[orange_joe]

Without trying to start a flame war...

There's likely an element that's certainly cultural, or a biologically based differences, but it seems like there are some very straight forward explanations for this.

There's significant governmental and private assistance to young women not available to young men (educational scholarships, grants, support groups, etc.). Any field in which men continue to do well is considered a problem, whereas the converse is accepted as a natural order (have you seen any pushes to get straight men into HR?).

There is also significant difficulty in even articulating these issues as its been broadly taboo to discuss biases that advantage women, such as a positive bias toward women in education[1]. That being said, the mere fact that this is now a publicly discussable issue seems to imply our standards for discussion are changing.

[1]. https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/01425692.2022.2...

[hellisothers]

Two things to consider when thinking on your points: On no initiatives to get straight men into HR, is there a great clamoring to get into the field of HR, or nursing (the other often cited example), do you perceive them as high prestige or high paying? You’re probably referencing subsidizing efforts to get into law, med school, finance, etc which are high paying and prestigious.

Regarding overt assistance given, this is to help balance the scales for deep structural support given to men. Which to your final point of difficulty of discussion, the structural biases are well documented but often derided when brought up in a discussion against complaints about the overt support provided to women.

We definitely need to address the issues about “the boys are not alright” but re-establishing old basis is not the way.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

There are initiatives for women to get into things like firefighting and many trades that aren't super high paying jobs. They exist because these jobs are deemed to have 'too many men'. But the opposite is never a problem. An all female board of directors is lauded as being the best thing, while an all male one is considered exclusionary. All these messages are being received by young men.

[itsdrewmiller]

https://www.aamn.org/ from quick googling. I did find a lot of men in teaching too but it’s almost all targeted at BIPOC.

[Eddy_Viscosity2]

Would the AAMN be allowed to offer scholarships for men to enter nursing school where only men are eligible for the award in the same way such awards can be made women-only for male-dominated fields?

[autoexec]

> Regarding overt assistance given, this is to help balance the scales for deep structural support given to men.

I don't see much effort to balance scales in areas where women have had much greater assistance and support available for an extremely long time while men have had little if anything. Parental rights, domestic violence, criminal justice, and physical and mental health, etc.

In many of these areas the "old basis" was mainly favoring women and there's been little effort to change that situation.

[IshKebab]

> deep structural support given to men

Genuine question, obviously in the past men had an enormous advantage, but what is that deep structural support today (in the West)?

[fennecbutt]

As a gay man, why specify straight men? It just shows your subconscious thought of gay man = femmy = hr. Most gay men are just average dudes and you'd never be able to tell, no matter how many overly dramatic portrayals of gay dudes there are on TV.

But primarily, I've not seen a single diversity initiative for gay people in my life. Based on skin colour, sure, for women, always. But not once have I seen anything prompting or requiring hiring of gay employees ever.

[autoexec]

> As a gay man, why specify straight men? It just shows your subconscious thought of gay man = femmy = hr.

I can't say if it was intended that way, but that's not how I read that comment.

I took it to mean that there's a popular cultural attitude that straight men (and more specifically straight white men) are "problematic" and undesirable generally, while gay men are considered different enough from straight men that they're often given a pass in certain circles. In my experience, how many "diversity points" being gay earns you vs the deduction you suffer for being born a man varies widely from setting to setting. It's also been my experience that being gay doesn't carry the same weight in those same crowds that it did decades ago.

I have seen workplaces that promote hiring for diversity which explicitly included LGBT folk as well as racial minorities. Depending on where you live these types of employers may be much harder to find, but a good place to start might be sites like this:

https://equalitycareers.com/

https://lgbt.net/job-seekers/

https://www.diversityjobs.com/

https://pink-jobs.com/

https://www.lgbtqcareernetwork.com/

[bradlys]

> Most gay men are just average dudes and you'd never be able to tell, no matter how many overly dramatic portrayals of gay dudes there are on TV.

Let's not be obtuse. You're acting as if most gay men are completely straight coded in society. That's just not even remotely true. Most gay men I know are "obviously" gay to straight women because straight women find most straight men to be a threat. Code switching like that is very common within the gay community when present around women. Very much being more flamboyant than they would otherwise as to make women feel more safe and allied with them.

I have dozens of gay male friends (yes, dozens) and I have rarely ever met a man and thought, "wow, he's gay? I never imagined! Seemed straight to me!" It happens but it's very uncommon.

[swat535]

> straight women find most straight men to be a threat

What do you mean by this?

I have many female connections and don't think any of them perceive me as a "threat".. my wife never indicated this either, yet I'm clearly heterosexual.

I don't think acting civil with the opposite gender has anything to do with one's sexual orientation.

[bradlys]

Talk to them about how they feel around men they don't know.

[ProfessorLayton]

What you're seeing is called confirmation bias. That most of your gay male friends are flamboyant says more about the company you keep around (Which is great btw, and not a judgement call) than all the other gay and bi guys just going about their day, unnoticed.

[LoganDark]

Whenever I've tried to discuss this in cases of obvious tokenism and what I call "reverse discrimination" (which is when minority groups are particularly favored for their PR value), my language has always seemed to appear charged with privilege or something which causes people to attack me for it. I absolutely do not mean to come off that way though.

