Things got a little easier with my mother when my sister had a kid when she was nineteen... but then, my mother is actually pretty weird, and is this among the most normal aspects of her. I applaud your parental management. (Holidays were always at their least strained when I hosted them, because everyone knew if anyone behaved too badly I would throw them out. Having thrown my sister out of my mother's house - in her defence, she was seventeen - and my mother out of my sister's house, no one crossed me on my own turf.)

"Well, that's not good. A lot of men feel they need to be the dominant one/primary breadwinner and/or easily feel threatened by a partner who is better than them at something they consider important. A mix of insecurity and weird socialisation about what it means to be "a man"."

It was really weird. He announced that he should be better at the two things we both did - martial arts and coding. Because I had so many other skills. (And, in fact, one of new criteria is to avoid getting into serious relationships with people who just can't keep up with me.) And would freak out if I had lunch with friends and we talked about generic programming - he like the idea of me coding iff I did it in some kind of positions of subservience to him. And... it was like, have you met me? And this after I had been the primary breadwinner from the start, bought us our house, etc. etc. Not to mention kept him on my awesome insurance plan as he bounced from startup to startup. I mean, none of this sounds weird, but (and I'll admit not for the first time) in theory part of the attraction was that I was smart and capable, etc. etc.

"Sounds like you get students who can already program a bit, which is handy. But yeah, hardware has the capacity to just destroy time like it isn't there."

Sort of. My established students have at least a rudimentary knowledge of Python because one of my students (the same one who finds soldering so relaxing) decided that the required Java course left her feeling like she had no practical knowledge, and so she asked me to tutor her in Python. Then she told a bunch of her friends / my other students, and we started Python club. Which is really all about practical applications. (Do you know what is pathetic? One of my Googler friends invited me to send any of their resumes in his direction, as he thought they sounded like a cool group if this was their idea of a fun summer... and it's entirely likely non of them will take him up on it because they're all going to medical school - or in the case of one our highschoolers, elsewhere for her BS.)

"It can be, though the number of new devices needing paste-and-reflow seems to be increasing."

Yeah. We (by which I mean my home rather than the lab) have a reflow oven, though I've so far mostly been able to skate by on surface mount. And my beloved hot air rework station, OMG, I have never loved a tool so much. (Actually, it's at least have the quality of the attached soldering iron, but darn, everything got better after I bought that.)

"Now that is something I know nothing about. My forays into the world of bio stuff is limited to a bit of fluorescence microscopy (mostly super resolution)."

Electrophys is only part of what I do on the bench side, but it's most of what I troubleshoot for my students, because it's fussy and most of them don't have the strongest electronics intuition. (And I still haven't written the guide to de-noising a rig.) It's pretty fun coming out of protein dynamics to electrophys, where suddenly it's all electrical signals. (There's substantial overlap in the area of ion channel conformational changes, and I might be writing a grant to try to make it all look like it was planned. Though really, while I'm attracted to certain kinds of problems, mostly I wander around looking for fun stuff to work on.)

I don't think many shy geeky women have random men approaching them in airports. (Nor do I expect many shy geeky girls have the lack of shame that it takes to practice martial arts forms in airport terminals.) I may have been poorly socialized all those years ago, but these days I'm outspoken, socially fearless*, and... well, I'm almost six feet tall, I train a lot, and if I'm awfully utilitarian about my clothes, I do know what suits me. (Of course, I also would expect that few shy geek men have random strangers across the street calling out to bring that ass over so they can stick their dick in it. Ugh, Cleveland. For a while I really didn't think I was going to get through my work here without doing someone serious bodily harm.) I am not conventionally beautiful, not do I participate much in beauty culture, but I'm smart, verbal, look decent enough and do a good charismatic. I'm not contrasting their problems with mine - really, if all I wanted was attention and to get laid, I've generally been spoiled for choice. But I'm a terrible example. (Finding someone who can keep up with me and doesn't eventually decide that actually they aren't really that thrilled with me being smart and competent - that's a bit more of an issue. Or decide that they have rights to my body that are not predicated on my consent, for that matter. But, y'know, I persevere somehow.)

