Did that thread about a woman's atlas get deleted?

[Gustaf]

I'm still not sure how this website, or it's contents could be seen as off limits to women. Nathan claims it is the statistics part of it, but I don't quite associate statistics with our maps....also it needs to be said of the people who actually visit and use the maps, there could be a 3:1 ratio of men to women. Perhaps most of them just don't register for the forum.

You don't see how the way society is structured and the way gender roles and expectations work would preclude women from this stuff?

Not really, no. But you are free to explain why. Nathan said it is because this is another form of statistics, but I don't quite buy that.

Ok, so first of all, there is a role for men as eccentric geniuses which does not exist for women. Women are judged predominantly based on their appearance and on their ability to interact socially and fit into the mold. This means that way fewer women become what we call 'nerds'. I'll preempt the jokes about how this is a good thing for them by pointing out that it definitely is a highly explanatory factor behind the lower wages women tend to get. It also means that women are generally less likely to be found on specialized internet forums. A woman is much less likely to find social acceptance for an odd interest like electoral maps and is thus more likely to stay away from it.

This is a bit of a brief and shallow take on it, granted, but I would think it's sufficient for someone to get it unless they're completely oblivious to these things.

[Simfan34]

I DELETED THE THREAD.

[memphis]

It's not about legal or physical barriers. Have you never known a woman intimately? And I don't necessarily mean sleeping with one. Just knowing a woman pretty well is sufficient to see this. I had a girlfriend who avoided working for investment banks. Not because she didn't want to, because she did. Not because they said they didn't like women, because they actually did the opposite, claiming to want more female employees. But because she very acutely felt the barriers of the sexist culture of those places and the way society expects men to do such jobs better. That's just a tiny anecdotal example from a country usually considered one of the most gender-equal in the world.

You're clearly viewing this from the perspective of a man. Which is natural since you are one. But the whole idea of tolerance and human rights is that we attempt to understand those coming from other positions in life. Not only do you fail in that but you seem uninterested to even try, content to retain misogynist positions. You should really reconsider that.  

For whatever reason, my closest friends tend to be women, so please spare me the "have you ever known a woman "spiel. The question that struck me immediately after reading your post was, why do you position women as some sort of extraordinarily fragile creatures unable to advance merely because they "feel the [perceived] barriers of a sexist culture?" Are they really that weak? I certainly don't think so. What you just said is far more insulting to women that any position I have stated. I'm not at all familiar with Swedish customs or business policy, but in the United States, companies are constantly going out of their way to find female employees, especially in traditionally male dominated fields like finance or engineering. It is, in fact, far easier to get a job in one of these fields as a woman than as a man. We all had a good laugh about "binders full of women" but companies really do this. Women have a serious edge in many fields just because we're all trying to overcompensate for something that nobody can ever define concretely. Which is a bit crazy to me, but companies are more than welcome to run their HR any legal way they see fit. Regarding the Atlas, and I think that was how this thread got started in the first place, nobody takes more crap here than fat people. I would much rather be a woman posting here than a fat. But we still have plenty of fats who are able to "overcome" the slings and arrows enough to post here. I'm even a little husky myself. And as I told Nathan, who remains in his sad little trench with his fingers in his ears, you should be far more reluctant to drop words like misogynist and sexist when they don't truly apply, if only because you may need these words in the future in more appropriate circumstances. When your racist/sexist/whateverist reflex is too strong, you completely destroy the meaning of these words.

[Kitteh]

It's not about legal or physical barriers. Have you never known a woman intimately? And I don't necessarily mean sleeping with one. Just knowing a woman pretty well is sufficient to see this. I had a girlfriend who avoided working for investment banks. Not because she didn't want to, because she did. Not because they said they didn't like women, because they actually did the opposite, claiming to want more female employees. But because she very acutely felt the barriers of the sexist culture of those places and the way society expects men to do such jobs better. That's just a tiny anecdotal example from a country usually considered one of the most gender-equal in the world.

You're clearly viewing this from the perspective of a man. Which is natural since you are one. But the whole idea of tolerance and human rights is that we attempt to understand those coming from other positions in life. Not only do you fail in that but you seem uninterested to even try, content to retain misogynist positions. You should really reconsider that. 

