Not only that, but I dated a guy once who wanted to use his EBT benefits to buy me food. There are always ways around the system to buy drugs. I don't think they're in common use, though. The guy I was dating didn't want alcohol or drugs (he wanted sex and oddly wanted me to be a mother for his children---but he couldn't see how a family court would have a field day with a trans woman caring for his children---I hope I did the best I could have for him by refusing). I'd like to see some real sociological research from the right wing before they presume that anybody using EBT is trading it for drugs. I think it's a canard.

This, children, is what's known as the tragedy of the commons. Unfortunately, Americans see welfare as a lifestyle, not a tool.

I must be getting old, or something. Personally, I believe that a woman should not have the right to choose if she does not have a career that would enable her to support a child. Or a husband, but that's archaiac. Sure, call me a baby-killer. I believe that we need to force abortions, and if that's too much trauma for a woman, then perhaps women who can't afford birth control shouldn't be having sex.

You're correct. That's not how it is in Michigan. I don't know why, but a lot of unhealthy, processed foods are cheaper to buy than healthy foods.

Personally, I've gone back to a primarily instant ramen diet. It's not healthy, but it keeps the stomach from grumbling. I don't know what I'd do if i had a child who was dependent on my ability to provide healthy foods.

It's easy to get things for pennies that will shut the stomach up, but it's not easy to get green veggies for the same cost. A nice salad is something that I've had to move to my "once in a while" category. A brick of ramen is now my "every day" category.

Most individuals I know who use food stamps are staunchly in support of incarceration of users of non-prescribed drugs and do not use non-prescribed drugs themselves. They do tend to use prescribed drugs such as addictive, opoid-based pain killers and anti-depressants, but those wouldn't be covered by food stamps. They also present themselves as highly suspicious of the evidence that cannabis is more effective than anti-depressants and opoid-based pain killers. I suspect this may be in part an attempt to counter the idea that if left unchecked, they would be supporting a drug habit due to some undefined moral failiing on their part.

While I think there needs to be something better than government handouts of these individuals, I also think the idea that they're using those handouts to support drug habits is unfounded. At least I've never seen compelling evidence that this is the case. Welfare queens do not need illegal drugs with all of the privilege that comes with being a Mother, and I've observed that welfare queens are the least likely to be using non-prescribed drugs.

What I do see is an acute moral failing in the tendency to have another child in order to continue benefits. That is a self-defeating side effect of handout programs targeted at children that must by design also benefit Mothers. It would be good if there were a way to decouple benefits from family size and encourage better family planning.

I'm even prepared to argue that perhaps it's not a human right to reproduce. Perhaps that's something that needs to be earned.

Sorry I came off that way. My thing is that we need to look closely at why individuals who were assigned the female gender at birth choose different careers than individuals with female minds assigned the male gender at birth.

I think what we'll find is that we extend too much privilege to those assigned the female gender at birth, and that privilege is the reason they don't choose careers like HVAC, mechanic, builder, etc. They have no need for those careers in a society that will give them a reasonable lifestyle and provide for a family while working minimum wage if at all. In fact, why should they bother learning those skills at all if having a wild night of sex is all they need to do to start a family and live a middle class lifestyle?

I think that's wrong.

Men and women are different, absolutely. Those differences on their own don't support the theory that women are staying out of CS and STEM because of estrogen or vaginas or something biological

My argument is that it's completely sociological, it's something that no amount of male bashing will fix because assigned males are not perpetuating the problem (or are too afraid of being seen as a misogynist for telling feminism that it's playing a big, big part in this problem), and it's something we can't solve unless we're willing to hold individuals who were assigned the female gender at birth accountable for their choices.

The fact that as a culture we've decided to make Mother a valid career for women while simultaneously destroying the father role and replacing fathers with sugar daddy government seems to explain a lot more. We have a horrendous anti-male bias, and the more I'm forced to live as a man, the more it becomes impossible to ignore.

The term womyn-born-womyn is used by feminists to shame trans women because trans women don't have a period and cannot have children and thus are somehow inferior according to them or a threat. I decided to start using it instead of "cis woman" because I don't see any reason to overlook the fact that feminism values animal functions over the body part between the ears.

At the very least, I need some term to draw a distinction between cis women and trans women to illustrate that the differences in career choice aren't hormonal or neurological.

