Ok but, awful as this is, “you should consider it” is funny, ngl
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
on 14 Mar 16:17
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Yeah, it’s a sexist comment implying she isn’t either qualified to be at the conference, or mistaking her for a passerby who is unaffiliated, and should consider working there. Either way, I don’t find sexism funny. Dunno why anybody would, but hey, I’m just some guy on the internet, so you do you.
osaerisxero@kbin.melroy.org
on 14 Mar 16:32
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It would work fine if the target was a man too, it's just one hell of a burn. It's a shame he was using it for evil.
Without any context it or history its just kinda dickish? Like maybe a good burn to a rival in some sort of relevent scenairo but this just sounds like an attempt to belittle someone by “mistaking” them for something “lesser” then when called on it they double down?
Strikes me as grade school level bullying at best 🤷
atomicorange@lemmy.world
on 14 Mar 18:32
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Why “burn” someone you just met? That just makes you an asshole.
I don’t think it’s that funny, just a sad defense for not being able to recognize that someone belongs at the conference instead of among the customer service staff.
LH0ezVT@sh.itjust.works
on 14 Mar 17:36
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I’m curious there, too.
Goodman@discuss.tchncs.de
on 14 Mar 22:23
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Yeah… Not that surprising to me. TU Delft hasn’t been doing so hot. They literally have it all. Corruption, harassment, nepotism. But if you are not a PhD student you shouldn’t be too affected by any of these.
cleanandsunny@literature.cafe
on 15 Mar 03:11
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Thanks so much for these links. I haven’t had time to look into Dutch sources. I have two good female friends doing their PhDs in other universities in the Netherlands in the sciences, and I’ve never heard anything even remotely close to this! They love their positions.
Goodman@discuss.tchncs.de
on 15 Mar 16:24
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Edit: Just generally read a bit on delta if you want to know more. It’s the Uni press. They even got censored by the university when they first reported some of this if I recall correctly.
cleanandsunny@literature.cafe
on 15 Mar 17:56
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Dank u wel!!
Goodman@discuss.tchncs.de
on 15 Mar 18:35
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Thanks. I only heard about Delft from a woman studying there, and didn’t hear any complaints. I guess PhD students cannot run as easily, so they get the short end :(
Actually, I was loosely considering applying there, this made sure I won’t. That stuff needs to be made more public, so that their reputation noticeably suffers. Only then will people care to enact change.
There is an excellent Science channel on Youtube and Nebula with a Physics PHD who’s made some eye-opening content about harassment and misogyny in STEM and Academia.
DaveyRocket@lemmy.world
on 14 Mar 16:43
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She’s a great science communicator. Another famous Youtuber (Captain D) called her “the Jenny Nicholson of science” her Dark Matter video is my favorite, though her Gell-Mann Amnesia video is a “must watch” imho.
Watch her dark matter video. And the follow up. But for the love of God, dodge the comments. SO MANY people read the title of the video and then went to make comments calling her wrong, even though she spent like an hour specifically addressing the arguments they make.
Dark matter is not a theory. It’s a problem. Fuck!
DaveyRocket@lemmy.world
on 14 Mar 20:01
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The only thing you should post in those comments is:
Dark Matter
Where is it?
How much?
Where is it?
How much?
Goodman@discuss.tchncs.de
on 14 Mar 22:24
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Do we need it?
RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
on 14 Mar 21:02
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I thought it was a theory like how gravity works is a theory.
Like I said, watch her video. She goes into lots of detail and gives a much better explanation than I could ever hope to. But here I go anyway:
The gist of it is that “dark matter” isn’t really an attempt to explain anything. Like, theory of gravity, we have some good rules, things accelerate depending on mass and proximity to other things. Theory of dark matter? Not so much.
Dark matter is a problem in the sense that it’s an observable phenomenon we can’t really explain. When we observe really far away stars and galaxies, they interact in ways that imply far larger amount of matter than what we are actually observing. So where’s that matter? We don’t know! Dark matter! But unfortunately that nomenclature and the many ideas surrounding what does cause the dark matter phenomenon have deeply clouded the conversation.
Dark matter is not a theory of how things work. It’s a problem to be solved.
RowRowRowYourBot@sh.itjust.works
on 14 Mar 23:52
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So it’s more we know it’s there we just don’t currently know what it is.
It isn’t theoretical much like the stink around me rn isn’t theoretical even if I cannot see or smell it with my stuffy nose because when I farted the dog barked at me and ran out of the room. I might not be able to directly observe it but clearly it is there.
Uhh I guess it’s kinda like that, minus you knowing you farted. Imagine the dog barked and ran but you genuinely had no idea why that happened. As a joke you go “dang that was like I farted so bad even the dog couldn’t stand it!” But now everyone heard you say you farted, so any time a dog barks and runs away they call it “Rowbot’s fart.”
Dark matter may not literally be matter of any kind at all. All we know for sure is that objects with a certain amount of observable matter are, for some reason, behaving like they have much, much more. But also not with any consistency; some of them act like they have 30% more, others like they’re twice their size. We just call it dark matter because “dang it’s like there’s a bunch of matter we can’t see.” But we don’t really know what’s causing the discrepancy.
To be fair, it’s not like we’re totally clueless about it, but as of yet no single hypothesis has any concrete proof.
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
on 14 Mar 16:54
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Are you a woman? I’ve never met a woman who hasn’t had some experience with this. Sexism is everywhere, and if you haven’t really experienced it, that’s bcz you’re a guy.
themoken@startrek.website
on 14 Mar 18:36
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Don’t know what the other comment was, but everyone has experienced sexism. It’s inevitable that inaccurate gender stereotypes will be applied to you at some time. For men it’s just the “stop emoting you fucking pussy” or “you suck at nurturing so don’t even try.”
The patriarchy fucks us all.
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
on 14 Mar 18:57
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While I agree, men face sexism too, in a different way. It feels like minimizing their experiences, to have someone come in here and say, well, actually, men face sexism as well.
I am a guy, for the record. I just finally started listening to the women in my life who have been telling me for years that they face this stuff.
themoken@startrek.website
on 14 Mar 19:12
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I don’t think it’s minimizing to acknowledge that sexism is endemic and cuts both ways.
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
on 15 Mar 00:10
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You don’t have to think its minimizing. I’m trying to tell you nicely that it is.
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 15 Mar 12:59
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Well, you’re wrong, so maybe don’t be a condescending shit about it
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
on 15 Mar 16:18
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The fact that you are so angry about what I have to say tells me I’m not.
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 15 Mar 18:17
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The fact that you have to pretend I’m angry for pointing out you were a cunt just to pretend you’re in the right is sad
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
on 15 Mar 23:06
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Do some self reflection my dude. Toxic masculinity is not the same thing, not even close.
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 16 Mar 00:04
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Never said it was the same thing, don’t put words in other people’s mouth. You said it minimizes people’s experience to point out that sexism isn’t exclusively experienced by one sex, which is a silly thing to say, and was the point of discussion, because of your original “if you haven’t experienced sexism you’re a man” comment
The reading comprehension/memory of people on this site has gone down the shitter the last couple weeks, jfc
NocturnalMorning@lemmy.world
on 16 Mar 00:11
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Good talk, but clearly not gonna get anywhere here. Have a nice weekend.
True, the patriarchy harms everyone. Sexism against women harms them (even kills) from interactions with men, negatively affects education, career, even hobbies. Leads to medical bias which also may kill them. Leads to them being trafficked and used as sex slaves. Experience female genital mutilation.
Andrew Tate is a hugely popular figure amongst young men. Those men are being harmed by the patriarchy but don’t realise or maybe care as they’re too busy harming women. It’s not the same for men, they’re massively privileged compared with women.
themoken@startrek.website
on 15 Mar 01:07
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The patriarchy is also what sends men to die for imperialism, tells them they can’t ask for help, admit weakness, or be vulnerable. It’s why the ratio of suicides is 6:1 men to women in the US and men are something like 4 times more likely to die deaths of despair, take jobs that destroy their body, or get rejected from jobs that deal with caring or teaching because of biased assumptions of pedophilia and sexual abuse.
Yes, some (read: cis, hetero, rich) men are privileged by the system, and we should absolutely not discount women’s experiences, but it’s not one or the other, it’s both.