For whatever reason, my closest friends tend to be women, so please spare me the "have you ever known a woman "spiel. The question that struck me immediately after reading your post was, why do you position women as some sort of extraordinarily fragile creatures unable to advance merely because they "feel the [perceived] barriers of a sexist culture?" Are they really that weak? I certainly don't think so. What you just said is far more insulting to women that any position I have stated. I'm not at all familiar with Swedish customs or business policy, but in the United States, companies are constantly going out of their way to find female employees, especially in traditionally male dominated fields like finance or engineering. It is, in fact, far easier to get a job in one of these fields as a woman than as a man. We all had a good laugh about "binders full of women" but companies really do this. Women have a serious edge in many fields just because we're all trying to overcompensate for something that nobody can ever define concretely. Which is a bit crazy to me, but companies are more than welcome to run their HR any legal way they see fit. Regarding the Atlas, and I think that was how this thread got started in the first place, nobody takes more crap here than fat people. I would much rather be a woman posting here than a fat. But we still have plenty of fats who are able to "overcome" the slings and arrows enough to post here. I'm even a little husky myself. And as I told Nathan, who remains in his sad little trench with his fingers in his ears, you should be far more reluctant to drop words like misogynist and sexist when they don't truly apply, if only because you may need these words in the future in more appropriate circumstances. When your racist/sexist/whateverist reflex is too strong, you completely destroy the meaning of these words.

(I appreciate the serious responses by Nathan, Antonio, Gustaf et al but at a certain point I don't really feel like taking this seriously)

[Lief 🗽]

A woman is much less likely to find social acceptance for an odd interest like electoral maps and is thus more likely to stay away from it.

I'm not sure that men find that much more social acceptance for an odd interest likes maps? Do you go around telling people that you're really interested in the county results of obscure elections? I don't. 

[Sbane]

I'm still not sure how this website, or it's contents could be seen as off limits to women. Nathan claims it is the statistics part of it, but I don't quite associate statistics with our maps....also it needs to be said of the people who actually visit and use the maps, there could be a 3:1 ratio of men to women. Perhaps most of them just don't register for the forum.

You don't see how the way society is structured and the way gender roles and expectations work would preclude women from this stuff?

Not really, no. But you are free to explain why. Nathan said it is because this is another form of statistics, but I don't quite buy that.

Ok, so first of all, there is a role for men as eccentric geniuses which does not exist for women. Women are judged predominantly based on their appearance and on their ability to interact socially and fit into the mold. This means that way fewer women become what we call 'nerds'. I'll preempt the jokes about how this is a good thing for them by pointing out that it definitely is a highly explanatory factor behind the lower wages women tend to get. It also means that women are generally less likely to be found on specialized internet forums. A woman is much less likely to find social acceptance for an odd interest like electoral maps and is thus more likely to stay away from it.

This is a bit of a brief and shallow take on it, granted, but I would think it's sufficient for someone to get it unless they're completely oblivious to these things.

Ok, I get your point but I disagree with it. I don't think it's socially more acceptable for men to have such interests. I think you could make the case men don't care and still pursue those interests more than women?

[Sbane]

And is it really sexist to suggest that men and women might have different interests that is not a result of socialization? There are physical differences between men and women. Is it a stretch to say there can be differences in our interests?

[memphis]

It's not about legal or physical barriers. Have you never known a woman intimately? And I don't necessarily mean sleeping with one. Just knowing a woman pretty well is sufficient to see this. I had a girlfriend who avoided working for investment banks. Not because she didn't want to, because she did. Not because they said they didn't like women, because they actually did the opposite, claiming to want more female employees. But because she very acutely felt the barriers of the sexist culture of those places and the way society expects men to do such jobs better. That's just a tiny anecdotal example from a country usually considered one of the most gender-equal in the world.

You're clearly viewing this from the perspective of a man. Which is natural since you are one. But the whole idea of tolerance and human rights is that we attempt to understand those coming from other positions in life. Not only do you fail in that but you seem uninterested to even try, content to retain misogynist positions. You should really reconsider that. 

For whatever reason, my closest friends tend to be women, so please spare me the "have you ever known a woman "spiel. The question that struck me immediately after reading your post was, why do you position women as some sort of extraordinarily fragile creatures unable to advance merely because they "feel the [perceived] barriers of a sexist culture?" Are they really that weak? I certainly don't think so. What you just said is far more insulting to women that any position I have stated. I'm not at all familiar with Swedish customs or business policy, but in the United States, companies are constantly going out of their way to find female employees, especially in traditionally male dominated fields like finance or engineering. It is, in fact, far easier to get a job in one of these fields as a woman than as a man. We all had a good laugh about "binders full of women" but companies really do this. Women have a serious edge in many fields just because we're all trying to overcompensate for something that nobody can ever define concretely. Which is a bit crazy to me, but companies are more than welcome to run their HR any legal way they see fit. Regarding the Atlas, and I think that was how this thread got started in the first place, nobody takes more crap here than fat people. I would much rather be a woman posting here than a fat. But we still have plenty of fats who are able to "overcome" the slings and arrows enough to post here. I'm even a little husky myself. And as I told Nathan, who remains in his sad little trench with his fingers in his ears, you should be far more reluctant to drop words like misogynist and sexist when they don't truly apply, if only because you may need these words in the future in more appropriate circumstances. When your racist/sexist/whateverist reflex is too strong, you completely destroy the meaning of these words.