Imo, if cis women were to take the energy they use to bash all assigned males and to complain that none of them make the choice to enter STEM and CS careers and just make the choice as an individual to enter STEM and CS careers... well... I suppose they wouldn't have a problem, then!

They also wouldn't be living a better lifestyle than working a minimum wage job or not at all and getting government benefits for being a Mother. That's the big difference I'm arguing that pressures cis women to make the choices they make, and I think that's a much bigger difference than any neurological or hormonal differences can account for.

Therefore, if this thing with a lack of cis women in CS and STEM careers really is such a problem (maybe it isn't), then I'm saying that the only way to solve it is to take the option of being a Mother away from cis women and take away their privilege of being presumed victims so they have the exact choices than men and trans women do.

If nobody wants to do that, then whatever. I see no other way to solve the problem, so if taking the option to become a Mother before a cis woman has a steady career is not something that we want to do, this "problem" will continue to exist.

Maybe some day feminists will either choose to be happy with the current cis female hegemony we have or choose a level playing field and not try to have their cake and eat it too.

Yes. I am.

Too bad it's not untrue.

An eye-opening experience for me was a co-worker I had a while back. She was kind, hard-working, and fair. She wasn't afraid to let me know when I was wrong about something and she didn't fly off the handle when I told her she was wrong about something. Then again, I don't recall many times other than when she was new that I had to let her know her perception of how something worked wasn't accurate.

Unfortunately, she get pulled down by the drama and decided to find another job.

It must be difficult working as a woman. Every other woman sees you as a target, somebody to claw down. The heartbreaking thing is watching this happen to somebody, watching things that are wrong and things that aren't even wrong or are sheer lunacy get thrown around just to smear somebody. Sometimes when it gets really bad I'll see things like official documentation get surreptitiously screwed with. One thing one has to be careful about in a workplace that's dominated by womyn-born-womyn is when one woman asks you to make one change to some software and then another woman asks you to make a very similar but different change.

Hoo boy, I've learned attempting to reconcile the two individuals requesting different things from me is a complete mistake when they're both womyn-born-womyn. I have a feeling that's what got the co-worker I liked working with in over her head. The most frustrating thing is that attempting to bring this to the attention of both individuals invariably is seen as picking sides. Sure, guys do this from time to time (just like having a vagina does not make one above sexism, having a penis does not make one above pettiness), but with a womyn-born-womyn you can count on it. It's not honest, but I've found the best way is to work through each nuance of the request, implement the parts of each that seem most correct, and then just tell both requesters it's all set. I don't know if they ever go back to check if I did what they asked, but the important point to a lot of womyn-born-womyn is that you were asked to do something so you did it without involving them in the details.

It's not important to be objectively correct to womyn-born-womyn. They have other priorities, values, and ways of knowing. There's a lot of what that article calls "Subjective Knowledge: The inner voice" going on. Unfortunately that "way of knowing" simply doesn't lend to success when you're writing a computer program. For many womyn-born-womyn, it's just simply unimportant to move to another "way of knowing," and why should they? What benefit would using "Procedural Knowledge: Separate and connected knowing" or "Constructed Knowledge: Integrating the voices" that incorporate both personal subjective knowledge and external objective knowledge have to a Mother?

That I think is a big problem. I cannot have children, and being trans I also have no family or any other way to influence a child with a reproductive system on the inside to have other aspirations than getting rich in sales or medicine or being Mother. Instead, it seems they continue to be influenced by Mothers and the increasingly womyn-born-womyn dominated elementary school.

The only solution I can think of is that we have to stop giving entitlement benefits to womyn-born-womyn solely on the basis that they got themselves pregnant. Require them to have a career or some other way to support a family before they choose Mother. Unfortunately, I think a lot of womyn-born-womyn would continue to limit themselves to being a Mother, but at least maybe they'd just be a lower-case mother and there might be a father involved instead of wage garnishment.

I look at you cisgendered people, and a lot of times I'm at a loss for many of the ways objectivity goes out the window when it comes to gender. Do I want women "back in the kitchen?" No, but I struggle to see any other outcome as long as all we do is blame anyone and everyone assigned the male gender at birth for life choices and the drawbacks of those life choices that individual womyn-born-womyn make. It takes two to tango; it's time to start putting some accountability for the lack of womyn-born-womyn in CS and STEM on the individuals who are making the choice to pursue other interests.