Oh, have you been sent to die? War duties are irrelevant for most men. The last conscription in my country was WW2 and women died then too, as nurses near the front, in the blitz, as spies, etc. All genders join the military now.
Meanwhile I think the conviction rate now, in 2025 for rape of women by men is 1%. That means you won’t get justice if you’re a woman reporting a serious crime. Women in america are dying because they can’t get healthcare for their miscarriage and pre-teen girls forced to carry their rapists baby. On shitter dickheads openly gloat ‘your body, my choice’ with no censorship, because abuse of women isn’t censored. Andrew Tate. Not really the same situation for men and women, is it? Women aren’t causing men to commit suicide but men are still controlling, belittling, abusing and killing women.
If you’re actually against the patriarchy you have to realise that it fucks women over way more and always has. We’re only seeing a backslide right now, and I suppose women in the west are lucky they aren’t in a country they would be stoned to death, or not be allowed to be overheard talking, seen inside their own home, etc.
themoken@startrek.website
on 15 Mar 02:46
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Nobody is arguing that the patriarchy fucks men harder than women because you’re right, it doesn’t.
Your dismissal of the military issue and suicide is an example of your, and society’s, complete lack of empathy for men. Sure, it’s not women sending men to die, or directly causing them to feel hopeless, but that doesn’t somehow mean they aren’t victims of the patriarchy.
Did I personally get ordered to die? No, but I sure as hell had my role as an emotionless working machine, the assumed self-sufficient breadwinner that needed to support my entire family myself even if it meant my life was expendable, pushed on me by men, women, religion, and the media. And if I didn’t want that role or failed to live up to it, I’m a fucking loser and the community doesn’t care that I fed myself to a meat grinder and came out broken.
I promise, it’s possible to have empathy for the women who are being fucked by the patriarchy as well as the men simultaneously. Going back to my initial comment, it was never trying to disregard the scientist in the post, only dispel this idea that there is some individual that hasn’t experienced sexism/patriarchy.
I have empathy for men, in fact all genders are experiencing all of the issues you had mentioned as specific to men. I mentioned conscription because that’s something which hasn’t happened in the west in the lifetime of most men alive today. I might as well complain that women can’t vote. Why don’t you have empathy for women who can’t vote? You know why women usually don’t usually fight in war? Because men don’t just try to kill them, they use sexual violence against them. Not just the enemy but their own comrades.
I don’t know if you realise but women also wage slave and for a hell of a lot less money usually. They’re cleaners, carers, doing the dirty jobs noone else wants. Then they often go home and take care of their kids and chores -women’s work. All while getting zero respect from society. And if the man leaves for any reason, she’s a single mother and therefore worthless. If you want to learn, watch the maid. That’s a good example of a woman struggling against the patriarchy. The father of the kid in that show is struggling too and I do think he deserves empathy but I see who has it worse.
themoken@startrek.website
on 15 Mar 03:57
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You keep getting hung up on conscription as if there aren’t thousands of men who went to war in the last 25 years. You don’t have to be drafted to get killed or traumatized, and just because you enlisted doesn’t mean you deserved everything that happened to you (esp. when most enlist are poor, have no prospects, and get effectively brainwashed as a teenager that the military is an out).
As for the rest, yes have empathy for single parents and wage slaves of any gender. I’m sorry sexual assault is thing that happens to many women.
So…you also want us to feel sorry for people who chose to sign up to be a soldier, knowing what that would entail? There are also women who died or were maimed or abused in war. Not as many, because not as many women chose that (or could choose that).
That’s kind of the point, someone can make a bad choice because of poor education and prospects, but another person is given no choice. I’d argue the person with no choices is worse off. Men have historically denied women the right to choose and I see that attitude is on the rise. Its unhelpful to say ‘what about men’ when talking about the struggles of women and marginalised genders.
Not that male struggles aren’t important, but its exactly the same as when a marginalised race says ‘black lives matter’ and a white person says ‘all lives matter’. The latter is true, but doesn’t need to be said - everyone already agrees. Noone is trying specifically to take rights away from men, and definitely not women. Its not just the patriarchy that fucks all people, but capitalism. Women’s issues go beyond that because people also in a state of being fucked by patriarchy/capitalism are hurting them specifically because they’re women.
I do think that if decent people can try to understand the different struggles and be allies for each other, that’s how we all win. It’s just that given the fact that
when so many women are being harmed by men, is it surprising that a lot of women are untrusting and even hostile? Like the 4B movement. Its bad enough that there’s still a gender pay gap, that CEOs are rarely women etc. They’re seeing their hard won rights dwindle away in real time.
gamermanh@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 15 Mar 12:58
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Man, you’re really trying to disprove your claim of having empathy for men, aren’tcha?
Coined by English philosopher and historian of science William Whewell in March 1834 in an anonymous review of Mary Somerville’s book On the Connexion of the Physical Sciences in the Quarterly Review
This just makes me sad. How can science advance, if we gatekeep one half of human population? In my academic career I have consistently found women to be smarter and better than men. Yet, these misogynistic ideas seem to persist. We deserve better than old farts with even older bias heading the institutions that make up our society.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
on 14 Mar 19:46
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It’s exactly that is why they’re kept down. Tiny men are afraid that they won’t seem as smart as the woman in the room.
As a man, I try to be different. I mentor the women around me and encourage them to do more, be better. I successfully got one of my mentee to negotiate her salary just yesterday even though she felt uncomfortable doing so. Try to be the change we need
I don't mentor anybody. I am not smarter than anybody and frankly I am always learning from everybody, at all levels of experience.
scrubbles@poptalk.scrubbles.tech
on 14 Mar 20:27
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Never claimed to be smarter than anyone, but if you’re experienced then people look up to you. A little bit of encouragement can go a long way. Like my story, all I did was nudge her to negotiate, and she felt the confidence to do so.
I can recommend looking into “science days” and stuff like that. It makes you a lot more hopeful for the future to see a lot of curious, open-minded 12-year olds.
And then they likely become the usual cynic adults, but hey, you tried.
ThisIsAManWhoKnowsHowToGling@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 15 Mar 23:18
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Never understood why some people so desperately need to be the smartest being in the universe. You’re a magic meat computers running on a system of hormones so complex that tweaking their balance just a bit can cause unforseen permament consequences. None of us have the right to call ourselves “smart”. Just chill and do your best.
TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works
on 14 Mar 20:13
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It cannot
ChickenLadyLovesLife@lemmy.world
on 15 Mar 10:11
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When I was in elementary school, we always had a table at the back where the advanced students would do more difficult stuff than the rest of the class while not being completely isolated. The table was always me and 5 or 6 girls. When we graduated high school, I was the top-ranked boy - and the 22nd-ranked student overall. I just took it completely for granted that girls were smarter than boys (although I did perceive the very strong anti-intellectual culture among boys which seemed more impactful than native abilities).
It wasn’t until I went to college that I started encountering the belief that men were fundamentally smarter than women, even though every college and university I’ve attended had more women than male students and the women had much better academic performance. That was my first taste of the power of group delusion.
Snowclone@lemmy.world
on 15 Mar 16:24
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Half way through the Hidden Figures movie I started to realize that the racist sexist people in charge really deserved to lose to the Russians.
cabinet_sanchez@midwest.social
on 15 Mar 19:10
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But now they’re all “DEI hires,” at least in the US, so we’re fucked over here
I read the first sentence in that big paragraph and thought “wow, going straight to the biggest problem right out of the gate instead of building up to it, huh?” Then I kept reading and realized the entire paragraph was about that same thing. Holy shit, that’s a lot of sexism!
TacoButtPlug@sh.itjust.works
on 14 Mar 20:12
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Fucking relatable.
No thank you to the hundreds of years of chemist men taking credit for women’s discoveries.
No thank you to the old white Persian man gate keeping chemistry from Ukranians and older women in my class.
No thank you to the sexist math book author who used shoeless women in a kitchen as a word problem example.
No thank you to Amazon for banning my 15 year account for calling the sexist math book author out in reviews.
