A Rant About Women

[Demeter]

http://www.shirky.com/weblog/2010/01/a-rant-about-women/

So I get email from a good former student, applying for a job and asking for a recommendation. “Sure”, I say, “Tell me what you think I should say.” I then get a draft letter back in which the student has described their work and fitness for the job in terms so superlative it would make an Assistant Brand Manager blush...So I write my letter, looking over the student’s self-assessment and toning it down so that it sounds like it’s coming from a person and not a PR department, and send it off. And then, as I get over my annoyance, I realize that, by overstating their abilities, the student has probably gotten the best letter out of me they could have gotten.

Now, can you guess the gender of the student involved?

Of course you can. My home, the Interactive Telecommunications Program at NYU, is fairly gender-balanced, and I’ve taught about as many women as men over the last decade. In theory, the gender of my former student should be a coin-toss. In practice, I might as well have given him the pseudonym Moustache McMasculine for all the mystery there was. And I’ve grown increasingly worried that most of the women in the department, past or present, simply couldn’t write a letter like that.

This worry isn’t about psychology; I’m not concerned that women don’t engage in enough building of self-confidence or self-esteem. I’m worried about something much simpler: not enough women have what it takes to behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks.

Remember David Hampton, the con artist immortalized in “Six Degrees of Separation”, who pretended he was Sydney Poitier’s son? He lied his way into restaurants and clubs, managed to borrow money, and crashed in celebrity guest rooms. He didn’t miss the fact that he was taking a risk, or that he might suffer. He just didn’t care.

It’s not that women will be better off being con artists; a lot of con artists aren’t better off being con artists either. It’s just that until women have role models who are willing to risk incarceration to get ahead, they’ll miss out on channelling smaller amounts of self-promoting con artistry to get what they want, and if they can’t do that, they’ll get less of what they want than they want.

There is no upper limit to the risks men are willing to take in order to succeed, and if there is an upper limit for women, they will succeed less. They will also end up in jail less, but I don’t think we get the rewards without the risks.

* * *

Now I don’t know what to do about this problem. (The essence of a rant, in fact, is that the ranter has no idea how to fix the thing being ranted about.) What I do know is this: it would be good if more women see interesting opportunities that they might not be qualified for, opportunities which they might in fact fuck up if they try to take them on, and then try to take them on. It would be good if more women got in the habit of raising their hands and saying “I can do that. Sign me up. My work is awesome,” no matter how many people that behavior upsets.

ONE THING THIS RANTER OVERLOOKS IS THE FACT THAT WOMEN TEAR DOWN ANY OF THEIR SEX WHO ATTEMPTS TO RISE...EXPECIALLY IF SHE'S QUALIFIED.

[Captain Hilts]

1. Women are NOT an interest group. Men are 8 times more likely to ask for a raise.

Women feel obligated to say "I am not a feminist, but...."

[Demeter]

5. And 20 times more likely to get it

even without asking or having to brag or make a threat.

[KoKo]

21. Did you forget a "Sarcasm Alert?" Or should I feel free to ALERT Mods on your

bizarre post? :shrug:

[Chulanowa]

2. So basically men and women are different

I'm still puzzled that this is news to people. Women are never going to be identical to men, nor will men ever be identical to women. I know it ruffles a lot of feathers to say that, but it needs to be realized.

men come pre-packaged with the level of testosterone and the hooting, chest-banging, penis-waving psychological hardwiring that makes so many "arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks." Women don't. They come with their own, different package of freakish hormones and misanthropic instincts which are different from the ones we have. That's just the way the chromosomes settle.

[Turbineguy]

3. It ain't just the plumbing.

I spent my career in a traditionally male job. It turns out that Women can do that job as well or better. The job requires attention to detail, patience, ability to cope with change, a willingness to read technical manuals and follow instructions. Based on my experience, women do this better.

The major change to take place in the workplace is that equipment has become too heavy for men to lift anyway, so cranes and rigging are used.

[Demeter]

4. Technical Problems are Solvable with Technology

but social problems?

Do we really need 100% more arrogant jerks? For that matter, do we need 100% more catty bitches?

No, we need better ways of sharing the work and the rewards, and allowing talents to be used properly for the betterment of all. We need the tolerance and appreciation of cooperation, not the destruction of competition.

Scarcity is not our problem. Greed is.

[Captain Hilts]

13. Wow! I haven't heard the 'women pay better attention to details' line in years!

My dad used this, but then had to admit that the boyfriends of my sister and I were both better at focusing on details.

This line was used to keep women in low-paying, repetitive work.

[Turbineguy]

14. And for us there is no

difference in pay either. And it's not necessarily repetitive work, it just requires care. The hiring system does not favor either gender.

