James Bond on Women's Equality Day

[Lusankya]

Says the person who, in a thread about the problems of women, ran in and screamed "men have problem too, ignore those of women!!".
Even without the latter part of that, it's pretty much just an attempt to distract from the problems of women. It's like going to an AIDS-charity and yelling "and what about cancer?!", or talking about the problems of blind people and wanting to talk about those if deaf people instead.

You're right, a Public Service Announcement that is blatantly combative and that shows the humiliation of a male icon deserves no response at all.

Yeah. Just like those cartoons of Muhammed.

What bearing does my being a horrible person have on the fact that more money is spent on breast cancer than prostate cancer, boys are falling behind in schools, men overwhelmingly lost their jobs in the recession and only half the funding went to those industries, work the most dangerous jobs, are overwhelmingly more likely to be victims of violence. That 4/5 suicides are men and 80% of homeless are men and they are twice as likely to lose their homes. Why aren't you agitating for more women on oil rigs and in mines? Where is the uproar over the lack of women in construction?

You know, for the men who lost their jobs in the recession, you could just as easily turn it around by saying that it was men who benefited the most from the boom that preceded it. As for women in construction jobs, leaving aside the fact that there is a noticeable difference between the physical capabilities of men and women, the lack of women in construction is a lot less of an issue than the lack of women in professions of power, because the lack of women in positions of power leaves women without a say in the crafting of their own destiny. The lack of women in construction... not so much. For that matter, I don't see you complaining about the lack of male domestic cleaners. Why is it, that when you choose a profession in which men are under-represented, you choose the career with the most associated prestige and power associated with it, and not something more mundane like, say, being a check-out-chick?

Aside from that, nobody in this thread is saying that certain problems don't exist for men. That argument is one that you are completely making up. Yes male suicide, mental illness and homelessness and so on are problems. However, the existence of those problems does not mean that women do not (by and large) face a harder time becoming successful than men do.

In some ways, feminism can actually help with the issues men face as well: one aim of feminism is not just to make it culturally acceptable for women to engage in traditionally "masculine" behaviours, but also to remove the stigma of traditionally "feminine" behaviours as being "weak" - with one result of this being that it becomes more acceptable for men to engage in these behaviours, should they so choose. I'm as much for extra choice for men as I am for extra choice for women.


Serafina: out of curiosity, is there any data that shows trans-women being far more likely to be interested in non-gendertypical hobbies (and vice versa for trans-men)? It wouldn't surprise me if there was a significant difference, simply because of trans-(wo)men being raised to play with the toys of the opposite gender.

[Lusankya]

I've gotta go, but I just thought of a sound piece of advice for Resinence and all of the other "anti-misandrists" out there:

If you want to talk about men's problems without sounding like an utter misogynist shit-faced prick, what you can do is go and start your own thread about the issue, without fucking this one up with your idiocy, because despite whatever you may think, women's and men's issues are actually two different topics, and you sound like selfish cockheads for trying to combine the two and making it sound like by increasing the one, you are necessarily decreasing the other.

[Serafina]

Serafina: out of curiosity, is there any data that shows trans-women being far more likely to be interested in non-gendertypical hobbies (and vice versa for trans-men)? It wouldn't surprise me if there was a significant difference, simply because of trans-(wo)men being raised to play with the toys of the opposite gender.

Scientific studies about it? Not to my knowledge.
I can however pretty confidently state that, yes, transwomen tend to have more male hobbies and interests than ciswomen. Often not blatantly-masculine stuff (such as certain sports), but rather an interest in computers, technology, hard sciences and such.
I would also say (tough with less certainty) that this is not so much the case with early-transitioners (before/during puberty). Keep in mind that transwomen often try to live in a male role and pick their interests accordingly - and there is nothing wrong or bad with keeping these interests after transition - you are not less female just because you have male interests.

Again, no hard scientific data, just a general observation of the community (4 friends, 6 i know in person and about 30 online). Therefore also no idea about transmen, since i don't know as many and as well.

[Resinence]

Except I have worked as a checkout chick, I certainly wasn't the only male there.
I'm not saying that people won't admit there are problems, I'm saying that it is almost never mentioned without a but, or however... women have it worse. You said it yourself, they are separate issues, so why add the but and however every time?

You know, for the men who lost their jobs in the recession, you could just as easily turn it around by saying that it was men who benefited the most from the boom that preceded it.

Thats fine but it shouldn't couched in nice language, call it was it is, revenge.
Helping men to act feminine if they want doesn't feed the homeless or give back the kids forcibly taken from fathers. It helps in a tiny way that does not effect the issues that men's advocates actually care about. Feminism is a women's movement first and an equality movement second, it's nice that your honest about it being essentially a side effect. And thats why I feel men should represent themselves politically as a gender.

If you want to talk about men's problems without sounding like an utter misogynist shit-faced prick, what you can do is go and start your own thread about the issue, without fucking this one up with your idiocy, because despite whatever you may think, women's and men's issues are actually two different topics, and you sound like selfish cockheads for trying to combine the two and making it sound like by increasing the one, you are necessarily decreasing the other.

