So, I specifically said state universities would be free to those who qualify. If someone wanted to go to a private institution they could certainly go into crippling debt in order to attend if they so chose.

And, really, I probably wouldn't care much if more people went to university, even if they weren't really qualified. People spending more time in school isn't a bad thing.

And further, I'm sure "the market" will fend for itself when it comes to filtering out idiots; it's just that people won't have crippling student loan debt that will make them so desperate for work that they'll be willing to let their employers bend them over in order to accept a shitty, low paying job.

Actually, the more I think about it, the more I like it - employers would actually have to offer something in order to attract workers because the workers won't be desperate anymore. I've known people who've taken very, very shitty jobs and worked in abusive environments for years out of fear of losing their health insurance or being unable to pay for school loans - that's pretty fucked up.

I say guarantee basic services (phone, basic cable, broadband), basic accommodations (place to live, food), and basic health (medical insurance) for those who need it. Provide life and job skills classes open to anyone who wants to attend. Make state university free of charge for those who qualify (via academic track record and testing), vocational training (plumbing, culinary, whatever) free for those who don't qualify for university.

Spread the housing across a given community, rather than concentrating it in one place, to prevent things like a project mentality and generational poverty mindset.

It would be vastly less expensive than the costs we pay for police, prison and emergency services, safer for everyone else, and overall reduce human suffering.

Most people would be happy to work an actual job and pay taxes in order to have "better than the bare minimum" for all of the above and the ability to do things like have food that isn't just staples, go on vacation, have more living space, etc.

For people who don't want more, or who can't work for more, at least this would keep them off of the streets to some extent, and keep them from getting so desperate they resort to crime just to survive.

I have zero problem with my taxes going to pay for such things because, not being an idiot, I'm aware that the alternative (what we have right now) is VASTLY more expensive by pretty much every metric.

Weirdly enough, women were quite well represented in technology before the 80s. Clearly there was an interest - so what's changed?

Women in other countries are somewhat more well represented in technology and more likely to go into STEM fields - so what are those other countries doing differently?

There are a number of things that make a strong case for the reasons women aren't well represented in tech being related to artificial issues rather than natural tendencies.

Tech isn't singled out as the one and only important field, by the way. I'm not sure where you get that idea from, but if you look at most any field with a lopsided gender ratio you'll see concern about the gender imbalance and efforts to remedy it. Nursing programs will aggressively pursue male candidates, same for elementary teaching, for example.

In any case, my guess as to why tech is singled out is not that tech is singled out, but that you're probably primarily reading tech sites where this gets discussed, so it just seems that way.

A willingness to give partial credit for work shown, even if the ultimate answer was wrong, and other things like that. They may be more willing, in this case, to assume that the boy with the wrong answer was on the right track, while the girl with the wrong answer was just flailing around and guessing, even when the provided answers and work were the same.

I see, it's not just ignorance - it's willful ignorance that forms the basis for your factually incorrect opinions, and when challenged on your ignorance, you lash out incoherently.

I'm sure you imagine you have a point - given that your stated opinions have no basis in fact, you probably imagine all kinds of crazy things are true. Please also feel free to imagine that you've put me in my place, if you like. I certainly don't see any point to continuing this discussion; I won't try to reason with someone clearly lacking it.

Except that there is a push to get more men into elementary teaching. And there is a push to get more men in to other industries dominated by women, like nursing.

You seem to have a very strongly held opinion (at least one that's strong enough to comment about and bash "SJW"s) that is clearly based at least in part on ignorance. I'd suggest learning more - not only will it help you avoid embarrassing yourself by displaying your ignorance, but it might even help you revise your opinions.

Also, side note, one of the reasons nobody gives much of a shit about there not being enough white players on pro basketball teams is because, statistically speaking, it isn't remotely relevant. How many pro NBA players are there? Now compare that to fields like software development or IT. Which one of those groups is more relevant for the average person who wishes to achieve upward mobility and has better odds?

Additionally, you're also ignoring the fact that white people were not, historically speaking, forbidden from playing in professional sports leagues and were not harassed and threatened (at least not for their race) when they joining the leagues. The fact that you so blithely ignore historical fact, once again, says to me that you form your opinions out of ignorance. Again, I suggest learning more so that you don't embarrass yourself by spouting off your uninformed nonsense.

Exactly that.

The extra information is irrelevant. It doesn't matter that his idiot identified as a feminist, and it didn't matter that the creep I described identified as a men's right's activist. They are an idiot and a creep, respectively, and it says absolutely nothing about other people who may have some label in common.

Given that I didn't say whatever it is you think I said, I'm not entirely sure why you seem so miffed.

I said that by changing the way they presented the company they were able to appeal to a segment of the workforce that previously had not been applying. I said nothing about what men value or that men stopped applying, just that more women began applying after they emphasized certain existing benefits.

In fact, given that I described the company's engineering group as mostly married men with children, and those benefits were already existing, one could infer that men can (and do) value child care and work/life balance.

You need to socialize with real human beings more if you think a minor disagreement with you on an internet forum is enough to ruin someone's day, princess.

Thank you for demonstrating my point perfectly.