I’m not sure of the timeframe of this, but it could be referring to the time when calculations were done by women by hand: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Computers
pineapplelover@lemm.ee
on 14 Mar 22:01
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They were paid basically minimum wage, so they weren’t treated the best. They were doing important work, and I personally have a lot of respect for it, but it was (and still is) an uphill battle against sexism.
could be referring to “mad men” era secretaries as ibm era computers were just better fancier word processors/typewriters
edit: or maybe like IT helpdesk staff who are like janitors (i.e. they don’t see a difference between calling environmental services for a clogged toilet vs IT for a bricked computer)
If a man told you he worked with computers, it’d be odd to raise an eyebrow and respond “Are you some kind of computer boy?”. The technician treated this woman’s work as something special because she was a woman. In other words: A man that works with a computer is still just a man. A woman that works with a computer must be something special, a computer girl.
And bonus points for calling her a girl, which is just a little bit more infantilizing.
ZombiFrancis@sh.itjust.works
on 14 Mar 20:57
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Shoutout to the physicists dismissing biologist experiment design as a whole instead of across sexual or gendered lines.
GrumpyDuckling@sh.itjust.works
on 14 Mar 21:01
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I don’t really understand how that one was a problem if they’re also a physicist, or even if they’re a biologist. Nothing wrong with some fun rivalry.
Tar_alcaran@sh.itjust.works
on 14 Mar 22:03
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There’s always rivalry between physicist and biologists. Or chemists and biologists. Or biologists and biologists. Damn biologists, they ruined biology!
When I was at college us physicists would joke about the biologists and the chemists and the mathematicians and the engineers, and in turn they’d joke about us, and we’d all have a good laugh over it.
I suppose it would come down to the context and how it was said.
Nah, it’s typical university faction wars. Engineers say crap about architects, mathematicians sneer on physicists and so on…
mortemtyrannis@lemmy.ml
on 15 Mar 11:41
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How people can walk out of a university with degrees and not understand how all areas of knowledge contribute towards each other and link together in ways that are not immediately obvious astounds me.
GoofSchmoofer@lemmy.world
on 15 Mar 12:42
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because of a long established undercurrent of competition within departments (and even between professors) for recognition and advancement. That and there are some people that have very large but very fragile egos that can’t allow another person or discipline to grab more sunlight than them.
prole@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 15 Mar 12:13
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Engineers say crap about architects
As an engineer, this shit is so cringe… There is a youtube gaming channel with an alleged engineer who plays video games (often related to physics or building things), and his entire fucking personality is formed around mocking architects for being “stupid.” He literally substitutes in the word “architect” instead of calling someone stupid. He say’s “they’re an architect.”
Grow the fuck up goddamn. How insecure do you have to be?
I’m a heavy equipment mechanic, and every day in the shop I hear other guys complaining about how an engineer fucked up a design on a piece of equipment and that’s why it failed. Or that the engineer made it hard to work on on purpose. So cringe. I just roll my eyes at them and tell them if they are so smart then why aren’t they the ones designing the equipment lol
Its sad that all the fields feel the need to shit 9n each other. We as a society would got a lot further if we could all get along 😁
I heard a joke once that a physical chemistry experiment will have 1000 data points per trend line; I organic chemistry will have 10 data points, and biochem will have 2 data points.
I bet to biochemists it’s very insulting. Back to the comment in the anti-acknowledgements, that was insulting without even being funny.
I like the ones that are symmetrical, like math thinks that physics is easy, and physics things that math is too unreal (I don’t remember the jokes)
emergencyfood@sh.itjust.works
on 15 Mar 15:13
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a physical chemistry experiment will have 1000 data points per trend line; I organic chemistry will have 10 data points, and biochem will have 2 data points.
There is an element of truth in this, but that one biochem datapoint probably took more money and (wo)manpower than a hundred phys chem datapoints. Which is sad, because biological systems are usually more complex, and therefore more ‘noisy’, needing more datapoints for a definitive result. Medical studies get a lot of datapoints for obvious reasons, and because they can afford to do it thanks to Merck et al.
It’s got an element of truth but they’re still the butt of a joke
AdrianTheFrog@lemmy.world
on 15 Mar 23:21
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My mom is a biologist and complains how physicists always come into biology, try to reinvent everything without looking at any prior work, and then fail to execute their (sometimes interesting, sometimes not) method
I appreciate her telling it like it is and not bowing to a pressure to please.
Found an article speaking more about it, if anyone is curious about the context/her work.
Blazingtransfem98@discuss.online
on 15 Mar 00:24
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Fuck these misogynistic pigs, idiots like these need to be called out more often. It’s too bad she couldn’t give names out and completely humiliate and ruin them.
AidsKitty@lemmy.world
on 15 Mar 10:36
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Only if the accusations are true. It is just a post on the internet, there is no proof any of this is true or factual. Don’t be in such a hurry to harm others and damage their lives.
As a woman, and having known many other women, I can promise you that none of what is mentioned is particularly far fetched. It’s sad, but we all have multiple stories like this. Almost any woman could put together a similar paragraph of incidents she has personally experienced.
Edit to add: she didn’t even name anyone! No one is harmed, except the people who know they should be ashamed of themselves.
As a man I’d have never believed how common such behavior is. I’d have thought that’s really outlandish.
Now I’ve gone through the (probably stereotypical) process of a guy having a daughter, she’s an adult now.
What she told me - no, all this stuff isn’t unusual at all. The first time she was afraid (and called me as she already had a phone of her own) she was not even 10 years old, riding her bike from my place to the ex-wife’s place, teenage boys catcalling her.
There’s a lot of us men around who find it hard to believe, because it doesn’t happen to US. But it does. Frequently.
Snowclone@lemmy.world
on 15 Mar 16:16
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I know it never happened around me personally, I’m tall and mean looking, but working in service for over a decade and most people don’t know how bad it is. You learn that the restraining order needs to happen BEFORE it gets worse not as it gets worse. And none of that protects workers traveling to work. You can’t let anyone walk alone to their car alone after close, and if a guy comes in and asks for an associate with those creep vibes, and they aren’t known to the associate or a part of their private life in anyway, you need to aggressively fight it. On visit two looking for her, you have to pull her behind closed doors and report to the police he’s stalking and get a restraining order. SECOND VISIT. Anything less and you’re letting to go way to far.
It’s not happening to us, but it’s happening all around us and we choose not to see it. Once my own daughter began talking to me about her experiences and pointing out men’s problematic behavior in public, I can no longer not see it.
It’s worth noting too that for every instance of feeling scared, there are at least 5 situations where women feel belittled. I think even well meaning men are a lot less aware of it happening, or of them doing it themselves. My own father is a sweetheart who means well, but he’s skeptical of anything I tell him until my husband repeats what I’m saying. I’ve had achievements minimized because I didn’t also raise a family while doing them. I’ve been denied entry into hobbies. I’ve been given fewer opportunities at work because they want a cute face at the front desk. I’ve been told math is not for me, while being the only middle schooler in the math team who could regularly beat high schoolers at competitions. I’ve been told no boys would ever want to be my friend, because boys can only be after one thing, so all the ones being friendly are faking it. And of courses I’ve had boys stop being my friend when it becomes clear that friendship is all I’m after.
It’s harder to spot but cuts to your self worth like these add up over time.
BradleyUffner@lemmy.world
on 15 Mar 11:29
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As the husband of a woman with a PhD, let me assure you that I have witnessed several of these first hand when I travel with her to conferences.
thespcicifcocean@lemmy.world
on 15 Mar 12:01
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While I agree with the first part of what you said, I don’t think the longterm solution is to call out individuals and make their lives horrible. It sure is a good way to maybe deter a few people from doing those misogynistic things. But what we need is actual structural change. It shouldn’t be possible these people to do such things in the first place without being sanctioned. And we should educate people more on feminism and intersectional struggles in general.
Swedneck@discuss.tchncs.de
on 17 Mar 12:18
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counterpoint: many people fundamentally need to be shamed if they’re being shitheads, or they will never improve. The important part is just that they also need to be given a clear way to redeem themselves.
Naming and shaming is part of the structural change.
Normalise this. In the past women would have been accused of being unprofessional to have called men out like this. That’s the only reason why every woman doesn’t do it.
ChaoticNeutralCzech@feddit.org
on 15 Mar 14:40
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This seems to be the Netherlands (TU Delft). Maybe it’s normal there.
But surely equality has been achieved in the last few months, this all feels so very January. People are so much more open minded now than in those dark days of the past. Why waste time even discussing such outdated attitudes that totally and completely disappeared in February and are certain to never return?!