I think in most ways the random approaching strangers on the street - or even relative strangers, such as coworkers or classmates one does not already have a social relationship with - is a major red herring. It is the spam of social interactions, where it takes a bazillion queries to generate one hit, because even women who aren't automatically fearful of strangers who are hitting on them are seldom interested in following up on such encounters. (And yo, I once seduced a man who bought me at an SF slave auction - a charity fundraiser, he won dances with me - because he seemed nice and I was at loose ends. Still run into him sometimes, actually, he really is a nice guy.) And guys who take getting turned down from that kind of request are kind of the equivalent of a business who has sent out five pieces of spam and can't understand why they don't have customers. It's multiple levels of fail, not in the least because it's a lousy way to meet people in the first place.

But worse, it create this whole sense of false equivalence, where women are seen as being spoiled for choice, without having a clue about the experiences of actual women.

* This might come from fatalism, or just not having the damns to give, but it certainly seems to read as fearless.

Well, actually, I know quite a few women who have - but let's just start with me, because I've most often initiated relationships, and I've been turned down pretty frequently too. (And while this seems to be highly regional, my research undergrads, at a very geeky midwest university, seem to do a lot of trading back and forth on the asking. And to me the gender roles here seem a bit on the calcified side.)

One of the things I wonder about is the social context from which dating relationships emerge. I mean, I assume that there are people who ask out relative strangers (I have certainly been asked out by relative strangers, and honestly, it weirded me out*) but the dynamic I most often see is that you'll have a larger social context, a group of people who hang out together and get to know each other fairly well (this can be a pretty geek group of people who watch anime together, play RPGs, carpools to cons, or what have you) and have casual flirtations in that context. So the whole "asking someone out" often is a lot less of a fraught proposition. (I mean, it's still pretty fraught, especially if you're nineteen and crushed out on them.) And if you have much of a social clue at all (and yes, this is a major factor) you probably have some idea how well they're inclined towards you.

This is a lot of what I see from our undergrads, to the extent I'm aware of their dating relationships. (I seem to alternate between being assumed to be old and clueless to being a stand in older sister.) It's fairly consistent with my own college days. (I mean, I was a bit of a menace, if not in a mean way. But... Oh, just imagine me and one of my girlfriends trolling for quiet young geek boys to take home and blow their minds.)

So yeah, there's a whole set of skills to learn, but the idea that everything is all on the guy... is at least not true in many contexts. And women can fail just as hard, though there isn't a subculture about how men are colluding to control them by withholding the cock they have so obvious earned. There are a lot of skills for everyone to learn. No one is born knowing this stuff. And it takes work.** And while some people are more socially inclined, it's perfectly learnable with work. And I suspect if you (I mean the generic you) aren't actively putting yourself in a social situation in which you'll be interacting with folks you're sexually attracted to, you will never learn these skills.

The entitled whining just drives me up a tree. For that matter, the idea that if some random guy asks a random woman out, and she says no - oh, no, the trauma! Yeesh. I mean, first off, that's a pretty stupid set up. And yet, most of us have been through some variant of it.

* Especially when it was from relatively strangers who were clearly not part of my subculture. Major culture shock of moving to the midwest, random guys in suits would ask me out on the train. Or in the airport. While I was practicing martial arts forms in an empty terminal. *blink*
** Do not draw the conclusion from any of this that I was born socially adept, oh, no. I mean, I generally had more male friends because a lot of my interests (computers, electronics, RPGs) skewed that way, but, no. And then I went to college when I was 13 (well, the first time, it's complicated). But, y'know, hard work and paying attention - these things can be learned.

I hear you. Second or third day of reading about gender issues on /. in a row, but you don't deserve that frustration. So tired of all the special snowflakes going on about how they've been traumatized by female rejection, because the world has coughed up their promised female trophy.

(Seriously, back in my SCA days, there was an informal big sister program where someone would take newly arrived nerd boys under their wings and talk them through everything from personal hygiene issues to how to ask a girl our or what was the secret subtext of this or that conversation.* But though that was great and all, that's a lot of care taking.)

* My personal bias: probably none. Okay, maybe there was one, but you'll only drive yourself crazy trying to figure it out. Be clear, be sane, and if she can't reciprocate you're so much better off without.

"...and female rejection..."

Yo, where I'm from of a guy doesn't like a gal, she's expected to grow a pair (of ovaries) and cope. Being all embittered is considered pathetic and a personal failing, not something that men have driven her to. (And, y'know, that's sad, and counselling often can help a lot.)

And women experience rejection all the time. Seriously. All the time.

