Interesting article about Sexism in Geek Communities

[Vondy]

One Philae Lander - associated scientist got in trouble for his sexy shirt.

 

I was offended by the aesthetics of his shirt -- not associated pseudo-politics or bad-isms [TM] that some wish to derive from it.

 

Its just ugly.

[Cancer]

Item re: women in STEM fields (STEM= Science Technology Engineering Math)

 

That is from one of Science magazine's publications and it may be behind a subscriber wall. Let me know if it is.

 

Back in early November there was an editorial in the New York Times with the provocative assertion that at this time, “[T]he experiences of young and midcareer women in math-intensive fields are, for the most part, similar to those of their male counterparts.” The link at the top of this post is a discussion of the study on which that NYT editorial was based. The 67-page scholarly study based on objective hiring and promotion data seems to be openly available, with its numbers. I wanted to see more than just an NYT editorial before putting any link to the discussion here.

 

As part of its work, that study controls for women's choices vis-a-vis family by examining the academic success rates for men, breaking out what family choices the men have made as well. Yes, men who choose to be "equal partners" in child-rearing (in terms of time spent at home and degree of responsibility for day-to-day domestic tasks), just as women making similar choices, are statistically less successful in terms of science careers than men who are in the breadwinner-style households or childless ones.

 

Quotes from the Science item at the top:

 

 

Over 6 years at a “large state university” cited in the paper, out “of 3,245 applicants for 63 tenure-track positions in 19 STEM fields, 2.03% of male applicants were hired compared with 4.28% of females,” ....

There is, of course, no guarantee that women won’t encounter men with sexist attitudes in the scientific world; they very likely will. Clearly, though, the objective barriers that blocked the way for past generations of scientifically talented women are, if the hiring and promotion data are to be believed, objectively gone.

When it is true for everyone getting a STEM PhD that your chance of making it into a full career in science is only a couple of percent ... then there are probably other issues to examine.

[薔薇語]

Here is a quite long but interesting article about rape on US campuses in the US. It starts out focusing on one particular case but then expands to the issue in general. 
 
Some quotes that I thought were interesting below:

 
On the issue of how guilt should be ascertained by campuses in sexual assault cases as a result of petitioning for changes through Section IX:
 
"And by federal requirement, students can be found guilty under the lowest standard of proof: preponderance of the evidence, meaning just a 51% certainty is all that's needed for a finding that can permanently alter the life of the accused."
 
Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, D-New York and co-sponsor of CASA said "We should never accept the fact that women are at a greater risk of sexual assault as soon as they step onto a college campus. But today they are." BUT this statement is then countered with "One recent paper... "Violence Against College Women" by Callie Marie Rennison and Lynn Addington, compares the crime experienced by college students and their peers who are not in college... What the researches found was the opposite of what Gillibrand says about the dangers of campuses: "Non-student females are victims of violence at rates 1.7 times greater than are college females..." Later the professor is quoted saying "Maybe that's not a really popular thing to say... I hate the notion that people think sending kids off to college is sending them to be victimized."

"The higher education insurance group United Educators did a study of the 262 insurance claims it paid to students between 2006 and 2010 because of campus sexual assault, at a cost to the group of $36 million. The vast majority of the payouts, 72 percent, went to the accused - young men who protested their treatment by universities."
 
Harvard has also changed its policies to which "More than two dozen Harvard Law School professors recently wrote a statement protesting the University's new rules for handling sexual assault claims. "Harvard has adopted procedures for deciding cases of alleged sexual misconduct which lack the most basic elements of fairness and due process," they wrote."
 
In response to the 1/4 college women will be raped that was concluded in the "Sexual Victimization  of College Women" study, the article points out "The study itself, however, found a completed rape rate among its respondents of 1.7 percent... In addition to the 1.7 percent of victims of completed rape, the survey found that another 1.1 percent experienced attempted rape. As the author wrote, "[O[ne might concluded that the risk of rape victimization for college women is not high; 'only' about 1 in 36 college women (2.8 percent) experience a completed rape or attempted rape in an academic year. But the authords go on to make several assumptions that ratchet up the risk." Since the survey was done after 6 months after the school year started, the researchers thought it okay to double that risk that they have data for so as to get a full year (despite most students not being in school for 12 months). And then they multiplied that by 5 since they assume most students take 5 years to complete their degree.

"The  1/5 to 1/4 assertions would mean that young American college women are raped at a rate similar to women in Congo, where rape has been used as a weapon of war."
 