It’s all in the wording, but I think it’s also the contradiction between the first and second/third sentences.
Yes yes, intelligent woman be intimidating to some people.
Acknowledges that intelligent women are intimidating to some. It also uses present tense, which implies the author knows this is still the case.
But how old is this, is it still that bad? The “computer girl” could be around 2000.
Ah “it”. Which it? That some people are intimidated by intelligent women or that the author encountered a ton of sexism?
I think it’s ok to ask how prevalent sexism still is these days, especially if you personally experience it / don’t participate in a field dominated by the opposite gender.
Something like “I thought society would have finally realized this behavior wasn’t appropriate after me too, is that not the case?” sounds less tone deaf.
cabinet_sanchez@midwest.social
on 15 Mar 19:13
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Simpler said than done. Of course I agree with you, but we need deeper changes in our society, in our behaviour as people. If you get told time and time again, that you’re worthless, can’t achieve anything etc. that’s going to leave a mark. Sure, encouraging to not let that dominate one’s thoughts is a useful skill. But it shouldn’t be necessary in the first place.
You can also have a chance to get out of such a negative surrounding, connect with people that respect you and do actions that raise your self esteem (back).
nomugisan@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 15 Mar 15:53
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Spoken like a true man. I’m a victim of sexism in STEM, now resigned to finish my degree in Japanese rather than deal with the awfulness that is men in Engingeering.
Snowclone@lemmy.world
on 15 Mar 16:08
nextcollapse
Maybe instead of meaningless platitudes actual change would be in order.
The woman who had to endure constant misogyny during her scientific career. You’re placing the responsibility on her instead of the people oppressing her
It may be in a scientific paper, but this is more of an anecdote about the various issues the author encountered, rather than something intended to be actionable and clearly delineated as you’d expect in the body of a scientific article. Therefore a more literary style is appropriate for this section.
My mental model is that bullet points are for when you expect a reader to go over the points with a highlighter, prose for when you want to produce an emotional response. This feels more like the latter.
gandalf_der_12te@discuss.tchncs.de
on 15 Mar 17:48
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Yeah i agree with you. I feel like prose is for free-style text, which doesn’t claim to be rigorous. Bullet points always feel like there’s more rigor involved.
She also made a video extolling the virtues of capitalism and how science wouldn’t have progressed without it, but then oddly went on to make videos about why she had to leave academia because of profit motive forcing her to research things that didn’t matter but got grant funding to keep her alive, without making the connection that the profit motive that destroyed her dream is due to capitalism.
Love the part on the video where essentially she says “I was given my first research position thanks to a grant for women. Also, there should be no research grants for women”. Piece of shit.
in an equal world, grants aimed specifically at either sex should not be necessary
Not quite, I’m afraid. Her point was essentially “I had very good grades, so I would have been hired anyway, but instead of hiring me normally, they hired me through this grant for women, which is a form of discrimination”. She’s not explicitly saying “kick the ladder when I’m up top”, but it’s essentially the conclusion. She mentions it on the “what’s wrong with academia” thingy video.
WilloftheWest@feddit.uk
on 15 Mar 15:14
nextcollapse
Bravo to the exceptional bravery on display here. I’m sure the majority of PhD graduates, including myself, wish they’d had the gumption to name and shame the suppressing factors contributing to a toxic academic environment. Reading this makes me kind of appreciative that my troubles were only administrative mismanagement and an inexperienced supervisor.
Also what the hell is up with TU Delft? It’s only partway through March and this is the second time this year that I’ve seen a PhD candidate publicly call out the institute.
mindbleach@sh.itjust.works
on 15 Mar 17:04
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No thank you to the physicist who declared to a room full of other physicists that biologists “don’t know how to design an experiment.”
That’s just what physics does to your brain. They’re all like that.
melpomenesclevage@lemmy.dbzer0.com
on 15 Mar 19:31
nextcollapse
yeah. the rest of this seems like serious grievances, but physicists saying dumb arrogant shit to other scientists about not being ‘real’ fields seems like blaming water for being wet.
PixelPinecone@lemmy.today
on 15 Mar 23:48
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Hey, not all of us! Physics was humbling in my experience. Had the exact opposite effect.
I did exceptionally well at a top physics university, and still felt stupid all the time.
It took getting my ass handed to me to wipe that veneer off my perceived awesomeness and realized I’m doing this cause I love it. Why would I think down on anyone else doing what they do cause they love it?
And I sure as hell came to realize that there’s people better at biology than I am at physics.
That said, lots of physics people are high on their own supply. So, not discounting the reality of physics dickheads that are in abundant supply.
stormdelay@sh.itjust.works
on 16 Mar 11:54
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I don’t know how it is in the USA, but here biologist graduates are mostly women, so I think the implication is that she was being called a biologist (who can’t design experiments) because she’s a woman
ThatGuy46475@lemmy.world
on 15 Mar 17:36
nextcollapse
Does anyone have info about the lawsuit
oftheair@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 15 Mar 18:20
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For anybody having difficulty reading the text:
Anti Acknowledgements
There have unfortunately also been people who have been less than helpful in my journey here. I wanted to acknowledge those too, because I know I am not unique in this experience.
No thank you to the physics study association that made me sing songs about how women couldn’t study physics without sleeping with the professor, the day I stepped into university life. No thank you to the 5th year physics student that decided to assign me a ‘stripper name’ within the first minute of meeting me in the physics coffee corner in my first year. No thank you to the technician that was responsible for onboarding me on the use of the cluster in my third year who raised his eyebrows and asked me if that meant I was some sort of “computer girl”. No thank you to the senior researcher that sent me utterly inappropriate texts after a conference, then proceeded to ‘apologise’ months later by telling me they had not been meant for me anyway so “no hard feelings remain hopefully”. And no thank you to him for attending every conference I’ve been to since. No thank you to the people who told me that it was “surprising” that I was doing a PhD since I was a girl. No thank you to the man who mistook me for a coffee lady at a conference, and after having to correct him two times that I did not work there, responded with “you should consider it”. No thank you to the researcher that asked me what I was wearing underneath my outfit during a conference. No thank you to the physicist who declared to a room full of other physicists that biologists “don’t know how to design an experiment”. No thank you to the people who have called me scary instead of strong and intimidating instead of intelligent. And finally, no thank you to the executive board of the TU Delft, whose knee-jerk reaction to being held up to a mirror about the social safety at the university, was to sue the party holding up the mirror instead of looking at the problems they highlighted.
I wish I could tell you this has all made me stronger somehow but in reality it has only shattered my confidence. You have made me feel like I do not belong in science and I cannot forgive you for that.
-Rachel
Ensign_Crab@lemmy.world
on 16 Mar 14:25
nextcollapse
Dammit. Should have checked the comments first.
oftheair@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 16 Mar 14:29
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Because I squinted my way through the image first. I should have read the comments first.
oftheair@lemmy.blahaj.zone
on 16 Mar 14:36
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Yeah. We had to do that kind of too, so we decided to type it all up. Opened up a notepad like program and wrote every single thing in the image, then went back to check for mistakes we made. We missed a few but the browser’s spell checker picked them up thankfully 🙂
I don’t doubt the stories, but a court would see it in a different way for a good reason. It’s hard to find a solution between slander and rightfully calling someone out.
JacksonLamb@lemmy.world
on 16 Mar 09:20
nextcollapse
What she has been through is awful.
I wish though that more people knew the difference between an Acknowledgements page and a Thank You page.
This should properly be titled Anti Thanks.
Acknowledgements should only cover individuals and institutions whose contributions are a direct factor in the material body of the text.
Edit: I see a surprisingly large number of you have, or plan to, amateurishly shoehorn your parents, best friends, favourite barista, and pet cat into your phD Acknowledgements.
Spend the 10 cents on having an extra page of front matter; your future publisher will thank me.
threaded - newest
Ok but, awful as this is, “you should consider it” is funny, ngl
Yeah, it’s a sexist comment implying she isn’t either qualified to be at the conference, or mistaking her for a passerby who is unaffiliated, and should consider working there. Either way, I don’t find sexism funny. Dunno why anybody would, but hey, I’m just some guy on the internet, so you do you.
It would work fine if the target was a man too, it's just one hell of a burn. It's a shame he was using it for evil.
