On Nerd Entitlement. Do young male nerds lack privilege?

Jonman wrote:

Flips side of that is the you're spot on about the art and word nerds. I don't know a single one of them making bank.

I want to add that even art and word white male nerds have an easier time getting their work out there and produced. We might not by and large be making as much as other, more tech orienated nerds, but we still have plenty of advantages. White male nerds are still overrepresented in writing rooms on TV shows (despite some extremely modest demographic shifts). Female playwrights are still in the vast minority. Also, if you are a white nerdy art/word nerd chances are you went to expensive art/word colleges and met plenty of other white art/word nerds who have or become connections that can help you get your art/words out there.

A few months back, I saw Katori Hall on a panel and she talked about Showtime passing on an original series she was pitching because "it seemed too important." (Yes, those were the exact words they used.) The show featured almost no white people in it and a female protagonist. Hall is a hugely important playwright who has achieved a ton of success in the theater world and is a no-brainer to jump into TV (her work is screaming for it.) But's she's struggling to break in despite her acclaim. Meanwhile, college professor and white male nerd Nic Pizzolato (who had no background in theater or TV before landing a gig on The Killing) got to be a showrunner and pen every episode of his series.

Basically getting any job that pays bank in the arts is hard, but even there white male nerds have an advantage.

Man, Arthur Chu just knocks it out of the f*cking park.

http://www.salon.com/2015/01/10/the_...

The point of privilege is it's largely invisible to the privileged. That's the freakin' point. Not knowing you're privileged is the default state. People shouting about how they don't actually feel privileged should be a surprise to exactly no-one.

Maq wrote:

The point of privilege is it's largely invisible to the privileged. That's the freakin' point. Not knowing you're privileged is the default state. People shouting about how they don't actually feel privileged should be a surprise to exactly no-one.

Should be, but most people don't spend much time thinking about the things that are good in their lives. It's really easy to notice problems, hard to remind ourselves about our happiness.

Plus, the normed culture in most modern societies that I'm familiar with isn't really geared towards the kind of self-mindfulness required to examine privilege. Just about no one is at the top of every kind of privilege, so nearly everyone can point to some way they have it worse, even if it isn't necessarily structural.

Has that MIT guy had any sort of response to the universal dressing down he's received?

Seth wrote:

Has that MIT guy had any sort of response to the universal dressing down he's received?

He posted a couple of updates and then stepped back from the whole thing. You can read it for yourself.

I'm in the position where I can empathize with his pain but think he's missing the bigger picture. Which is more or less what Arthur Chu said, so there's that. I do think there are a lot of undersocialized young boys who are in a lot of pain and vulnerable to being recruited by movements that will hurt them in the long run. But it's a problem of cognitive dissonance caused by failing to live up to internalized gender roles, not systematic oppression per se.

I do think there are a lot of undersocialized young boys who are in a lot of pain and vulnerable to being recruited by movements that will hurt them in the long run.

Basically the same thing Homeland Security said about returning, dissatisfied veterans being the largest threat to this country's security. Guys with military experience and training not 100% loving the country they've defended being recruited into reactionary groups.

Demosthenes wrote:
I do think there are a lot of undersocialized young boys who are in a lot of pain and vulnerable to being recruited by movements that will hurt them in the long run.

Basically the same thing Homeland Security said about returning, dissatisfied veterans being the largest threat to this country's security. Guys with military experience and training not 100% loving the country they've defended being recruited into reactionary groups.

Historically, of course, disaffected young men are a prime driver for revolution. I don't think we're generally at that point with either of these groups, but the overlap can be dangerous on a societal level.

Let's see... Take two nerdy gamer types, equal education, equal social skills, equally living in their parents basement. One white, one minority with ethnic accent of your choice. They both decide to go for the same programming job.

Which one do you think will get it?

Robear wrote:

Let's see... Take two nerdy gamer types, equal education, equal social skills, equally living in their parents basement. One white, one minority with ethnic accent of your choice. They both decide to go for the same programming job.

Which one do you think will get it?

What I love in these discussions, and has been popping up in GamerGate after Intel's CES announcement (because they included FemFreq in their group to work on diversity, GG now opposes it) is that they always go to "Well, quality will take a dip because they're no longer hiring based on merit." This suggests that they assume that white males will produce higher quality work. This is privilege. And yet, they still don't get the idea behind it.