"There were just over 3,900 forcible sexual offenses, with most schools reporting single or low double-digit numbers. (Under the Clery Act a “forcible sexual offense” does not require the use of actual physical force, it can simply be an act against someone’s will. Offenses include everything from rape to fondling.) Given the approximately 12 million female college students, that’s a reported sexual assault rate of 0.03 percent"

Per the "Dear colleague" letter, " It asserted the process should be equitable and impartial. But it laid out procedures that privilege the rights of victims over those of the accused. It recommended schools provide “comprehensive, holistic victim services including medical, counseling and academic support services, such as tutoring” for the accuser, without describing any services that should be available to help the accused navigate a pervasively adversarial process. If a school allowed the accused to appeal a verdict of responsibility for sexual misconduct, then an accuser also got to appeal if the accused was found not responsible. This provision meant someone accused of a campus sexual assault could find himself sitting through a second tribunal on the same charge."

"A female Tufts student had accused a former boyfriend of rape, and after he was cleared (and the female student sanctioned for misleading campus authorities in the course of their investigation), she brought a Title IX complaint against the school. OCR’s mandate was to look at Tufts’ procedural deficiencies, not the finding in the case, and it criticized Tufts at length. The university agreed to make all the OCR’s recommended changes: to improve its protections for accusers and speed up its resolution process, among other things. The school also agreed to give a monetary settlement to the female student. But Tufts balked at signing off on OCR’s finding that the school was a Title IX violator. It issued a statement saying the school “could not, in good faith, allow our community to believe that we are not in compliance with such an important law.” In response, OCR told Tufts it would pull the university’s federal funds, a threat, the Boston Globe wrote, that was “so catastrophic that it virtually required Tufts to reach some understanding with the government.” It took only a few days for Tufts to cave"

"Carol Tavris is a social psychologist and author of the feminist classic, The Mismeasure of Woman, and, with Elliot Aronson, Mistakes Were Made (but Not by Me). She says she is troubled by the blurring of distinctions between rape (notably by predatory males), unwanted sex (where one party agrees to sex not out of desire but to please or placate the partner), and the kind of consensual sex where both parties are so drunk they can barely remember what happened—and one of them later regrets it. She says, “Calling all of these kinds of sexual encounters ‘rape’ or ‘sexual assault’ doesn’t teach young women how to learn what they want sexually, let alone how to communicate what they want, or don’t want. It doesn’t teach them to take responsibility for their decisions, for their reluctance to speak up. Sexual communication is really hard—you don’t learn how to do it in a few weekends.”

Tavris also believes holding only men responsible for their sexual behavior has pernicious effects on women because it supports a victim identity that is already too prevalent in our society. “It’s so much easier to be a victim than to admit culpability, admit your own involvement, admit that you made a mistake,” she says. “It’s much easier to say it’s all his fault. Look, sometimes it is all his fault. That’s called rape. But ambiguities and unexpected decisions are part of many encounters, especially sexual ones.”"

"And it’s not just about conveying to young women the dangers of drinking. It’s equally important to tell young men about the jeopardy they face when having an alcohol-fueled sexual encounter at college. While women’s consumption is often considered a mitigating factor at campus tribunals, men’s consumption generally is not. This disparity is sex discrimination, says Brett Sokolow, president of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management. Sokolow has long fought for harsh penalties for accused men on campus. But in an open letter titled “Sex and Booze,” he writes: “If both are intoxicated they both did the same thing to each other. Why should only the male be charged if both students behave in ways defined as prohibited by the policy?” He has been called in to consult on cases in which schools have suspended or expelled the young man when both students were equally intoxicated. Schools that are doing so, he says, are creating male “Title IX plaintiffs.”"

"The names Hannah Graham and Morgan Harrington, two Virginia college students who were kidnapped, raped, and murdered, are powerful testimony to the need to get campus sexual assault right. Jesse Matthew, 32, being held for Graham’s murder, has also been linked to Harrington’s and will be tried for the rape of a third woman who managed to get away. When he was a college student, Matthew was expelled from two consecutive schools, Liberty University and Christopher Newport University, after accusations of rape. Tragically, neither case ended up in the criminal justice system. It is precisely because serial predators of the kind Lisak describes do exist that we should recognize adjudicating rape is not the job of college administrators but of law enforcement. Expelling a predator only sends him out into society to attack again."

---

Also, here is The Young Turks view on the Rolling Stone article that was referenced a few times in the above article:

Let it be known that the above video is a discussion about an accusation of gang rape and uses strong language, it is not safe for work (NSFW).

La Rose.

[Markdoc]

When it is true for everyone getting a STEM PhD that your chance of making it into a full career in science is only a couple of percent ... then there are probably other issues to examine.

 

Those numbers are not for "full careers" though: they're for tenure, which basically means top o' the tree. The days when every full professor eventually got tenure are far off in the past, especially in the US.