I'll tell you what I hear and see. I hear a lot of men who are saying they'd love more womyn-born-womyn especially in CS. I see girls interested in engineering and CS right up until they find out they can make twice as much and retire at 35 if they pursue erotic dancing for example or else decide to start a family before they've even gone to college. I see a lot of kvetching from feminists and white knights about the outcome of these facts of life. I hear women who are seeking careers in CS complain about how they get job offers simply because they're the only woman who was interviewed for the position and, thanks to the white knights and feminists, the interviewers are too scared not to offer her the job. I also know a number of womyn-born-womyn who believe that I can program computers because of my assigned gender!

No amount of male-bashing will help a womyn-born-womyn who herself believes that the ability to program a computer has anything to do with gender. I feel bad for their grand-daughters, but there's jack shit I can do about what those individuals choose to believe and choose to pass on to their grandchildren.

Pointing out how certain womyn-born-womyn are responsible for this problem and how entitlement programs that enable the Mother lifestyle exacerbate this problem is not misogyny. Pointing out that womyn-born-womyn aren't perfect, innocent victims here is not misogyny. However, I will admit that my position that if womyn-born-womyn can't figure out how to solve something that really is their problem---reviewing their own beliefs and attitudes for sexism and misogyny and getting their daughters to take CS classes and get STEM degrees---they can go back into the kitchen for all I care may be misogynist. We can't continue to pretend that womyn-born-womyn are somehow being oppressed, and we can't continue to ignore womyn-born-womyn who hold rediculous views and think that computers are just for boys. These individuals need to be held accountable; no more free passes.

If I had a genie and could wish myself a different reproductive system, I wouldn't make the choice to become a Mother, and there are plenty of womyn-born-womyn who don't choose to become Mothers. Hell, I might even stay with CS instead of getting frustrated enough at the accusations of sexism to learn some other way to make money. I can't make that choice for anybody else, though, and I think the EULA with most genies and other wish-granting figures prohibits mind control anyway.

Of course standard disclaimer, the plural of anecdote is not data.

Bingo.

What do you propose to do and since when were science and tech jobs lucrative? I think that's probably the problem right there. It's not lucrative.

It pays the bills. If you're a womyn-born-womyn, however, it's easier just to sign up for entitlement programs. Those pay the bills, too. I see it all the time. Sometimes this behavior is even encouraged by the individual's mother!

I wish it wasn't that way, but what is there to do? Get me a genie so I can wish to be a womyn-born-womyn so I'm not blamed for choices others make? Sure, why not. That's perfectly fine with me. Won't be statistically significant, but at least I won't be accused of sexism anymore.

I mean, look. I have literally been accused of sexism because the I wasn't willing to resign a job I had and just roll over into a gutter because a womyn-born-womyn who had absolutely no background in tech believed that merely by having a vagina, that'd make her better at the job because Ada Lovelace had a vagina, too!

Sometimes accusations of sexism can be deeply rooted in sexism itself.

This is a situation where feminism would have more credibility in pointing the finger of sexism just as soon as they get around to caring about what percentage of builders, plumbers, HVAC technicians, and diesel mechanics are womyn-born-womyn. Instead, it seems that feminists and white knights are doing little more than exploiting the "geek" stereotype and engaging in bullying.

There are plenty of geek girls out there. If they want money, they go into sales or medicine where there is money. If they want family, they know how to get pregnant and enroll in entitlements. They have no need for science and tech careers.

They also know every time I point this out, there's a white knight that will jump up to defend their victimization. Well, sure, let's try to get more womyn-born-womyn into CS careers. I'm not the best teacher, but I've pointed numerous womyn-born-womyn at languages like Python and offered to answer questions, just that doesn't appear to do jack shit about this problem.