(I appreciate the serious responses by Nathan, Antonio, Gustaf et al but at a certain point I don't really feel like taking this seriously)

Personal attacks are against terms of service and have consequences. They are also not a good way to get people to take you seriously either on the internet or in real life. Just FYI. You may want to consider a substantive rebuttal. A tactic that has been woefully avoided by you and all parties you mentioned. OMGZ, you are a sexist stupidhead!!!11 does not win a thread. It just makes you look foolish.

[Mr. Morden]

I understand why the male to female ratio is high here, but it still surprises me a little that it's *this* high.  If I'd never visited Atlas before, I might have expected that a message board on this topic would be ~80% male, but it seems to be closer to ~99% male.  I've never visited another messageboard (be it one on politics or anything else) with a male to female ratio this high, and I've been to some messageboards on some pretty "nerdy" topics.

I started a thread on this topic some years ago, which I can no longer find, and someone said that they'd been to boards on first person shooters that had more women than this.  IIRC, in that same thread, Beet made the good point that Atlas is kind of a "social island".  If you had a messageboard on a first person shooter game, then some people would play the game, most of them would be men, but some would be women, and some of them would log onto the messageboard about the game.

This forum, however, isn't organized around any such kind of product, nor around any particular media personality.  It's an island on the internet that you only find if you're looking for it.  That may somehow be skewing the male/female ratio to a more extreme value, though the exact mechanism is still a bit fuzzy for me.

[Filuwaúrdjan]

Once again, there are certain people here who need to understand the importance of abiding by the First law of holes.

[Antonio the Sixth]

And is it really sexist to suggest that men and women might have different interests that is not a result of socialization? There are physical differences between men and women. Is it a stretch to say there can be differences in our interests?

Again, notice how the sorts of people who, in the past, have inferred the idea of intellectual/psychological differences based on physical differences have have since then been proven, not only wrong, but also morally bankrupt. Please, let's not do the same mistakes over and over again.

[Antonio the Sixth]

BTW, I really like Inks' newfound interest in exposing Opebo's hypocrisy. It makes him look human for the first time in a long while.

[Sbane]

And is it really sexist to suggest that men and women might have different interests that is not a result of socialization? There are physical differences between men and women. Is it a stretch to say there can be differences in our interests?

Again, notice how the sorts of people who, in the past, have inferred the idea of intellectual/psychological differences based on physical differences have have since then been proven, not only wrong, but also morally bankrupt. Please, let's not do the same mistakes over and over again.

Intellectual differences? That implies I am suggesting women are "too dumb" to be on the atlas. That's farther from the truth and I believe that is the case for Memphis as well. I really widh you people would drop the sexist accusations because all it does is shut down conversation. There can be differences in interests between men and women that can have a biological basis. The way I see it is that the burden of proof is on your side to prove how women have been socialized to not participate in websites like the atlas.

As I have admitted above, there is probably a social aspect to this since women usually aren't expected to spend their time on online forums. But what sets us apart from other forums is the content which leads to the ridiculous gender ratio...

[Antonio the Sixth]

"Differences in interests between men and women that can have a biological basis" qualifies as an "intellectural/psychological difference" in my book. I guess we don't have the same definition of the terms, but the idea I've expressed in the previous post are fairly clear.

[patrick1]

Alright I'm too tired to wade through all this but:

Is there some new orthodoxy that somehow any gender differences come down to 'society' or patriarchy?  That is at least the hint I'm getting from Antonio V and Nathan et al.

[Sbane]

Yes there are psychological differences. The word intellectual just reeks of implications of smarts and cognitive capabilities, which is not my argument at all.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Alright I'm too tired to wade through all this but:

Is there some new orthodoxy that somehow any gender differences come down to 'society' or patriarchy?  That is at least the hint I'm getting from Antonio V and Nathan et al.

It's really not especially new.

