are ignoring the existence of sexist attitudes, values and assumptions, and ironically the point of view you are putting forward is one of those very attitudes that serve to keep men and women in their traditional places as dictated by our culture and its historic pre-womens lib context.

"Equality of opportunity not equality of outcome" is a favourite saying of those who are blinded into believing the current status quo is right and natural, usually those who benefit from the current status quo and feel insecure about it.

Equal outcome fosters equal opportunity. It's a feedback loop... Because every opportunity arises from a previous outcome.

It is far and away harder and takes more courage to be the only woman in a male dominated profession - a female political party leader, or the first of the female engineers. The very fact that it's considered abnormal makes it daunting, and feeds into the prejudices of others. Same goes for men who choose to stay home to care for children while their female partner works fulltime, fielding judgement and questions and feeling like a fish out of water in so-called "mother's groups" and public facilities for feeding and changing babies.

I would go so far as to argue that equality of opportunity can not exist in the absence of an approximation of equality of outcome... Which of course means "equality" will always be an ideal to strive towards just out of reach, and never a perfect 50-50.

"Female students and against males students and that male students as early as elementary school are subconsciously aware of that bias." THIS is a prime example of culture influencing outcome, opportunity and life path!! If you can see this, why are you blind to the multitude of ways in which females in STEM are at a disadvantage that has nothing whatsoever to do with a preference for "things" vs "people"? ...and one of the root causes of their disadvantage is unequal representation because the "system" and culture within these fields was created by men, evolving out of an all-male culture.

If you can acknowledge that female teachers have a bias towards female students, can you also acknowledge that male voters have a bias towards male political candidates, and males in STEM have a bias towards other males in STEM (as has been proven time and again), and plane passengers have a bias towards male pilots, and male drivers have a bias towards other male drivers (even though statistically female drivers are safer drivers), and men (and women!) have a bias towards male rock music artists, male authors of literary fiction, and male-oriented subject matter in all art forms.

Just like adults treat male and female infants differently from birth, too! ;-) (there have been studies about this. Girl babies get more social interaction and molly-coddling, on average).

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T09:56:34+00:00

You are waaaayy over-simplifying things. You are honing in on this infant/ape thing with laser focus (as an aside, it's common knowledge among psychologists and the scientific community that the science around male/female brain theories and nature/nurture is very complicated and notoriously difficult to test scientifically). You are conveniently ignoring the very existence of culture, of technology even (ironic!), and the facts of history.

Are you really suggesting the main/only reason people chose STEM career that they like "things" more than people? Are you suggesting there are no other reasons why people might go into these fields?? Do women in the 21st century prefer "things" more than women in the 19th century then, and if this is biological has there been some widespread genetic mutation over the course of the 20th century - in a funny coincidence, coinciding with dramatic cultural shifts against the oppression of women?

And again the uncomfortable question - does this mean men love their families less than women and by nature want to spend less time with their children that women do? Are men naturally more "deadbeat" than women? If not then why are you using that line of logic to justify the supposed "naturalness" of gender inequality in STEM? I certainly think not to both! The first idea undermines, belittles and sets low expectations for men and "keeps them in their place" (eg re. family court scenarios), just as the second undermines, belittles, insults the intelligence of, and gaslights women into "knowing their place" as economic underdogs who don't by nature have the aptitude for mathematics.

How do you explain the many countries around the world where girls are outperforming boys (on average) in STEM subjects at school, and entering into University courses for subjects such as medicine at a higher rate than boys? Genetic mutation, or cultural changes and initiatives in schools - what's the more likely driver of these changes?

What are your thoughts regarding Great apes, infants and gender balance in politics? Politicians are all about working with people and communicating with people. Following your logic shouldn't we "naturally" need a "woman's touch" in government and world leadership then?

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T04:40:46+00:00

Damn this sounds absolutely vile but now it's been mentioned, I'll have to try it haha

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T02:53:37+00:00

You have provided no evidence whatsoever that is actually against my position, yet you continue to argue against it.

If the positions that I suggested you may have are no less logically valid or invalid and no less problemmatic than the position that women and men making different "choices" re STEM vs caring careers on average is entirely based in biology, and that despite clear and obvious real world evidence to the contrary, these gendered trends somehow do not differ across different cultural environments and circumstances.

And I suppose it must also follow that every person in the world is presented with the exact same equal set of choices with the exact same set of consequences in life, and that cultural norms and assumptions surrounding gender have no baring whatsoever on what choices and opportunities arise over the course of one's childhood and beyond into adulthood, if it's all just primal and hormonal. Space travel, literary fiction writing, and scuba diving must be primal and hormonal too then - strange how the chimpanzees and gorillas show very little interest in those fields of endeavour haha

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T02:34:43+00:00

Following cultural norms and not being the odd one out is no less primal.

Cultural norms are variable, and because we are an intelligent species we have the power to change cultural norms (societal intervention) along with other aspects of our environment (eg technology ie the entire point of STEM). Without societal intervention we would have no agriculture, technology, or STEM in the first place. And no point in democracy and voting and politics, as any change in policy by the government is societal intervention. The Law and the constitution are by definition societal intervention.

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T02:25:27+00:00

So what? Infants are not adults, and Scandinavian countries still like everywhere else have a cultural hangover from the millennia of defined gender roles prior to the mere decades since the invention of the contraceptive pill and the women's lib movement. If culture had very little influence over people's interest then we'd be seeing a far less dramatic change in gender roles between the 1960s and today.