Hell, once I was helping a womyn-born-womyn with her C homework. I compiled it and ran it on my computer and didn't get the same result she got. I found the error (buffer overflow iirc that worked on win32 but not on linux) and told her why we were getting different results, but she jumped on me and called me sexist! How the hell is pointing out a buffer overflow sexist?! (Really, think about that. Does it make you feel good to know that there's a programmer out there, programming computers, who thinks that a buffer overflow is a term I invented because I was trying to intimidate her and be sexist!? And that the only reason she gets away with it is because of her assigned gender and all the feminists and white knights backing her up! If it were a guy we'd just call him ignorant or an idiot or both and be done with it. Womyn-born-womyn have the privilege of being victims when they're objectively wrong.)

Just don't punish me for being assigned the wrong gender at birth in any more ways than I've already encountered, but that's exactly all anyone's ever proposed. If I don't roll over into a gutter and hand my job over to a womyn-born-womyn who doesn't have any experience or education, then I must be sexist and a misogynist!

I am so, so sick of it. I am an individual, and I am not accountable for the actions and choices of others. I am sick of being beaten over the head with Ada Lovelace for no other reason that my assigned gender and stupid choice of career. What's funny is that I've never, ever encountered a woman using Ada Lovelace as a weapon who even understands her Notes. Well, unless I count myself, but that's because I forgot to type out womyn-born-womyn in the previous sentence.

If I had been a womyn-born-womyn, I think I might have studied human language or maybe history instead of CS. Instead, I wound up in CS because I had a knack for it and I needed a paycheck. It's not somewhere I would be if I had understood how money works earlier in life and had been interested in that or if I were able to start a family without worrying about how to provide for one. I wonder how many other assigned males that's true of?

lol. You're not quite right on what the term means.

I don't understand why you get so riled up at the term "womyn-born-womyn." This is a term that was invented by feminists specifically to shame trans women.

Womyn on its own is the term you're describing. The -born-womyn thing gets thrown on because feminists like to make sure that trans women understand that they're not "really" members of the gender their mind is. So, I got the message!

What the term does is take gender out of the realm of biological and medical fact and turn it into a caste one must be born into.

Didn't click on your links, but one of the things I find hilarious about the whole "wage gap" thing is that in science and tech sectors, womyn-born-womyn are more guilty of it than assigned males!

If you're a womyn-born-womyn and you want to get a science or tech job, you'd better get interviewed by an assigned male, because he'll pay you more.

Yet, even though this is a problem womyn-born-womyn are perpetuating, perhaps even causing, we still refuse to hold them accountable. I think we need to start.

Well, you'd need to explain why then trans women do just fine in tech careers and why in other places womyn-born-womyn are doing ok as well.

Does the brain have a gender? Yes. However, it has nothing to do with ability or preference for one career or another. I can also tell you firsthand that the estrogen/testosterone thing is a complete and utter red herring.

You're looking in the wrong place in your attempt to be scientific. It's much more subtle than one chemical that gives you soft skin and another chemical that helps you build muscle.

Look at all the privileges womyn-born-womyn have.

If you could start a family with no means to provide for it, then run out on the person you had sex with to make the baby, get custody of the child practically by default (especially if you use the R word), and then live a middle class lifestyle going between minimum wage jobs, why would you want to screw yourself up with something as complex and difficult like tech and science? For what, especially when you're now a class of person that we view as infallible: a Mother?

That's just one example, but a pretty big one.

For example, in places womyn-born-womyn are at 50-50, genital mutilation is also a 50-50 industry from what I understand.

Maybe we need to start making womyn-born-womyn as expendable as assigned males are over here.

I'd also like to respond to another of your comments:

The problem is you're wrong. These things create differences, but these things do not create the differences we're looking at.

If they did, switching from testosterone to estrogen would change a person's entire personality or set of interests instead of just making it a little easier for them to cry. Trans folks would be utterly unable to fit into their assigned gender at all, although I'm not sure if that would be a good or bad thing. The things that do emerge in a child's behavior that don't match what's expected of his or her assigned gender are easy to overlook to the point of denial or humiliate and beat out at any rate. We also tend to have confirmation bias when somebody does something that we consider gendered.

Womyn-born-womyn would be getting into tech and science careers, but they need similar motivations to why a guy gets into these careers: he needs an income to support himself regardless of his interest or lack of interest.

What feminism and womyn-born-womyn have essentially done is to take the argument that since they're physically weaker and because they carry children, that they should be protected to an absurd level. When a womyn-born-womyn fails, look how we try to find somebody else to blame. When an assigned male fails, look at how quickly we are to blame him.

