[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.

[MoltenMan]

I feel like you're glossing over my main point, which is that this stuff 100% does breed resentment for the average person, which is how we end up with people like Trump (obviously there are many more factors to consider but this is definitely one of them).

The difference between your scenario is just how visible it is; I have never ever had somebody go up to me and say 'This opportunity is being given to you because you're a white male'! If anything, it's the opposite! Did you know I was not eligible _to apply_ for a single scholarship for college a few years back, solely based on my race and gender? It was pretty demoralizing!

Again, I'm not saying that I _haven't_ benefitted from being a white male in some indescribable unknown way; but unlike in your scenario, I cannot _see_ this. Think about the average person, who goes their whole life seeing others being handed stuff specifically because of their race and gender and when they complain about it they simply get told 'Do you have no empathy? Your life is much better off than theirs!'

Again, who knows what the right solution is. But I don't think that it's the status quo.

[wredcoll]

> I feel like you're glossing over my main point, which is that this stuff 100% does breed resentment for the average person, which is how we end up with people like Trump (obviously there are many more factors to consider but this is definitely one of them).

I mean, having to cater to the feelings of overly sensitive men is how most of these problems started in the first place.

[MoltenMan]

Ack! There is nothing 'overly sensitive' about being annoyed when you see somebody else get an opportunity because of the color of their skin or gender. It's human nature! In fact I suspect the average person in favor of DEI and / or identity politics would still suffer a decent amount of cognitive dissonance if they were passed up because of something like this. Again, it's just human nature!

Please try to imagine advocating for women's rights 100 years ago and hearing somebody say something like 'overly sensitive women want to vote! Psh!' If you want to argue for DEI please try to present good faith arguments.

Personally, I don't really get butthurt about things, so this isn't a problem for me (although I do think it's a problem in general as it is obviously going to anger people). I do think one of the main problems with DEI is that it attempts to address the symptoms instead of the root cause of the problem. I.e. trying to get girls into stem / coding in highschool or college instead of figuring out why they're less interested in it from a much younger age (and if that's even a problem; classic nature vs nurture problem).

[wredcoll]

You just wrote a whole bunch of paragraphs talking about how appearances made you feel things without ever addressing the actual facts.

>DEI is that it attempts to address the symptoms instead of the root cause of the problem. I.e. trying to get girls into stem / coding in highschool or college instead of figuring out why they're less interested in it from a much younger age (and if that's even a problem; classic nature vs nurture problem).

Except there are DEI initiatives that look at every level.

Being in favor of the status quo is pretty easy, I admit, and hey, if you happen to benefit disproportionately from the status quo, bonus, right?

[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.

[nomdep]

> 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.

In your head? The first two are specially absurd. How would anyone know what women watch or read in their houses?

[com2kid]

As soon as women try to participate in fandom or attend conventions, they are derided as not being "real fans". This has been documented as a problem with geek culture for well over 50+ years.

[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.

[klipt]

Accounting and law schools are also graduating majority women these days. Have you not been paying attention?

DEI keeps on saying "more women in universities! More women in universities!" even though universities have been majority women for decades now. It's a one way ratchet that never stops.

[punchfunk4lyte]

Women were marginalized for millenia. Your mother/grandmother wasn't allowed to open her own bank account until 1974. It will take a long time to correct for that. It's a ratchet from the perspective of our very brief lives.

What's the theory of harm here? If we continue educating women they may gain too much social mobility?

[klipt]

> Your mother/grandmother wasn't allowed to open her own bank account until 1974.

And your father/grandfather was enslaved by the government to fight in the Vietnam war until 1975.

> What's the theory of harm here? If we continue educating women they may gain too much social mobility?

Blatant hypocrisy, you think 60% of college students being women is good, but consider it horrible sexism that at one time 60% of college students were men.

You don't want equality, you just want everything to be female dominated.

[punchfunk4lyte]

I actually don't care what the makeup of college students is. It's useful to encourage women to pursue education in order to promote equity. But there isn't some magic proportion of men to women graduates that I think we should be pursuing.