[Recursion]

16. Here's a weird thing I noticed in IT

Programmers in all my shops were about 50/50 male/female. Sysadmins (that was what I did) have always been, in every shop I've ever been in, all guys. What's up with that? Is it just that women have better sense than to carry a beeper and have to run to the datacenter at 3am for no extra money? Are girls discouraged from tinkering with hardware when they're kids (seems more likely)?

[kimmylavin]

22. Some girls are discouraged from tinkering - I wasn't!

I have always considered myself lucky that my parents had three girls, and that my awesome father didn't have a boy to focus the "boy stuff" on.

As it was, I had Tinkertoys, Legos, motors/gears, and tons of building stuff.
I was encouraged to take stuff apart (and jeez, did I!), and I had my own tools.

Perhaps that's why I spent two years as a programmer?
(I've never been a sysadmin, though I was offered the job once!)

[Lucky Luciano]

24. Traders do a lit of boring, tedious, and repetitive work and

They get paid well. They have 95% tedious work to do - the other 5% is absolute glory or misery. The possibility of the amazing triumphant glory is what makes traders put up with the other 95% of the job!!!

[Captain Hilts]

12. Being bold is rewarded early in male kids. Not so much with girls. We get it beaten out of us...

I can't tell you how many times I was hauled into the principal's office for not being 'ladylike'.

My mother told me a 'lady' gets her name in the paper 3 times: born, married, dies. I'm only 50.

Ava Gardner was a 'loose' woman. Gable was a 'ladies' man'. Men get praised for behavior for which women are criticized.

Women can't use bad language. Susan Boyle gets fried for saying 'fuck', but how many male singers say it?

If you aren't a doormat for the man in your life you're accused of being a lesbian: Eleanor Roosevelt, Katharine Hepburn, Hillary Clinton, the list is long. As if there is proto-typical 'lesbian' behavior...

[raccoon]

15. Amen. In the seventh grade, I was told by my principal that it wasn't "ladylike" for me to run out

to the bus in the afternoon. :puke:

[Chulanowa]

18. Oh, I understand that

Don't for a second think I'm justifying some sort of "weaker sex" stereotype, or the ridiculous paternalism you and many others had to put up with.

I'm simply noting that men and women have biological differences, beyond genitalia.

Personally I'm of the mind that the OP's basis of argument - that women should learn how to act like men to succeed - is pretty much a rephrasing of "women don't have what it takes." Telling someone they have to be something they're not... well, can you imagine anyone saying "You blacks need to learn how to be more like white people!" and being taken seriously? I can't.

[DURHAM D]

6. "There is no upper limit to the risks men are willing to take..."

This explains our current financial situation/failure and why Iceland is bankrupt.

Men see only the potential successes and gains and can not or will not register the risk.

[Demeter]

7. Good Point

Although I would hope that criminal behavior was not expected nor condoned by a reputable firm....

[gula]

20. "not expected nor condoned "

How about willingly ignored?

[wolfgangmo]

19. Which is why women should be completely in charge of ...

government, military, banks, etc.

Men have been running things for centuries and look at the cock up that has caused. Women running all things couldn't possible be worse.

[Blue_Tires]

25. +1

being needlessly reckless isn't always a professional virtue

[Mopar151]

8. That last line, in bold?

That is SO true! I supervised Machinists, assemblers, and ancilliary help for 6 years.Most of the girls don't play so nice - especially with regards to issues of class. We had a barracuda of an HR manager, and a couple other (witches with a B) in management or crucial positions. If you did'nt bow and scrape before them, you were junk - and the shop ladies had it worse!
And the shop ladies did'nt always play well with others - particularly the men with a woman's social style - not gay (actually kinda homophobic), but jealous, gossippy, and ready to launch a whisper campaign in seconds.

[Recursion]

9. That's Montague's argument in "The Natural Superiority of Women"

He said it's why you have a few more male than female Mozarts and many more male than female convicts. On a lot of scales men have a higher standard deviation and women have a higher mean.

[Berry Cool]

10. I agree that women need to be more assertive, and more supportive of each other,

but why should they need to be arrogant, stuffed-shirt Joe Isuzu liars in order to get ahead?

I HATE liars. I have been in competition with at least one young woman who WAS a liar. It was excruciating at times, because I played the situation by the rules and she lied to try to set herself above me in people's minds. Ultimately, though, she paid.

And why should people HAVE to "fake it until they make it" just to get and hold down the job they want? So many biographies of wealthy people seem to start out that way and it really irritates me. "When Joe Gottalottabucks tried to get his first job at age 18, the supervisor asked him if he knew anything about X. He didn't even know what an X was, but he said he had years of experience. He was hired on the spot, and panicked as he realized he'd have to learn all about X on the job. But he soon proved his mettle and natural instinct for the business, and now he's the CEO of X Global Inc...."

