#sexism against men

[religion-is-a-mental-illness]

By: Lawrence M. Krauss

Published: Sep 11, 2023

The voyage of discovery that science offers can take us furthest when it is open to the best and brightest, regardless of who they are and where they come from. Great scientific minds often emerge from unexpected backgrounds. Many scientific disciplines remained effectively closed to ethnic minorities and to women for far too long. But over the past 50 years at least, science has opened up and a host of affirmative action programs have been created to encourage women and minorities to consider careers in the field.

For some activists, however, these efforts have not gone far enough. In response, universities, industries, and research institutions have instituted a vast bureaucracy designed to promote Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion: a behemoth that is growing at a rate far exceeding that of investment in new faculty and facilities.

This has resulted in some disturbing new trends in academia and scientific institutions more broadly. In a desire to include women and minorities, white males are often excluded, and too often women and members of minority groups are tokenized by being promoted primarily for their gender or skin color.

This tokenism has affected the most prestigious institutions. It was a bone of a contention at this year’s Lindau Nobel Laureate meeting. Citing fellow laureate Christiane Nüsslein-Volhard, who has questioned the use of gender quotas in STEM and warned against “discrimination against men,” Nobel prizewinner Kurt Wüthrich commented that he felt discriminated against “in the climate that this meeting is being held.” He was particularly dismayed by the fact that the female laureates were placed in the front row of a group photo—an example, he felt, of insulting tokenism. “I would feel horrible if presented in this way,” he said. “It was ridiculous, fully ridiculous.” As a result of voicing these views, Wüthrich was accused of violating the meeting’s code of conduct.

That may have been a minor issue of optics, but his more general point is valid. Look at almost any online photo promoting science and you will find this kind of tokenism.

Here are several examples.

The first is from a recent article in Science, the official journal of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

[ Source: Science. ]

Scientific societies should encourage all young people to consider a career in scientific discovery. Science nevertheless seems to feel the need to present a patronizing advertising image, featuring three women and two men of color.

In an email encouraging young people to embark on scientific careers, the American Physical Society presents an image of five women and a black man. The omissions—presumably done in the name of diversity—are obvious and embarrassing.

[ Source: Substack. ]

In advertisements for their annual general meeting, which attracts over 10,000 scientists from all over the world, the APS shows three women and one male of color.

[ Source: APS website ]

For hundreds of years, white men in lab coats were presented as the face of science. It is time to change that picture. But we should do without losing touch with reality or becoming overtly patronizing.

This trend of prioritizing women and minorities is not restricted to advertising and public relations but is affecting faculty appointments at every level.

Let’s start at the top. Six of the eight Ivy League universities—Harvard, Brown, Penn, Cornell, Dartmouth, and Columbia—now have female presidents, as do UC Berkeley and MIT.

MIT is a particularly striking case. Despite comprising many traditionally male-dominated STEM disciplines, its upper management team is largely female. The head of the MIT Corporation, the President, the Director of Research, the Provost, the Chancellor, and the Dean of Science are all women. The Institute’s core discipline, the School of Engineering, consists of eight departments, five of which are led by women. This is clearly not a coincidence, nor is it likely, given the demographics of the place, that this is simply the result of choosing the best people for those jobs. Were the situation reversed—if most of the faculty were female, but the leading administrators were all male—there would be an outcry.

It is still the case that most full professors, in most STEM disciplines, are male. But the reasons for this are often misunderstood. It generally takes decades to attain this rank, and many full professors have been in their current positions for over 30 years. Even if the hiring system were now biased in favor of women, they would not yet have achieved parity at the senior level.

And the hiring system may well be biased. Thanks to the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion infrastructure that dominates almost every major US university today, affirmative action initiatives have affected the hiring of junior faculty across the board.

It is difficult to obtain national statistics on this, but in 2015, before DEI initiatives reached current heights, a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences revealed a two to one preference for female candidates for tenure track positions in STEM.

New faculty announcements suggest a similar bias. For example, in 2021, UCLA announced the following new appointments in the physical sciences: Abigail Doyle (Chemistry and Biochemistry), Alvine Kamaha (Physics and Astronomy), Courtney Shelly (Statistics/Mathematics), Qianhui Shi (Physics and Astronomy), and Hong Wang (Mathematics). It did not appoint any new male faculty. Similar examples abound.

