[jkelleyrtp]

In high school, I ran a robotics team that did lots of STEM outreach. We went to community centers, after school programs, and worked with other similar orgs like "girls who code."

I think we played an important role in the community. In our mission we stated we wanted to help bring "equity to STEM education."

In 2025, according to the current admin's stance on "DEI," my robotics team would not be able to receive grants without risk of being sued. It's plainly obvious the line is not drawn at restraining "overly progressive policies" - it's just arbitrarily placed so the govt can pick and choose the winners based on allegiance.

It's a shame that folks with a strong moral fiber are now punished for wanting to help their communities.

[belorn]

Around 2019, Guido official stated that he would not longer mentor any white male, and that there was enough white males around that any white male who wanted to learn developing python would have to do it on their own. The community in general seemed to follow the same policy back then, but now seem to have relaxed a bit.

Reducing complex individuals into two bits of information, skin and gender, will never be a stable system for equity. It always bring push back, which usually escalate hostilities and bring more polarization.

I would like to imagine than in the place of DEI or anti-DEI, we will instead see a push for programs that look to the individual and their need for support. Needing mentors and support is not born out of gender or skin color, nor faith or sexual orientation. Its born from human need to improve oneself and those around us. That is a program that deserve government grants, and I wish there was governments that would support that in 2025 political climate.

I noted today in local Swedish news that one of the largest STEM university in Sweden found that they have now reached their gender equallity goals for technical programs, and is looking to change the diversity program towards other demographics that has been overlooked and gotten worse over the years in term of gender equallity, like for students in biology and chemistry. Time will tell what the people with strong moral fiber will do, as there seems to be a lot of resistance among those who previous was supported by that diversity program.

[analog31]

>>> Reducing complex individuals into two bits of information, skin and gender, will never be a stable system for equity.

It's a remarkably stable system for inequity.

[aswegs8]

>Around 2019, Guido official stated that he would not longer mentor any white male

Honestly such statements weird me out. How did we come to saying such things being considered normal??

[b112]

From my side of the coin, I've always thought that the best solution is ground level support.

Ensure that students of any type have excellent public schools. Ensure that people without resources, of any background, have access to higher education. This can be by grants for the very poor, just as it can be by government backed, guaranteed approved student loans.

Healthy, stable food in schools is an excellent way to keep a child's mind on education.

These things level the playing field. There are plenty of white males who need such help to be on a level playing field with wealthier families too. I grew up in a rural community in Canada, and saw many smart but underprivileged(including trouble with keeping food on the table) families end up with grants to go to university.

If you do this, if you provide the capability for merit to shine, and ensure that merit can be fed intellectually, you're doing much of the work required for true equality.

I frankly don't give a rat's ass about women being in any specific field, or someone of whatever skin tone. I do 100% care if people want to, but cannot!! I want all who are capable, to be able to express that capability.

If this is done, and done correctly, then the numbers of candidates applying for jobs will result in numbers indicative of candidates in the field. And more importantly, of people wanting to be in those fields. If you get 11% women in the field, and 11% women applicants, and nothing prevented women from entering that field, you're where you want to be.

We don't need to encourage people to enter a field. We need to only ensure they can if they want to.

This sort of "women are weak and are scared of entering fields" is bizarre, from an equality standpoint. The same for people with different skin tones. Why do people seem to think women, for example, are weak and incapable of pursing their dreams? They are not!

The women I've known in my life have been strong in opinion and in drive, the same goes for people of any racial background. There are of course those that are not, but I've seen lazy, undriven white males too.

People don't need to be prodded, dragged, pulled into a field.

They just need to have no way that they are hindered. They just need the freedom to choose. To know that they can pursue that which they desire.

Support at the ground level does this.

[lou1306]

It's not like a white male cannot get mentored in Python by anybody. By 2019 Python was already one of the most popular languages in the world. Surely any dev on Earth who wants to learn Python has plenty of people and resources at their disposal, and it would take a very good set of reason to turn to the language inventor himself.

I agree that DEI often acts as a fig leave over a whole bunch of other systemic issues, and the European vs American cultural and historical landscapes are already so different as to make any cross-the-pound discussion on DEI extremely hard to navigate, but I still commend the PSF for not taking clearly ideological orders from a funding body. That road would have lead to nothing but trouble.

[pseudalopex]

> The community in general seemed to follow the same policy back then

Our definitions of the community in general must differ. This was not what I saw.

> Reducing complex individuals into two bits of information, skin and gender

This is a straw man. Skin and gender were not the only factors he considered. And he considered gender because of patterns of failure when other mentors mentored women.

[ashtonshears]

I appreciate your efforts to support community and people

[me-vs-cat]

> the line is ... arbitrarily placed so the govt can pick and choose the winners based on allegiance.

