Geek Girls To Feminists: Don’t Jack Up Our Target-Rich Environment

Posted on | April 4, 2014 | 28 Comments

by Smitty

Is it National Offend a Feminist Week yet? Dr. Layla has got me on my knees, laughing at the notion that women shun Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) majors due to “concern that their ‘geeky’ male classmates will present poor social prospects“. Other major concerns listed were:

boring
they wouldn’t be any good at it.

To be sure: one should do things one finds interesting. But if you only did things you were good at, how would a feminist get past the teenage harpy stage?

When I did my engineering degree, the choice was driven my maximizing learning. All of the math and science would be kind of folded in, I rationalized, and therefore I pursued a major in control systems engineering. In middle age, the chief result of all this is that I can tell our government is running without proper stabilizing feedback, like a truck going down a hill without breaks. But I have a really bitchen piece of paper to back up my assertion, so, there.

I actually don’t know any geek girls, other than this blog’s old admin lady. Who was cool, but our traffic outgrew her patience rapidly. Or maybe it was Stacy’s dull, sonorous tones when expressing concern over technical issues. In any case, why would women in STEM majors want competition?

Challenge to feminists: just found an all-female engineering school. It turns out that there is a high school program to start women off in engineering in the back yard of Republican #WarOnWomen Generalissimo, Governor Scott Walker. Who knew? You can build that up into a full-on college, feminists.

However, moving yourselves from the “griping column” to the “doing column” is going to require new Applied Victimization research to find fresh blame targets. So, that’s an issue.

via Instapundit

Category: National Offend a Feminist Week

Comments

28 Responses to “Geek Girls To Feminists: Don’t Jack Up Our Target-Rich Environment”

Political Rift » Geek Girls To Feminists: Don’t Jack Up Our Target-Rich Environment
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:35 pm

[…] smitty by Smitty Is it National Offend a Feminist Week yet? Dr. Layla has got me on my knees, laughing at […]
Evi L. Bloggerlady
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:56 pm

Yeah, I am sure Melinda Gates is full of regrets…NOT!
Lunatic Feminist: Meet Mary Daly | Batshit Crazy News
April 4th, 2014 @ 9:59 pm

[…] Smitty: Where smart girls hunt for mates… […]
Women looking for mates in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematic (STEM) Majors… | Batshit Crazy News
April 4th, 2014 @ 10:23 pm

[…] Smitty notes that smart girls do not turn up their noses at STEM majors… […]
Julie Pascal
April 4th, 2014 @ 10:28 pm

Heh. I was (briefly) in electrical engineering 30 years ago… back when the Fortran 101 class at NDSU of 300-ish students was 297 males and 3 females. I failed that class, but never once felt anything but accepted. I was just really really bad at computers. That’s okay. Not everyone has to be good at everything. Also, I met a lot of guys that way. Met a lot of guys in ROTC, too. And pistol club.
RS
April 4th, 2014 @ 10:48 pm

What does it tell us, that even with STEM programs twisting themselves into knots to get female applicants, the ration of males to females in Math and Engineering is still around 3 to 1? Lawrence Summers called. He wants his job back.
smitty
April 4th, 2014 @ 10:52 pm

Cease your Thought Crime and get with the Narrative right now!
Julie Pascal
April 4th, 2014 @ 11:00 pm

I went back to college. I’m taking Earth and Planetary Science. I can babble your ears off about how entirely awesome ionic bonds are and why exactly a chemical formula of (Ca,Na)2-3(Mg,Fe,Al)5Si8O22(OH)2 makes any sort of sense at all.

But I’m already taken so that would be just cruel. 😉
Kirby McCain
April 5th, 2014 @ 12:17 am

You sure know how to let a guy down.
Kirby McCain
April 5th, 2014 @ 12:24 am

Numbers and science represent facts. Could also be an issue. Besides, they sure seem to enjoy battling the Phantom Menace … uh errr the hetropatriarchal whatchanacallit.
Cube
April 5th, 2014 @ 2:03 am

It says the combination of ability plus interest in STEM is relatively uncommon.among the XX chromosome set. Having just one of those doesn’t cut it. And Summers should have told the whiners to shove it instead of taking their crap even the slightest bit seriously.
Cube
April 5th, 2014 @ 2:12 am