Someone once asked something relating to a literal "diversity quota" that they had to specifically hire only minorities in order to meet, and I was removed from that entire community for raising concerns of preferential treatment. I believe my exact words were "isn't that just discrimination in the other direction?"

So I think, this is still very much taboo? Either that, or I just suck at communicating. (Which is fair.)

[orwin]

The issue with "diversity quota" is that it only target "visible" diversity. But I guarantee if you want your SV tech startup to be really diverse, your next hire should be the white man from Pocahantas conuty, WV rather than the black man from Mill Valley, CA [0].

Anyway, i'm largely against quotas, i'd rather have blind resume and have hiring stat done on really big companies to prevent them from gaming too much. If you want to hire diversity for diversity sake (which in tech is a good thing, you want multiple point of view), hire outside of your zone of control, seek people who won't send you a resume.

[0] I've been twice in the US, and visited both places, i guarantee the culture is extremely different, although the National Park crowd is the same (i.e: extremely cool and interesting) in both place.

[ricardobeat]

Diversity hiring has the specific goal of equalizing the mix a little bit, which requires hiring particular people. Same as education quotas which aim to bring in more students from unprivileged backgrounds, an attempt to correct historical discrimination over generations.

Your question demonstrates a lack of basic understanding of this, which could be obtained in half an hour of reading; from this perspective being kicked out of the room is not an unexpected response.

I do strongly agree with the principle that any discrimination is still discrimination, but reality is more nuanced than that.

[spondylosaurus]

Agreed, and I think a key thing to note here is that discrimination against marginalized groups/minorities has historically run much deeper than hiring strategies, and so hiring strategies themselves provide a pretty superficial picture of how close we are to "solving" inequality.

It's not always this dramatic, but sometimes you can chalk up the difference between two people's opportunities in life (at least partly) to the fact that Person A's great-great-grandparents had a thriving family business, and each generation was able to provide a safety net for the next, versus Person B's great-great-grandparents who weren't allowed to own property. There are other factors, obviously, but advantages or disadvantages can accrue over time like compound interest. If Person B gets a good job, that's beneficial for them, but it might be exponentially more beneficial for their own great-great-grandchildren down the line—it just takes a while to see that change!

[LoganDark]

So my impression is this: in a vacuum, if everyone hired only minorities, then non-minorities would be at a disadvantage, instead of minorities being at a disadvantage. Your argument seems to be that since there is still so much discrimination against minorities, some companies only hiring minorities serves to make the job market as a whole more fair for them, by "balancing out more" against those who only hire non-minorities. If those companies "only" treated everyone equally, then everyone else only hiring non-minorities would have even more of an impact, and the job market would be even more unfair for those minorities. Do I understand you correctly?

(Also: sorry for constantly using the term minorities/non-minorities. I don't have a better word to use here. I know talking about things this way could be seen as being part of the problem.)

[wakawaka28]

You don't suck at communicating. The people who want to discriminate against you want to do it badly and don't care what you think about it. They don't believe in a colorblind society and equal treatment under the law, they believe in getting what they can get at your expense while crying victim. I'm not saying you shouldn't be nice to people, because some of them might legitimately feel disadvantaged by their minority status. But keep in mind that some of them know exactly what they're doing to abuse our sympathy.

[kurthr]

Same with nursing. Of course there is discrimination against men, but there are so few that it's mostly based on other things (like which island you're from).

[majgr]

In Poland it is opposite. Public Health Service raised salaries for nurses, since average age of nurses was around 54 years old. This is seriously demanding job, so I assume not a lot of people were willing to take it. But when salaries were raised more men appeared.

[kurthr]

It's a very demanding job, physically and emotionally, as well as, specialized training and liability since you literally have people's lives in your hands. You have to deal with people at their worst. Pay is quite high, and it's challenging to get into a nursing school program, but still only ~10-12% male (and about 1/3-1/2 are gay). Social dynamics are really different in nursing from school, to work, to supervision and management.

[lwkl]

> There's significant governmental and private assistance to young women not available to young men (educational scholarships, grants, support groups, etc.). Any field in which men continue to do well is considered a problem, whereas the converse is accepted as a natural order (have you seen any pushes to get straight men into HR?).

Or we might no know of the efforts that is made to recruit more men for these female fields because most people on this site work in tech which is male dominated?

In education for example the lack of male teachers has been seen as a problem for years. Teaching here is a well paid job but men here don't want to do it, despite there being active measures to recruit more men for this profession. It's basically the opposite of tech.

[oldnetguy]

Most men won't do it because of the stigma of men willing to work with Children. Men are seen as predators.

https://slate.com/human-interest/2017/10/a-male-preschool-te...

[Gibbon1]

My take is for young women there are a bunch of real economic and social benefits to women that go to college and so they do.

The oldest of them is you go to college to meet men. It's the old 19th century reason. Send your daughter to college and next thing you know she's engaged to her roommates older brother a son of a wealthy industrialist.

Don't discount four years of college is four years of not being under anyones thumb.

College educated women have high social status. And job opportunities that don't involve gross low end work normally done by women.

[gamblor956]

Maybe it's just because I have to work with the HR department a lot, but I know plenty of straight guys in HR. HR attracts gregarious people, sexual orientation doesn't play much of a role.