Were you there?
I wasn't.

Neither you nor I KNOW if his motivation was sexism.

You're guessing if you think so.

I made no assumptions as to his motive, merely pointed out that it is not necessarily sexism.

I'm wondering what any of the ladies here have to say about my earlier post:

No Gender Differences In Math Performance

What do you think? Is alimony sexist?

How about the "tradition" that the bride's family should pay for the wedding (since a woman is, supposedly, an inherent financial burden, and you're grateful for taking her off your hands. That was the reasoning behind the dowry tradition which was basically the same thing btw).

I hear a lot of feminists crying out for equality but I don't think I've ever heard them protesting against the ways in which the scales are tipped in their favor.

There are an endless parade of sexist elements in society, most of them arising from historical events or movements. THi sis not to say I justify them, only to say that they exist.

As to someone talking to the man when the woman is asking the question, it sounds like a classic example of a salesman not wanting to deal with a hard question. It could be sexism, it could be avoidance, both, something else, but no matter, it's rude no matter which.

I'm familiar with the same problem in some ways, I'm a non-PhD who operates almost exclusively in rooms full of PhD's (Bell Labs Research, AT&T Research, Microsoft), some of whom are concious of who has what degree. Never mind who invented the technology under discussion, some of them will ask a question, have me answer it, and look at somebody who works for me and ask "So, Dr. so-and-so what do you think of what he said".

Doesn't happen too much lately, though, I will say.

There are lots of nasty little status things like this in the world.

They stink.

It depends. What did the woman give up to marry the man? Come to that, it's not impossible for a man to get alimony; what did he give up to marry the woman? If it's one of those cases where the woman dropped out of school to support her husband while he got his degree or whatever, yes, she deserves to be supported until she can support herself. However, she should show a good-faith effort to do so; going back to school should count. If both partners work, no, there should be no alimony. In short, it's too complicated for a short answer.

I had a friend who, at his wedding, did both dowry and bride-price, which was basically an excuse for the bride and groom to give each other lavish presents. It was beautiful, actually, and she still wears her bride-price amber necklace all the time; he died nearly two years ago. However, slightly more on topic, I think the couple should pay for their own blasted wedding. Now, when my best friend got married this year, her family did contribute, but not because they had to. His family didn't, but not because they didn't have to. It has to do with how nice her mother is compared to his, frankly.

You must not be listening.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I must not have been listening either.

There is a lot of ridiculous historical detritus on all parts.

And I've heard feminists arguing for actual equality, too, as opposed to only when it benefits them. Just like anyone else, there are people who want equality, people who want ahead, people who just joined in ...

Feminism is no worse than most (any?) other movement.

To the people who point out some of the excesses I can only say "there's always one", that applies to men, women, children, horses, mules, you-name-it.

I'm interested in hearing your story. How did you win custody?

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Olsen the moderator.

I said, "Mine."
She said, "Ok."

Would you look to a hypothetical movement that called itself "Whitism" as a champion of racial equality? Same difference.

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Olsen the moderator.

There's an outstanding example of justice triumphant in family court.

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Olsen the moderator.

Name a few.

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Olsen the moderator.

Go buy TWO calculators that cost $150 each.

I have a friend in whose best interests it was to stay with her mother--her father has serious physical and psychological health problems--who very nearly couldn't have. You see, her mother's sort of bi but mostly lesbian. There are other prejudices in the legal system.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

I'm just happy there are people in general that are good at math, even when I've forgotten most of it from high school.

I've got a couple;

Leona Woods and, best of all, Margaret Burbidge.

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This is no fantasy. No careless product of wild imagination. - Jor-El

Godspeed, John Glenn. - Scott Carpenter

And these atomic bombs that science burst upon the world that night were strange even to the men that used them.
- H.G Wells, The World Set Free

To the conspiracy crowd, radiation is a big Boogey Man that inspires terror and death in all who encounter it. - JayUtah

Tell me about it. That's exactly what I'm about to do.

But if it helps my girls master mathematics, that's what I'll do.

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Olsen the moderator.

The plural of anecdote is . . . ?

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Olsen the moderator.

We are very close to raising a generation that cannot do math without a calculator!

