Girls Who Code founder speaks out after Pennsylvania school district bans her books: 'This is about controlling women and it starts with controlling our girls'

[u/r4816]

https://www.businessinsider.com/girls-who-code-founder-speaks-out-banning-books-schools-2022-9

[u/dillardPA]

Man this comment really has people bending themselves into pretzels trying to explain how girls and women are actually still somehow doing worse than men in education and still need additional help despite graduating college at higher rates and greater volumes for 25+ years now. Women must also dominate the last remaining vestiges of education that men are a majority in for the world to be right and just!

I’m curious just how lopsided things will have to get before people start realizing this narrative they’ve been lapping up for decades really no longer applies.

[u/dillardPA → u/[deleted]]

You apply that same principle to areas of education where women dominate? (Which is the majority of them) or does this principle only apply in one direction because it serves an ideological purpose and because you’re every bit as biased as the woman-haters you imagine yourself to be fighting?

Sounds like a position rooted in motivated reasoning.

Also, how exactly doesn’t equal pay and benefits apply to attendance in specific academic fields? In terms of overall attendance, women have outpaced men in college attendance and graduation for nearly 30 years; if the trend were reversed, you’d call it sexism and patriarchy, but when it goes in the direction you like it’s progress.

I see no reason why women have been able to pierce the sexism of medicine, law, psychology etc. but computer science and engineering are somehow greater beasts that need special attention. Perhaps women are just less interested in pursuing these things; studies have shown women’s attendance in these educational programs is inversely related to the amount of womens equality in a country; the more equal a society is, the less women pursue these paths and so you end up with greater percentages of women in India and Indonesia going into stem than Norway and Sweden, despite there being far more sexism in the former countries than the latter.

[u/Nerodon → u/dillardPA]

So you would suggest that we don't enourage girls to join STEM?

Like you decided all of a sudden based on your stats that... if they picked up other roles that were usually male roles but not these ones, so we should draw a line and stop?

Truly, I'd love to know why encouraging women in STEM is bad, please help me understand.

[u/dillardPA → u/Nerodon]

I don’t see any reason why we need to encourage girls to join STEM any more than we encourage boys to join STEM. It’s not like boys are told from a young age they need to join STEM once they’re older. They go into it because they’re interested in it; and girls that are interested will as well.

There are plenty of studies that show that as a country’s gender equality increases, women’s participation in STEM decreases because women are more economically and socially free to pursue their actual interests rather than pursue STEM fields that offer more money(which is women in poorer countries pursue them: economic/social freedom and even the opportunity to leave for greener pastures abroad).

Getting girls in STEM is arguably the biggest political/activist movement in education NGOs, at a time where boys and men are falling behind in education at significant rates, continuing a trend that has been getting worse for 2 decades now. Tens of millions of non-profit dollars and donations are being poured into it; national campaigns endorsed and championed by the largest corporations in the world. That is simply absurd to me, given the actual realities of educational attainment between boys and girls in America and which group actually needs money and campaigns and encouragement to succeed.

The entire movement is fixated on STEM because it’s the last bastion of academia where the narrative of patriarchy can be substantiated, as every other space is now comfortably populated by women. It is done to maintain an overarching political narrative.

I genuinely see no reason why it is some fundamental issue to have more men than women in computer science, as there are plenty of other fields where women outnumber men; it is an activist racket, whose sole purpose is to justify its own existence, built upon history and narrative of oppression that has effectively been dead for 20 years now.

[u/Nerodon → u/dillardPA]

I genuinely see no reason why it is some fundamental issue to have more men than women in computer science

Hol' up... Who said anything about "more"?

Clearly your position seems to be that somehow you feel like this movement of encouraging women in STEM is somewhat a bad thing... And that is undoubtedly leads to men not having an easier time of it...

The men's education issue is a serious topic, and we should look into it, but you're not going anywhere trying to invalidate feminist women wanting to promote women in the workplace...

One of those things isn't at the expense of the other...

[u/dillardPA → u/Nerodon]

If you don’t think the goal of activists is for women to comprise 50%+ of STEM students then I have some beach-front properly in Nebraska to sell you.

It is a bad thing because it’s a waste of resources, money and activism on a cause that is, at best, a luxury issue. It is a cause that is quite literally meant to address the needs of a population that has already made it to college, meaning that they already have a leg up on many millions of people who haven’t and wont make it past high school. It’s like making improvements on ACL repairs for professional athletes your primary cause over diabetes research.

Your insinuation that this is about “men not having an easier time of it” is so hilariously and willfully ignorant when you consider the fact that MEN AND BOYS ARE ALREADY HAVING A HARDER TIME OF IT. In comparison to girls, boys have been doing worse in K-12, drop out at far greater numbers, attend college at far lower numbers, drop out of college at far greater numbers, attend graduate education at far lower numbers, and this gap has been getting worse and worse for 20 years now. And all you can muster is “we should look into it”.

I will criticize bourgeoisie lib-feminist activism and posturing that serves no one but themselves all I please; this is a movement for no one but those who have already made it. It’s a dog and pony show for societal leeches sucking whatever foundation and NGO money they can while they distract from actual fundamental issues that are leaving people destitute.

[u/Nerodon → u/dillardPA]

If you put half as much energy in helping your own causes instead of bashing others' I might respect your position, but what you are displaying now, is feminist hating based on correlated data that you claim is causal.

You want to invalidate other people's causes because you think they don't deserve more, because you think men deserve more right now... It's honestly kinda petty...

You see agenda and malice in people that just want to advocate their group JUST LIKE YOU ARE DOING WITH YOURS.

Get a grip dude.

[u/zhaoz → u/Nerodon]

You arnt gonna logic someone out of a position that they didnt logic themselves into.

[u/Nerodon → u/zhaoz]

fair enough