Can’t we have several National Offend a Feminist Weeks? With so much lunacy to smack down it’s tough to cram it all into just one.
Anamika
April 5th, 2014 @ 2:40 am

A couple of years back I started hearing complaints from male friends in Indian IT circles that women IT professionals are lazy, work inefficiently etc while they bust their ass twice as much. At first I though they were being sexist, then over a period of time I closely observed this trend while working as a consultant for several MNCs. IBM India it seems is the biggest culprit of the lot. No wonder they have recruited more than 50% of their recruits from women work force fresh out of college. That’s a double whamy, as in India, 30% of all admissions in higher education is reserved for women (and another 40% to underprivilized castes, minorities, only 30% is in open merit category) So you already have a diluted pool.
JeffS
April 5th, 2014 @ 6:42 am

There’s always this National Holiday.

Which Stacy missed posting about this year. Talk about lost opportunities!
A Federal Worker
April 5th, 2014 @ 8:09 am

Working in an engineering organization, as I do, I can observe a wide range of STEM graduates, male and female.

I never have done any number crunching, but I’ve long known that women are a minority when it comes to STEM. Hell, ask ANY engineer, or employee of an engineering firm. I saw tis back in the engineering school I attended; if you wanted a date from a lady from on campus, the stakes were high, the competition was fierce, and the field very small. Better luck could be found at the nearby business and nursing colleges.

The reasons why this is so are not totally cultural in nature, although I’m sure there’s some; I’ve seen it personally, but it tends to be minor. Smitty’s post brings up some other thoughts of mine about “poor social prospects”, “boring”, and “they wouldn’t be any good at it”.

Simply put, any attempt by feminists to explain women “shunning” STEM studies are complete and utter bullshit.

And yeah, my rational supporting this is anecdotal, but that’s better than the ideological fervor feminists grunt out each morning. Further, my being an ardent member of the heteronormative patriarchy is immaterial, other than my inevitable denouncement for not supporting the narrative du jour .

First of all, there has LONG been an active effort to recruit women into STEM. My own degree in civil engineering dates back to the late 1970s, and most women who graduated in my class were offered a top paying job immediately. Perhaps coincidentally, the total placement rate for my school at that time was above 95% of all graduates.

Second, those women who did NOT get a top paying job immediately generally were getting married. To an engineering graduate.

Third, my college actually offered a “general engineering” degree when I attended (they don’t anymore — I checked). Those majors studied a little bit of everything. From a practical perspective, this seems pointless. Who wants to hire a “general engineer”? The official explanation was that people could sign up for the G.E. major, and see where they fit in best with other departments, and transfer later on. In other words, this was an effort to open up the school to people who may not really know what they want.

Fair enough. But the fact that mostly women signed up for that major struck a lot of the guys as being odd. Yes, we noticed it. More women on campus widened the field, and that meant more social interaction. A standard opening line was “What’s your degree?” “General Engineering” puzzled us greatly, and as we were being trained to identify and analyze problems, we dived in.

The results were inevitable. You’d think that an engineering and technology college would know better than to disguise a social program with an engineering facade, but, hey, the administration was all too human. Eventually, we called the “general engineering” degree the “M-R-S degree”, because that’s what it became. Most of those women were looking for a husband, and were not interested in STEM subjects. Some even transferred to nearby colleges. It was “boring” or they just couldn’t hack the studies.

Not that we complained about more women on campus, mind you. The hormone levels in the dorms were well into the lethal zone. But “poor social prospects”? ‘Tis to laugh!

On not hacking the studies … the freshman drop out rate at my college, at that time, was better than 50% in the first year. That’s male AND female, regardless of degree. No one laughed at “not hacking it”; that was the point of the majors, and anyone who made it to the sophomore year was considered a success.

My fourth (and final) point brings us back from yesteryear, and focuses on the “they wouldn’t be any good at it”.

My observations of male versus female STEM abilities comes down to this: gender is not relevant. How that person got the job is what matters.

I work with one design office, run by a woman, with mostly male employees. That office does good work, and the chief earned her position. She’s a good engineer and manager.

And while the office does good work, a few of her employees are anything but value added. The boat anchors are in the minority, are male, and got their jobs through attrition and the good ol’ boy network. She rides herd on them, but it’s a thankless job.