We can detect comparable trends further up the tenure ladder, too. For example, MIT has just announced the election of six new Fellows to the American Physical Society. This represents a significant career milestone for the successful candidates. I was happy to see that they include my well-deserving former graduate student, Hong Liu, but that aside, the trend seems clear.

[ Source: MIT News ]

Affirmative action is not the only explanation for the increasing paucity of white males in such positions. The American Physical Society offers a plethora of programs designed to assist pre-tenure female (and sometimes male minority) faculty in physics. There are conferences, leadership programs, internships, grants, workshops, networks, site visits, guidelines, scholarships, fellowships, and prizes. There are no similar programs for young white male scientists, although many of them face similar career challenges.

In US academia in general, women now receive more doctoral degrees than men.

[ Source: Cory Clark and Bo Winegard for Quillette ]

Women also occupy most faculty positions in post-secondary institutions.

[ Source: Cory Clark and Bo Winegard for Quillette ]

While it is heartening that the climate for women in academia has been improving, these figures suggest that the laser focus on recruiting, retaining, spotlighting, and promoting women in STEM may have become superfluous.

As April Bleske-Rechek and Michael Bernstein have shown, while men still occupy three quarters of STEM positions (despite the fact that the percentage of women in STEM has more than doubled since 1980), the situation is precisely reversed in the fields of health, education, administration, and literacy. While massive efforts are underway to correct the imbalance between men and women in STEM, there have been no concomitant efforts to increase the numbers of men in female-dominated professions. People do not seem to perceive the latter imbalance as a problem. In a recent survey of over 800 recent college students, Bleske-Rechek and Bernstein found that the students were overwhelmingly more concerned about male overrepresentation in certain high status professional positions than about female overrepresentation in others.

[ Responses to the question "Do you agree that the gender gap is problematic?" Source: Unsafe Science. ]

This was the case even though the female-dominated disciplines were not considered lower status than the male-dominated ones.

[ Responses to the question "Do you agree that the job is high in status?" Source: Unsafe Science. ]

Other data in the study suggest that gender gaps in male-dominated disciplines are significantly more likely to be attributed to sexism or discrimination than they are in female-dominated disciplines.

[ Responses to the question “How much of the gender gap is due to sexism/discrimination?” Source: Unsafe Science ]

These results align with recent work by Matt Grawitch et al., summarized here. Grawitch and his colleagues found that both male and female respondents were more likely to judge that an interaction between a banker and a client had been sexist when the banker was male and the client female than the reverse. We are far more likely to attribute sexism to disparities that favor men than disparities that favor women.

The impression that universities are primarily concerned with hiring, supporting, and promoting women may be contributing to the fact that, at entry levels, young men are leaving higher education in their droves.

We can see the results of this in the California State universities: the undergraduate student body at Cal State Los Angeles is 59 percent female, and 67 percent of its graduate students are female; Sonoma State is 63 percent female; San Diego State is 57 percent female; Humboldt State is 58 percent female; Cal State East Bay is 61 percent female. Nationwide, around 60 percent of students are female. And the gender gap is growing. Recent data show a significant downward trend in male college enrollments, which has coincided with the increasing prevalence of DEI programs.

[ Source: Brookings Institution ]

The reduction in male undergraduate numbers is partly caused by the fact that young women are graduating from high school in higher numbers than their male counterparts. In fact, women now graduate at higher rates than men at all educational levels.

[ Source: Brookings Institution ]

Similar trends are emerging at pre-university level. Consider this announcement of the finalists and winners of the 3M Young Scientist Challenge.

[ Source: 3M News Center ]

It is no surprise to see a high prevalence of Indian and Chinese students among this group, as East and South Asians have been outperforming white students for some time. What is perhaps more surprising is that the finalists included only one young Caucasian male.

Perhaps this is partly due to way such programs recruit applicants. Consider this advertisement for the Regeneron Science Talent Search.

[ Source: Society for Science ]

Is the nearly complete absence of white males in these images the result of a decision to highlight women and minorities—or are fewer white men getting involved in such programs than ever before?

We may be moving towards a future in which women will be significantly better educated than men and will occupy far more of the jobs that require professional qualifications and skills. The societal impacts of this are unknown.

We must continue to ensure that higher education and scientific training remain open to people from all demographics. But we should not encourage diversity at the cost of driving away talented people. Our fixation on raising the profile of women and minorities in science by minimizing the role and status of men in general, and white men in particular, is misplaced.