Without any context it or history its just kinda dickish? Like maybe a good burn to a rival in some sort of relevent scenairo but this just sounds like an attempt to belittle someone by “mistaking” them for something “lesser” then when called on it they double down?
Strikes me as grade school level bullying at best 🤷
Why “burn” someone you just met? That just makes you an asshole.
Burn in something else
In my case i teased a flatmate with “ladies first” when i opened the door while he passed through and he replied with “bitches next”
That is funny because the attacker (me) got payback
In her case he simply stomped on her from the start with no sense of the respect she deserves. No smart comebacks or something, only a douchebag
I don’t think it’s that funny, just a sad defense for not being able to recognize that someone belongs at the conference instead of among the customer service staff.
Now I want an anti-acknowledgment section in my dissertation too
Name dropping TU Delft is surprising to me! ETA: found more info here, but not about the lawsuit piece.
…tudelft.nl/…/a-no-thank-you-to-the-person-who-as…
I’m curious there, too.
Yeah… Not that surprising to me. TU Delft hasn’t been doing so hot. They literally have it all. Corruption, harassment, nepotism. But if you are not a PhD student you shouldn’t be too affected by any of these.
Thanks so much for these links. I haven’t had time to look into Dutch sources. I have two good female friends doing their PhDs in other universities in the Netherlands in the sciences, and I’ve never heard anything even remotely close to this! They love their positions.
This is a pretty holistic article on all the “badness” in english …tudelft.nl/…/victims-of-social-unsafety-always-d…
Edit: Just generally read a bit on delta if you want to know more. It’s the Uni press. They even got censored by the university when they first reported some of this if I recall correctly.
Dank u wel!!
Geen probleem 😉
Thanks. I only heard about Delft from a woman studying there, and didn’t hear any complaints. I guess PhD students cannot run as easily, so they get the short end :(
Actually, I was loosely considering applying there, this made sure I won’t. That stuff needs to be made more public, so that their reputation noticeably suffers. Only then will people care to enact change.
There is an excellent Science channel on Youtube and Nebula with a Physics PHD who’s made some eye-opening content about harassment and misogyny in STEM and Academia.
www.youtube.com/@acollierastro
She’s a great science communicator. Another famous Youtuber (Captain D) called her “the Jenny Nicholson of science” her Dark Matter video is my favorite, though her Gell-Mann Amnesia video is a “must watch” imho.
Watch her dark matter video. And the follow up. But for the love of God, dodge the comments. SO MANY people read the title of the video and then went to make comments calling her wrong, even though she spent like an hour specifically addressing the arguments they make.
Dark matter is not a theory. It’s a problem. Fuck!
The only thing you should post in those comments is:
Dark Matter
Where is it?
How much?
Where is it?
How much?
Do we need it?
I thought it was a theory like how gravity works is a theory.
Like I said, watch her video. She goes into lots of detail and gives a much better explanation than I could ever hope to. But here I go anyway:
The gist of it is that “dark matter” isn’t really an attempt to explain anything. Like, theory of gravity, we have some good rules, things accelerate depending on mass and proximity to other things. Theory of dark matter? Not so much.
Dark matter is a problem in the sense that it’s an observable phenomenon we can’t really explain. When we observe really far away stars and galaxies, they interact in ways that imply far larger amount of matter than what we are actually observing. So where’s that matter? We don’t know! Dark matter! But unfortunately that nomenclature and the many ideas surrounding what does cause the dark matter phenomenon have deeply clouded the conversation.
Dark matter is not a theory of how things work. It’s a problem to be solved.
So it’s more we know it’s there we just don’t currently know what it is.
It isn’t theoretical much like the stink around me rn isn’t theoretical even if I cannot see or smell it with my stuffy nose because when I farted the dog barked at me and ran out of the room. I might not be able to directly observe it but clearly it is there.
Uhh I guess it’s kinda like that, minus you knowing you farted. Imagine the dog barked and ran but you genuinely had no idea why that happened. As a joke you go “dang that was like I farted so bad even the dog couldn’t stand it!” But now everyone heard you say you farted, so any time a dog barks and runs away they call it “Rowbot’s fart.”
Dark matter may not literally be matter of any kind at all. All we know for sure is that objects with a certain amount of observable matter are, for some reason, behaving like they have much, much more. But also not with any consistency; some of them act like they have 30% more, others like they’re twice their size. We just call it dark matter because “dang it’s like there’s a bunch of matter we can’t see.” But we don’t really know what’s causing the discrepancy.
To be fair, it’s not like we’re totally clueless about it, but as of yet no single hypothesis has any concrete proof.
I recently got recommended her channel. She’s amazing, like Jenny Nicholson but for science.
Here are two videos on that subject that are great to start out with
Sexual harassment and assault in Astronomy and Physics
women in space (but with legos so it’s fun)
Love her videos! Really opened my eyes to a lot of this.
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Are you a woman? I’ve never met a woman who hasn’t had some experience with this. Sexism is everywhere, and if you haven’t really experienced it, that’s bcz you’re a guy.
Don’t know what the other comment was, but everyone has experienced sexism. It’s inevitable that inaccurate gender stereotypes will be applied to you at some time. For men it’s just the “stop emoting you fucking pussy” or “you suck at nurturing so don’t even try.”
The patriarchy fucks us all.
While I agree, men face sexism too, in a different way. It feels like minimizing their experiences, to have someone come in here and say, well, actually, men face sexism as well.
I am a guy, for the record. I just finally started listening to the women in my life who have been telling me for years that they face this stuff.
I don’t think it’s minimizing to acknowledge that sexism is endemic and cuts both ways.
You don’t have to think its minimizing. I’m trying to tell you nicely that it is.
Well, you’re wrong, so maybe don’t be a condescending shit about it
The fact that you are so angry about what I have to say tells me I’m not.
The fact that you have to pretend I’m angry for pointing out you were a cunt just to pretend you’re in the right is sad
Do some self reflection my dude. Toxic masculinity is not the same thing, not even close.
Never said it was the same thing, don’t put words in other people’s mouth. You said it minimizes people’s experience to point out that sexism isn’t exclusively experienced by one sex, which is a silly thing to say, and was the point of discussion, because of your original “if you haven’t experienced sexism you’re a man” comment
The reading comprehension/memory of people on this site has gone down the shitter the last couple weeks, jfc
Good talk, but clearly not gonna get anywhere here. Have a nice weekend.
True, the patriarchy harms everyone. Sexism against women harms them (even kills) from interactions with men, negatively affects education, career, even hobbies. Leads to medical bias which also may kill them. Leads to them being trafficked and used as sex slaves. Experience female genital mutilation.
Andrew Tate is a hugely popular figure amongst young men. Those men are being harmed by the patriarchy but don’t realise or maybe care as they’re too busy harming women. It’s not the same for men, they’re massively privileged compared with women.
The patriarchy is also what sends men to die for imperialism, tells them they can’t ask for help, admit weakness, or be vulnerable. It’s why the ratio of suicides is 6:1 men to women in the US and men are something like 4 times more likely to die deaths of despair, take jobs that destroy their body, or get rejected from jobs that deal with caring or teaching because of biased assumptions of pedophilia and sexual abuse.
Yes, some (read: cis, hetero, rich) men are privileged by the system, and we should absolutely not discount women’s experiences, but it’s not one or the other, it’s both.
Oh, have you been sent to die? War duties are irrelevant for most men. The last conscription in my country was WW2 and women died then too, as nurses near the front, in the blitz, as spies, etc. All genders join the military now.
Meanwhile I think the conviction rate now, in 2025 for rape of women by men is 1%. That means you won’t get justice if you’re a woman reporting a serious crime. Women in america are dying because they can’t get healthcare for their miscarriage and pre-teen girls forced to carry their rapists baby. On shitter dickheads openly gloat ‘your body, my choice’ with no censorship, because abuse of women isn’t censored. Andrew Tate. Not really the same situation for men and women, is it? Women aren’t causing men to commit suicide but men are still controlling, belittling, abusing and killing women.
If you’re actually against the patriarchy you have to realise that it fucks women over way more and always has. We’re only seeing a backslide right now, and I suppose women in the west are lucky they aren’t in a country they would be stoned to death, or not be allowed to be overheard talking, seen inside their own home, etc.