That doesn’t much jive with the feminazi narrative, huh? Other than the good ol’ boy network, I mean.

OTOH, I can think of at least 3 women who have risen to high managerial levels who are not only lousy engineers, they couldn’t manage their way out of a wet paper bag. Incompetent and, in at least one case, dysfunctional.

They got to their lofty positions by ladder-climbing and checking-the-box. And, I am more than a little certain, because they are female. It’s the Federal government, after all. Where political correctness is mandatory.

To all outraged lefties reading this: Yeah, that last one is an opinion. But it’s a well informed opinion, so if you don’t like it, too bad.

And please note that I did use the word “anecdotal” earlier. Still, that’s an improvement on the assertions and/or lies brayed out by feminists on a daily basis.

And in any case, Dr. Laya is quite wrong. SHe should demand a refund for the costs of her PhD. Assuming that she actually paid for it herself in the first place.
Tanuki Man
April 5th, 2014 @ 11:11 am

Truck without “breaks?” On fuel taxes maybe?
DaveO
April 5th, 2014 @ 12:29 pm

Just me, but Mayim Bialik gets the heart racing in a good way.
M. Thompson
April 5th, 2014 @ 12:41 pm

We aren’t too keen about non-reproductive type things around here…
JeffS
April 5th, 2014 @ 1:32 pm

Just where do you think I first learned of this event, hmmmm?

Hint: It wasn’t at Hot Air or HuffPo.
Quartermaster
April 5th, 2014 @ 2:46 pm

So quit leading us on! While you’re at it, you’d better get that petition drive started to control dihydrogen monoxide too. That stuff is really bad.
K-Bob
April 5th, 2014 @ 6:48 pm

It’s prepararatory work. Sort of like prerequisites for certain classes you need in order to graduate.
K-Bob
April 5th, 2014 @ 6:52 pm

We had our share of flakes in the sciences at the school I attended, but many women are excellent at higher math concepts. Those are the ones who were serious competition for the hard sciences geeks.

Fortunately being excellent at math is not the same as appreciating how green the smoke can get in certain explosions, or how big of a hole it left.
Quartermaster
April 5th, 2014 @ 7:25 pm

She used a nasty word too. The ‘F’ word of computer programs. (F0rtran).
Seriously, it’s all Caps as FORTRAN is an acronym. I haven’t written anything in that language since ’81 and that was to help someone else out. I’ve been using BASIC for my own stuff since ’78 and am using True BASIC since GWBASIC doesn’t run on a 64 bit OS.
Quartermaster
April 5th, 2014 @ 7:26 pm

Summers is, if nothing, a man of the left and he had committed apostasy and would not remain unpunished.
Quartermaster
April 5th, 2014 @ 7:27 pm

The least you could do is get “Heteronormative Patriarchy” right since you are so obviously a beneficiary of it.
Quartermaster
April 5th, 2014 @ 7:31 pm

At Tennessee Tech, most of the women in STEM programs were in Math. The next down was Chemistry. In the School of Engineering the ratio of guys to gals was about 10:1.
This CE loves him some ‘splodey. Favorite part of my military experience was the demo range.
JeffS
April 5th, 2014 @ 8:16 pm

HOOAH!

Ditto, dude. I miss priming C4, I do.
K-Bob
April 5th, 2014 @ 9:19 pm

I agree, even though the only ‘splody I ever participated in was in a quarry and out on roadway maintenance as a State Road Dept. worker. (I drilled the holes, and tamped in the dyno. I knew nothing about how to determine how much dyno or where to drill, I just did the drilling, and more freaking shovel work than I ever thought possible.) I also participated with some good ole boys in some highly-suspicious, farm stump removal that was more properly called “pit creation.”

At the quarry, one time we half-buried a dump truck that the dynamite wranglers were hiding behind when they depressed the plunger. Turns out a half stick of dyno really is not a very good substitute for a quarter stick in planning these things by recipe. Who knew?

I was a half mile up the road stopping traffic, and I saw this huge, frikkin boulder flying up, surrounded by tons more flyers of all sizes. When I ran back to the quarry (having no idea what I’d find), those guys were a dusty mess, but okay. Ended up being hilarious.

(For you non-demo experienced folks, a proper demo guy would have had the rock face go *whump*, then start slowly sliding down. It’s not supposed to head for the next county.)