After more than 40 years of intense affirmative action efforts, it may be time to take our thumbs off the scale and let a natural balance emerge. Young males—and white males in particular—should not be discouraged from pursuing higher education in science, or from engaging in any other field of intellectual activity.

[ Via: https://archive.md/18k9n ]

==

DEI does not belong in science.

[logankisseswade]

it doesn’t surprise me now why people hate famous men/artists like Morrissey, Axl Rose, Dennis Miller, Jim Carrey, Michael Jackson, etc when you’re smart and talented and good looking and kind and well, Male(cough, cough lol)

it’s no mystery

[imadethisaccountforaheadcannon]

Moon is more of a women then Earth is

I watched the Foxy and Monty show before when it first showed up and what made me hate Earth the most was how monty was talking about her and how as soon as she showed up and the fact he is stile doing it even after moon came back from the dead not just him but literally everyone has a good thing to say about her

Yet the only thing she did to get that praise is enable a bunch of badguys

Its pretty damn obvious shes meant to be ah audience suggogate and frankly the bitch has a hidden holier then though attitude just like sun and the TSAMS fanbase and with everything I heard and sore about her I want nothing to do with her+ wanna strait up kill her so she'd wouldn't "redeem" anyone else

At thats another thing I view eclipse as a rapist and moon to have actually given birth to lunar and before that moon had a large chunk of his money that he earned personally given away just cause sun said so and has had his merits as an inventor completely disregarded just cause sun felt so entitled to keep on using moons tech after moon died

Even when strait up not given permission to with whom sun actually perceived as moon at the time

BTW I recon the star being destroyed was the tipping point of him not being moon anymore

These are all the problems women typically get even the physical power disadvantage and even them ignoring everything the guy sun does only to focus on the few times the moon gal actually lost it

Like lets say moon was outwardly more female like very scrawny and most definitely flat chested and she like moon has a stick would it look like "evidence of sun's abuse" then or would more people see it how it actually is that sun mentally tormented moon so badly moon actually felt like the only way he had to be on equal terms was a weapon the fact that sun was clearly not listening to moon at all would be even more apparent if moon was female

How would Earth as a "gal boss" be perceived then if the fandom just lost another waifu before her

Imagine how it would look if sun hallucinates himself into scapegoating a bunch of women and spends a year getting flying monkeys around him

[lamia-lmiae]

It's good for mom, good for dad, and good for baby. Improved bonding, reduced cortisol levels, overall better health.

I'm curious to know if she knows him or not because the especially not him sounds personal

I don't even know why she's bringing up the feeding part. This is skin-to-skin contact which has a lot of benefits for the baby and him

I don't even know what to say. It says a lot about a person if you look at this sweet picture and think it's creepy

[trans-androgyne]

Misogyny and sexism are not and never have been synonyms. That’s not all of what’s meant by sexism. Literally just take two minutes to look up the term. It’s prejudice or discrimination against people on the basis of their sex (often expanded to include their gender). Plenty of them make sure to specify that it can affect men.

Here’s an example of its use from APA: “We define sexism as individuals' attitudes, beliefs, and behaviors, and organizational, institutional, and cultural practices that either reflect negative evaluations of individuals based on their gender or support unequal status of women and men…it is important to acknowledge all levels of analyses are intertwined and both women and men experience sexism.”

[theblockedtomb]

if you make posts about, e.g., trans men being seen as the worst of both men and women, denied the right to speak on either experience, and tag it as transandrophobia or something similar, you are making it very clear that when trans women talk about their experiences you either do not listen or do not care. Trans women also experience these things. It's not because you're a trans man. It's because you're trans. I know you're trans because you're a man but that's not the point, the point is all trans people are treated like this. Unless they either go stealth or gain high levels of social acceptance. Guess which subgroup of trans people that's easier for.

[uncanny-tranny]

The thing that sucks about misogyny is that it's not just a problem for one group of people or one gender group. If you want to combat bigotries, you (impersonal) have to not come at it from the angle of bigotry as an identity you have, but as a set of beliefs and actions. To be a misogynist isn't an identity like being gay or a similarly deep and personal identity. A misogynist is somebody who believes in and acts upon misogynistic ideas, myths, or any other such thing.

This goes for pretty much any bigotry, and the idea of bigotry as identity does us all a disservice, especially if you turn the bigotry into essentialism. When you essentialize bigotry in a certain group of people, you empower people to keep said bigotry unchecked and uninterrogated. That does everyone a disservice.