I somehow doubt it would be possible to have such a thread without 'but women have it worse' coming up without fail though, probably not from you but from some white knight, which you know, shows callous disregard and all. It's like saying "yeah sure some rich people went bankrupt in the recession and thats horrible... BUT they had years of luxury, and think of all the poor people who lost their jobs", considering the media dominance of women's issues you see how that may offend?

HOWEVER, you present yourself reasonably and I agree with you that it's not constructive to combine the issues, and not a hint of seething rage and passive aggression! So I'll keep it to it's own threads from now on.

Serafina:

It seems I inadvertently muddied the waters when I brought up hobbies, I meant physical differences in the brain that determine gender identity and certain instinctive behaviours, since bakustra seems to be of the Tabula Rasa bent, where getting men to adopt feminine behaviour will somehow suppress their instincts like being more aggressive and whatnot, not gender roles, you would agree that being MTF "a woman born in a man's body" is a fairly accurate description? That's what I meant. I have no interest in continuing the nature vs nurture holy war, but find Blank Slate Theory to be questionable.

As for James Bond, I feel that the ad was combative and divisive, apparently others don't, fine.

Anyway its saturday and I'm already running late, so I guess this can wind down.

[Serafina]

It seems I inadvertently muddied the waters when I brought up hobbies, I meant physical differences in the brain that determine gender identity and certain instinctive behaviours, since bakustra seems to be of the Tabula Rasa bent, where getting men to adopt feminine behaviour will somehow suppress their instincts like being more aggressive and whatnot, not gender roles, you would agree that being MTF "a woman born in a man's body" is a fairly accurate description? That's what I meant. I have no interest in continuing the nature vs nurture holy war, but find Blank Slate Theory to be questionable.

No one is advocating a "blank slate"-theory here. Stop the strawmen, or i'll just continue to burn them down.

The points that have been brought up are perfectly valid - nurture DOES play a big role. You can argue about the details, but it is fairly obvious that nurture is the largest part when we are talking about interests. And those ARE relevant when we are looking at the question "why are less women interested in engineering, physics and such".
As i have said, transwomen are a pretty good example that those interests are NOT dependent on nature, but rather nurture.

You are still completely ignoring social pressures here. And those are relevant for more than just interests - Lusankya has already pointed out several times that a women who has "male interests" will get heavily discouraged from pursuing them. She will also receive less respect than her male colleagues with equal performance, including in social circles outside of work. Last but not least, there is still a male power structure in many areas which will prefer to promote men rather than women.
I can attest to these difference very well, given that i have literary seen both sides.
You are ignoring all of these problems and are claiming that they are due to nature. That's blatant sexism.

[Go 2 Hell]

I've gotta go, but I just thought of a sound piece of advice for Resinence and all of the other "anti-misandrists" out there:

If you want to talk about men's problems without sounding like an utter misogynist shit-faced prick, what you can do is go and start your own thread about the issue, without fucking this one up with your idiocy, because despite whatever you may think, women's and men's issues are actually two different topics, and you sound like selfish cockheads for trying to combine the two and making it sound like by increasing the one, you are necessarily decreasing the other.

The issue is, you guys already fucked this one up. The thread was about genuine issues of inequality, for WOMEN, that I'm sure we can all agree are true. But now, its about complaining about things that are hardly true.

[Bakustra]

Passive aggressive much? I guess calling someone sexist and associating them with neo-nazi's and fascists before proceeding to tell them 'fuck you' isn't a slur in your world.

Since it's obvious you already had a view of me the moment I first posted and are on some crusade let me simply ask this:

Are the concerns of men not valid because women have problems?

If gender power is not a zero-sum game as is claimed, then who is being harmed by airing men's problems in the open?

What bearing does my being a horrible person have on the fact that more money is spent on breast cancer than prostate cancer, boys are falling behind in schools, men overwhelmingly lost their jobs in the recession and only half the funding went to those industries, work the most dangerous jobs, are overwhelmingly more likely to be victims of violence. That 4/5 suicides are men and 80% of homeless are men and they are twice as likely to lose their homes. Why aren't you agitating for more women on oil rigs and in mines? Where is the uproar over the lack of women in construction?

And when someone tries to bring it up, all they get in response is baiting, trolling, and diversion of the issue into how horrible being a woman is, again.

That is my problem, and obviously you could care less, so why should I support or even give a damn about you?

Hmm I guess I better go sharpen my Claws Of Bourgeoisie Oppression, being a bad guy and all, good luck with that quest to equalise reality. What a joke.

Retsina, I don't know why Serafina and Lusankya are trying to engage you honestly. You come in attacking this PSA as sexist against men, and yes, I assumed that you were ignorant about feminism. Then you continued posting, and it became apparent that you were much, much worse. You produce a whole bunch of ridiculous statements, but apparently you don't actually believe any of them, and were just trolling when you suggested that liking science is a sex-linked genetic trait. You also mock the very idea of feminism and believe that it's against reality, so why should anybody try to convince you? You clearly don't have any receptiveness to new ideas when it comes to this, so why should anybody waste their time discussing this with you?