This is the real problem. They use vague statements to make decisions based on loyalty with just enough merit as distraction.

Everything will get much worse for everyone, and they will probably set back the progress of causes they use as vehicles in their loyalty crusade. I increasingly see other outcomes becoming less likely.

[slumberlust]

Cronyism is back on the menu.

[zb3]

You state no details.. but things like "girls who code" sound discriminatory. What about outreach to people who can't learn to code for example because they're not wealthy enough?

[II2II]

Note that they said:

> We went to community centers, after school programs, and worked with other similar orgs like "girls who code."

This sounds like a fairly broad based outreach program. The inclusion of an organization that supports girls is just one of the avenues they used. There is nothing wrong with that.

Sometimes I feel like founding an organization called Men In Science & Engineering Research, simply because the acronym (MISER) would be a fitting parody for those who promote blind equality (i.e. the type of equality that hoards the riches of science for men).

[MoltenMan]

I don't think there are really enough details on the parent comment to judge it either way, but can't you at least see how weird it is that 'Women in STEM' is very accepted but a 'Men in STEM' program would never fly? Whether or not white men have hidden advantages over non white men (and I'm not saying that they don't! Simply that they are not clearly visible), it should be very clear that there are large non hidden advantages for non white / non male people, which is obviously going to foster discontent, whether or not they are actually at a disadvantage in the big picture.

As a similar example: my close Vietnamese friend met all of his best friends and girlfriend in college in VSA, a Vietnamese club. All of my non white friends went to 'Latinos in X' 'Asians in X' etc. clubs. There were no equivalents for me! I don't resent anybody for this (by dint of my personality I don't really care), and in truth it was probably good for my cold networking skills (perhaps widening the unseen advantage gap that I supposedly have even further), but I also think it's difficult to look at this and not understand why people are so discontent with DEI identity politics.

[dragonwriter]

> but can't you at least see how weird it is that 'Women in STEM' is very accepted but a 'Men in STEM' program would never fly?

I can see how it might seem weird to an alien who knew what men and women were, but had no context for the existing state and history of society.

I can't see how it would seem weird to anyone else, however.

[MoltenMan]

Maybe I wasn't clear in my previous comment about what exactly rubs me the wrong way, so here's an analogy: imagine you went to school and the the teacher lined everyone up by gender and handed out a cookie to everyone. And then she handed out two extra cookies to all of the girls! You would be annoyed! Does it matter that back at home guys normally get 4 extra cookies every day? No, because as a guy, you don't see or know this! (In this world brothers don't have sisters and vice versa). And even if you do technically know this because you've heard about it, you don't really viscerally understand it because it's not really your lived in experience.

So what is the solution? I can't say I know. But I do know that these things very much breed discontentment and it is at the very least important to recognize why.

[jkelleyrtp]

I think a hallmark of 2025 is a resounding lack of empathy and compassion from people. Maybe's it's smartphones, social media, or some sort of existential doomerism.

To reframe your scenario: imagine you went to a school and some of your classmates came from poor families and couldn't afford clothes, food, or a laptop etc. To help those students, the teacher used class funds to buy them new shoes and get them a nice laptop to get their work done. Do you still think it's unfair that you don't get new shoes, laptop, or cookies?

The solution to your original question is to understand why the teacher is giving girls 4 cookies and then just be happy that more people get a fair shot at life.

[com2kid]

Imagine the teacher lines up all the kids, gives them cookies, notices all the kids are boys, so the teacher puts up a sign outside the girls restroom advertising free cookies for anyone who attends math class.

Now the boys have cookies and the girls have cookies.

Except the cookies are not actually cookies, they just represent what you'll learn by attending the class.

That is out reach.

I don't see jocks complaining about fitness outreach programs to geeks. That'd be absurd.

But guys famously will complain about:

1. Women reading science fiction

2. Women watching science fiction on TV.

3. Women playing d&d

4. Women playing online games

5. Women writing code.

To be fair, many women are judgemental about male nurses or even male teachers.

That type of idiocy has to stop both ways. Let people do what they want to do.

[dragonwriter]

I noticed that you have worked very hard in your strained analogy to setup conditions which validate my original statement:

“I can see how it might seem weird to an alien who knew what men and women were, but had no context for the existing state and history of society.”

[kelnos]

If boys always get 4 cookies at home, and girls get none, and then we go to school and boys get 1 more cookie, and girls get 3 cookies, I'd think it was pretty weird that boys get 5 cookies and girls only get 3.

> No, because as a guy, you don't see or know this! (In this world brothers don't have sisters and vice versa).