You have zero problem saying feminists as a group (a group you don't belong to) are stupid/crazy fucks, yet you get your panties in a twist because someone does a similar thing about men's rights activists (a group you pretty clearly belong to).

The thing is - when I see your stupid/crazy stuff, I just dismiss YOU as being a stupid/crazy person. I don't dismiss all men or all men who are in the men's rights activist movement.

My entire point with my anecdote was that by putting in the (completely irrelevant, in my opinion) fact that the perv in question was in the men's rights movement is a painfully obvious attempt to paint an entire group of people as being fucked up by association, and that's pretty fucked up. Thank you for being a lovely demonstration of how easy it is to manipulate people.

So, no intellectual honesty then. I'll help you out:

Had you simply described her as a "person" rather than a "feminist" would it have changed anything meaningful about the anecdote? If so, what would have changed?

Do you feel that her identifying as a "feminist" somehow contributes to the absurdity of her actions in this case or provides insight? If so, why?

I posted a response to the GP, but the fact is that many times applicants won't even apply to a position if the position is presented in a way that makes it look like there will not be a fit.

In many cases, jobs for tech positions are posted in such a way that they appeal very much to a certain type of candidate (young, male, unmarried, no kids, wants to have fun!) which absolutely turns off candidates not in that group. It isn't (usually) intentional - it's just that the people doing the outreach go "hey, that's where I'd want to work" and don't try and see things from another perspective.

It's actually kind of stunning just how unintentionally myopic many people trying to hire in the tech industry are. Often when it's pointed out to them that the whole approach they've been taking is making people not even try for the positions, they are quite surprised.

Did you intentionally use the term "feminist" in your anecdote to describe the subject of it?

If yes, what was your intent in using that term?

I'm doubtful that you'll be able to give intellectually honest answers to those questions that don't speak directly to the point that I very clearly made after my anecdote and that don't make you look like a giant asshole.

Or to just to get more creative where and how they look for qualified candidates or how they advertise positions.

For example:
A company I work with has had exactly one other woman apply for an engineering position in the last 2 years I've been affiliated with the company. A few people have brought this up and said "there just aren't any women out there!"

I had been directly recruited by a friend, so I never saw the materials we use to recruit. I decided to take a look. A lot of things were mentioned in the ads and in the site's listing: there's a video game room! Team members often go out for drinks after work! We've done bowling nights! We work hard and we play hard!"

Zero mention of available day care. Zero mention of a culture that promotes "family first" (aka "getting home at a reasonable hour"). Zero mention of a soft policy of avoiding crunch time (release when it's ready, not based on an arbitrary date). Zero mention of the fact that most of the engineers were married with kids, and often brought their kids to work.

We changed the materials to more accurately portray us as a family-friendly workplace rather than a binge drinker's paradise. Lo and behold, we began getting resumes from qualified women, several of whom said that they'd seen our ads before but didn't even apply because they didn't think the place would be a fit.

Further: our recruiters would only go to meet-ups that were centered around our specific technologies/platforms, and those meet-ups were either overwhelmingly or exclusively attended by men. I suggested our recruiters seek out meet-ups for working women, women in science and engineering, etc. Shockingly, several very well qualified women were coming in to interview as a result.

Point I'm making here is that there are ways to get different kinds of people to be interested in your workplace that don't sacrifice quality. If you don't think there's a way to get more diverse candidates in the door without sacrificing quality, the problem is that you're not creative enough.

Guy I used to work with was active in a number of men's rights activist groups and was always bitching about how his ex-wife was given full custody of their kids during the divorce, how the system is rigged against men, and how women are crushing "good men" like him and all that. One day at work he LOST HIS FUCKING MIND because he was informed his wages would be garnished for not paying child support. "Why should I have to pay when she has the kids?"

Well, it turns out that his wife filed for divorce and full custody after:
- She found "erotic literature" on their shared computer that featured a father training his pre-teen daughters to have sex
- When she confronted him about it, he didn't deny that the stories were his, but in fact said that this was a "healthy outlet" for thoughts and urges he had
- He refused to go to therapy to talk about the fact that he needed a "healthy outlet" that featured him vicariously raping his kids

When he was going off he said the only thing he did wrong was admitting that he wrote the stories and that he should have lied instead so that "bitches" didn't twist his words around to make him look like he wanted to fuck his kids.

You posted an anecdote with - let's not be intellectually dishonest here - the goal of encouraging people to draw broader conclusions about an entire class of people (that the readers do not belong to) based on the actions of one irrational individual. And, judging by the fact that you got modded up as "insightful" it seems to have worked.

I posted my anecdote, but I'm quite willing to bet that those same readers are going to be unwilling to apply that same broad brush to a class of people that they do belong to.

What one should take away from these two anecdotes is that there exist some people who are, for lack of a more precise term, fucking morons. Sometimes they use flowery rhetoric about causes or their rights to dress up their stupidity or awfulness, but that shouldn't be taken as an excuse to dismiss the causes those people purport to advocate, especially just because the cause happens to be one that the reader doesn't particularly endorse.

It's really easy for people to lump together entire classes of people they don't belong to - and it's perfectly natural to do so! But the best people recognize that the world is more complex than that, and they fight their nature.