That's the message we get from the media. At the same time, the message we get from employers is: If you lie on your resume, and you are hired and then found out, YOU WILL BE FIRED. ON THE SPOT!

Should women be more forward and do a better job of pushing their skills and experience to the fore? Should they shop shying back and apologizing? Yes. But I see no reason why they should have to become obnoxious lying bastards just to get ahead.

[northzax]

23. Don't worry

No one who makes a company money is going to get fired for lying on a resume.

[madmom]

11. For years women were told to step back and let the man have the job because

he had a family to raise,as if she took no part in these things, NOW they are saying they were wrong? No they are saying women shouldn't have listened to them. GOOD for the ones who didn't.

[RainDog]

17. maybe it should be a rant about men who inflate their worth to the detriment of truth

but that would assume that the male way of doing things is right simply by virtue of its existence.

because we see the results that elevating incompetency just because someone is a good bullshitter has done to this nation over the last 30 years.

but obviously I don't know how to play the game.

[jonathan_seer]

26. Too bad so many think of Human beings our big brains means we are physiologically not animals

because when it comes down to our biology, what drives us Etc. we are very much animals, like dogs, cats, monkeys Etc. Our huge powerful brain does NOT alter what this means.

Because so many don't realize or refuse to accept it confusion results like that expressed above as he flays around looking for an explanation to why women don't won't do this except in rare cases.

The ability to act like this is tied to one thing - a much higher testosterone/estrogen ratio than a woman.

How hard you laugh or how quickly you dismiss this is directly related to the level of ignorance you have towards human physiology.

The proof is hard and solid.

Millions of men have had their testosterone levels collapse for a variety of health reasons.

And one of the most reported results is a dramatic reduction in aggressive behavior. They become more go with the flow, less likely to make issues of things on all levels.

They also lose the control of emotions that men usually have, because they "feel" them more.

Similarly women who experience long-term rises in testosterone up to those of a man undergo changes that make them far more aggressive, obnoxious than other women, and if not treated will experience changes in their body to make them more masculine, some permanent. One that is odd, but true is an enlargement of the clitoris echoing what happens in the womb to male fetuses.

If you think I'm kidding, I'm not. It's true.

When it comes to this issue, understanding the difference between men and women has nothing to do with our culture, or sexism.

It has everything to do that on certain levels we intelligent human beings still are hard wired like all animals are, and no amount of intelligence has yet proven able to overcome this hard wiring.

We as a species may have moved beyond simple unthinking instinct, but not much.

In many ways the 'freedom' we feel defines the human species vs. "animals" is far more like "thought through instinct."

We find ourselves wanting something, and justify doing it.

All too many of these habits like banking, saving money we convince ourselves is due our greater intellectual ability analyzing the future and planning ahead Etc.

Yet "banking" as in 'saving' for the future is practiced by many animals, squirrels, dogs, cats. All will try to hide extra food when it's available - to eat in the future.

The difference is we "justify/explain" why we do what we do.

We elevate our drive/instinct and call it the anxiety, discomfort we feel NOT being prepared when we do not save.

This "need to do it" is a far bigger factor than we want to admit, and why we go to such great lengths to explain so many of our actions as a result of some sort of thought process rather than a response to an impulse of our still powerful instincts to survive, reproduce, eat Etc.

Also we don't admit that successfully doing these things does not require any planning really. Our justifications and rationalizations though are important for making us feel human though.

As for the animals, they cannot and don't need to intellectualize why they do what they do, they just do it - thus instinct.

Understanding that can go a long way to realizing just how much of human behavior is driven by hormonal influences MEN as well as women. In the case of men testosterone is the make or break hormone.

If we as a species lost some of overwhelming sense of superiority and belief of "differentness" from simple animals, we'd be able to solve many of the problems we think impossible to solve, because we'd know why we did what we do is often not tied to "a rational thought process" as much as a "drive rooted in deep instinct" that all animals share in some form or another including humans.

[Misanth]

27. ...Seriously?

Care to cite your sources, friend?

Hormone research is in its infancy - we haven't a god damned clue what any of it really does. Anyone who tells you otherwise is either talking out their butt or lying through their teeth. Most of them are trying to sell you something.


Try putting down the Psychology Today for a minute, and try this on. It's just as accessible, and a good deal more honest.
<http://www.anapsid.org/hormones.html>


*edited for typo

[undeterred]

28. I am so sick of men who behave like arrogant self-aggrandizing jerks

in the workplace. I hate working for them and I hate working with them. They should be banned from the workplace.