Demosthenes wrote:

What I love in these discussions, and has been popping up in GamerGate after Intel's CES announcement (because they included FemFreq in their group to work on diversity, GG now opposes it) is that they always go to "Well, quality will take a dip because they're no longer hiring based on merit." This suggests that they assume that white males will produce higher quality work. This is privilege. And yet, they still don't get the idea behind it.

I think it might be a bit more nuanced than that. Their statements about hiring shows that they are mistakenly assuming that the world is a perfect meritocracy and that skills and knowledge are the only things that matter (and get taken into account) when hiring.

Following that line of thought, then, the dearth of women and minorities in technology simply means that women and minorities aren't as good at technology than the people who currently have those jobs: white men.

Hmmm... good point. The number of GG morons who have told Wu to make her own games has been a bit hilarious and/or depressing depending on the day.

This may be more specifically appropriate for the feminism thread, but it's relevant here too: The plight of the bitter nerd.

[edit]

Turns out I'm a filthy skimmer.

I like that Arthur Chu's Salon piece. Since well-written male perspective is hard to find, here is a 10k word defense on Aaronson (by Scott Alexander, one of the nerdiest male nerds to ever nerd) that I've mostly liked and agreed with. I think he is too harsh on Penny and the thing he got wrong is probably the part where he doesn't acknowledge that nerds have to be partly to blame for absence of women from technical fields - his argument there is quite sketchy. Still, the rest is quite good.

But since no one will read the whole damn thing, here is his own summary:

1. There are a lot of really nasty stereotypes perpetuated about nerds, especially regarding how they are monsters, nobody can love them, and they are too disgusting to have relationships the same way other people do.
2. Although both men and women suffer from these stereotypes, men really do have a harder time getting relationships, and the experience is not the same.
3. Many of the people suffering from these stereotypes are in agreement that it is often self-identified feminists who push them most ardently, and that a small but vocal contingent of feminists seem to take special delight in making nerds’ lives worse.
4. You cannot define this problem away with the word “patriarchy”.
5. You cannot define this problem away by saying that because Mark Zuckerberg is a billionnaire, nerds are privileged, so they already have it too good. The Jews are a classic example of a group that were both economically advantaged in a particular industry, but also faced unfair stereotypes.
6. Whether women also have problems, and whether their problems are even worse, is not the point under discussion and is not relevant. Women can have a bunch of problems, but that doesn’t mean it is okay for any feminists to shame and bully nerds.
7. Nerds are not uniquely evil, they are not especially engaged in oppressing women, and they are not driving women out of Silicon Valley. Even if they were, “whenever they choose to open up about their private suffering” is not the time to talk about these things.
8. “Entitlement” is a uniquely bizarre insult to level at nerds given that by most of the term’s usual definitions nerds are some of the most untitled people there are.
9. The feminist problem of nerds being desperate and not having any social skills (and therefore being creeps to women) is the same as the nerd problem of nerds being desperate and not having any social skills (and therefore having to live their life desperate and without social skills). Denying the problem and yelling at nerds who talk about it doesn’t help either group.
10. The nerd complaint on this issue is not “high school girls rejected us in the past when we were lonely and desperate,” it is “some feminists are shaming us about our loneliness and desperation in the past and present and openly discussing how they plan to do so in the future.” Nobody with principles is angry at the girls who rejected them in the past and this is a giant red herring. If you don’t believe any feminists are shaming anyone, then say so; don’t make it about little Caitlin in seventh-grade.

(Although if you take issue with any of it, you probably want to read the whole argument.)

My take on what he says / tl;dr:

1) There isn't enough empathy around.
2) Pain or being privileged is not a zero-sum concept.

UCRC wrote:

(Although if you take issue with any of it, you probably want to read the whole argument.)

That didn't help. That is a 10,000-word anti-feminist rant from someone who spectacularly missed the point.

Gravey wrote:
UCRC wrote:

(Although if you take issue with any of it, you probably want to read the whole argument.)

That didn't help. That is a 10,000-word anti-feminist rant from someone who spectacularly missed the point.

I like your hypothesis but need it mansplained to me.

whoops. not supposed to post here.

UCRC wrote:

My take on what he says / tl;dr:

1) There isn't enough empathy around.
2) Pain or being privileged is not a zero-sum concept.

Did... did we read the same article? Because what I hear him saying "We need more empathy, now let me tell you why this lady is a b**** and a Nazi and trying to oppress men and nerds and needs to shut up because MY PAIN!!!! is sacrosanct.

