Please keep ideological flamebait out of your comments here. The last thing we needed in this thread (ok, one of several last things we needed—but they're all tied for last place!) was yet another gender flamewar. You didn't need that to make your substantive point about competitiveness.
I didn't declare that anyone should cease to be competitive. I simply pointed out that the proximate cause of the problem is a decrease relative to women, not any absolute decrease in position as the parent post claimed.
Sorry are you saying that women aren't competitive, or that men can't compete with women? Because there are the same number of boys and girls as before, they're just together. So even if I accept one of those (which I don't), the boys can still be competitive with each other, there are just girls in the vicinity.
Not sure how you came to this conclusion - women are indeed competitive and men can, and do compete with women.
What I'm saying is that higher levels of testosterone in men increases their competitiveness and appetite for risk.
Depriving boys (and men) of an outlet for that competitiveness is folly. Expecting men to take up crocheting just because equality is folly.
I support giving men and women equal opportunity. I support any individual's choice. If a boy wants to play with other boys who are we to interfere? If a boy wants to play with girls or crochet, who are we to interfere?
FORCING equality, equivalence and absolute parity onto women and men will lead, I think, to societal problems. Androgynous sameness. History, and experience, has shown me that anything in the extreme is a recipe for disaster.
Who knows. I may be wrong (I've been wrong before), but I have yet to hear a compelling counter argument.
The issue is that if you get rid of the male/female bracket - you’re going to never see women win almost any sports at all. As soon as men go through puberty - most women are at a significant biological disadvantage. Turns out, some women like sports and like to compete. They don’t want to compete against men because it’s very lopsided and unfair due to biology.
Sure. I don't understand the competition argument though. In my HS and College years it did not matter if the top student was a man or a women, it just mattered if it was you or someone else. And as far as I recall men and women were fairly evenly matched. Why do you think they should compete separately?
It's an issue because there aren't enough people in IT full stop, and because the reason half of those with the intellectual potential aren't interested is downright insulting.
There's also research to say mixed gender teams perform better along some axes, but that's peanuts next to the numbers game.
Completely true. Men and women are equally competitive. The difference is that men compete explicitly and in packs (e.g. team sports) and women compete implicitly and within the group (any Hollywood high-school movie).
Because they complained that it’s unfair when both gender compete.
And we do absolutely have special prizes by gender for other intellectual professions like actors, female leaders/entrepreneurs, female writers, female alpinist (“first female to climb X or Y”). As if it’s something unreachable.
No comment on the 600+ cases of males dominating in women's sports then? It's all right there on the page you scrolled all the way down to get to the non-athletic competitions.
That's 242 winning places which women lost to men in cycling, 117 in track and field, 65 in mountain biking, 43 in disc golf, 38 in swimming, 20 in powerlifting, and the rest in a wide variety of other sports.
197 first place podium spots that women athletes have lost to men, 177 second places lost, and 168 third places.
Do you still believe this is not a problem for female athletes, even after being shown data proving otherwise?
Your post seems to make a set of assumptions about women's abilities and preferences (for example their ability to thrive in a hyper-competitive environment).
It's not clear why these should be any more acceptable than the claims Damore made.
Are women not taught to compete? I do not remember girls being any less competitive (in school, in sports, etc.) Almost everyone wants to stand out and be better than others in some aspects and is proud when they can achieve that.
Life is very competitive, I am not sure why need to de-emphasize it to much. Making it "us" vs "them" is the more problematic part, but individual competition is a pretty constructive force overall, for men and women of all colors.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31262574 and marked it off topic.
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