We're ok with homeless men. We aren't ok at all with homeless womyn-born-womyn. Why? Because feminism has so coupled the womyn-born-womyn with babies and destroyed the role of the father that we can't imagine doing anything else other than giving a womyn-born-womyn with a child entitlements. Far be it for us to even question what she was possibly thinking when she was sleeping with a guy without protection, without any way to support a baby, and without any intention of abortion.

Well, I can tell you what I've overheard straight from womyn-born-womyn: they were thinking $$$. Womyn-born-womyn aren't stupid.

That's a bit more powerful to think about than armchair pontifications about estrogen and testosterone.

What if those pressures are things that we're supposed to consider good such as welfare programs?

Would you still want to eliminate them?

In some of those countries where things are close to 50-50, womyn-born-womyn aren't protected from genital mutilation. Does that mean it's finally time to implement the American Academy of Pediatric's 2010 idea to legitimize the practice over here, too?

Yes, there are cultural reasons womyn-born-womyn avoid certain careers. I wonder how that would change if we took away entitlement programs that allow them to live the same lifestyle while working minimum wage (or not at all) they would otherwise have to work those careers to earn?

I mean, hell. Tell a womyn-born-womyn that she needs to afford her own birth control, and you've got a major political party trying to claim that's somehow basic healthcare.

We need to stop privileging womyn-born-womyn. We need to start telling them "tough shit, now get a job."

The only reason this wouldn't work is because men are ok with supporting a wife who doesn't have a career. Men would need to be ok with seeing a woman starve and taking her child from her the same way they're ok with seeing a man starve and taking his child from him.

Otherwise it looks like 10% is all you get. Not all womyn-born-womyn are the same, but boy howdy that must be something else to grow up knowing that having children isn't something you'll need to fight for and then realize that all you really need to do to become a Mother and get a Room of One's Own is to sleep with a guy who's had one too many beers. Thanks to feminism, nobody will think less of you, and they'll actually see you as the victim! Your parents will love you for giving them grandchildren! Nobody cares what's wrong here!

Hell, I've met womyn-born-womyn who have done this very intentionally and with guidance from their Mothers about how to sign up for all the best entitlements from sugar daddy government.

Welfare queens are real; it's just that their skin color is white so you don't mind and look the other way. Let's stop pretending that womyn-born-womyn are victims and start holding them accountable for their choices.

Shhh!

Next we might find out that womyn-born-womyn really aren't segregated and living in ghettoes in the bad part of town! Next we might find out that womyn-born-womyn actually have pretty much the same opportunities as the males in their families!

Who knew?!

Next we might even find out that when one is assigned the male gender, one realizes that one needs to get a job that's going to provide a decent income and work whether it's something one finds personally interesting or not, and that when one is able to become pregnant, minimum wage is good enough because nobody dares question a Mother.

If we want to solve this problem, we need to start questioning Mothers. We need to drasticly reduce spending on entitlement programs for Mothers. Require womyn-born-womyn to get skilled jobs regardless of their interest if they want to have children, and you'll see things change.

Eh, screw it. I have a feeling that womyn-born-womyn would rather wind up back in the kitchen than do something hard like math. It's true! I interact with so, so many womyn-born-womyn at work who can't do anything with numbers beyond the basic 4 operations. It's not because of estrogen or because of their womb or their period or anything stupid like that. It's because it's below them.

Oh, but that doesn't stop them from bashing me over the head with Ada Lovelace. Proprietary software having a problem? It couldn't possibly be the vendor, according to some womyn-born-womyn I work with, it must be my assigned gender! It must be a hormone I don't even have in my blood! If only a "woman" were in my position, then everything would be sunshine and rainbows!

These aren't individuals who are oppressed. These are individuals who are just quite simply above things like programming. After all, somebody will provide food and housing for them.

The triumph of feminism was transforming the source of that security from a good husband to the state. Feminism may have opened some doors along the way, and do we see some womyn-born-womyn who actually do want to do things like being a doctor or lawyer, but ultimately that's a side effect of what feminism wanted to do. Feminism is about the hegemony of one assigned gender over everyone else.

