That's my thinking as well. I've read up a bit on feminism, the picture I get is of a movement that's trying really really hard to get people to take them seriously. They've chosen tech as the battleground for precisely that reason. Personally, I think it's great. I like seeing my compatriots forced to confront sexism.

If you think sexism is bad in technology, you should see it everywhere else. The gender gap has gotten a bit better in the last twenty years or so, but traditionally male occupations are still overwhelmingly male, and likewise for female occupations. And salary gaps where you do find men and women working together are just abominable.

Sexism is one of those things you just kind of ignore until you really start looking, then once you do you see it literally every fucking where. And it's utterly depressing. We like to think that because we gave the vote to black people and women that we're enlightened.

I think you're right. Highly educated, intellectual "nerds" who generally really want to do the "right thing" (however that is defined) are likely to be a lot easier to convert to feminism than, for example, (1) the NFL (2) Kentucky (3) Wall Street (4) Saudi Arabia.

Feminism, as a movement, is aimed at battles it thinks it can win. Nerds who aren't particularly attached to conventional forms of masculinity are already partly won over.

Or the skewed gender ratios in various fields are due to innate biological differences.

Sexual dimorphism, which includes psychological traits, extends to humans as well. We are animals too after all.

What an age we live in. Nearly every animal on earth, including our closests primate relatives, have innate morphological and behavioural differences between male and female. Yet noticing that homo sapiens exhibit the same differences has become a thought-crime of the highest order.

These differences cause a tendency for men and women to gravitate towards certain fields. Skewed sex ratios in a profession do not necessarily indicate discrimination and its time to stop pointing and sputtering when not everything is 50/50.

Gender ratios between fields aren't a huge huge problem, but it is something we could address and improve over time. We don't have to perpetuate the ratios by telling nerdier girls they're not good with computers and should really just be cheerleaders. Salary gaps, on the other hand, are clear evidence of discrimination. And there's plenty of those.

"Innate biological differences exist" isn't, by itself, a compelling argument. The closest argument you can make that's compelling is "Innate biological differences exist, linked with competence in computer science, and they are vast enough that the fraction of people who can make it skews heavily male." That's an actually-scientific hypothesis, which is great, because we can do some studies to determine whether it's true.

http://www.slideshare.net/terriko/how-does-biology-explain-t...

On the other hand, if you make non-scientific claims, it's pretty easy to push "innate biological differences" to mean whatever you want it to mean. Like that women are more naturally suited for programming than men, because it's just like prepping dinner.

http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-how-...

The slide share only attempts to address difference in ability, not inclination. If women are just as capable programmers, but, on average, tend to have a natural inclination towards more social and nurturing roles (teacher, nurse, etc... fields with the highest % of women) then we would still expect the same gender ratio skew we see.

Most troubling, any mention that innate biological differences between the genders could play a role in the skewed gender ratios is not even considered in these diversity attack articles. It has become a thoughtcrime.

Also "winning" the right to working in a coal mine or laying roofing wouldn't really be a victory after all compared to SV. These people want the upside of being a male without the risk that it carries. Yea some of us get to play this game in SV. What about the vast majority of us that have to work a shit job to support our family? Giving one gender privileged access to industries like SV while simultaneously sheltering them from industries like the coal mining industry would also be a horrible form of marginalization.

This argument is as terrible as it is old. Feminists have been fighting for the right to work in coal mines, and fight on battlefields, and everything else.

>Feminists have been fighting for the right to work in coal mines, and fight on battlefields, and everything else.

It's terrible because it doesn't fit the narrative you're trying to push. Paying occasional lip service isn't the same as "fighting for the right". Working in a coal mine or fighting in the battlefield isn't a "right". It's an obligation blue collar families fall into.

You are correct.

That said, from within Silicon Valley it sure looks like the feminists are coming for the supposedly easy money of engineering while ignoring the risky things like policing. True or not, it's sometimes the perception that matters.

This says more about Silicon Valley than about feminism, though.

My statement could be interpreted that way, yes.