Time and again I witnessed girls in my school classes in the 70s and 80s treated disrespectfully and condescendingly by teachers so boys of my age were exposed to these attitudes and I'm sure some were influenced by them.
I have two daughters and when they were about 9 and 10 my brother bought them a model combustion engine. When we told one of my uncles he snorted and said "Hasn't he noticed they're Girls!". That was about 8 years ago, and that uncle of mine has 3 daughters. Of course my kids loved the model and wouldn't let anyone else touch it, they spent hours working on it.
I'm pretty confident the current climate is much, much more open to women choosing their own path but it's still not perfect. There are still a lot of men in positions of power or influence with attitudes they learned many decades ago. Actually a fair few women too, many older ladies have regrettably regressive attitudes. They're there in families and work places influencing expectations, promoting biased thinking and giving boy's toys to boys and girl's toys to girls.
Women tend not to reach university in tech, so the blame would be on parents anyway.
> but it's still not perfect
What would "perfect" look like?
I do think time will solve this if there are indeed that many women interested in tech. There is still a possibility that those women are exceptions though. And this "positive" discrimination sets everyone back.
Don't penalize other men because you are unsure about educating your daughters. It is natural to be defensive here, but that is for you to deconstruct.
>What would "perfect" look like?
The best we can hope for would probably be enough awareness of positive role models, and access to encouragement and opportunities, to effectively counteract the inevitable discouragements and adverse influences. Not perfect but it might have to do.
I'm not at all for positive discrimination, I hope I didn't give that impression. I don't think it's necessary. I do believe white men still enjoy a lot of advantages, or at least face a lot fewer obstacles, than even white girls and that's based on personal observation and experience. I was replying to a comment that white girls do not have fewer privileges than white men, and I think that's thoroughly misconceived. It's better than it was, but misogynistic attitudes are still very much out there.
- Wow, example that came up just today. My wife and I were discussing plans for a renovation to our house with an architect. They guy pretty much refused to look at my wife and addresses his answers to me every time, even when she was asking the questions he checked it with me before answering. It was weird.
Being guided to a male or female path isn't a privilege though. Boys gets even more pushback than that if they try to enter female dominated fields. There is a male privilege in tech, sure, but this article is about the advertisement segment which is far from male dominated. So what we see here is a bunch of women pushing out men using their female privilege in that industry.
Holy fucking shit I cannot stand the echo chamber that is tech sometimes. Get out of your bubble and try to experience the world outside of reading about it on HN. There are worse things than being denied a job because of bullshit HR policies.
https://www.statista.com/statistics/585152/people-shot-to-de...
This means your example of white privilege is invalid. Do you have any other?
The sign of privilege is being unaware of it, because you're not regularly confronted with adversity. What is the worst adversity you've faced in your life as a white male? Mine is maybe being denied a lucrative job. Boo fucking hoo for me.
However your original claim was wrong and deserved to be called out. You said:
"When I get pulled over for speeding I don't have to worry about getting shot like black men do."
which is an absolute statement. In fact, you do have to worry about getting shot. I knew perfectly well you'd make a statistical argument in return, and also that it would be irrelevant given the strength of your original claim. There is no "white privilege" that means US police won't shoot you. They will do so if they feel the need, or perhaps even if they don't. The primary determinator of that is nonetheless your own actions, like whether you're armed or on drugs at the time.
But it also doesn't make sense to use this one isolated statistic in the context we're debating. After all, if you want to use getting shot by the police to define your hierarchy of privilege then the poorest European is vastly more privileged than the richest American will ever be, implying that Europeans should never be hired for jobs when an American could be hired instead. That wouldn't make sense.
Now, none of the above will land home with you. But I want you to consider something else. When you try to justify racism and sexism against white men like you are doing above, you're not just slapping yourself in the face, you're slapping the rest of us too. You're justifying us being denied jobs, including those of us who don't even live in America, because this ridiculous self-harming ideology gets exported via American HR departments, management and cultural production to the rest of the world. That's how you end up with people marching in London saying "hands up don't shoot" even though British police are almost always unarmed and the UK doesn't have a problem with police shootings.
By insisting that arbitrarily chosen differences in outcome with deep and complex socioeconomic causes are all reduced to "white man bad" you are deservedly opening yourself to harsh criticism, not merely because it's a racist and sexist viewpoint, but also because it directly harms the lives of those around you. By all means, stop applying for lucrative jobs if you feel so guilty about existing, but for goodness sake don't insist that those same harms befall the innocent.
> When you try to justify racism and sexism against white men like you are doing above, you're not just slapping yourself in the face, you're slapping the rest of us too.
Yes, I did choose an absolute example. You're not wrong about that. The part you're missing is that you sound tone-deaf. To quote a famous movie: "You're not wrong, you're just an asshole." Are you the guy that says "all lives matter" instead of "black lives matter?" It's like you don't get the bigger picture. Yes, the problems you point out are real - they're also trivial. And if you want to make a mountain out of a molehill I can't stop you, but you come across as an entitled jerk.
The point isn't white men are bad. The point is white men are clueless that others are suffering more than them and are only focusing on themselves when others need help more than they do. It's selfish. It's similar to billionaires complaining about taxes. You also conveniently avoided my question - what's the greatest adversity you've faced as a white male? Because that's the perspective you're lacking.
FWIW I actually appreciate you writing a long response. Anyway, agree to disagree.
But even if we just focus on the USA, the situation and causes of some parts of the black population's outcomes are so complex that reducing it to "white people don't care enough" just doesn't make sense. White men don't make black men get divorced at a much higher rate, to pick just one example.
Greatest adversity I've faced "as a white male"? I ignored the question because it makes no sense to me. I don't know what it means, grammatically. I've faced all sorts of adversities and was a white male whilst those things were happening but that's not what you mean is it? How about being incorrectly accused of being racist? That's happened a couple of times. Whether that happened "as a white male" I cannot say, but I really doubt it would have happened had I been black. But then maybe it would have been. Who can know?