Nobody is arguing that the patriarchy fucks men harder than women because you’re right, it doesn’t.
Your dismissal of the military issue and suicide is an example of your, and society’s, complete lack of empathy for men. Sure, it’s not women sending men to die, or directly causing them to feel hopeless, but that doesn’t somehow mean they aren’t victims of the patriarchy.
Did I personally get ordered to die? No, but I sure as hell had my role as an emotionless working machine, the assumed self-sufficient breadwinner that needed to support my entire family myself even if it meant my life was expendable, pushed on me by men, women, religion, and the media. And if I didn’t want that role or failed to live up to it, I’m a fucking loser and the community doesn’t care that I fed myself to a meat grinder and came out broken.
I promise, it’s possible to have empathy for the women who are being fucked by the patriarchy as well as the men simultaneously. Going back to my initial comment, it was never trying to disregard the scientist in the post, only dispel this idea that there is some individual that hasn’t experienced sexism/patriarchy.
I have empathy for men, in fact all genders are experiencing all of the issues you had mentioned as specific to men. I mentioned conscription because that’s something which hasn’t happened in the west in the lifetime of most men alive today. I might as well complain that women can’t vote. Why don’t you have empathy for women who can’t vote? You know why women usually don’t usually fight in war? Because men don’t just try to kill them, they use sexual violence against them. Not just the enemy but their own comrades.
I don’t know if you realise but women also wage slave and for a hell of a lot less money usually. They’re cleaners, carers, doing the dirty jobs noone else wants. Then they often go home and take care of their kids and chores -women’s work. All while getting zero respect from society. And if the man leaves for any reason, she’s a single mother and therefore worthless. If you want to learn, watch the maid. That’s a good example of a woman struggling against the patriarchy. The father of the kid in that show is struggling too and I do think he deserves empathy but I see who has it worse.
You keep getting hung up on conscription as if there aren’t thousands of men who went to war in the last 25 years. You don’t have to be drafted to get killed or traumatized, and just because you enlisted doesn’t mean you deserved everything that happened to you (esp. when most enlist are poor, have no prospects, and get effectively brainwashed as a teenager that the military is an out).
As for the rest, yes have empathy for single parents and wage slaves of any gender. I’m sorry sexual assault is thing that happens to many women.
So…you also want us to feel sorry for people who chose to sign up to be a soldier, knowing what that would entail? There are also women who died or were maimed or abused in war. Not as many, because not as many women chose that (or could choose that).
That’s kind of the point, someone can make a bad choice because of poor education and prospects, but another person is given no choice. I’d argue the person with no choices is worse off. Men have historically denied women the right to choose and I see that attitude is on the rise. Its unhelpful to say ‘what about men’ when talking about the struggles of women and marginalised genders.
Not that male struggles aren’t important, but its exactly the same as when a marginalised race says ‘black lives matter’ and a white person says ‘all lives matter’. The latter is true, but doesn’t need to be said - everyone already agrees. Noone is trying specifically to take rights away from men, and definitely not women. Its not just the patriarchy that fucks all people, but capitalism. Women’s issues go beyond that because people also in a state of being fucked by patriarchy/capitalism are hurting them specifically because they’re women.
I do think that if decent people can try to understand the different struggles and be allies for each other, that’s how we all win. It’s just that given the fact that when so many women are being harmed by men, is it surprising that a lot of women are untrusting and even hostile? Like the 4B movement. Its bad enough that there’s still a gender pay gap, that CEOs are rarely women etc. They’re seeing their hard won rights dwindle away in real time.
Man, you’re really trying to disprove your claim of having empathy for men, aren’tcha?
What a stupid thing to say. Either you didn’t read my comment or your reading comprehension is shit.
Related: <img alt="" src="https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/pictrs/image/dc7e3f0c-2eb7-4776-9320-0eee729783aa.webp">
He really didn’t coin the term for her specifically, as nice as that sounds.
Well, at least in connection with her:
That sounds like it was for her specifically in the first use
Wikipedia on “scientist”
This just makes me sad. How can science advance, if we gatekeep one half of human population? In my academic career I have consistently found women to be smarter and better than men. Yet, these misogynistic ideas seem to persist. We deserve better than old farts with even older bias heading the institutions that make up our society.
It’s exactly that is why they’re kept down. Tiny men are afraid that they won’t seem as smart as the woman in the room.
As a man, I try to be different. I mentor the women around me and encourage them to do more, be better. I successfully got one of my mentee to negotiate her salary just yesterday even though she felt uncomfortable doing so. Try to be the change we need
I don't mentor anybody. I am not smarter than anybody and frankly I am always learning from everybody, at all levels of experience.
Never claimed to be smarter than anyone, but if you’re experienced then people look up to you. A little bit of encouragement can go a long way. Like my story, all I did was nudge her to negotiate, and she felt the confidence to do so.
I can recommend looking into “science days” and stuff like that. It makes you a lot more hopeful for the future to see a lot of curious, open-minded 12-year olds.
And then they likely become the usual cynic adults, but hey, you tried.
Never understood why some people so desperately need to be the smartest being in the universe. You’re a magic meat computers running on a system of hormones so complex that tweaking their balance just a bit can cause unforseen permament consequences. None of us have the right to call ourselves “smart”. Just chill and do your best.
It cannot
When I was in elementary school, we always had a table at the back where the advanced students would do more difficult stuff than the rest of the class while not being completely isolated. The table was always me and 5 or 6 girls. When we graduated high school, I was the top-ranked boy - and the 22nd-ranked student overall. I just took it completely for granted that girls were smarter than boys (although I did perceive the very strong anti-intellectual culture among boys which seemed more impactful than native abilities).
It wasn’t until I went to college that I started encountering the belief that men were fundamentally smarter than women, even though every college and university I’ve attended had more women than male students and the women had much better academic performance. That was my first taste of the power of group delusion.
Half way through the Hidden Figures movie I started to realize that the racist sexist people in charge really deserved to lose to the Russians.
But now they’re all “DEI hires,” at least in the US, so we’re fucked over here
I read the first sentence in that big paragraph and thought “wow, going straight to the biggest problem right out of the gate instead of building up to it, huh?” Then I kept reading and realized the entire paragraph was about that same thing. Holy shit, that’s a lot of sexism!
Fucking relatable.
No thank you to the hundreds of years of chemist men taking credit for women’s discoveries.
No thank you to the old white Persian man gate keeping chemistry from Ukranians and older women in my class.
No thank you to the sexist math book author who used shoeless women in a kitchen as a word problem example.
No thank you to Amazon for banning my 15 year account for calling the sexist math book author out in reviews.
White Persian?
Acknowledgmen’t
I don’t understand the “computer girl” one, did the technician think that her being a woman meant she was doing computer science instead of physics?
I’m not sure of the timeframe of this, but it could be referring to the time when calculations were done by women by hand: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harvard_Computers
That’s still big brain though
They were paid basically minimum wage, so they weren’t treated the best. They were doing important work, and I personally have a lot of respect for it, but it was (and still is) an uphill battle against sexism.
Oh I’m sure they were treated unfairly. Just stating that I got big respect for those pioneers.
could be referring to “mad men” era secretaries as ibm era computers were just better fancier word processors/typewriters
edit: or maybe like IT helpdesk staff who are like janitors (i.e. they don’t see a difference between calling environmental services for a clogged toilet vs IT for a bricked computer)
If a man told you he worked with computers, it’d be odd to raise an eyebrow and respond “Are you some kind of computer boy?”. The technician treated this woman’s work as something special because she was a woman. In other words: A man that works with a computer is still just a man. A woman that works with a computer must be something special, a computer girl.
And bonus points for calling her a girl, which is just a little bit more infantilizing.
Shoutout to the physicists dismissing biologist experiment design as a whole instead of across sexual or gendered lines.
I don’t really understand how that one was a problem if they’re also a physicist, or even if they’re a biologist. Nothing wrong with some fun rivalry.
There’s always rivalry between physicist and biologists. Or chemists and biologists. Or biologists and biologists. Damn biologists, they ruined biology!
.
When I was at college us physicists would joke about the biologists and the chemists and the mathematicians and the engineers, and in turn they’d joke about us, and we’d all have a good laugh over it.
I suppose it would come down to the context and how it was said.
