Ah. Interesting… I guess I should stop making excuses then… I have occasionally felt like posting things but… I’m so nervous! Everyone here impresses me so much generally.
User Chronophasiac lives near me, and I’ve talked to him about some of my concerns about the conversations about gender we have on lesswrong/OB. My concern is that because of the lack of female presence in rationality forums, that perhaps males have to generalize on a small sample. Rationalist males are noticeably different from the average male, and rationalist females are probably comparably different from average females. I guess I often have a bit of a negative response to how rationalist males talk about females… because even though they might be making correct decisions about most females, they’re certainly not right about me. It’s possibly irrational- but I guess I have a strange worry that they don’t know that. Ah, I remember that these feelings were triggered when they were discussing why there aren’t more women here. But I have no reason to think they haven’t considered it, in fact, I remember Eliezer mentioning that… I should link but I’m lazy.
I’m not mad at the males here for trying to figure out why females aren’t here, and trying their hardest. But… I’m female and I’m here… and all the proposed ideas sounded so off to me. I’ve been trying to think of better ideas though and failing… since I like it here. I guess my best hypothesis is that there are still less women in the topics related to Less Wrong and Overcoming bias, due to the kinds of reasons they’ve proposed for that (past inequality, culture, etc...). But I digressed.
I guess the best thing I can do is just contribute to the site more. In the meantime, just consider what it would possibly be like if lesswrong was ran by women, and we were trying to figure out how to bring in more males, and we wondered if we should consider how males liked hunting, and let that inform our decisions. I mean, you’d know we were trying our best, but those of you who don’t really care for hunting would be like “we really have to let them know we aren’t all like that, and we wouldn’t appreciate it as much as they think”.
I suspect this might have drifted off-topic, but my large ego won’t let me transmit it elsewhere.
In the meantime, just consider what it would possibly be like if lesswrong was ran by women, and we were trying to figure out how to bring in more males, and we wondered if we should consider how males liked hunting, and let that inform our decisions. I mean, you’d know we were trying our best, but those of you who don’t really care for hunting would be like “we really have to let them know we aren’t all like that, and we wouldn’t appreciate it as much as they think”.
LOL’d and upvoted. I will be tempted to cite this comment every time I see a discussion anywhere by a bunch of men trying to figure out “how to bring in more women” to some group, without actually asking any women.
This is a pet peeve of mine in IT forums, where guys often have no idea how offensive their special treatment proposals are to precisely the sort of women that they’d want to have participate, and are bemoaning that no women apply for IT jobs, when I managed to run a gender-balanced IT department for over five years without any “affirmative action” hiring. (i.e., it fell naturally out of our choosing to evaluate based on group fit and potential, rather than out of any need to have a gender balance.)
I’m twenty years old, too—so?
Ah. Interesting… I guess I should stop making excuses then… I have occasionally felt like posting things but… I’m so nervous! Everyone here impresses me so much generally.
User Chronophasiac lives near me, and I’ve talked to him about some of my concerns about the conversations about gender we have on lesswrong/OB. My concern is that because of the lack of female presence in rationality forums, that perhaps males have to generalize on a small sample. Rationalist males are noticeably different from the average male, and rationalist females are probably comparably different from average females. I guess I often have a bit of a negative response to how rationalist males talk about females… because even though they might be making correct decisions about most females, they’re certainly not right about me. It’s possibly irrational- but I guess I have a strange worry that they don’t know that. Ah, I remember that these feelings were triggered when they were discussing why there aren’t more women here. But I have no reason to think they haven’t considered it, in fact, I remember Eliezer mentioning that… I should link but I’m lazy.
I’m not mad at the males here for trying to figure out why females aren’t here, and trying their hardest. But… I’m female and I’m here… and all the proposed ideas sounded so off to me. I’ve been trying to think of better ideas though and failing… since I like it here. I guess my best hypothesis is that there are still less women in the topics related to Less Wrong and Overcoming bias, due to the kinds of reasons they’ve proposed for that (past inequality, culture, etc...). But I digressed.
I guess the best thing I can do is just contribute to the site more. In the meantime, just consider what it would possibly be like if lesswrong was ran by women, and we were trying to figure out how to bring in more males, and we wondered if we should consider how males liked hunting, and let that inform our decisions. I mean, you’d know we were trying our best, but those of you who don’t really care for hunting would be like “we really have to let them know we aren’t all like that, and we wouldn’t appreciate it as much as they think”.
I suspect this might have drifted off-topic, but my large ego won’t let me transmit it elsewhere.
LOL’d and upvoted. I will be tempted to cite this comment every time I see a discussion anywhere by a bunch of men trying to figure out “how to bring in more women” to some group, without actually asking any women.
This is a pet peeve of mine in IT forums, where guys often have no idea how offensive their special treatment proposals are to precisely the sort of women that they’d want to have participate, and are bemoaning that no women apply for IT jobs, when I managed to run a gender-balanced IT department for over five years without any “affirmative action” hiring. (i.e., it fell naturally out of our choosing to evaluate based on group fit and potential, rather than out of any need to have a gender balance.)