Researcher question – what's the point of semicolons and curly braces?

[Anon via Digitalmars-d]

On Wednesday, 4 May 2016 at 15:46:13 UTC, Nick Sabalausky wrote:
> It's touchy, because I've come across people who actually do 
> genuinely believe the field has things in place deliberately to 
> exclude women/ethnicities...even though...those VERY SAME 
> people have never once been able to provide a SINGLE CONCRETE 
> EXAMPLE of any of these alleged mechanisms they believe so 
> strongly to exist.

Cognitive biases are a thing. People assume women are bad at 
math. People assume black people are violent thugs. People assume 
Asians are savant-level geniuses. People assume Native Americans 
are alcoholics. People assume Arabs are Muslims. People assume 
Muslims are terrorists. Those assumptions and biases dictate how 
we interact with the world. Sociology can describe systems and 
mechanisms that aren't controlled by people or even intentional. 
People do not even need to be aware of their biases. That doesn't 
make them not exist.

> Not only that, but I've yet to come across an anti-minority or 
> anti-female programmer, and even if such creatures exist, 
> they're undeniably var too much in the minority to have any 
> real large-scale effect on "keeping people out".

Anti-<blank> is irrelevant, as it is fairly easy to deal with. 
Perceptions and biases are what matter. As I said above, people 
(in general) assume women are bad at math. That makes them less 
likely to trust any math a female coworker does than they would 
be to trust the same math done by a male coworker. Women get 
tired of dealing with others disregarding them based on these 
assumptions, and feel unwelcome in the field. Nobody needs to be 
intentionally excluding them for them to be excluded. I know I 
wouldn't keep working somewhere if nobody took me seriously.

> The vast majority that I've seen are far more likely to 
> *dislike* the field's current gender imbalance.
>
> In much the same way programming is predominantly male (or "a 
> goddamn sausage-fest" as I see it), nursing is predominantly 
> female. So why did none of US pursue careers in nursing? Was it 
> because we hit roadblocks with systems in place within the 
> nursing field designed to exclude males? Or was it because we 
> just plain weren't interested and had the freedom to choose a 
> field we DID have interest in instead?

Actual answer: boys are raised to view nursing as a girl's job, 
and taught that they should not pursue "feminine" jobs. The same 
is true of girls being taught not to pursue "masculine" jobs. 
This is changing, thankfully, but the outdated views are still 
pervasive.

> Systems DO undeniably exist, for this very field, that are very 
> plainly and deliberately sexist or racist though...but just not 
> in the way some people believe. Unlike the others, I CAN 
> provide a real concrete verifiable example: There are a lot of 
> Computer Science grants and scholarships for students that list 
> "female" or "non-caucasian" (or some specific non-caucasian 
> race) as a mandatory requirement. I came across a bunch of 
> those when I was trying to get financial aid for college. But 
> there are NONE that require "male" or "caucasian" - it would 
> never be permitted anyway, they'd get completely torn to shreds 
> (and for good reason). The only ONE I did hear of was only a 
> publicity stunt to point out the hypocrisy of all the sexist 
> anti-male grants/scholarships.

And yet plenty of male-targeted outreach programs and 
scholarships do exist. In fields like nursing, for example. The 
point of such programs/scholarships is to create downward 
pressure on K-12 schooling to raise kids to not view *themselves* 
through these bias filters.

> Verifiable fact: My sister paid considerably less than I did 
> for each year of college even though we came from EXACTLY the 
> same economic background, exactly the same city/town, exactly 
> the same ethnicity, nearly the same age (and yet she's slightly 
> younger, so if anything, increasing tuition rates would have 
> worked AGAINST her), and one of our respective colleges was 
> even the exact same school. And her pay now is (considerably) 
> higher than mine, and she works in a field that's known to pay 
> LESS than my field.

Not enough information in this anecdote. Your sister could have 
had higher grades than you, granting her more scholarship money. 
Need-based grants/scholarships take in to account the number of 
kids parents are supporting and how many are in university, and 
the kids' incomes (if any). She may have also applied herself 
more and gotten promoted more which could reverse the expected 
pay gap.

> Anti-female systems in place? Bull fucking shit. Anyone who 
> claims there are: put up REAL fucking examples instead of 
> parroting vacuous rhetoric or shut the fuck up forever.

You are really starting to sound like the type of person who 
denies climate change because it was chilly in your city 
yesterday. Please don't be that person. Nobody likes that person. 
Nobody takes that person seriously.

> I've had far more than enough of the mother fucking 
> baby-goddamn-boomers and GI-generation dragging THEIR bullshit 
> war-of-the-sexes out the the goddamn 1950's where it belongs 
> and forcing it onto MY 1980's+ generation. I literally grew up 
> subjected to a constant barrage of "*GIRLS* can do/be ANYTHING 
> they want", never a goddamn word about guys except to 
> constantly villanize us and demand that we're always the enemy, 
> even though *3* motherfucking decades separated me from all 
> YOUR historic sexist crap, so, boomers, goddamn GI's, and the 
> younger idiots they've infected with their "this is still 1950, 
> and we must war against the oppressive males" propaganda, hurry 
> up and die so we can finally be rid of YOUR legacy and the 
> sexism you create and maintain. Fuck the pendulum, just stop 
> the goddamn thing right in the middle already.

Since we are comparing anecdotes, I grew up constantly being told 
I was smart, as the girls I went to for help with math were told 
they were dumb. The baby boomers around me were constantly 
propagated the "girls must be stay at home mothers and are too 
dumb to have a STEM job" bullshit (despite my mom being the one 
to handle finances). Even through college, people took me more 
seriously than my smarter (sometimes female) peers, because their 
cognitive biases made me seem smarter than I am (mostly due to my 
physical appearance).

> People are morons.

On that, we agree. But disregarding others' life experiences (and 
sociological research) because they differ from your own benefits 
nobody.