I read that as the subtext still being sexist because Biology tends to have more women in the field compared to Physics.
Nah, it’s typical university faction wars. Engineers say crap about architects, mathematicians sneer on physicists and so on…
How people can walk out of a university with degrees and not understand how all areas of knowledge contribute towards each other and link together in ways that are not immediately obvious astounds me.
because of a long established undercurrent of competition within departments (and even between professors) for recognition and advancement. That and there are some people that have very large but very fragile egos that can’t allow another person or discipline to grab more sunlight than them.
As an engineer, this shit is so cringe… There is a youtube gaming channel with an alleged engineer who plays video games (often related to physics or building things), and his entire fucking personality is formed around mocking architects for being “stupid.” He literally substitutes in the word “architect” instead of calling someone stupid. He say’s “they’re an architect.”
Grow the fuck up goddamn. How insecure do you have to be?
I’m a heavy equipment mechanic, and every day in the shop I hear other guys complaining about how an engineer fucked up a design on a piece of equipment and that’s why it failed. Or that the engineer made it hard to work on on purpose. So cringe. I just roll my eyes at them and tell them if they are so smart then why aren’t they the ones designing the equipment lol
Its sad that all the fields feel the need to shit 9n each other. We as a society would got a lot further if we could all get along 😁
I heard a joke once that a physical chemistry experiment will have 1000 data points per trend line; I organic chemistry will have 10 data points, and biochem will have 2 data points.
I bet to biochemists it’s very insulting. Back to the comment in the anti-acknowledgements, that was insulting without even being funny.
I like the ones that are symmetrical, like math thinks that physics is easy, and physics things that math is too unreal (I don’t remember the jokes)
There is an element of truth in this, but that one biochem datapoint probably took more money and (wo)manpower than a hundred phys chem datapoints. Which is sad, because biological systems are usually more complex, and therefore more ‘noisy’, needing more datapoints for a definitive result. Medical studies get a lot of datapoints for obvious reasons, and because they can afford to do it thanks to Merck et al.
It’s got an element of truth but they’re still the butt of a joke
My mom is a biologist and complains how physicists always come into biology, try to reinvent everything without looking at any prior work, and then fail to execute their (sometimes interesting, sometimes not) method
I appreciate her telling it like it is and not bowing to a pressure to please.
Found an article speaking more about it, if anyone is curious about the context/her work.
Fuck these misogynistic pigs, idiots like these need to be called out more often. It’s too bad she couldn’t give names out and completely humiliate and ruin them.
Only if the accusations are true. It is just a post on the internet, there is no proof any of this is true or factual. Don’t be in such a hurry to harm others and damage their lives.
As a woman, and having known many other women, I can promise you that none of what is mentioned is particularly far fetched. It’s sad, but we all have multiple stories like this. Almost any woman could put together a similar paragraph of incidents she has personally experienced.
Edit to add: she didn’t even name anyone! No one is harmed, except the people who know they should be ashamed of themselves.
As a man I’d have never believed how common such behavior is. I’d have thought that’s really outlandish.
Now I’ve gone through the (probably stereotypical) process of a guy having a daughter, she’s an adult now.
What she told me - no, all this stuff isn’t unusual at all. The first time she was afraid (and called me as she already had a phone of her own) she was not even 10 years old, riding her bike from my place to the ex-wife’s place, teenage boys catcalling her.
There’s a lot of us men around who find it hard to believe, because it doesn’t happen to US. But it does. Frequently.
I know it never happened around me personally, I’m tall and mean looking, but working in service for over a decade and most people don’t know how bad it is. You learn that the restraining order needs to happen BEFORE it gets worse not as it gets worse. And none of that protects workers traveling to work. You can’t let anyone walk alone to their car alone after close, and if a guy comes in and asks for an associate with those creep vibes, and they aren’t known to the associate or a part of their private life in anyway, you need to aggressively fight it. On visit two looking for her, you have to pull her behind closed doors and report to the police he’s stalking and get a restraining order. SECOND VISIT. Anything less and you’re letting to go way to far.
It’s not happening to us, but it’s happening all around us and we choose not to see it. Once my own daughter began talking to me about her experiences and pointing out men’s problematic behavior in public, I can no longer not see it.
It’s worth noting too that for every instance of feeling scared, there are at least 5 situations where women feel belittled. I think even well meaning men are a lot less aware of it happening, or of them doing it themselves. My own father is a sweetheart who means well, but he’s skeptical of anything I tell him until my husband repeats what I’m saying. I’ve had achievements minimized because I didn’t also raise a family while doing them. I’ve been denied entry into hobbies. I’ve been given fewer opportunities at work because they want a cute face at the front desk. I’ve been told math is not for me, while being the only middle schooler in the math team who could regularly beat high schoolers at competitions. I’ve been told no boys would ever want to be my friend, because boys can only be after one thing, so all the ones being friendly are faking it. And of courses I’ve had boys stop being my friend when it becomes clear that friendship is all I’m after.
It’s harder to spot but cuts to your self worth like these add up over time.
As the husband of a woman with a PhD, let me assure you that I have witnessed several of these first hand when I travel with her to conferences.
We should absolutely ruin their lives. Fuckem
A bit more, this is a chapter from a PhD thesis
While I agree with the first part of what you said, I don’t think the longterm solution is to call out individuals and make their lives horrible. It sure is a good way to maybe deter a few people from doing those misogynistic things. But what we need is actual structural change. It shouldn’t be possible these people to do such things in the first place without being sanctioned. And we should educate people more on feminism and intersectional struggles in general.
counterpoint: many people fundamentally need to be shamed if they’re being shitheads, or they will never improve. The important part is just that they also need to be given a clear way to redeem themselves.
Naming and shaming is part of the structural change.
Normalise this. In the past women would have been accused of being unprofessional to have called men out like this. That’s the only reason why every woman doesn’t do it.
This seems to be the Netherlands (TU Delft). Maybe it’s normal there.
I don’t think so. Academia is still a pyramid system, and a lot of people want a post-doc or not burn bridges
normalize it to the point that the anti-acknowledgements name names
Beautifully spoken
Yes yes, intelligent woman be intimidating to some people.
But how old is this, is it still that bad? The “computer girl” could be around 2000.
It’s from this year.
…tudelft.nl/…/a-no-thank-you-to-the-person-who-as…
But surely equality has been achieved in the last few months, this all feels so very January. People are so much more open minded now than in those dark days of the past. Why waste time even discussing such outdated attitudes that totally and completely disappeared in February and are certain to never return?!
My bad for not being in circles where this behavior was common the last 20 years i guess?
I’ve certainly been there, shocked to realise my personal slice of reality was unusual. At least in this case, it’s a good problem to have.
When people talk about privilege, and checking it, doing that before your other comment is what they are talking about.
…the dissertation. Which means years of being at a university, though granted it’s unlikely to be 25.
Feminist Hacker Barbie is the proper meme response to that and that’s 2014/15, but chuds tend to live under rocks so that might explain it.
Boy did this comment backfire.
It’s all in the wording, but I think it’s also the contradiction between the first and second/third sentences.
Acknowledges that intelligent women are intimidating to some. It also uses present tense, which implies the author knows this is still the case.
Ah “it”. Which it? That some people are intimidated by intelligent women or that the author encountered a ton of sexism?
I think it’s ok to ask how prevalent sexism still is these days, especially if you personally experience it / don’t participate in a field dominated by the opposite gender.
Something like “I thought society would have finally realized this behavior wasn’t appropriate after me too, is that not the case?” sounds less tone deaf.
You don’t think the “yes yes” is dismissive?
Ha, I mentally skipped the second yes. Agree, add that to the list.
You think old men in academia are up to date on their misogyny? Why?
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Never let the actions of others dictate your future. If you have a goal never never give up.
Simpler said than done. Of course I agree with you, but we need deeper changes in our society, in our behaviour as people. If you get told time and time again, that you’re worthless, can’t achieve anything etc. that’s going to leave a mark. Sure, encouraging to not let that dominate one’s thoughts is a useful skill. But it shouldn’t be necessary in the first place.
You can also have a chance to get out of such a negative surrounding, connect with people that respect you and do actions that raise your self esteem (back).
Spoken like a true man. I’m a victim of sexism in STEM, now resigned to finish my degree in Japanese rather than deal with the awfulness that is men in Engingeering.
