Yes, life is more complicated than the argument that white men start on easy mode. But that is the basis on which the more complicated fractal reality exists, and the new right wants it even simpler: they think everybody has an equal opportunity -- it's right here on this piece of paper -- so if you're poor, you fucked up. The left's argument is more complex than the right's, and less complex than reality.

Who are you calling you people.

Let's recap here. Zoe Quinn slept with all the major game reviewers and/or their editors. She gets rave reviews for a game people who actually bought have panned mercilessly. Literally caught with their pants down, they point to their customers and scream "sexist!". That's the point of the scandal. You can dress it up however you like, but at the root it's about corruption in the gaming press.

This sounds about right to me.

You are right that GamerGate has some kind of unholy obsession with Quinn instead of Grayson, who should be the target of criticism if that criticism has merit. That criticism has very little merit.

But if you think the italicised summary is 'about right', you haven't been paying attention. Here's what really went down:

a) Grayson wrote two articles talking about Zoe Quinn's game as an interesting tool for dealing with emotional issues and an interesting direction for games to explore
b) Months after these articles were published, Grayson and Quinn slept together
c) Months later, Quinn's ex aired his dirty laundry in public and made a lot of false accusations along with one or two true ones
d) Depression Quest was and is a free game. It never got rave reviews, except as an interesting anomaly. It's pretty similar to the reviews of Dear Esther.
e) The "Gamers are dead" articles all talked about "The word gamer carries a common stereotype: basement-dwelling misogynistic nerd. That stereotype is inaccurate -- gamers cross all demographics -- and should be discarded. Studios should make more games that appeal to wider and alternative audiences"
f) Actual basement-dwelling misogynistic nerds got mad about this and made a hue and cry.
g) Non-basement-dwellers, non-misogynists, and non-nerds who identify as gamers heard this hue and cry, skipped reading the actual articles, and got involved
h) Folks who have been campaigning for ethics in game journalism for a long time jumped on the bandwagon
i) GamerGate continues to dig into the lives of outspoken women and 'expose' their exploits, and call for boycotts of sites that do actual criticism and talk about larger societal issues in the context of game review, while largely ignoring real actual problems in game journalism like paid shills and editorial conflict of interest with advertisers.
j) The misogynistic troll segment of GamerGate explicitly uses "it's about ethics in game journalism" to distract from their trolling.
k) 4chan (4chan!) kicks these assholes out and they regroup on 8chan.
l) The proponents of ethics in journalism fail to realize that their flag has been ripped and smeared with shit by the channers and continue to wave it.

If you are not a racist, homophobic, misogynistic cockstain, then those names are not directed at you.

The thing is, the perception of GamerGate is preponderantly misogynistic. That's what people see when their only targets are outspoken women who provide evidence that they are targets of constant, vile death and rape threats. Some people in GamerGate, presumably you among them, are not misogynist, and are truly interested in improving the state of video game journalism. Yet you align yourself with this stained movement that continues to focus on these women despite the arguments against them being largely debunked, and ignores the very real and very pervasive real problems with game journalism. Shadows of Mordor? Gamergate gives a quick mention at best, then crickets as people continue to point fingers at Sarkessian, Wu, Quinn.

You take offense when people call the movement out on its bullshit, then wonder why you're getting smeared with the same brush?

One side is arguing based on preponderance of evidence, the other side is arguing based on exceptions to the rule. Which side are you arguing?

Game journalists are friends with game developers. That is true industry-wide, and it's not an ethical problem. Political journalists are friends with political staff. Foodie journalists are friends with restaurateurs. That's how it works -- that how you get the story.

There are real problems with game journalism. Paid video bloggers; advertisement vs. editorial; publisher-sponsored 'reviews'. Zoe Quinn is not among these real problems, yet she is still front and center in the GamerGate discussion six months later. Literally nobody outside GamerGate and depression treatment advocates cares that a free game got top billing in a minor piece as one of 50 minor games that were greenlit, nor that the developer and the writer were friends, nor that the writer was mentioned within a long list of other pre-release testers in the credits of that game. It is in fact counter-productive to keep bringing it up.

GamerGate folks keep complaining about someone shooting a squirrel while ignoring the concentration camp next door. If GamerGate was really interested in journalism ethics, Zoe Quinn would be the least of their concerns. Why aren't you talking about Geoff Keighley or Shadows of Mordor -- i.e. real, major, glaring problems with game journalism? Why is GamerGate so narrowly focused on women? Even in relation to the minor ethical issue with Depression Quest, GamerGate is entirely focused on Zoe Quinn, and not on Nathan Grayson, to the extent that in a slashdot article about Zoe Quinn -- not about GamerGate nor game journalism -- GamerGate still pops up to spout this inanity.