And he is definitely treating privilege as a zero sum game and suggesting women have already taken their fair share through feminism and are trying to push it further to totally usurp men. He keeps making references to equality for men... but becomes VERY hostile when women want equality in other areas.

IMAGE(http://www.sarahdarkmagic.com/sites/www.sarahdarkmagic.com/files/images/10351371_1565381687024980_1531958090575839843_n.jpg)

I feel like this image really sums up this guy. He is so close to seeing so many problems (boys being more likely to be pushed into tech areas than women), and instead of wondering why that is happening at that age (and what that says about gender bias for the field from society as a whole), he chalks this up to either just natural gender differences (saying women are just not good at tech) or some difference in accumulated knowledge on the topic during formative years (stopping just short of saying because men are more frequently taught the topic than women, which would be gender bias! But that would be bad for his point, I guess.).

He is literally the tiniest step away from seeing feminism correctly, but instead, he's too busy talking about social justice warriors.

On top that this article (or as far as I could get into it section 8 before realizing I'd written 5 pages of refutations to his arguments) is literally filled with him saying "trust me, I'm a medical professional", making massive strawmans that feminists are out to take over the world and basically turn men into their slaves, and a lot of Godwin-ing (and Star Wars Godwin-ing by trying to compare feminists to the Emperor, I'm officially coining that. Nerd discussions where they call someone basically Palpatine is Star Wars Godwin-ing).

Palpatining. Palpatinery? Palpatineriffic?

Sith Happening?

This suggests that they assume that white males will produce higher quality work.

I think it would be more accurate to say that if you're choosing people based on their skin color, you will get suboptimal results, no matter what skin color you're selecting for.

Demosthenes wrote:

Did... did we read the same article?

Since I was reading it for balance, I didn't have the hostile reaction (well, with exception of the Star Wars part) toward it, because I wasn't expecting impartial viewpoint and don't care much for that blog. I like hearing very different perspectives.

My (highly personal and I guess mediated through my own ruminations) takeaway from that post is still that too many people in this debate are conditioned to be very angry instead of compassionate and perhaps the existing framework pretty much prevents people from having non-destructive, non-abusive exchanges (i.e. treating terms like 'oppression', 'entitlement', 'privilege' as one-dimensional concepts, just argue problems away instead of admitting that things can suck for different people in very different ways and treating them as separate).

Jesus, Aaronson really doesn't get it does he? His unexamined privilege remains a black swan problem for him.

Here's the thing though UCRC... I don't think that is a well written piece. I think that is a poorly disguised recruitment effort for the MRA movement for "nerds". This dude does so much cherry picking in his data it's ridiculous. He has created this false narrative in his piece (and, possibly inside his own head) that women rule the world and it's time for men to fight back against that.

The two best examples I remember writing about before I deleted a rather lengthy response:

*Women have a far easier time in "dating", which he proves by the number of unsolicited messages men and women get on OKC. He completely ignores the well-established reality of online sexual harassment for women (as does the study he links to). He complains about how even the ugly women get more messages than the attractive men, which, frankly, is F'ed up. It's also horribly ironic in that the less attractive men that study uses are pretty much photocopied from the "nice guy nerd memes" that he's so mad about. He goes on to completely ignores the patriarchal gender roles that expect a man to ask women out rather than the other way around. Dating is REALLY complex because our society has turned it into a very ugly thing in a lot of ways. And he ignores all of this to say "women have it easier because they get more messages from strangers than men do".

*Inequality in representation amongst various fields of employment. Problem 1, he actually gets into shades of men are just better at tech and science than women. Problem 2, he complains about the idea that equality is necessary in those same areas, then launches into a tirade on women being more predominant in other areas. Problem 3, he completely drops these examples when they could be followed to show that men still dominate in these areas, they just don't do so through numbers... they do so through being the most likely to be promoted. Education. Yes, women are predominantly the teachers. But men are much more likely to become administrators, principals, superintendents, and school board members. Healthcare... yeah, nursing may be almost universally female, but the head nurses, the nurses in charge of nursing departments, etc... are disproportionately men compared to the proportions of men and women in those base nursing positions.

Yeah, I realized last night that I was getting too angry to post about this. But continuing to look through that dude's post... I realized what was making me mad. The author of that piece, like so many MRAs, continues to view success as how often they get laid and how hot is the girl they get laid with. They continue to act like they deserve everything they want from hot women because they are smart or "nice". And now, with authors like that, they're trying to stir up men who are not getting laid and are angry about it to make them more angry for their cause.

