[gedaxiang]

Actually, I've noticed that there's a lot of arrogant assholes in the collegiate Computer Science atmosphere, maybe more so than in other fields.

But it has nothing to do with the gender issue. These "jerks" will be jerks to anyone who isn't at their level, male or female - I even caught myself sounding a little condescending today during a group study session.

[sethg]

I think men who are non-jerks are still socialized in how to interact with jerks. We understand that a certain number of guys are jerks and we have to deal with them anyway, so we learn how to shrug off the behavior or respond in kind, and we have to learn how to tell when someone crosses the line from macho bluster to being actually dangerous.

Women, I think (someone tell me if I’m full of it here) are brought up differently—they are trained to see guys who act this way as threats, and to avoid them, or at least keep their guard up around them. (There are obviously women who act rudely to other women, but it tends to be a different kind of rudeness.)

[overgryphon]

This is something that can be true, and I feel that a lot of guys don't really understand. I had difficulty once with a coworker who gave me a birthday present even though he shouldn't have known my birthday, found out my address, asked me out every month even though I said no and gave no indication I was interested, and often times invaded my physical space. While this might seem like innocent social awkwardness (often attributed to some subset of cs guys), it certainly doesn't seem that way when it happens to you.

When guys don't respect social boundaries it can be frightening. Don't be so quick to assume this fear is trained- I didn't start to react with fear until a handful of upsetting experiences. It can be justified fear.

[sethg]

I would use a stronger term than “jerk” to describe that kind of behavior; I had in mind the sort of assholish behavior that some men exhibit among other men (e.g., the condescension described a few comments upthread).

A man who treats women as if their main purpose in life is to be his potential girlfriends has a different problem, and I think most men who act like this are not so much socially awkward as socially mistrained.

[zheng]

This is just another anecdotal datapoint, but I've found substantially less arrogance in my CS program than in some of the other bigger majors here (IR, Govt, Econ). I think it helps that some of the best and brightest students spend a vast majority of their time answering questions, debugging code, and filling in others with that obscure unix knowledge.

Nevertheless, we have very very few female majors.

[nickbarnwell]

Out of curiosity, what CS program is that? From the major majors you listed, it sounds as thought it might be where I'm headed next year, and I'd love to hear what a current student thinks of it.

[zheng]

It's a well-known mid-atlantic school in the US. If that still fits the profile, feel free to email me(see my profile) and I'd be happy to discuss things more with you.