No assumption. Check the links in my other replies to you. I'll even gather the most relevant ones again:
http://blogs.scientificamerica...
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

OK, this is about programming, not other areas of education.

we don’t really have a STEM gender gap in the U.S.: we have an ET gender gap!

I already know many social workers. I also know many teachers. Like teachers, social workers also have above average education and make below average wages. I think both are indicative of the same root issues. It's largely a problem of short term thinking.

Highways already have intersections. Some are 4-way signals, some are stop signs on the secondary road.

Are you thinking of freeways?

In my ideal world, I would keep my Outback for long trips or lots of cargo, sell or donate our cheap commuter, and subscribe to a driverless car service for commuting to work or making other trips around town, like to the grocery store or the bar. I don't care if my commute is a half hour longer: I'll work in the car and spend an hour less in the office, or eat breakfast and meditate without having to think about the stress of rush hour.

One set of factors has obvious, macro level effects. The other has subtle psychological and mental effects. Those subtle effects are more difficult to measure and less well understood. Some of our popular/stereotypical understanding of these subtle psychological and mental effects is demonstrably false yet still pervasive. e.g it is a commonly believed that men have better analytical and mathematical ability than women. This is a myth: men and women in fact have about the same ability.

It's not about being inoffensive, it's about being correct. It's about improving society for everyone.

In my own anecdotal experience, yes: women are both more adept at teaching in classrooms and more inclined to be teachers than men are. But different students learn in different ways and need to be exposed to diverse viewpoints in order to learn effectively throughout school. We didn't always believe this: for centuries and still in some places, school was a function of the church and all teachers were male. Sometimes all students as well.

In my own personal anecdotal experience, yes: mean are more adept and interested in understanding how machines work. But IMO this difference is easier to explain by cultural influence than it is by biological differences. 2 year old girls are just as interested in figuring out how the world works as 2 year old boys. But boys are encouraged to take things apart and build them while girls are encouraged to look pretty and make friends.

With computer science in particular, there is absolutely no evidence that men have any innate neurological advantage over women, yet we outnumber women by at an order of magnitude at least. Women are said to be better than men at understanding the integration of independent parts into a larger group dynamic. Men are said to be better at spatial manipulation. We have equal ability at math. Software engineering requires all these skills, but in my own practice, I find systems thinking skills more useful and applicable than the other two.

Because cultural stereotypes affect people's confidence, performance, efficacy, and motivation. Look up stereotype threat effects.

Who called for a politically enforced diversity? Quotas are facile and ineffective. I am calling for individuals to seek diversity for its own sake.

Do you have any actual evidence of this?

Ooh here's a good one: there is negligible difference in mathematical ability between genders, yet stereotypes about male superiority exist and have been quantitatively measured:

http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pm...

Yes, and the fact that most teachers are women demonstrates that indeed something is actually broken and needs fixing.

Do note that I explicitly said that the mere fact of a gender disparity is not an indicator that something is actually broken and needs fixing.

That mere fact is, however, a good reason to start looking.

Yes, and the fact that most teachers are women demonstrates that indeed something is actually broken and needs fixing.
Also, most nurses are female, such a monoculture cannot be healthy.

Yes, I agree. Those are further examples of the same issue, and similarly unhealthy. More women are teachers, more men are principals and superintendents. More women are nurses, more men are doctors.

And most garbagemen are men

There are likely factors here arising from macro biological differences in physical strength and risk aversion. Professional occupations are more concerned with factors influenced by micro biological and culturally-influenced psychological differences in knowledge and aptitude. However I am inclined to say that there is unwarranted bias in the waste management field quite similar to the bias the military is slowly starting to overcome.

The problem is, how do we measure what the actual problem is?

First off let's bring the focus back to the topic at hand: STEM occupations. There exist studies that show, given functionally identical resumes, hiring managers in STEM fields rate men as more qualified than women. When similar future studies show no such difference, we are can triumphantly declare centuries of systemic gender bias solved.

We can count indicators of manipulation of the free choice of the individual by other cultural biases as binary factors: do marketers show any boys at all playing with LEGO Friends, any girls playing with Technic? Does Barbie say "Math is Hard"? Does the classroom teacher?