What you're doing is just like coming into a thread about conditions in Darfur, and shitting out posts about how people have it bad in China too, while simultaneously deriding the people getting raped and murdered and orphaned in Darfur. Then when people take you to task, you rant about how this means that the problems in China obviously mustn't be that important, and reveal yourself to be Skeletor in disguise.

I pointed out how you were a horrible person because I am convinced both that your worldview, of a tiny, patrician elite that must rule over the idiotic, drooling plebeians, is incompatible with feminism, LBGT rights activism, anti-racism, or any egalitarian movements whatsoever, and that you are horrible in a number of ways. In fact, it filters perceptions to suggest that feminism is actually about putting women on top. Therefore, in order to really convince you, it would be necessary to shatter this worldview. But worldviews are difficult to attack, so I decided to do so in a roundabout manner via insult, in the hopes that you might be struck by a sudden enlightenment or suffer a rage-fueled meltdown, which might free you from those tinted glasses you see the world through. But Lusy and Serafina appear to think that you can be reasoned with under this worldview. Good on them.

Ultimately, though, any efforts by you to make a thread about the problems men face would probably run straight into your hostility, authoritarian elitism, and all that, so I doubt that it would really help you. But if you want to make one, good on you, I suppose.

It seems I inadvertently muddied the waters when I brought up hobbies, I meant physical differences in the brain that determine gender identity and certain instinctive behaviours, since bakustra seems to be of the Tabula Rasa bent, where getting men to adopt feminine behaviour will somehow suppress their instincts like being more aggressive and whatnot, not gender roles, you would agree that being MTF "a woman born in a man's body" is a fairly accurate description? That's what I meant. I have no interest in continuing the nature vs nurture holy war, but find Blank Slate Theory to be questionable.

Oh, you fucker. This is why I'm convinced that engaging you is pointless. I specifically said that I didn't hold with the blank-slate theory, and pointed out that restricting it to "purely hardwired gender roles" and "completely blank slates" was dishonest. Either you're lying, which is what I suspect, or you haven't bothered reading my posts beyond a quick skim, or you're ridiculously, nigh-cartoonishly stupid. That said, the problem here is that- well, you're assuming that aggression is hardwired into the male brain. That's a questionable assumption, especially since it assumes that physical aggression is the totality or majority of aggressive behavior, especially when aggressive behaviors vary significantly across cultures. You're taking what is essentially tradition and giving the weight of a generally agreed-upon conclusion. That's the problem with saying "some gender behaviors are hardcoded", because there's very little evidence, and a lot of tradition instead, making that frankly untenable without the weight of evidence.

I've gotta go, but I just thought of a sound piece of advice for Resinence and all of the other "anti-misandrists" out there:

If you want to talk about men's problems without sounding like an utter misogynist shit-faced prick, what you can do is go and start your own thread about the issue, without fucking this one up with your idiocy, because despite whatever you may think, women's and men's issues are actually two different topics, and you sound like selfish cockheads for trying to combine the two and making it sound like by increasing the one, you are necessarily decreasing the other.

The issue is, you guys already fucked this one up. The thread was about genuine issues of inequality, for WOMEN, that I'm sure we can all agree are true. But now, its about complaining about things that are hardly true.

Would you be willing to provide examples beyond appealing to your own personal experience and mansplaining why physics questions depend on rockets, cars, and guns?

[Go 2 Hell]

I've gotta go, but I just thought of a sound piece of advice for Resinence and all of the other "anti-misandrists" out there:

If you want to talk about men's problems without sounding like an utter misogynist shit-faced prick, what you can do is go and start your own thread about the issue, without fucking this one up with your idiocy, because despite whatever you may think, women's and men's issues are actually two different topics, and you sound like selfish cockheads for trying to combine the two and making it sound like by increasing the one, you are necessarily decreasing the other.

The issue is, you guys already fucked this one up. The thread was about genuine issues of inequality, for WOMEN, that I'm sure we can all agree are true. But now, its about complaining about things that are hardly true.

Would you be willing to provide examples beyond appealing to your own personal experience and mansplaining why physics questions depend on rockets, cars, and guns?

Really? Now I just feel like I'm being bullied. *sigh* All because of my sex. Its tough being a dude sometimes.

[Bakustra]

"Mansplaining" is what feminists call what you're doing with the physics thing- saying that the opinions of women about an issue are less valid because *semi-patronizing explanation of something often tangentially relevant*. It's not really all that bad a behavior, but it's annoying. But as a physics major, I'm genuinely curious as to why cars, rockets, and guns are more relevant than, say, violins, music boxes, CDs, balls, marbles, or any number of other illustrative phenomena which are less masculine-associated by our culture.