In our world, men do know that women face barriers to entering STEM education and STEM careers that men do not face. Many men seem to ignore that fact, though, or pretend it's not true, and I will continue to roll my eyes at their annoyance about "Women in STEM" programs.

What a bizarre analogy...

[klipt]

If you include biological and medical sciences in STEM, STEM graduates have been majority female for decades.

Where is the DEI for men in the female dominated STEM subjects?

[punchfunk4lyte]

> If you include biological and medical sciences in STEM

Biological sciences are STEM of course. But if we're going to extend the definition, why not include all fields that involve technical skills? How about accountants and lawyers?

I'm concerned that you only proposed adding medical and nursing students because it's the only additional field that would support your argument. That strikes me as goalpost moving, so I hope it was just an omission.

[dragonwriter]

> Where is the DEI for men in the female dominated STEM subjects?

There’s actually quite a bit of outreach-type programs aimed at getting them in the door, and a lot less after that because despite women dominating degrees and entry-level hires, men still disproportionately dominate management and leadership roles.

[dllthomas]

> Where is the DEI for men in the female dominated STEM subjects?

Is that rhetorical? Have you looked, or just assumed their absence?

My cursory search seems to indicate that there are some, although I don't have bandwidth to investigate in any depth and I'm not sure just what criteria you'd want to use for qualification.

[acdha]

Where is your data showing those programs don’t exist? For example, conservatives like to talk about the plight of male nurses but even a cursory search shows that there are exactly the kind of programs you’d expect to find.

[kelnos]

> that 'Women in STEM' is very accepted but a 'Men in STEM' program would never fly

That's because, in general, STEM itself is already a "Men in STEM" program. We men don't need a program to get us excited about pursuing STEM education & careers; that pursuit is already there, and already common. It goes back to innocuous-seeming things as young boys being given chemistry kits for their birthday, while young girls are given dolls, and continues all the way through teen years as boys are encouraged to pursue STEM-related coursework in greater numbers than girls, culminating in STEM careers being already full of men with conscious or unconscious biases against women.

Creating a "Men in STEM" program would be a waste of time, and would just be about scoring conservative political points.

[bluecalm]

Your argument is based on the fact that more men naturally gravitate towards STEM than women do. This doesn't mean there aren't still men who could go into STEM but lack motivation/opportunity/some other push. Maybe there are more of them than there is women like that, maybe not. You are saying it's ok to ignore all those men just because already bigger % of men naturally go into STEM. This is just discriminatory. Just because some people sharing some characteristic with me do better (in this context) doesn't mean I am in position to do better.

This is the mistake DEI proponents make. There is no "we men", there are individuals and discriminating towards them is not ok and also illegal.

[evilsetg]

It's fun that you say 'naturally' when there have been centuries of oppression and conditioning against women in STEM.

[JuniperMesos]

> We men don't need a program to get us excited about pursuing STEM education & careers; that pursuit is already there, and already common. It goes back to innocuous-seeming things as young boys being given chemistry kits for their birthday, while young girls are given dolls, and continues all the way through teen years as boys are encouraged to pursue STEM-related coursework in greater numbers than girls, culminating in STEM careers being already full of men with conscious or unconscious biases against women.

I don't believe this is true. I think the gendered difference in interest in the cluster of topics we label "STEM" is mostly biological and deeply-seated - one piece of evidence I find very convincing is the observation that non-human primates exhibit the same sorts of gendered behavior with toys that human children do (females wanting to treat any kind of toy as a doll, males wanting to treat any kind of toy as a tool, etc.).

I also don't think that boys are encouraged to pursue STEM-related coursework in greater numbers than girls. I think that girls are explicitly encouraged to pursue STEM-related coursework in much greater numbers than boys - this is exactly a consequence of the above-noted social fact that "Women in STEM' is very accepted but a 'Men in STEM' program would never fly". And as you say, this is because males are much more likely to be intrinsically interested in pursuing STEM education and careers, whereas females are more likely to require explicit societal encouragement to do so. I've read more than one account of a woman who had worked in some kind of software-related field admitting that she wasn't intrinsically excited about the work, but felt like she would be a bad feminist if she left a STEM track to do something more traditionally female-coded instead.

[acdha]

> one piece of evidence I find very convincing is the observation that non-human primates exhibit the same sorts of gendered behavior with toys that human children do (females wanting to treat any kind of toy as a doll, males wanting to treat any kind of toy as a tool, etc.).

This is actually why I don’t think the differences are mostly social: there’s a lot of evo-psych speculation which gets widely referenced in casual discussion but when you look at the details turns out to be much weaker. For example, that famous Hines 2002 study about vervet monkey toy preference relied on grouping toys into categories based on human leanings: a police car was masculine while a cooking pot feminine despite no vervet monkey ever associating a pot with mother’s home cooking, and the effect went away when they used other groupings (e.g. animate or inanimate objects).

