Comment by wgren | Hacker News Reader

Comment by wgren | Hacker News Reader

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>Human biology is not that quick to change.

No, but a lot of things with regards to our current expected behaviour of genders is in fact social, not biological. A lot of 18th century male behaviour would today be regarded as effeminate. Red was once the color of choice for baby boys, and blue for girls.

>Artificially boosting the career success of women just causes misery on the long run for men

Hang on, did anyone propose affirmative action here or something? All the blog talked about was trying to praise girls for their smarts rather than their looks. If this is enough to cause misery for you, I think you have self-esteem issues. (Edit: Oops, that was needlessly confrontational and personal. Apologies for last sentence.)

>I thought that the girl in your story was very smart, and even if people had treated her like a pretty doll for her entire life she would still be the same. Intelligent, critical and capable.

Perhaps, but as mentioned in the article, some girls as young as 5 think they are "too fat" and try to go on a diet. It is clearly an issue for some.

Hang on, did anyone propose affirmative action here or something? All the blog talked about was trying to praise girls for their smarts rather than their looks. If this is enough to cause misery for you, I think you have self-esteem issues.

Sorry the blog talked silently about a lot of things, which squarely put the blame on people for a lot of mistakes which girls make personally.

I appreciate my nephew all the time when he wins a running race or plays cricket well. But that is never taken as something that can be used to be bad at academics nor does not speaking about he being good at studies permanently deter him from being good at studies.

If girls aren't good looking, how does that stop them from picking up a book and studying hard for an entrance exam. Or burning the midnight oil meeting a tough deadline? None of that has anything to do with beauty. That's something which has to come from within. Willingness to work hard and go to tough times is what brings success and that is irrespective of gender.

Somehow I find it difficult to accept that argument that saying somebody that they look good suddenly becomes the reason to be never good at anything else ever after.

It's not about the attribute itself, but affirmation along that attribute.

It's the same conundrum facing parents of gifted kids, praising innate ability vs. hard work backfires in a spectacular way sooner or later and the child stops taking risks because they are afraid of being dumb.

>Hang on, did anyone propose affirmative action here or something? All the blog talked about was trying to praise girls for their smarts rather than their looks. If this is enough to cause misery for you, I think you have self-esteem issues.

As the pool of eligible husbands diminishes, the pool of men who simply can't get a wife grows and the disparity between the lucky and unlucky men increases. I'm sure you can see how this can generate social friction inside a nation?

I'm not making a moral statement either way here, just observing some forces that I believe do affect our lives.

Wait, are you saying that we need to encourage women to be less capable because the career market is zero sum, and men need careers more than women?

I'm very open to the idea that I misunderstood your statement, but if I have characterized it correctly, then the flaw in it is that careers are not zero sum, and having additional capable, productive people in a society creates more wealth for the society as a whole than would otherwise have existed. This creates more opportunities for men as well as women.

I certainly believe that marriages can be more harmonious when the men is in a economically leading role. Do I believe that women should suppressed in order to achieve this? No. Do I believe that if a woman wants a successful marriage, pursuing a high-status career can be harmful to this? Yes.

So in a gay or lesbian marriage, which partner should voluntarily subordinate themselves to the other?

Which I guess is my way of saying that any particular marriage happens between two individuals with their own strengths, weakenesses, and interests, not between two archtypes or statistical distributions. A successful marriage is only possible between two happy partners, and if a person will be unhappy without pursuing their other life goals along with their marriage, giving those life goals up for the sake of the marriage is still a losing strategy.

Personally, I think overgeneralization from the statistical majority is one of the signal problems of trying to talk about gender rules and guidelines -- though, admittedly, the opposite problem is nearly as common, which is refusing to acknowledge that there are such things as common tendencies and statistical majorities.

I'm only talking about heterosexual marriage, nothing else.

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