[Go 2 Hell]

"Mansplaining" is what feminists call what you're doing with the physics thing- saying that the opinions of women about an issue are less valid because *semi-patronizing explanation of something often tangentially relevant*.

Thanks for explaining, my primitive man brain would've never been able to figure that out. Tell me more.

It's not really all that bad a behavior, but it's annoying. But as a physics major, I'm genuinely curious as to why cars, rockets, and guns are more relevant than, say, violins, music boxes, CDs, balls, marbles, or any number of other illustrative phenomena which are less masculine-associated by our culture.

I don't recall ever saying or even implying that they were less relevant. Well maybe CDs aren't that relevant. I don't even see the point of making a problem out of a violin, but alas, I only took physics because I needed a science credit, so I really don't give a shit.

[Bakustra]

"Mansplaining" is what feminists call what you're doing with the physics thing- saying that the opinions of women about an issue are less valid because *semi-patronizing explanation of something often tangentially relevant*.

Thanks for explaining, my primitive man brain would've never been able to figure that out. Tell me more.

This here is why the tone argument is bullshit, folks. No matter the tone you use, people will react negatively. Think positive, sir, think positive!

It's not really all that bad a behavior, but it's annoying. But as a physics major, I'm genuinely curious as to why cars, rockets, and guns are more relevant than, say, violins, music boxes, CDs, balls, marbles, or any number of other illustrative phenomena which are less masculine-associated by our culture.

I don't recall ever saying or even implying that they were less relevant. Well maybe CDs aren't that relevant. I don't even see the point of making a problem out of a violin, but alas, I only took physics because I needed a science credit, so I really don't give a shit.

Problem about shooting rockets are more relevant than a problem about Justin Bieber's hair blowing in the wind (an example that's borderline offensive).

Hmm. I just don't know how I got the impression that you were demeaning feminine or gender-neutral problem descriptions from that. I just don't know, but then again, apparently you don't care about physics, in which case I wonder why exactly you care about how the problems are described... But you still said that this was based on falsehoods. I'd like to see what you consider falsehoods, if you don't mind.

For the bored, violins are useful for 1) tensile strength, 2) simple harmonic motion 3) sound waves and wave mechanics in general, 4) tensile forces, and 5) damped harmonic oscillation just off the top of my head. Similarly, CDs are a lot more useful for rotational motion and mechanics than the old saw of "a bullet hits a block that can freely rotate, determine angular momentum, torque, moment of inertia, et cetera" from freshman mechanics courses. Rockets, meanwhile, are only relevant for rocket motion, which is so minor and specialized that my classical mechanics course didn't even spend any in-class time on it! Spaceships are often used for special relativity problems, but you could use a lot of other things too- I learned space-time diagrams from a problem about a ladder being carried into a barn at relativistic velocities.

[Go 2 Hell]

So what you're saying is a problem about Justin Bieber's hair is more relevant to physics than rockets? That's all I said, but you seem to disagree.

[Bakustra]

So what you're saying is a problem about Justin Bieber's hair is more relevant to physics than rockets? That's all I said, but you seem to disagree.

No, they're equally relevant, seeing as they both involve physical phenomena. Both are mechanical systems. Hell, the hair can be used to introduce the idea of a system of particles, or an anchored object and how that influences forces. You said that the rockets were more relevant, and I'd like you to address the other things that I said, if you would.

[Lusankya]

Why is Go 2 Hell talking down using Justin Beiber's hair blowing in the wind as an example anyway? He was the one who brought up Justin Beiber's hair to begin with in the first place. My own Justin Beiber example said nothing about his hair, and instead was about him being ripped apart by rabid fans, which was an image that I thought would appeal to lovers and haters of Justin Beiber alike. And was, incidentally, a decent example of how data derived from observations must often provide upper and lower limits, rather than an exact number.

Why is Go 2 Hell arguing against something that I never said, but he did?

It is a mystery.

[Go 2 Hell]

Why is Go 2 Hell talking down using Justin Beiber's hair blowing in the wind as an example anyway? He was the one who brought up Justin Beiber's hair to begin with in the first place. My own Justin Beiber example said nothing about his hair, and instead was about him being ripped apart by rabid fans, which was an image that I thought would appeal to lovers and haters of Justin Beiber alike. And was, incidentally, a decent example of how data derived from observations must often provide upper and lower limits, rather than an exact number.

Why is Go 2 Hell arguing against something that I never said, but he did?

It is a mystery.

I simply added my own twist to what you brought up, sorry if I paraphrased too much. But there's honestly no point in "debating" this anymore. Or at least there's no point in me participated since I'm incapable of changing your point of you, as are you incapable of changing mine. This was fun, we should do it again sometime.

[Simon_Jester]

One could just as easily make physics questions about the torque in a music box, or the tension in a sewing needle, or what the lower limit of the coefficient of friction between a drawer and its tracks is if it can be pulled out a certain length, hell, even a question to determine where the centre of gravity is in a doll, and whether or not it will stand up on its own in a certain configuration.