Unfortunately, we've seen where that leads. It leads to dudes shooting up a sorority for the women there not sleeping with him. It leads to men thinking that women have RUINED THEIR LIFE BECAUSE THEY DIDN'T HAVE SEX WHEN THEY WANTED TO. This dude is so preoccupied with the idea of vaginas being a magical treasure, and women are b****es for not sharing it with all men... while maintaining that women who sleep around are sluts... it's staggering to me.

UCRC wrote:

My (highly personal and I guess mediated through my own ruminations) takeaway from that post is still that too many people in this debate are conditioned to be very angry instead of compassionate and perhaps the existing framework pretty much prevents people from having non-destructive, non-abusive exchanges (i.e. treating terms like 'oppression', 'entitlement', 'privilege' as one-dimensional concepts, just argue problems away instead of admitting that things can suck for different people in very different ways and treating them as separate).

I think the "mediated through my own ruminations" bit is key here, because I'm sympathetic to that viewpoint, despite ultimately disagreeing with Aaronson. There are issues of intersectionality that are too-frequently glossed over, and some people online who definitely read Aaronson's words with as little charity as possible. There's a bunch of stuff in what he said to disagree with, but I've read a number of commentators (not from here) who took his words and read into them the worst, conscious interpretation of them.

It's a general tendency I've noticed: when someone in a different ideological category says something, people can take their surface words and interpret them as expressing the hidden meaning of their secret agenda. Kind of a reverse dog-whistle. Aaronson said some stuff that tripped some of the hidden landmines in the discussion without realizing it, and is confused about why he's being attacked for things he doesn't think he believes.

(Penny's approach likely works better to reach out to people like this, who think they are acting in good faith; attacks cause people to cognitively double-down on their positions.)

The original flashpoint, Aaronson's declaration that he couldn't possibly be privileged, missed what the privilege means in an academic sense, of course. And there are random people on Twitter who do think that privilege means that his pain doesn't matter; kind of a Poe's Law meets Sturgeon's Law...but that's a sideshow.

I think Arthur Chu pinpointed the distinction I've been trying to puzzle out: it's a difference between internal and external sources of pain. Lots of nerds (and other unsocialized young boys) have a lot of pain. But, bullying aside, their biggest issues are dealing with the internal pain. A lot of that is from stuff like cognitive dissonance at the conflict between gender roles, their sexual drives, and their training to suppress that. And yes, that is what the academic definition of "patriarchy" encompasses, as long as you don't get your feminist glossary from Tumblr. But young women, who are dealing with their own internal conflicts, also get more external stuff.

Now, I do think that there should be efforts to reach out to these boys and young men, and help them find a way out of the pain. If we don't, they're at risk for recruitment by the people who do promise them a way out: men's right activists, pick-up-artists, and the like. And make no mistake: there are some actual internal conflicts going on here that are causing these young men distress. To pick out one that clearly caused distress to Aaronson: the conflict between natural sexual drive and how they think they should treat women. On the one hand, he was attracted to women, on the other hand, he had absorbed the message that expressing this was wrong. You take the (patriarchal) message that a gentleman shouldn't look at a lady, the (patriarchal) idea that women are too pure for sex, the (feminist) idea that women shouldn't be treated as objects, the (feminist) ideas about power in relationships, stick them all into a blender, give them to a kid who is analytical but naive, and watch him beat himself up.

Note how Aaronson has trouble distinguishing between "old-fashioned ass-grabbery" as complained about by women and descriptions of what sounds like consensual sexual contact: at least as a young man, he didn't have a category for consensual sexual advances. And that's what breeds many of these problems; young men who don't think they are sexually attractive (because they don't live up to their arbitrary image of masculinity and don't understand female sexual advances) and don't understand how to negotiate consensual sexual interest. Throw on some bullying, some learned helplessness, and you get this. It doesn't help, of course, that many young women who are equally clueless about both their own performance of gender roles and about how they feel about masculine roles: the best enforcers of patriarchal gender roles are the opposite sex.

I think that's a problem worth talking about. Is it a feminist problem? Well, not strictly. It's a problem for feminists, some of whom have looked at it. It's caused by feminism, insofar as feminism is one of the things that helped disrupt gender roles in the second half of the 20th century. But it's not caused by feminism in the sense that Scott Alexander is arguing. There are a bunch of other causes, and what I really think it comes down to is that gender roles in Western societies today don't line up with the lives we actually have. I personally think that gender roles can be a positive thing, and that it's possible and necessary to construct healthy masculine and feminine roles for the people who need them. And I think a lot of people do need them, including the nerds who want a place to express their sexuality but don't know how.