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

double post. Sorry.

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Olsen the moderator.

Not in the classes I took. In high school, we used the calculators to help us with more complex (basically impossible by hand within a class period) problems, and did other sections with no calculator at all to master the basics. In college so far, it has been similar - in calc 3, all tests were no calculator, and we also had matlab and mathematica based projects that involved far more complex problems.

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WANTED:

Schroedinger's Cat

Dead And Alive

[QUOTE=Tobin Dax;1302605]Your poor daughters. All that great education, and yet you'll burden them into traditional roles and living off of alimony. What is your real objection to those calculators?

[...]
QUOTE]


I have never said or implied anything like what you have just claimed. I find your retort unsubstantiated, and abusive.

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Olsen the moderator.

Two Daughters story? (Id est- you told an anecdote as well )

Heh. Quoting from Wikipedia's article on the latter--
(Incidentally, I can assure you that Mount Wilson is hardly in the middle of nowhere, on account of its official address is Pasadena, California; the railway that used to take people up the mountain starts about two or three miles north of my mom's house, which means perhaps fifteen miles from downtown Los Angeles!)

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Do you argue that in the 1950's, say, white men in America were oppressed?

Yes.

But fortunately women were liberated and went out and got jobs.


Ok, I couldn't resist Don't take that too seriously.

Quite seriously, you have a point, too.

I think the other fellow missed the point where I said that everyone got bit by the various role models we're still somewhat stuck with.

There are few things we can't get past. Men can't have babies, men die younger, and they are bigger and stronger. (each of those except the first on a statistical basis, of course) Women can have babies, the whole set of risks that we can't eliminate (any "intellegent designer" advocate has to explain to me why human reproduction works the way it does. my goodness what a hack) related to having babies, longer life if they survive the babies, lesser upper body strength, generally more endurance per exercise taken, etc.

But, when we talk about things like math, especially more abstracted higher math, I really can't say as I've personally seen a difference, I know about as many really good women mathematicians as I do really good male mathematicians, for instance.

But roles beat in during childhood do continue to both limit and hurt people.

Geeze!! Is this nonsense still going on. There are no differences between the intelligence of men and women. There are some of each that are very smart, some that are serious retards and lots somewhere in the middle.

Please have pity on us old folks then. I graduated from High School before there was any such thing as an electronic calculator. All I had was a slide rule.

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

I'm sorry but all the biased, unscientific, politically correct "studies" in the world will not change the women's ability in mathematics (or give them more confidence to become better). Why can't we just agree that our brains are simply wired different and that male brains are better at some things? Why is it OK to say women are better at verbal skills but god forbid if you say they are worse at math?

I know it can hurt feelings and it is rude but I feel like I need to say that women are in general intellectually inferior to men. Occam's razor: Is it simpler to explain that women's lack of success in scientific or thinking areas is because of some universal prejudice against them (which includes the prejudice of women against themselves as well) and a complex social oppression which lets the more alien people (like Asians) get technical jobs but leaves out the species men in power love most (women) or is it just that men are smarter?

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A slight inclination of the cranium is as adequate as a spasmodic movement of one optic towards an equinine quadruped utterly devoid of any visionary capacity.

Occam's Razor requires taking all the evidence into consideration before deciding which is better and simpler. You, quite frankly, are not. Despite the fact that I, for one, have provided you with examples of prejudice against women, including by women.

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Gillian

"Now everyone was giving her that kind of look UFOlogists get when they suddenly say, 'Hey, if you shade your eyes you can see it is just a flock of geese after all.'"

"You can't erase icing."

"I can't believe it doesn't work! I found it on the internet, man!"

Thinking back to my sociology classes, they drew a distinction between sex and gender differences, with sex-based differences having an actual biological basis, while gender-based differences were attributed to biology, but were actually cultural. The problem (which most sociologists will readily admit) is that it can be very difficult to untangle the two. The usual statistical sociology methods are usually too limited in scope (it's hard to get an adequate survey sampling of world cultures), while anthropology methods are basically just arguments from anecdote.

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“There’s nothing that spells progress in large, friendly letters like trying to combine two totally incompatible technologies.” – David Szondy, Tales of Future Past.