Yes. Honestly, most of the entry-level problems I see are quite abstract: pulleys, blocks on ramps, stuff like that. Cannons get used in ballistics (which is only a small part of physics, even at the freshman level) because they're a good explanation for "why is this object flying through the air?" And ballistics is all about objects flying through the air.

So when someone asks "how did it get there?" you just say "Um, er. Someone shot it out of a cannon!"

An example of a physics question aimed at feminine women: Paris Hilton can push a shopping trolley along with a force of 20N. When the trolley is empty, Paris can accelerate the trolley at 5m/s/s, however after loading it up with 10kg of designer clothes and 5kg of Chanel Perfume, she can only accelerate the trolley at 3m/s/s. Calculate the weight of the empty trolley.

I'd argue that's so 'feminine' it's almost stereotypical and... well, I'd think it more offensive than a relatively neutral example that features essentially the same thing (trolley, loads, acceleration when laden and unladen)... but without the heiress and brand names. But then, I wouldn't write an example featuring action hero Rock Stronggo doing some ridiculous and improbably manly feat either.

Even changing the questions to more gender-neutral questions would be beneficial in making female students more interested. Any question that involves the word "car", for example, could be replaced with the word "bicycle", which is a far more gender-neutral object, while many examples using "bullets" could be replaced by "balls". This, while not necessarily grabbing the attention of feminine girls, would at least not be reinforcing the idea in their minds that physics is a "boy" thing.

Again, I see far more pulley and blocks on ramps than I do of anything else.

[Lusankya]

One could just as easily make physics questions about the torque in a music box, or the tension in a sewing needle, or what the lower limit of the coefficient of friction between a drawer and its tracks is if it can be pulled out a certain length, hell, even a question to determine where the centre of gravity is in a doll, and whether or not it will stand up on its own in a certain configuration.

Yes. Honestly, most of the entry-level problems I see are quite abstract: pulleys, blocks on ramps, stuff like that. Cannons get used in ballistics (which is only a small part of physics, even at the freshman level) because they're a good explanation for "why is this object flying through the air?" And ballistics is all about objects flying through the air.

So when someone asks "how did it get there?" you just say "Um, er. Someone shot it out of a cannon!"

I'd argue that completely relying on abstract examples at an early level isn't really an example of good teaching. Sure, some abstract examples are fine, but the students do need to learn how to apply their study to the real world, and when you decide to use a "real-life" illustration, it's quite lazy to just say "a rocket did it." If you even thought for a second, you could realise that you could instead say "someone squeezed it out of a pimple", and not only would the students be more able to recognise it as something in their own life, but they'd also be able to test it out in front of the mirror when they go home in the evening*.

I'd argue that's so 'feminine' it's almost stereotypical and... well, I'd think it more offensive than a relatively neutral example that features essentially the same thing (trolley, loads, acceleration when laden and unladen)... but without the heiress and brand names. But then, I wouldn't write an example featuring action hero Rock Stronggo doing some ridiculous and improbably manly feat either.

Yeah, because using some random example that I thought up in the same time that it took to type it as an example of what I think all questions would be like is sooo fair.

Then again, I would find an example of action hero Rock Stroggno doing some ridiculous and improbably manly feat to be absolutely hilarious, especially if it involved something completely surreal like shooting a banana gun at King Kong to rescue Helena Botham Carter. I also think that using an Heiress who is personally known for enjoying shopping to be far less sexist than a question like:

"A woman can push a shopping trolley along with a force of 20N. When the trolley is empty, she can accelerate the trolley at 5m/s/s, however after loading it up with 15kg of groceries, she can only accelerate the trolley at 3m/s/s. Calculate the weight of the empty trolley."

The Paris Hilton example at most only insults Paris Hilton, who, likely as not, would appreciate the free publicity far more than she would feel upset at my implication that she was trashy enough to buy perfume in 5kg batches. The example of the woman pushing the shopping trolley, on the other hand, perpetuates the 1950s stereotype of the woman as the homemaker, and of shopping as a "woman's" job. Despite this, I imagine I would have received a lot less flak for suggesting the new, revised question than I did for the original, despite the original being:

a) more amusing and;
b) less sexist

Or are you, too, are now going to go and argue with me that by taking Paris Hilton to be a more topic that will interest girls more than cars, I too am being sexist towards girls, even though I'm not the one doing the fashion magazine marketing which is a major cause of girls being more interested in Paris Hilton than boys are (poor-quality porno video aside).

Again, I see far more pulley and blocks on ramps than I do of anything else.

The fact that neutral examples are more frequent than examples using stereotypically** masculine situations in no way disputes my point that examples using stereotypically** masculine situations are more common by far than examples using stereotypically** feminine situations. Pulley and ramp questions are boring enough on their own without the added disincentive of all of the other questions being about basketballers (yawn), missile systems (double yawn) and the gradient of the road at Nascar (zzzzz). A ratio of 70% abstract questions to 30% questions about stuff you're interested is far more likely to get someone interested in a subject than a ratio of 70% abstract questions to 30% questions about boring stuff.