This may have already been said, but a tiny slice of this issue is that it looks like women are rejecting the one thing white male nerds want. This observation is specific only to how reality works for Tinder/OKC/etc, but women suffer a deluge of attention from people, whereas white male nerds probably don't have a lot of people "swipe right." They're probably jealous of the sheer volume of matches that women get on things like that.

The counterpoint being that, after maybe a week of that type of attention, it's not really a positive experience. There was a plot device in an episode of How I Met Your Mother where famed attention seeker Barney Stinson creates a cell phone that rings nonstop with potential sexual partners. I imagine that must be what tinder/OKC must be like for women, except sub in three idiots and one threatening person for every twenty calls.

@Demosthenes

I don't really know anything about him, so can't say anything with any degree of confidence, but from my lecture a few days ago I don't remember seeing the attitudes you ascribe to him in the latter part of your post. So I'd say you might be right, but my money would be on your self-admitted anger leading you to stereotypise.

Incidentally, that was also what was curious to me in the case of original Aaronson's post and Marcotte's reply (who read Aaronson's post as "Women are failing him by not showing up naked in his bed, unbidden. Because Female Doggoes, yo." and that was actually one of her more generous moments).

edit:

Gremlin wrote:

It's a general tendency I've noticed: when someone in a different ideological category says something, people can take their surface words and interpret them as expressing the hidden meaning of their secret agenda. Kind of a reverse dog-whistle. Aaronson said some stuff that tripped some of the hidden landmines in the discussion without realizing it, and is confused about why he's being attacked for things he doesn't think he believes.

(Penny's approach likely works better to reach out to people like this, who think they are acting in good faith; attacks cause people to cognitively double-down on their positions.)

Yes! To tell you the truth, I don't feel very strongly about the content of the debate, but the overall willingness to be really vicious in these debates. I probably wouldn't care to comment had I not seen reactions to Aaronson.

And I really like the rest of your post too.

I don't really know anything about him, so can't say anything with any degree of confidence, but from my lecture a few days ago I don't remember seeing the attitudes you ascribe to him in the latter part of your post. So I'd say you might be right, but my money would be on your self-admitted anger leading you to stereotypise.

Ummmm... wait, where did I stereotype?

Seth wrote:

This may have already been said, but a tiny slice of this issue is that it looks like women are rejecting the one thing white male nerds want. This observation is specific only to how reality works for Tinder/OKC/etc, but women suffer a deluge of attention from people, whereas white male nerds probably don't have a lot of people "swipe right." They're probably jealous of the sheer volume of matches that women get on things like that.

The counterpoint being that, after maybe a week of that type of attention, it's not really a positive experience. There was a plot device in an episode of How I Met Your Mother where famed attention seeker Barney Stinson creates a cell phone that rings nonstop with potential sexual partners. I imagine that must be what tinder/OKC must be like for women, except sub in three idiots and one threatening person for every twenty calls.

Bold: UCRC's posted link pretty much confirms this, and shows either a staggering level of ignorance on what a lot of those messages really are, or a refusal to face it because it refutes their original point that "dating is harder for men than women."

Italics: That is a pretty generous assessment based upon most reports that actually look at content.

Demosthenes wrote:
Seth wrote:

This may have already been said, but a tiny slice of this issue is that it looks like women are rejecting the one thing white male nerds want. This observation is specific only to how reality works for Tinder/OKC/etc, but women suffer a deluge of attention from people, whereas white male nerds probably don't have a lot of people "swipe right." They're probably jealous of the sheer volume of matches that women get on things like that.

The counterpoint being that, after maybe a week of that type of attention, it's not really a positive experience. There was a plot device in an episode of How I Met Your Mother where famed attention seeker Barney Stinson creates a cell phone that rings nonstop with potential sexual partners. I imagine that must be what tinder/OKC must be like for women, except sub in three idiots and one threatening person for every twenty calls.

Bold: UCRC's posted link pretty much confirms this, and shows either a staggering level of ignorance on what a lot of those messages really are, or a refusal to face it because it refutes their original point that "dating is harder for men than women."

Italics: That is a pretty generous assessment based upon most reports that actually look at content.

As a guy, I wanted to know what it was like to be a woman on a dating site, so I set up a fake profile and the end result was not something I was expecting