Maybe instead of meaningless platitudes actual change would be in order.
Victim blaming, classic
Who is the victim?
The woman who had to endure constant misogyny during her scientific career. You’re placing the responsibility on her instead of the people oppressing her
What I read was “don’t let these bastards stop you”, as in “whatever they do, you have your place in science or any other pursuit you make”.
It doesn’t mean “no change needs to be made”. Rachel didn’t give up, and was right about it, and it’s good she spoke up.
A dot point list would have made this more readable. Just saying.
If you are unable to read a paragraph, you need to spend your time getting a referral to speak with a neurologist, not commenting on Lemmy.
Oh sorry, let me help: spend time make plan speak brain doctor, no make mean comment here. danger! brain sick or hurt! make speed!
It’s objectively easier to read a bulleted list, but be a cunt for no reason
oh no! the brain injury is worsening! he’s lost his understanding of hypocrisy entirely! someone call for a wellness check!
Not the same person, looks like you should learn to read before acting like a shitstain again, dipshit
I didn’t even know you could get prions over the internet!
Then why are you:
It may be in a scientific paper, but this is more of an anecdote about the various issues the author encountered, rather than something intended to be actionable and clearly delineated as you’d expect in the body of a scientific article. Therefore a more literary style is appropriate for this section.
My mental model is that bullet points are for when you expect a reader to go over the points with a highlighter, prose for when you want to produce an emotional response. This feels more like the latter.
Yeah i agree with you. I feel like prose is for free-style text, which doesn’t claim to be rigorous. Bullet points always feel like there’s more rigor involved.
The irony in how badly you are missing the dot point
and she should smile more too right? god you are a cunt
Is this satire?
Not a physicist but fuck it is so relatable.
Reminds me of Sabine Hossfelder, a physicist, who had made some similar experiences.
youtu.be/LKiBlGDfRU8?si=5zCg4doidh7tSJIM
Proof that educated people can still be immensely stupid and be utter human trash.
It’s sad that she decided to channel her experience into transphobia, as if punching down will somehow make up for all the punches she got.
Really? That’s news to me.
She also made a video extolling the virtues of capitalism and how science wouldn’t have progressed without it, but then oddly went on to make videos about why she had to leave academia because of profit motive forcing her to research things that didn’t matter but got grant funding to keep her alive, without making the connection that the profit motive that destroyed her dream is due to capitalism.
Not to mention, she’s fueling anti-science perspectives.
Ironically - still successfully highlighting how smart people can be assholes.
Also, she’s very ableist in that she is against autistic people
clearly you don’t understand physics.
edit: oh no, soft science people downvoting me because they don’t understand conservation of energy. shocking.
Love the part on the video where essentially she says “I was given my first research position thanks to a grant for women. Also, there should be no research grants for women”. Piece of shit.
To be clear, you are criticising Sabine for saying there should be no research grants for women? If so, you perhaps misinterpret her meaning?
If I know Sabine at all from her videos, she would have meant that in an equal world, grants aimed specifically at either sex should not be necessary.
That’s quite different from a “raise the drawbridge” stance - but I’m a casual viewer, so please be kind while putting me right, if warranted.
Not quite, I’m afraid. Her point was essentially “I had very good grades, so I would have been hired anyway, but instead of hiring me normally, they hired me through this grant for women, which is a form of discrimination”. She’s not explicitly saying “kick the ladder when I’m up top”, but it’s essentially the conclusion. She mentions it on the “what’s wrong with academia” thingy video.
This sounds like the University of Ottawa. Watching physics professors sexually harass the few women in our class was disgusting.
Start creating a list of them…
The university does this actually. It’s called the faculty list of tenured professors.
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Bravo to the exceptional bravery on display here. I’m sure the majority of PhD graduates, including myself, wish they’d had the gumption to name and shame the suppressing factors contributing to a toxic academic environment. Reading this makes me kind of appreciative that my troubles were only administrative mismanagement and an inexperienced supervisor.
Also what the hell is up with TU Delft? It’s only partway through March and this is the second time this year that I’ve seen a PhD candidate publicly call out the institute.
Sucks.
Live and let live, man! And preferably with no sexism!
Unfathomably based.
That’s just what physics does to your brain. They’re all like that.
yeah. the rest of this seems like serious grievances, but physicists saying dumb arrogant shit to other scientists about not being ‘real’ fields seems like blaming water for being wet.
Hey, not all of us! Physics was humbling in my experience. Had the exact opposite effect.
I did exceptionally well at a top physics university, and still felt stupid all the time.
It took getting my ass handed to me to wipe that veneer off my perceived awesomeness and realized I’m doing this cause I love it. Why would I think down on anyone else doing what they do cause they love it?
And I sure as hell came to realize that there’s people better at biology than I am at physics.
That said, lots of physics people are high on their own supply. So, not discounting the reality of physics dickheads that are in abundant supply.
I don’t know how it is in the USA, but here biologist graduates are mostly women, so I think the implication is that she was being called a biologist (who can’t design experiments) because she’s a woman
Does anyone have info about the lawsuit
For anybody having difficulty reading the text:
Anti Acknowledgements
There have unfortunately also been people who have been less than helpful in my journey here. I wanted to acknowledge those too, because I know I am not unique in this experience.
No thank you to the physics study association that made me sing songs about how women couldn’t study physics without sleeping with the professor, the day I stepped into university life. No thank you to the 5th year physics student that decided to assign me a ‘stripper name’ within the first minute of meeting me in the physics coffee corner in my first year. No thank you to the technician that was responsible for onboarding me on the use of the cluster in my third year who raised his eyebrows and asked me if that meant I was some sort of “computer girl”. No thank you to the senior researcher that sent me utterly inappropriate texts after a conference, then proceeded to ‘apologise’ months later by telling me they had not been meant for me anyway so “no hard feelings remain hopefully”. And no thank you to him for attending every conference I’ve been to since. No thank you to the people who told me that it was “surprising” that I was doing a PhD since I was a girl. No thank you to the man who mistook me for a coffee lady at a conference, and after having to correct him two times that I did not work there, responded with “you should consider it”. No thank you to the researcher that asked me what I was wearing underneath my outfit during a conference. No thank you to the physicist who declared to a room full of other physicists that biologists “don’t know how to design an experiment”. No thank you to the people who have called me scary instead of strong and intimidating instead of intelligent. And finally, no thank you to the executive board of the TU Delft, whose knee-jerk reaction to being held up to a mirror about the social safety at the university, was to sue the party holding up the mirror instead of looking at the problems they highlighted.
I wish I could tell you this has all made me stronger somehow but in reality it has only shattered my confidence. You have made me feel like I do not belong in science and I cannot forgive you for that.
-Rachel
Dammit. Should have checked the comments first.
Oh, uh, why?
Because I squinted my way through the image first. I should have read the comments first.
Yeah. We had to do that kind of too, so we decided to type it all up. Opened up a notepad like program and wrote every single thing in the image, then went back to check for mistakes we made. We missed a few but the browser’s spell checker picked them up thankfully 🙂
It’s greatly appreciated, even though I derived no benefit. You make lemmy better.
Thank you. We try!
thank you
You’re welcome! 🙂
can’t wait to experience that myself!! 🥰
Holy shit. Get em.
The amount of dudes in this comment section who really aren’t getting it is astounding…
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why is this rachel too scared to name names?
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And this burden of proof is on the accuser.
I don’t doubt the stories, but a court would see it in a different way for a good reason. It’s hard to find a solution between slander and rightfully calling someone out.
What she has been through is awful.
I wish though that more people knew the difference between an Acknowledgements page and a Thank You page.
This should properly be titled Anti Thanks.
Acknowledgements should only cover individuals and institutions whose contributions are a direct factor in the material body of the text.
Edit: I see a surprisingly large number of you have, or plan to, amateurishly shoehorn your parents, best friends, favourite barista, and pet cat into your phD Acknowledgements.
Spend the 10 cents on having an extra page of front matter; your future publisher will thank me.
You should let her know so you can make your way into the next printing
Bold to assume I’m not in this one.
Hero.
I love everything about how she’s calling out the culture in her realm of academia and casting it in Stone by being the first pages of her book.
Sucks it all happened. But proud to have it justly put on blast.
Absolute legend