Feminism absolutely hates the idea that with equality might come accountability. The idea of a "room of one's own" is that because one is born with a womb, the world just owes one something, and since anyone assigned the male gender at birth is an evil rapist, regardless of the gender of the body part between their ears, regardless of what hormones are in their blood, regardless of whether they're revolted by intimacy with womyn-born-womyn the same way you'd be revolted if another guy tried to sleep with you, it's moral to demand that assigned males actually build the "room of one's own." The idea that one would work for the "room of one's own" is absolutely foreign to feminism.

I love it, and I think we need to do more to make womyn-born-womyn personally accountable for their lives. I say start kicking them the same way we'd kick a guy who was a bum. Put them in some pain if they don't start signing up for CS classes.

Maybe if we take away the womyn-born-womyn privilege of being able to start a family without any way to provide for it, we'd start seeing more womyn-born-womyn in tech. As it stands, why would somebody want to screw themselves up with a mountain of technical crap for a mediocre salary, when they can just get pregnant, work a minimum wage job, and live with about the same quality of life?

So yes, a womyn-born-womyn who wants to make her own income will get into medicine or become a lawyer. Womyn-born-womyn aren't stupid. They know the chances of being a rockstar like Bill Gates or Mark Zuckerberg or even making it past the quality of life they could enjoy on welfare by getting into science and tech jobs is miniscule.

We need to level the playing field. If we want to pour gobs of money into something to do that, let's cut back or eliminate entitlement programs, create work projects to say, address our crumbling infrastructure or even replace infrastructure, say copper with fiber, and let's see how womyn-born-womyn like it when they need to get one of those jobs they have no interest in if they want to eat.

It couldn't have anything to do with the fact that we expect anybody assigned the male gender at birth to be breadwinners and have no such expectations for womyn-born-womyn?

Why are there so many trans women in tech careers and no womyn-born-womyn? Perhaps it's something other than biology.

I believe this is a problem that feminism created for itself. Womyn-born-womyn know they don't need to learn a skill or trade in order to become Mothers, and oh how we shower Mothers as a society.

I hear in Iran, things are quite different. Maybe feminism would like it if we took some direction from them since whatever they're doing seems to be encouraging womyn-born-womyn to get into tech. Maybe we should implement the American Academy of Pediatrics' 2010 recommendation to legitimize the practice of female genital mutilation. Who knows what differences might exist because we mutilate one gender at birth and not the other; maybe we should just do both. Even the reactions womyn-born-womyn had to both the AAP's 2010 report and the AAP's 2012 male circumcision report. The AAP says, sure go ahead and mutilate little girls, and knees jerk until the cows come home. Say that men are better off circumcised, and you get a small army of womyn-born-womyn reporters smirking and nodding. After all, if we screw up when we're cutting a man's genitals and slip or wrose, he was just expantable anyway, and he probably wouldn't have been good in bed anyway, so who cares, right? It's utterly lost on womyn-born-womyn that if they hate having sex with intact men, why are they mutilating an infant instead of having this conversation with somebody they're dating?! Do these womyn-born-womyn plan to have sex with the infant?

No. It's about control. Womyn-born-womyn love that nothing as horrible as a botched circumcision could ever happen to them, and they love it. If we waited until the child was a bit older, the child might protest or the child might be aware that a part of his body that he needed was amputated and that it's not normal for his glans to constantly hurt.

That's just the beginning of all the stupid, artificial ways we've decided to create gender. Maybe it's because of the cisgender blind spot, but I don't know that I care anymore. When womyn-born-womyn are telling me that my skill with computers is because of a chemical that's not in my blood or because of a body part that's been mutilated that I'm seeking to remove entirely what should I fucking do?

Womyn-born-womyn love how things have turned out.

I don't know if they do this in Iran, but maybe we should force womyn-born-womyn to play sports that they hate whether they like it or not. Maybe we should take away their privilege of wearing their hair however they want it and tell them they're just ditry hippies if they want it to be long. I suppose I could go on.

How about if a womyn-born-womyn gets pregnant and she can't afford to provide for the child, we take the child from her instead of giving her cash and housing? That might shake up the career and life choices that womyn-born-womyn make!

None of these things has anything to do with biology and everything to do with the post-feminist culture we've created where anyone assigned the male gender at birth is expendable and womyn-born-womyn are privileged brats.