Comment by orionblastar | Hacker News Reader

Comment by orionblastar | Hacker News Reader

In 1986 I went to UM Rolla and joined a fraternity. At the time there was not a lot of females on campus as it was science, engineering, technology, etc. Females had at that time decided not to follow STEM degrees and it was a male dominated campus.

It is now UM Science and Technology, it has been re-branded.

The Fraternity I was in did hazing and had us pledges do under age drinking and smoke cigars and other stuff. It made Rolla a party university and it made me sick and my money was running out so I quit and moved back to St. Louis for a community college were tuition was cheaper.

A Fraternity is male only for a reason, a lot of the men are rough and cuss a lot, and you have to be tough to survive the hazing and other trials they put you under. I won't reveal their secret rituals or betray them in any way. Just that it is not designed for females nor are sororities designed for males. Trying to change that will change the experience one gets from a fraternity or sorority. People act differently around the opposite gender than they do in a group of people all the same gender.

Author here.

Think about how all this would sound if you were talking about race instead of gender and see if you'd still agree. If you don't still agree, try to figure out why.

We find it gross to say things like "Whites and blacks have different interests and enjoy different kinds of things, so there's nothing wrong about separating them into different social institutions". I think it's still gross if you replace 'whites and blacks' with 'men and women'.

My main point is that not very many women sign up for STEM degrees. For example computer science is about 17% women students and it should be more like 50%. It is also mostly white and Asian. I don't really know why that is or why certain genders or races don't take up STEM classes even with a discount on tuition. I had to pay my own way by working part-time to afford tuition.

The argument you gave is comparing apples to oranges.

Can a white person join an African-American only campus group? Can a male join the Women in STEM group?

So why is there a Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts?

Why is there a male sports team and female sports team?

I'm not saying segregation is the right thing, but I've had SJWs tell me what white males intimidate other people, so they want to have an all female computer class or all black computer class. So it isn't my idea to separate the students.

I say that having a diverse class is the better way to go. But I've been told I am wrong on that.

There are lots of scholarships and grants for females and minorities to attend colleges and universities. So computer science should not be mostly male and mostly white.

Would a black fraternity allow white men to join?

Would a sorority allow a man to join? Sleep in the same sleeping area as females do?

Can a man join women in STEM group and get free scholarships and grants meant for women?

Those are the questions you have to ask yourself. You seem to think in black and white thinking when the world is shades of gray and in colors.

At Harvard, officially-recognized groups cannot use race/gender/sexual-orietation/religion as a qualification for membership. So, yes, a white person can join the Black Student Association. And yes, a male can join Women in Business.

Boy Scouts and Girl Scouts are allowed to exist. But I, myself, think their gender segregation is gross.

There are male and female sports teams for the same reason heavyweight and lightweight boxers compete separately: we recognize that there's a meaningful difference in type of bodies and so we segment them into different groups for competition. But not that the reason for separation, here, is not gender; it's types of bodies.

Can't you make the claim that type of bodies differ because of gender, and thus just like sports teams, student groups can decide who joins because of type of body. It's not sports, it is social meetings and debates and all of that. Sort of a loophole in your argument.

My argument is not: there should never be clubs that are, in fact, single gender.

My argument is: gender itself shouldn't be used as a criterion for group membership.

Well that's different. Groups go by other requirements than gender. For example MENSA people with low IQs can't join it. Fraternities and Sororities require a certain GPA, ACT, and SAT scores. Computer Clubs usually have a test to see if a member knows enough to join it. Some say these tests favor one gender and screen out the other gender.

Did you know that in computer science there is only 17% of students that are female? In the 1950s and 1960s it was mostly women in comp sci and programming. For some reason women just gave up Computer Science and Programming and young men took over because there was a void to fill. Personal computers made owning a computer more affordable and thus learning how to program cheaper as well.

Of course if you follow the news, we are having debates over which bathroom to use for transgender people and then some people are neither male nor female so what to do for that? Maybe a unisex bathroom for a third bathroom choice? I think the same thing is happening to student social clubs now. STEM clubs are mostly male because not enough females take STEM classes and there is no gender requirement for STEM classes but they end up mostly male anyway.

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