This stuff is hard, make no mistake. But I'm wondering more and more how much the mythologizing the great force that is female rejection is really more about male introverts who don't interact with women, and never learn to interact with women, and create this whole mythology about women that is mostly not tempered by experiences with actual women. Because really, the girl in your eighth grade class who didn't want anything to do with you (or whatever) isn't something you should obsess about for the rest of your life. And I think it used to be that people had to deal with each other, face to face, enough, that it kind of wore the sharp edges off of the neurosis, at least for most.* And it's now a lot easier to form insular subculture where men come up with all these theories about what women are like, etc. etc. and don't actually interact with women in meaningful ways.**

Because really, I read all this stuff about what women are supposed to be like... and I am a woman. And, okay, I'm fairly atypical, but I spend time around a lot of women, of all varieties. I date both men and women. And these stories have so little in common with the actual people I know, it's pretty absurd.

* Not that I'm advocating the generic superiority of social interactions with the people who happen to live near you. You can have my internet connection when you pry it from my cold dead hands.
** Note, if this doesn't turn around and get expressed as misogyny in the workplace, or shooting sprees or whatever, go right ahead. It takes all kinds.

And if women were leaving because they didn't like the work, you might have a point. But that's generally not the case. It's really common for women to love tech, love coding, and get totally burnt out on a inimical work environment.

Yeah, but young women are more likely to look into careers in tech if women in their communities are in tech. (On my phone, can look up the reference later if you'd like.) So if you lose the women who are there you are also losing the women in the pipeline. Tech had to look like a reasonable option if you want to attract more than a few mavericks (like me.)

(And I eventually went into research, though I contribute to actively contribute to the pipeline on the teaching side. And hey, if industry sounds more entertaining than research, i might switch back. The paycheck was fun but I just got so bored.)

I suspect subculture comes into it, as does context. I think most of my undergrad women are probably doing the thing where there's a lot of hanging out with a group of friends, so they get to know the guy pretty well, and an awful lot of understated flirting, and they're the one who finally says: "Hey, like, are we flirting? Because I think you're cool. Yes? Then would you like to go to such an such event?" (We also seem to be oversupplied with shy quiet geek boys. Which reminds me of what a friend of mine said about being an undergraduate here - back when it was an even geekier school - and which reflected my experiences as being an outgoing and sexually forthright woman in geek circles: Being a woman at Case is like coming to Earth from Krypton. You suddenly discover powers that you never suspected you had before. Anyhow, while I am not hugely in the know about the undergrad dating scene, in many of the cases I do know about, women are initiating the relationships.)

I don't have a lot of insight into the local dance scene, though one of my martial arts students is pretty involved, so I could probably ask him. I'm also used to women doing a lot of leading - and a lot of women dancing with women when the numbers don't work out. (And men dancing with men because they want to, for that matter.) But Ohio is clearly pretty different from Washington State (and especially the more liberal western half of Washington State) and Ohio is supposed to be pretty dead center for a lot of things for the country.

"Yeah, that's not making an argument for a work-life balance. That's just saying "women can't cope". I used to be one, my partner is an academic, and I know many others. The idea of "women don't want to" is so far at odds with reality that I don't know where to begin."

This was in my life in software, before I got bored and went into research. I wish it was as simple as "women can't cope". That particular boss honestly thought he was being supportive (as opposed to, say, T, who took my "Don't make me bored, you won't like me when I'm bored," at my word, and threw me into the river with some kind of faith that politically naive twenty-two year old me would learn to swim. I did. Eventually I realized I loved it.) My mother has her own issues, not the least of which was trying to engineer grandchildren into her future, and my now ex-husband was trying to both ensure his own physical comfort (he *loved* the idea of me spending more time around the house) and ensure some kind of supremacy for his own software career. (In retrospect, some of this was kind of hilarious. He got seriously jealous and controlling about my coding.) Though I think he also told himself he was being nice, since because he didn't like to work hard, of course I would like not to work hard.

And, of course, the flip side is that there's such a huge amount of shame - are you eating home cooked meals? If not, you are a bad woman. Is your house perfect? Etc. etc. And that's before children enter into it.

"Just don't call them minions within earshot. I hear that never goes down well."

It is a big deal when my senior students get their own minions. You can hear them practicing their evil cackles.

"If anything working on hardware makes one more paranoid because there's more that can go wrong."

It's the hardware that ends ups being the time suck, mostly. (All my established students have at least a rudimentary knowledge of python, and decent first pass troubleshooting skills.) Though I have at least one student who (like me) finds soldering relaxing. ...and there's a lot of stuff that will get easier once I find the time to write some documentation. Electrophysiology is famously fussy.