Though looking at this site does suggest that at least the questions about what angle the rain would fall on a person depending on their velocity are actually likely to be more interesting to female students than male students, because women are apparently a lot more interested in the weather than men. So... yay, I guess?


For the record: I'm not actually blaming anyone for the current situation. As far as institutionalised sexism goes, the masculinisation of science textbooks is not really a malicious kind of sexism. It's more similar to the way that audio-visual learners are the given an advantage in our current schooling system over primarily kinaesthetic learners. The people who end up doing the teaching were people who did reasonably well under the current system, and who use the way they were taught in part as a model: which for teaching in general involves an audio-visual teaching style and for science teaching in particular involves stereotypically** masculine examples, because "that's the way it's done". It doesn't involve any particular malice on the part of anyone involved - just a certain lack of introspection and the assumption that "if it worked when I was young, then it will work now", without questioning whether or not it had an effect on those for whom it didn't work. That's not being evil. It's not being sexist. It's just being human, and is the same reason that the A students often do not make good teachers: they cannot understand where their students' problems lie, because they never had problems understanding themselves.

What does annoy me, and what I do blame people for, is the fact that when the issue is brought to their attention, rather than turning to their nearest textbook, looking through the questions and saying, "Yes, all of these questions are either gender neutral or stereotypically** masculine. This is an issue I had never noticed before," or saying, "No, you are wrong. My science textbook, at least, has an equal mix of questions designed to appeal to both male and female learners," in which case I would be ecstatic to hear that your textbook is better than mine, all I get is, "Waaah, this doesn't matter anyway, why do you hate MEN?" And, "These are the only things that can POSSIBLY be used as examples, because I am ignoring the examples that you gave not three posts ago!" And, "I don't like the random examples you pulled out of your arse in an attempt to be humorous, because I am taking them as an example of what should be in a textbook rather than as examples to illustrate that yes, stereotypically** feminine topics can in questions illustrating physical principles." And, "Well, actually, it's YOU being sexist, Miss "pink ponies are for girls and blue cars are for boys". On what grounds do you base this? Hmm? Hmm? "

I don't blame people for not being fully introspective in everything related to their personal lives. What I do blame people for is for being douches and refusing to apply that introspection to their lives when the issue is pointed out to them.


*Before anyone decides to bitch at me about this joke as well, I will point out that it is a crack about teenagers and not a crack about physics nerds, so bleh. Maybe we can get into a huge pointless argument about whether or not the statement "teenagers have pimples" is discriminatory towards people between the ages of 13 and 19, because that sure sounds like a lot more fun than just moving on with the discusion.

**Bitchy arseholes in this thread: please note my use of the word "stereotypically“， this is not meant to imply that these things are intrinsically more masculine or feminine than anything else, but rather that society pushes people of each gender to engage and appreciate gender-typical hobbies and interests, which gives each gender an edge in appreciating things based on those topics. I've addressed this before, and if you want to call me sexist for calling pink horses "feminine" and blue cars "masculine", you need to actually read my posts carefully, and then look through a Toys *R* Us catalogue and write a report on which toys are being used by boys and which are being used by girls.

[Xon]

I'd argue that completely relying on abstract examples at an early level isn't really an example of good teaching. Sure, some abstract examples are fine, but the students do need to learn how to apply their study to the real world, and when you decide to use a "real-life" illustration, it's quite lazy to just say "a rocket did it." If you even thought for a second, you could realise that you could instead say "someone squeezed it out of a pimple", and not only would the students be more able to recognise it as something in their own life, but they'd also be able to test it out in front of the mirror when they go home in the evening*.

Honestly I see the poor quality of teaching as a bigger issue. The rising prevelence of teaching to test is disheartening, especially when the example is nothing more than the teacher talking at you with little emotional attachment to the concepts being taught. And is very well documented if you repeat a statement or style of a statement to someone enough, they come to beleive it even if it's completely baseless.

But it's also a true statement that the language you use shapes your thoughts, and that includes how people talk around you. So the type and style of language which gets used around children is also a very important issue. It is a morbidly amusingly fact that speaking proper language rather than 'baby talk' around a infant or toddler aids in thier development of language skills.

[Duckie]

But it's also a true statement that the language you use shapes your thoughts, and that includes how people talk around you. [...] It is a morbidly amusingly fact that speaking proper language rather than 'baby talk' around a infant or toddler aids in thier development of language skills.

Almost completely wrong and mostly wrong, respectively, Xon.

Though the education reform sentiment's in the right place, and perhaps by literal reading and some spinning I could turn those into true statements, if weaker ones.

I can explain why you'd think that's correct because they're both obvious ideas that make sense, yet they're wrong; but that'd be a threadsplit right there.