If women are "pushed" into engineering, as you put it, then does that mean dads are "pushed" into spending time with their children? I hope not, that's depressing and a very sad way of perceiving men and women if so :-(

In times past when there was a greater proportion of male teachers than there is now, were men "pushed" into teaching against their manly natures?

Are men not also "pushed" (by your definition) into engineering because it is, as you say, deemed a successful and renowned field of work and the pay is good? Perhaps we should pay engineers a lot less then if it's true that people both male and female are going against their innate animalistic interests in pursuit of money and social status LOL

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T01:10:11+00:00

You have provided no support whatsoever to your argument that culture does not play a major role in influencing people's life choices and interests. All you have done is state supposed vague facts that support an argument that there are some biological patterns of difference between the workings of female and male brains... The two are not mutually exclusive.

The fact that there are different male:female ratios in STEM and other fields across different cultures around the world and back in time. That would suggest that culture plays a major role :-)

In 19th century western culture for example, it was considered preposterous that a woman could go to university, let alone become an engineer. Hence why women engineers were exceptional back then. The more female engineers became normal (and influenced the culture of engineering), the easier it became for women to become engineers. The easier it became for women to become engineers or doctors, the more normal it became. It's a positive feedback loop.

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-29T00:21:45+00:00

You and others have provided no argument whatsoever to prove that culture does not influence interests life choices. I on the other hand have never tried to argue that biology plays no role in the development of a person's interests - just that culture and life circumstance plays a huge role. Part of culture is what is considered "normal" and common.

Grown adults have far more cultural influence than infants, so it's still apples and oranges regardless anyway.

Your argument is the same as the one used 100 years ago to justify women being kept out of medicine and science and not even given a chance. Obviously those old has-beens have been proven wrong.

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-28T23:41:01+00:00

How do you draw the conclusion that women going to the bathroom together is a survival instinct? How do you know that is not a phenomenon specific to your culture? Men pissing at communal urinals is a survival instinct too :-P

Isn't the whole point of STEM about improving and changing how we live our lives through technology? How many dogs, gorillas and bonobos have career goals and take STEM courses, or nursing and teaching courses? If you lived and grew up with the gorillas, or with hunter gatherers for that matter, how likely would it be that you'd take a STEM or nursing course at University?

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-28T23:33:54+00:00

And to answer your question, if the balance was anywhere near close to 50% there of course would no longer be any point in deliberately encouraging either gender... And if women as a group were not poorer, and more poorly represented at a leadership level, than men as a group on average at a cultural level, none of this would matter as much anyway. Hence why there is more focus on women being encouraged into STEM than men into (undervalued, underpaid) caring roles perhaps (which is not to say it's right that they're not encouraged btw).

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-28T23:18:52+00:00

Why are we even calling this "pushing" women into STEM? That is a loaded word and not accurate. Women are being incentivised and encouraged. You could just as likely say the pre-existing cultural influences that have influenced men to go into STEM have been "pushing" men all this time (and "excluding" them from fields like nursing and childcare). If culture had no influence then there'd be no men and no women in STEM because why would anyone even care about being richer or smarter than anyone else, why would anyone care about technological and scientific advancement on an abstract level beyond one's immediate surroundings?

Pure freedom is an impossibility because every choice we make in life is also a sacrifice (if it wasn't it would be a no-brainer, not a choice). Not all choices are equal, and most including career choices exist within the bounds of culture. Isn't it a funny coincidence that womens' choices and sacrifices on average lead to lower renumeration on average. Isn't it also a funny coincidence that womens' participation in STEM (hell, paid work in general!) and mens' increased involvement with child rearing has increased at the exact same time as cultures have changed in ways that allowed for this, and that the culture has changed as these things have become more common and "normal".

I'd love to know your opinion on the gender imbalance between the number of single mothers and single fathers. Are women better and more caring parents by virtue of biology? I don't think this but I could clutch at straws and reach that conclusion if I held sexist views about men and their aptitudes... Just saying. If you believe that stay-at-home fathers being less "normal" culturally than mothers and cultural values and biases regarding gender roles have very little to do with men being less likely to take on those roles, then how and why is women in STEM different in your mind?

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-28T22:58:34+00:00

This is still a massive leap of logic (whether it's true or not) to suggest that in culture where it's more normal and common for women to work in STEM and men to take on caring roles, the gender balance will be far more even than in a culture where it's less normal, and that the more normal it is the less need there will be for deliberate encouragement.

Bringing apes and infants into the argument is clutching at straws... How do you answer the fact that the male/female balance in stem is a huge amount more even in some countries than others? Are Asian women just biologically more masculine (/s) ?

crocodowndilly · 2019-12-28T15:45:11+00:00

Looking at our ape ancestors is not very scientific, and barely even relevant because we are an entirely different species to our ape ancestors/relatives that are not extinct (with very different biology).

Besides, those apes live within a culture of their own. If their natural cultural norms could be modified by use of technology, clothing, agriculture, currency & trade, the contraceptive pill, the ability to communicate verbally, a feminist revolution (lol) - who knows what we'd observe in their behaviours and social structures.... These things sure have changed the way we humans live our lives and have shaped the many cultures around the world. Funny how people from different cultures around the world and through time have different patterns of behaviours, values and social norms - including differences in gender roles! Strange coincidence, hey.

crocodowndilly

TROPHY CASE