Actually, I believe the point is that they are trying to avoid harassment - a constant barrage of low signal messages doesn't amount for much in terms of making the first move.

I probably wouldn't use this app. But I've also cancelled accounts because I got sick of getting a bazillion poorly spelled messages crudely demanding sex. Not worth my time - I'd rather go hang out at a bar, and I don't even like to drink.

A friend in Cambridge was explaining European regional differences... which left me with the impression there's a lot of variety there, as well.

But seriously, in Seattle, where I grew up, it was a non issue. Nor does it seem to come up in most US west coast cities - at least in geek circles.

I suspect this is highly regional. When I did dance type stuff out in Seattle, women were as likely to ask men as vice versa (mostly amongst SCA folks and similar crowds). And while I certain stood out socially in some ways, I wasn't unusual in my level of forthrightness or outspokenness.** In Ohio, the gender roles struck me as almost comically calcified - and yet, even here it's not unusual for my female undergrads to ask their male friends out, or to initiate things moving from friendly to dating. (And it's a pretty geeky university.)

But then, one of my good friends apparently made quite a stir, and made quite a few people uncomfortable when she proposed learning to lead in tango classes and started asking folks to dance with her. (Typically, there were more women than men, so this seemed practical, but apparently not.) We regularly commiserate on crazy Ohio gender roles. (But it's really, for the US, probably "places that aren't major coastal cities" and a few other liberal strongholds.)

* Well, and I did a lot of middle eastern dance, but not so much partner dancing there.
** I was known to be particularly likely to put someone in a jointlock if they groped me without obtaining permission first. Of course, I also study and teach martial arts and the general consensus was that only an idiot would try it, though some idiots did. I just wish it didn't take folks so long to figure out that it's not about me, it's about the groping. Eesh.

Yeah, but they were the ones who wanted to make sure it was no strings attached sex!

What bothered me wasn't that they decided they were interested after all - that was a conversation I'd be willing to have, though often my interest wasn't there, it was that the whole thing was wrapped in assumptions. Oh, I decided I'm interested after all, so we're in a relationship now. Um, wait, no, really, we agreed on this no strings bit, and that's not something you get to decide unilaterally.

But yeah, I get it. This was all more of a problem when I was younger, and more likely to be caught flat footed by this sort of thing. Apparently a mode that works really well for me is close friends who are occasional lovers, and not everyone has that mode. (It doesn't mean I don't go in for more serious relationships, but it's just not as common. And I'm certainly not going to wait that long to get laid.)

I've not really done a lot of online dating. I played with OKC because the match algorithms were amusing. I might have actually used it to date had it not been so obnoxious in Ohio. A lot of my queer female friends have commented that queer female dating is a royal pain in the ass, generally (a lot of indirect communication, etc.) I haven't really found it so, but then I'm pretty good at direct.

Yeah, hence my careful phrasing. (And I think it's nigh unto impossible to disentangle the cultural chaff even when we're trying really hard.) But even assuming one could get away from the value judgements, there's a lot of conditioning about what we should and shouldn't want. Even at the time I remember being rather struck and confused by the fact by everyone in my life from my boss to my mother agreeing that I should not go for the really cool position that excited and interested me but instead go for something more boring and lower key so I'd have more time to spend at home because women want that, and it will make you happier, y'know? I mean, there's a real argument for work life balance, too, but it's not really applied uniformly.

"I was wondering because I, a lot of other people on slashdot and technically minded students tend to write like that. I think the idea of block structuring comes quite naturally to people versed in programming and brackets are a nice way to structure things."

Being limited to a strictly linear structure is kind of cruel and unusual.

"You have my sympathy :)"

Actually, while I never have enough time to do all the projects I'd like to, my research students are a lot of fun. I like the mentoring work (lab science is so unlike science classes, oh, you need a new kind of apparatus? solder together some paperclips, then build the rest out of legos and modelling clay) and it means I get to develop methods, which is fun, but then leave them to run all the repeats which, um, kind of suits my attention span. Meanwhile, I'm picky about who I take on, and I've mostly gotten it set up so that my senior students train my new students, which cuts down on the overhead. I could wish I'd done a bit less convincing everyone that I could fix most things, as I do spend a lot of time fixing things for everyone, as opposed to just fixing things for people who are working on my projects. Vanity, thy name is Tylik.