Comment by tunesmith | Hacker News Reader

Comment by tunesmith | Hacker News Reader

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This is another maddening component - who actually argues that men and women are the same? Everyone courageously disagrees with this, but I seriously cannot find anyone actually advancing that viewpoint. It's this weird blind spot. I tried asking a few times in another thread, and the only replies I got were from people trying to debunk it.

Of course men and women are different, duh. The problem isn't that premise. The problem is the arguments people make from it.

You get the feeling that there are these legions of people that assume that liberals are in favor of diversity programs because liberals believe men and women are the same. And then these legions of people point to a study that shows men and women aren't the same, and then they feel, "A-ha! Take that, liberals!" It's completely mystifying to me.

We're not in favor of diversity programs because of a belief that men and women are the same. We're in favor of diversity programs because we know that people will use these differences as excuses to discriminate against women. This is not hard to understand!

There absolutely are people who are against any claims that men and women are biologically different, the president of Harvard got fired for even hinting that this was a possibility. Another way to look at it, if there are differences between men and women than you would expect men to be better at some things and women to be better at some things. Try claiming one of the sexes is better at anything and see how that goes over.

Larry Summers didn't merely say they were different, he used that to argue that it helped explain what others attribute to discrimination - that's different. (And from doing some googling, it's also apparently not why he was fired, even though it did cause controversy.) My point is that merely pointing out that men and women are different doesn't weaken any of the arguments that people tend to use to justify diversity programs.

It's not that people belive there is literally no difference. It's that people say the differences that do exist are irrelevant and/or aren't useful for making choices such as who might be better at what. If that's true, that these differences arent't predictive or actionable, then for practical purposes, there is "no difference". That's the crux of the argument -- are differences actionable? My hypothesis is that there are actionable differences in BOTH DIRECTIONS. Unfortunately a lot of assholes blew our ability to get to the bottom of which is which because they instead pretended to get to the bottom of things but really just rigged outcomes in favor of men. Now it's super hard to shed that baggage and actually try to make positive use of any actionable differences that may exist.

no, all of these diversity programs make the assumption that women want to do and can do everything a man wants to do and can do, and they strive to make workplaces half female and half male based on that assumption alone. if want to find people who align with the "men are the same as women" thing, just go to a public area and suggest that women dont like tech as much as men -- they will show themselves rapidly. just say that women arent as X as men and they will show themselves, as i have experienced many, many times, both directly and as a witness. i have tons of liberal friends who full on reject the notion that men are usually stronger than women, just based on muscle and bone mass and density. bill nye recently made rounds on the internet with his video trying to explain that chromosomes dont determine gender, and it went beyond what you identify as -- he claimed that sometimes both chromosomes types are found in the same person. he was suggesting that gender is a construct because thats the popular mantra. if you think that gender and gender differences are handled well in mainstream culture today then you havent looked hard enough.

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