[marsabillions]

this site legitimately hates feminism and it makes me hate everyone

[adhderall]

well as you can see besides being ugly as all fuck I'm also extremely bitter so that doesn't help at all in making me appealing. but it also comes with the territory you see, being treated as a hideous freak of nature for your whole life kind of does things to your psyche.

also going into shit in the tags as an extreeeemely jaded individual who's been on every side of the discourse and KNOWS it all VERY PERSONALLY so I know many people will find all sorts of different reasons to hate me (if they want ig) because I'm ~politically homeless~ at this point because I'm sick and tired of everything but whatever

(also fuck I ran out of space in the tags so another post maybe idk. )

[thirddoctor]

Someone on here was doing exactly that they watched the first episode and said ‘I don’t trust Moffat I’m not watching the rest he needs to be locked away because hens a misogynist’ crazy work

Yeah it's going to be rough because it's a show where you really do have to watch the whole thing before judging it. I have a feeling a lot of people who dislike Moffat are gonna hatewatch the first episode (or not watch at all and make assumptions based on the premise) and come away thinking it's a self-insert show about a nice middle-aged white man who didn't really do anything wrong and is being unfairly torn to shreds by a bunch of easily offended snowflakes. Clearly just Moffat trying to downplay any criticism and paint all the poor men like him who live in fear of being cancelled over a silly joke as the real victims.

[lastoneout]

I think terfs are a really good example of the whole "far right people can believe seemingly contradictory things without a shred of self-awareness" given that they simultaneously believe women are inherently better than men AND that it's absolutely 100% impossible for a woman to beat a man in any competition at all bcs apparently we just naturally suck at everything.

[gay-otlc]

Say it with me: The fact that closeted and non-passing trans men face misogyny for being perceived as women does not mean that closeted and non-passing trans women have male privilege!

[unproduciblesmackdown]

billions also comedy gold presenting winston as a scapegoat for abuse culture fans when it's like but hey it can't be actual scapegoating if you Enjoy It or consider it Justified or experience Reassurance from Its Opportunity For A Group Cohesion Substitute For A Cohesion Based On An Inherent Equal Degree Of Belonging, The Absence Of Which Allows For, Encourages, Reinforces, & Rewards Scapegoating

it can't be Bullying if someone's Weird or you Just Don't Personally Like Them or Nobody's Actually Stopping You, Maybe At Least If They Don't See Too Much Of It, Maybe Others Are Supporting It

it can't be Abuse if you're just doing things Normally or are Following Rules or Aren't Feeling Malicious And Aren't Getting Divine Revelations Otherwise and probably it's just that a lot of abnormal people are being whiny &/or unfair &/or the Real malicious ones. kinda just like how that scapegoat is the real person ruining everything and really just forcing you to treat them like this

[kacievvbbbb]

I cannot describe how much I hate the "nobody hates women more than other women" group and response. God yall are so fucking annoying and my opinion of your intelligence immediately plummets

Because truly are you dumb? Or do you just not exist in the real world????

Like I truly fucking hate it because it is a narrative concocted to literally demean any women's movement because;" look there are women that disagree so the movement is obviously misguided and unserious"🙄

Like I'm not dismissing that internalized misogyny exists amd there are definitely women that want and love to uphold the patriarchy and are very vocal in their disbelief in women's right, Since women began fighting for their right there have always been women, and there probably always will be women, working in opposition of women's movements. but like point to any group in fucking history and see people that actively worked against their own best interest.

But also sometimes women disagree with each other and they might not even like each other. And it's not internalized misogyny and it's not being a "pick me" and it's not trying to tear other women down. It is simply two people who just happen to be women, not liking each other.

Men are actually violent with each other at truly astounding rates, most violent crimes are men against other men, Men actively work against the best interest of other men all the fucking time. Men can kill each other over beefs and nobody would even think to say "wow nobody hates men more than other men" or " men hating men what else is new" or "Men just hate other men it's in their nature". Nobody would dare suggest that all men must be a hive mind and their views on something must all be aligned before it can be taken seriously.

And that's because men can be people but women will always be women.

[le-panda-chocovore]

I need feminism because female athlete play Female Sport while male athlete just play Sport.

[rjalker]

"Reverse misogyny" stories are not the progressive, feminist power move you think they are, especially not when you expect your readers to be happy and content with the status quo presented by your story. Biological essentialism and sexism are never going to be progressive even if you try to dress them up like they're feminist. They're just not.