I don't want everything dominated by women, I just recognize that the work of undoing their marginalization is not complete.

[kelnos]

Wow, way to make up words that the person you're replying to never said, and then arguing with them.

Bad-faith arguments seem to be your shtick, given your comment history on this post.

[dragonwriter]

> DEI keeps on saying "more women in universities! More women in universities!"

No, “DEI” doesn’t keep saying that. Why are you making up a strawman to fight?

[jimbob45]

Erm…accounting is STEM via the M by many modern definitions.

[punchfunk4lyte]

Accounting is not a branch of mathematics.

[kelnos]

Accounting is applied mathematics.

[echoangle]

If that would make it count as STEM, you could just rename STEM to M because STE is arguably all just applied mathematics.

[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.

[klipt]

What's the equivalent of "Girls Who Code" - "Boys Who Nurse"? A club teaching First Aid to boys only? Does it exist at the same scale that Girls Who Code does?

[punchfunk4lyte]

You've never heard of programs to encourage men to be nurses or teachers? I certainly have.

Here's what I found after a quick search. If you're interested I'm sure you could research and find more information.

https://www.arizonacollege.edu/blog/men-wanted-new-efforts-t...

> Only 12% of the nurses providing patient care at hospitals and health clinics today are men. Although the percentage of nurses has increased — men made up just 2.7% of nurses in 1970 — nursing is still considered a “pink collar” profession, a female-dominated field.

https://www.belmont.edu/stories/articles/2025/men-in-educati...

> A critical shortage of male teachers continues to affect K-12 education across America, with men making up just 23% of elementary and secondary school teachers today, down from 30% in 1987, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Belmont University's College of Education is addressing this gender gap through intentional recruitment, mentorship and innovative program design.

[tstrimple]

These people are very disconnected from reality. They make wild claims like groups for men are illegal and you’d never see a group dedicated to helping men in the nursing field. The feminists would destroy it! And yet…

https://www.aamn.org/

[acdha]

It’s really telling how they’re just so confident about easily debunked claims.

I’m reminded of a retired college admissions administrator whose theory was that some of the men in college gap was over-confidence: statistically the women who applied overall were far closer to the women who were accepted, whereas like a third of their male applicants had no chance so a roughly even balance of applicants turned 2:1 in favor of women being accepted. I’m sure that many of them grumble about DEI, unaware that merit is _why_ they weren’t accepted whereas their fathers’ generation would’ve found room for many of them via legacy or sports spots.

[klipt]

Are these studies easily debunked?

https://academic.oup.com/esr/article/38/3/337/6412759

> Gender discrimination is often regarded as an important driver of women’s disadvantage in the labour market, yet earlier studies show mixed results. However, because different studies employ different research designs, the estimates of discrimination cannot be compared across countries. By utilizing data from the first harmonized comparative field experiment on gender discrimination in hiring in six countries, we can directly compare employers’ callbacks to fictitious male and female applicants. The countries included vary in a number of key institutional, economic, and cultural dimensions, yet we found no sign of discrimination against women. This cross-national finding constitutes an important and robust piece of evidence. Second, we found discrimination against men in Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, and the UK, and no discrimination against men in Norway and the United States. However, in the pooled data the gender gradient hardly differs across countries. Our findings suggest that although employers operate in quite different institutional contexts, they regard female applicants as more suitable for jobs in female-dominated occupations, ceteris paribus, while we find no evidence that they regard male applicants as more suitable anywhere.

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/33513171/

> Male applicants were about half as likely as female applicants to receive a positive employer response in female-dominated occupations. For male-dominated and mixed occupations we found no significant differences in positive employer responses between male and female applicants.

https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S074959782...

> both scientists and laypeople overestimated the continuation of bias against female candidates. Instead, selection bias in favor of male over female candidates was eliminated and, if anything, slightly reversed in sign starting in 2009 for mixed-gender and male-stereotypical jobs in our sample. Forecasters further failed to anticipate that discrimination against male candidates for stereotypically female jobs would remain stable across the decades.