[Lusankya]

Honestly I see the poor quality of teaching as a bigger issue. The rising prevelence of teaching to test is disheartening, especially when the example is nothing more than the teacher talking at you with little emotional attachment to the concepts being taught. And is very well documented if you repeat a statement or style of a statement to someone enough, they come to beleive it even if it's completely baseless.

I never said that poor teaching wasn't an issue, however that in no way invalidates my central point that the way science courses are currently taught contains bias, and any reform of science teaching should take this into account.

[Simon_Jester]

Yeah, because using some random example that I thought up in the same time that it took to type it as an example of what I think all questions would be like is sooo fair.

No, it's not, but it does raise a problem with physics questions for those of us who have to write the questions: we're often doing it on short notice, or are far more preoccupied with making sure the numbers add up than with making the setup of the word-problem aspect convincing.

Get the word problem wrong and you don't embarass yourself- at worst the problem is boring, and teachers aren't punished for boring their students. Get the numbers wrong and everyone who does the problem correctly notice you screwed up. You tell me which kind of mistake the writer is more worried about.

So the setup often doesn't get much thought, and it's so much easier to write abstract problems than it is to write problems that provide concrete examples which must nonetheless avoid all the forms of offensive stereotyping, including "this perpetuates the idea that women do all the shopping!"

By the time you've done that, the problem defaults to: "Someone pushes a cart with a constant force. When the cart is empty, they can accelerate the cart at 5m/s/s. After loading it up with 15kg of stuff, they can only accelerate the trolley at 3m/s/s. Calculate the weight of the empty trolley."

Which is a perfectly doable problem, but totally un-engaging.

Or are you, too, are now going to go and argue with me that by taking Paris Hilton to be a more topic that will interest girls more than cars, I too am being sexist towards girls, even though I'm not the one doing the fashion magazine marketing which is a major cause of girls being more interested in Paris Hilton than boys are (poor-quality porno video aside).

I don't even know.

The problem is that when doing physics you have to worry about math as it is. Introducing social context into your problems is just an exercise in playing hopscotch in an unnecessary minefield- I once had a professor who got formally reprimanded because he was enough of a dickhead to do a ballistics problem about people jumping off the top stories of the World Trade Center on 9/11.* That's about the worst you can get into in terms of "politically fucking insulting on so many levels," but there are many ways to get it wrong.

The natural reflex for physics teachers is to just remove the context. It's easier, literally less work, to create a contextless "person pushes trolley" problem illustrated with stick figures than it is to worry about whether "Paris Hilton is shopping" would be:
-offensive
-viewed as 'silly' by your audience, in a way that undermines their respect for the teacher
-distracting from the problem, as is often the case when a problem encourages students to overthink things

And sitting down and coming up with a problem that has a context but is neither offensive nor silly while still engaging your students by addressing subjects their social conditioning has trained them to care about without seeking to reinforce that social conditioning by blatantly implying that they should adhere to it...

[takes deep breath]

...well, that takes a fair amount of extra work. It is much simpler, and more often done in my opinion, to remove the context and count on the students as a whole having enough interest in physics to carry them through.

*Seriously, that guy was a dickhead. Kind of awesome in a batshit crazy offensively right-winger way, because he was undeniably good at the math and stuff, but what a dick.

The fact that neutral examples are more frequent than examples using stereotypically** masculine situations in no way disputes my point that examples using stereotypically** masculine situations are more common by far than examples using stereotypically** feminine situations. Pulley and ramp questions are boring enough on their own without the added disincentive of all of the other questions being about basketballers (yawn), missile systems (double yawn) and the gradient of the road at Nascar (zzzzz). A ratio of 70% abstract questions to 30% questions about stuff you're interested is far more likely to get someone interested in a subject than a ratio of 70% abstract questions to 30% questions about boring stuff.

I don't disagree- though the "banking on a highway" problem is one of the classics, that may just be because a bunch of dudes wrote it.

The problem is just that the trend here is going to be, by necessity, towards gender neutral problems, or more accurately 'neuter' problems, where anything interesting about them that might be gendered has been removed because it's more trouble than it's worth to vet your problems for being gendered-but-not-too-gendered. Especially when the definition of how to give gender to a problem to draw the interest of female students tends to shift, depending on what the most recent round of studies tell us the two genders care more about.

In my department, this has more or less already happened, I think. Though I could be wrong; I'd have to check.

Though looking at this site does suggest that at least the questions about what angle the rain would fall on a person depending on their velocity are actually likely to be more interesting to female students than male students, because women are apparently a lot more interested in the weather than men. So... yay, I guess?

This illustrates another problem: how much effort does it take to keep up with the latest research on what women are, statistically speaking, more interested in than men? If I try to guess I'll probably guess wrong; I would never have guessed 'weather' and I doubt you would have either.