What’s especially missing in these cases are controlling for social differences (e.g. any claims about women being innately worse at engineering need to center an explanation for the much lower gap in Soviet states which made an effort for gender neutrality) and attempting to explain how very complex behaviors reduce to the trait being studied. For example, a male vervet monkey preferring a police car to a cooking pot is a considerable remove from a Google software engineer or CS degree and there is usually an enormous amount of hand-waving trying to connect the two.

When I worked for a neuroscience lab years ago, this came up in conversation a bit and basically everyone thought there were innate cognitive differences but that they’d be low-level and relatively small: e.g. testosterone makes a big difference for things like grip strength and there are clearly low level anatomical differences but higher-level cognitive abilities depend on many factors and the unusual plasticity of our brains is an enormous confound. This gets harder the more advanced the skill you’re talking about: e.g. a question like whether a group of boys performed better at 3-D rotations is due to biology or because they’ve been encouraged to play with building toys and games is a already a hard research topic but looking at things like success as an engineer or scientist is orders of magnitude harder because it combines a range of different skills and the metrics are harder to quantify.

[endemic]

So we shouldn’t focus on helping a subset of people because doing so is discriminatory to everyone else?

[AnimalMuppet]

Well... if you're getting a grant to help group X (which is in need), and you're not helping group Y (that is also in need), that should be all right (one organization probably can't do everything). But there maybe ought to be someone else getting a grant to help group Y.

[rs186]

I believe you are always allowed to create a club "boys who code" if that's something you are interested in.

[bmelton]

If you want to use any public spaces (libraries, community centers, parks) then no, you can't. Virtually every state has a prohibition on the use of public spaces that specifically prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex or gender

If you wanted to leverage the "private club" exemption per Roberts v Jaycees, then you would be disqualified from using public spaces as well, which -- my wife established a "girls who code" organization and it benefited greatly from the use of both public and lent private spaces, but she could not have done without the ability to use both as it would have been extremely cost prohibitive (and it wasn't in any way profitable anyway)

[runako]

> Virtually every state has a prohibition on the use of public spaces that specifically prohibit discrimination on the basis of sex or gender

This ties into a very specific confusion about affinity groups. Specifically, they generally are not exclusionary (in part because it's largely illegal). The only thing preventing boys from participating in a "girls who code" type of event is the boys don't want to go to something with "girls" in the name.

[bmelton]

I blearily put this reply to the wrong top-level comment earlier, but ...

That very much depends on the group. Years ago, my wife founded two chapters of a national organization who did "girls who code" sorts of things. There was (to her) a surprising amount of infighting about how to handle registrations from males. Leadership felt that men should not be allowed to attend, but there were at least a couple of chapter leads (including my wife) who felt that men should be allowed to attend, but where spots were scarce, they should be prioritized to women.

Disregarding the politics of it, there was definitely not a shortage of men who were discouraged from signing up because they were somehow icked out over the name. I'm sure some men were, and I'm sure others probably deferred on the grounds that they didn't want to take spots away from those for whom the mission was intended -- but because the organization was unwilling to publish official guidance for reasons I won't bother to opine on, my wife was routinely in the position of having to explain her attendance policies to men who had signed up

[kelnos]

If you were to create a "boys who code" organization and get denied for use of a public space that a "girls who code" org has used, then a) you could sue for use of the space, citing the girls groups' use, and win, or b) you could sue saying that the girls group shouldn't be allowed to use it, and win.

[bmelton]

That very much depends on the group.

Years ago, my wife founded two chapters of a national organization who did "girls who code" sorts of things. There was (to her) a surprising amount of infighting about how to handle registrations from males. Leadership felt that men should not be allowed to attend, but there were at least a couple of chapter leads (including my wife) who felt that men should be allowed to attend, but where spots were scarce, they should be prioritized to women.

Disregarding the politics of it, there was definitely not a shortage of men who were discouraged from signing up because they were somehow icked out over the name. I'm sure some men were, and I'm sure others probably deferred on the grounds that they didn't want to take spots away from those for whom the mission was intended -- but because the organization was unwilling to publish official guidance for reasons I won't bother to opine on, my wife was routinely in the position of having to explain her attendance policies to men who had signed up

[aabhay]

So what about the girl scouts, is that also discriminatory?

[endomorphosis]

Yes, there was an entire supreme court case about that 30 years ago, a lawsuit against the Boy Scouts I might add.

[aabhay]

That was against the boy scouts but the reverse lawsuit hasn't been filed against the girl scouts to my knowledge.

That said, law in the US and one’s opinions on what constitutes discrimination are different things.