 

cheers, Mark

[Cygnia]

http://www.technologyreview.com/qa/533096/a-feminist-critique-of-silicon-valley/

[Lawnmower Boy]

Those numbers are not for "full careers" though: they're for tenure, which basically means top o' the tree. The days when every full professor eventually got tenure are far off in the past, especially in the US.

 

cheers, Mark

PhD, a year or so of adjunct teaching/postgraduate research, then it's on to retail. Seems like a reasonable use of an advanced degree to me.

 

It's this kind of crap that leaves people crazy mad enough to think that Gamergate is a good idea. 

[Cygnia]

http://wrongquestions.blogspot.co.il/2014/12/mad-as-hell-thoughts-on-aaron-sorkin.html

[Cygnia]

 

Why does gender balance matter in the games industry?

[Lucius]

Anyone post this yet?

 

http://www.newscientist.com/article/mg22429996.000-the-fight-back-against-rape-and-death-threats-online.html#.VI5TYlJ0xdh

 

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary notes that if so, it's just been posted again.

[Cygnia]

 

Wonder Woman Takes a Big Step Back

 

[Pattern Ghost]

I don't know if I can trust that article. It says the guy has won awards for his art. I find that improbable.

[Ranxerox]

Wonder Woman Takes a Big Step Back

 

I'm a long time reader of Wonder Woman, and after buying the first issue of the Finch run, I quickly decided to stop reading the title until it gets a new creative team.  I'm hoping that happens quickly.  Given Wonder Woman's long publication history, I'm sure that the Finch's won't be able to do the character any lasting harm, but still seeing her drawn as a vapid teenage girl with a boob job is just much too depressing.

[Cygnia]

 

Grand Theft Auto Will Never Change—But We Can

 

[薔薇語]

Grand Theft Auto Will Never Change—But We Can

 

 

Okay, the following is a complaint from an overly entitled child who doesn't seem to understand thing one about capitalism:

 

"What are you going to say to that? Ooh, I bet I can guess this one, too: “If you don’t like it, don’t buy it.” But my individual choice not to buy Grand Theft Auto until they make this change has affected absolutely nothing over the years. I never bought a copy of any GTA game—not since my experiences seeing the third one at my friend’s house. And my decision has not affected Take Two at all."

 

 

Just because you don't like a game doesn't mean the game should not be sold or that the game publishers should somehow magically adjust everything to fit you. This is a level of narcissism that is far too rampant in our society. Just because I don't like or buy Apple products doesn't mean I should expect them to somehow cave to my one personal demand.

 

Next, while I have no desire to play GTA or any violence simulators it is disingenuous for the author to single out sex workers as somehow being extra put upon. They aren't. GTA and the like allow you to kill sex workers, that is right. Do you know who else they allow you to kill? EVERYONE! There is nothing special about the treatment of sex workers in the game than any other group. But the author knows that she can't make a case against the game on legit grounds so she is trying to drive up sympathy by pointing out how sex workers can be killed. 

 

Next, the author doesn't seem to understand the mechanics of the game, either. She says "[sex worker's] deaths have no in-game consequence". Well, guess what, that isn't true. If you kill any character, sex worker or not, in a public manner there are consequences. If you kill any character in a secluded place, there are only a few consequences at best. It isn't singling out sex workers but rather treating them the same way it treats every character in the game. 

 

Next up "I could link all day long..." Then do it. The problem is that there have been no credible studies that actually link in game violence with real life actions. If anything we have evidence to the opposite since violent crime has gone down year after year despite in game violence becoming more frequent, more gory, and more 'real' every day. But why should the author be expected to actually prove harm when she can just say it does. 

 

As to the actual Australian Petition: it was a worthless battle to wage. Target decided to take a game that has already been on selves for a year, that is likely not sold in any large quantity from them, and not directly sell it any more. Ten to one they bundled them all up and just sold them to another retailer at cost who would sell them. So they still made money while probably losing a few bucks in sales. 

 

As to the actual game itself (GTA in all its iterations): they seem like awful games. I really can't fathom why people would ever want to play such horrible trash. But then again, I find myself hard pressed to ever do any of the 'bad' actions available to me in any games. Heck, I find role playing anything less than a classically good or lawful neutral character to be uncomfortable. But those are my tastes. I know them and shop with an appreciation towards them. I encourage everyone to do the same. And I hope that enough people will have similar tastes to me such that only awesome games will get made. But I don't feel so entitled as the author as to assume every company must subscribe to my sensibilities. 

 

La Rose. 