What does annoy me, and what I do blame people for, is the fact that when the issue is brought to their attention, rather than turning to their nearest textbook, looking through the questions and saying, "Yes, all of these questions are either gender neutral or stereotypically** masculine. This is an issue I had never noticed before," or saying, "No, you are wrong. My science textbook, at least, has an equal mix of questions designed to appeal to both male and female learners," in which case I would be ecstatic to hear that your textbook is better than mine, all I get is, "Waaah, this doesn't matter anyway, why do you hate MEN?" And, "These are the only things that can POSSIBLY be used as examples, because I am ignoring the examples that you gave not three posts ago!"

Agreed.

And, "I don't like the random examples you pulled out of your arse in an attempt to be humorous, because I am taking them as an example of what should be in a textbook rather than as examples to illustrate that yes, stereotypically** feminine topics can in questions illustrating physical principles." And, "Well, actually, it's YOU being sexist, Miss "pink ponies are for girls and blue cars are for boys". On what grounds do you base this? Hmm? Hmm? "

Hey, give me a break. I am not attacking you, I'm pointing out a problem that can turn around and bite me if I try to do something like the Paris Hilton problem.

Because the opposite problem can crop up then: if I write 100 problems about shopping and say I'm doing it to keep women interested in the work, someone is (legitimately) going to point out that this is itself making and reinforcing a stereotyped assumption about women. Or at least I am (legitimately) going to worry that someone might, because shit, if I saw someone doing that I would probably say something.

At which point I have to pull out a sheaf of scientific studies saying female students are 15% more likely to pay attention to problems with 'shopping' identifier tags, and 20% less likely to pay attention to problems with 'cars' identifier tags, while the reverse is true for male students, and I have to balance my problems so that X% of them have 'feminine' tags and Y% have 'masculine' tags (because I don't want to lose the male students either), and somehow get the numbers right and...

[collapses in exhaustion at prospect of actually having to do this for an extended period of time]

Actually, what I'm going to do is say "screw it" and write all my problems about boxes on ramps. I have deadlines to meet. Not because I'm trying to be part of the wall of oppression here, but just because I'm a person with 24 hours in a day.

If someone can come up with a way to fix this that doesn't create a serious burden of carefully vetting the social context of their physics problems against a small hill of research on which subjects interest which gender how much, and then place this burden on the people who write the problems, great. If not, please try to understand that having to do this does impose a considerable extra burden of work, with only a limited potential for payoffs that aren't zero-sum game.

[Covenant]

If someone can come up with a way to fix this that doesn't create a serious burden of carefully vetting the social context of their physics problems against a small hill of research on which subjects interest which gender how much, and then place this burden on the people who write the problems, great. If not, please try to understand that having to do this does impose a considerable extra burden of work, with only a limited potential for payoffs that aren't zero-sum game.

Use examples contained within examples of Angry Birds being flung. Huzzah! Everyone loves games. How much force to fling a small sparrow vs an ostrich, etc.

Create characters as well. Have a physics textbook filled with examples stemming from Zookeeper Jane's constant problems moving Pete the Fat Panda around.

For in-class examples use bean-bags and other tactile things. Beanie babies would work. Worried men will feel strange messing with little stuffed animals? No they won't, they just might pretend they will.

The goal isn't to try to find things that APPEAL to girls directly, but to find things that are neutral and engaging so that everyone has a level playing field. I certainly wasn't appealed to by examples involving horses or cars, but as a guy I was already more pre-disposed towards physics by merit of it being more Star Warsy and Star Trekky than, say, Earth Sciences. I would also suggest relabeling Physics courses to be more like generalized Science courses. Physics sounds mathy and hard (when it really isn't at the introductory levels) and it has a lot of fun puzzle elements that people should enjoy learning about.

Hell, if you're a teacher and need some examples, I can just come up with this shit all day as a game designer. It's what I do (design physics principles to be understandable and appealing to people not used to it) and I think asking the right people would yield good results.

[Go 2 Hell]

That would be acceptable is middle school, but in higher level education, that's just ridiculous.

Oh yeah Angry Birds, cause we all know that games take real life physics into account.

[Phantasee]

It's perfectly fine as an introduction to ballistics. Do you think high school physics is particularly complicated? Because it shouldn't be. You teach the basics with as few variables as possible, so students are equipped with the fundamentals that can then be expanded to handle more variables in their higher level courses in post-secondary.

[Simon_Jester]

Now now, Phant, it's unfair to fault Go 2 Hell for having never cracked a high school or freshman physics textbook...

With respect to Covenant: fair enough.

I suppose it's partly a matter of the attitude with which you approach this sort of thing- as someone else noted already, people who do quite well in low-level physics may not be the right ones to teach it. I can look at a "block on ramp" problem and consider it perfectly understandable; if I weren't the sort of person who could do that I suspect I wouldn't be a physicist in the first place.

When you're trying to design homework problems in a hurry, and you don't have the natural aptitude that Covenant has just shown... it's a lot easier to do nothing but balls on ramps than to try to introduce 'feminine-appeal' problems to balance 'masculine-appeal' problems.

Whether "nothing but abstract balls on ramps" is a good enough solution to the problem, I don't presume to know.