[Lief 🗽]

Are you guys seriously arguing that, if not for societal influences, women and men would think exactly the same? Because that's wrong. There are physiological and anatomical differences between the average male and female brains, and these affect how the two sexes think, resulting in, yes, "psychological" and "intellectual" differences. This shouldn't be controversial. It's basic science.

[patrick1]

Alright I'm too tired to wade through all this but:

Is there some new orthodoxy that somehow any gender differences come down to 'society' or patriarchy?  That is at least the hint I'm getting from Antonio V and Nathan et al.

It's really not especially new.

Ah, just wrong then. Got it.

[Kitteh]

Are you guys seriously arguing that, if not for societal influences, women and men would think exactly the same? Because that's wrong. There are physiological and anatomical differences between the average male and female brains, and these affect how the two sexes think, resulting in, yes, "psychological" and "intellectual" differences. This shouldn't be controversial. It's basic science.

The argument as I see it is whether or not there are differences (I don't feel that it's clear either way) they almost certainly don't lead to places like this being 99% male (as opposed to maybe 75%) and that social factors do influence things too.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Alright I'm too tired to wade through all this but:

Is there some new orthodoxy that somehow any gender differences come down to 'society' or patriarchy?  That is at least the hint I'm getting from Antonio V and Nathan et al.

It's really not especially new.

Ah, just wrong then. Got it.

Not as wrong as this rank dismissiveness towards the notion that socialization (which often appears, as in your post, as 'society', in scare quotes as if to indicate that it's absurd to think that social forces could be determinative of something like gender roles!) does, in fact, affect the way people think and the subjects in which they maintain interest from a very young age.

[Sbane]

Are you guys seriously arguing that, if not for societal influences, women and men would think exactly the same? Because that's wrong. There are physiological and anatomical differences between the average male and female brains, and these affect how the two sexes think, resulting in, yes, "psychological" and "intellectual" differences. This shouldn't be controversial. It's basic science.

The argument as I see it is whether or not there are differences (I don't feel that it's clear either way) they almost certainly don't lead to places like this being 99% male (as opposed to maybe 75%) and that social factors do influence things too.

No doubt about that, but I am fairly sure the ratio of interest in our website's material is a 3:1 men to women ratio at best. There are societal reasons for why forums tend to be dominated by males.

[Okay, maybe Mike Johnson is a competent parliamentarian.]

Are you guys seriously arguing that, if not for societal influences, women and men would think exactly the same? Because that's wrong. There are physiological and anatomical differences between the average male and female brains, and these affect how the two sexes think, resulting in, yes, "psychological" and "intellectual" differences. This shouldn't be controversial. It's basic science.

The argument as I see it is whether or not there are differences (I don't feel that it's clear either way) they almost certainly don't lead to places like this being 99% male (as opposed to maybe 75%) and that social factors do influence things too.

No doubt about that, but I am fairly sure the ratio of interest in our website's material is a 3:1 men to women ratio at best. There are societal reasons for why forums tend to be dominated by males.

That's clearly true. What we're arguing about is why all of that might be.

[All Along The Watchtower]

A woman is much less likely to find social acceptance for an odd interest like electoral maps and is thus more likely to stay away from it.

I'm not sure that men find that much more social acceptance for an odd interest likes maps? Do you go around telling people that you're really interested in the county results of obscure elections? I don't. 

That's really not equivalent to the social expectations women face every day.

[patrick1]

Alright I'm too tired to wade through all this but:

Is there some new orthodoxy that somehow any gender differences come down to 'society' or patriarchy?  That is at least the hint I'm getting from Antonio V and Nathan et al.

It's really not especially new.

Ah, just wrong then. Got it.

Not as wrong as this rank dismissiveness towards the notion that socialization (which often appears, as in your post, as 'society', in scare quotes as if to indicate that it's absurd to think that social forces could be determinative of something like gender roles!) does, in fact, affect the way people think and the subjects in which they maintain interest from a very young age.

Couple disjointed replies to above:
I really don't even know what scare quotes is supposed to mean. From my perusal of the thread and general sense, society is such a vague catchall to warrant it. Sure socialization plays a role but so to do basic biological differences. I'm not sure why this seemed locked in a binary. The dismissal of the biological component of differences is equally foolhardy and as Lief said un-scientific. Further, I also got the sense the sexist label was being pulled out quickly for disagreeing and as a reply. Who knows maybe I missed some crass stuff along the way across a few threads.

I actually think that it is better (for the women) that the opposite sex really doesnt post here. I vaguely recall many old threads where perverts and white knights would square off in endless combat. It was embarrassing.