[Cygnia]

 

Twitter doesn't think these rape and death threats are harassment

 

[Cygnia]

 

Punching Up: the CAH Conundrum

 

[Cygnia]

 

On Nerd Entitlement

[薔薇語]

Okay, so the following isn't exactly about sexism nor sexism in the gaming community, but I thought it was a cute video that has a good message about body image issues. And it is especially nice to see it coming out of Japan which takes the stick figure ideal to extremes. 

 

It has English subtitles to everything so please take a chance to watch. 

 

 

La Rose. 

[Cancer]

Cards Against Humanity was something I had never seen until Dec 22, and while I liked what little I saw of it, I wasn't there to get stuff for me.

 

In a way, I am reminded of the series of Truly Tasteless Jokes books that appeared back in the early 1980s, IIRC. Ostensibly intended to be offensive to everyone, some people were more offended than others.

[NuSoardGraphite]

I'm a long time reader of Wonder Woman, and after buying the first issue of the Finch run, I quickly decided to stop reading the title until it gets a new creative team.  I'm hoping that happens quickly.  Given Wonder Woman's long publication history, I'm sure that the Finch's won't be able to do the character any lasting harm, but still seeing her drawn as a vapid teenage girl with a boob job is just much too depressing.

I've seen the cover and i dont see the issue.

 

I do agree that she looks too young in the face on that cover. the somewhat ridiculous pose they have her in is typical of what modern comic artists do. Her breasts are no larger than just about any other picture of WW I have seen or any other comic book female drawn for the last 30 years. if anything, the problem i have with it is that it is rather average in the comic industry and doesnt really do anything to differentiate itself from the plethora of Jim Lee clones out there.

[NuSoardGraphite]

 

As to the actual game itself (GTA in all its iterations): they seem like awful games. I really can't fathom why people would ever want to play such horrible trash. But then again, I find myself hard pressed to ever do any of the 'bad' actions available to me in any games. Heck, I find role playing anything less than a classically good or lawful neutral character to be uncomfortable. But those are my tastes. I know them and shop with an appreciation towards them. I encourage everyone to do the same. And I hope that enough people will have similar tastes to me such that only awesome games will get made. But I don't feel so entitled as the author as to assume every company must subscribe to my sensibilities. 

 

La Rose.

 

I can answer as to why so many people like those games. i am not a fan of GTA. In fact i only played the 3rd one out of curiosity because it garnered so much critical acclaim. GTA3 essentially created a whole new genre of games....open world adventure...and did so VERY well. the games are exceedingly high quality and the sheer level of freedom those games give to players in the course of their gameplay was a game changer in the industry which is now being emulated across many other genres. the games are as important in the hierarchy of video gaming as pong, space invaders, pac man, super mario brother, final fantasy, tomb raider and doom....all games that are defining tittles in their respective genres. in fact, of all the modern games, GTA has had the most influence overall than any other modern game.

 

Now, i have zero desire to play any GTA games because they are not in my primary desired genres which are rpg and action/adventure. but i would LOVE to play an action rpg with the freedom of GTA. In fact the top wrpg currently out; Dragon Age: Inquisition is pretty much that game, and it's GOOD. so i kind of have to appreciate the game for its brilliance. it's just too bad that it's hidden underneath all that controversy to be more easily spotted.

[薔薇語]

Indeed, NuSoardGraphite, I perhaps went out too much into the extreme as to say I don't understand at all. I get the open world appeal** and how stunning it looks graphically. But I have also seen well mannered and good people get weird joy out of just harming random NPCs on screen and doing absolutely strange things. I get that not everyone is going to share my sensibilities but I still find it hard to grasp on a meaningful and emotional level why such things are fun. Then again, it took me until about a year ago to grasp on that same level why people are obsessed with professional sports. While I don't watch them and have no desire to, I have gotten into watching StarCraft II tournaments. I even have players and commentators I follow and want to support. Heck, the only time I get on twitter is to promote the games and talk about them as they are happening. Now I get, on an emotional level, that connection. But I still don't have that for GTA. Same goes for some other strange games like Goat Simulator. 

 

** There were games before GTA that did the open world thing. And there have been many after it that have done a great job at it. But GTA does reportedly do a good job at it. 

 

La Rose. 

[Pattern Ghost]

 

GTA3 essentially created a whole new genre of games....open world adventure...

 

It may have been notable for its execution, but it was far from the first.

[Cygnia]

Spoilered for language.

 

 

 

[Lucius]

 

An old thread that might be relevant.

 

 

http://www.herogames.com/forums/topic/79117-superhuman-women-less-attractive-in-6th-edition/page-1

 

 

At least, it got me thinking about how female characters are viewed, and the relative importance of attractiveness for male vs female characters...

 

Beauty in women is serious business; beauty in men is “just kidding!”

Lucius Alexander

 

The palindromedary has a Y chromosome and a Y-not? chromosome