Well I took time to read the first one. On a strictly academic level, it suffers from a major flaw common to students - her mind was made up before she started writing and went out seeking material to support a preconceived idea. This isn't a research paper, it's an argument.

From the article: A recent study found that ``women are often still depicted on television as half-clad and half-witted, and needing to be rescued by quick-thinking, fully clothed men'' really? We must be watching very different TV, 'cause what I see is sitcom dads as bumblig buffoons playing to their morally superior wives, commercials in which if there's a twit or a loser it's always the man, where the bank counselor is always a woman, where any mention of technology requires they show a female, and where if there's child playing sports 4 times out of 5 it's a girl playing soccer, or hockey if it's a Canadian commercial. This report was written to present what was desired to be presented.

Anyway - so let's assume she's right - that environment plays a large role. Neither Locke's tabula rasa nor Rousseau's plants to be cultivated, but somewhere in between, I'd easily accept it plays as large a role as biology. I'm not sure it's any different, though. Where's that environment come from? The natural instincts of the other humans around her. Sure, you can modify it to some degree with conditioning. You can teach a tiger to live on straw. You can turn men into metrosexuals and women into fembots on the outside, but doing so is de-naturing them to suit an ideology, not freeing their true selves.

Take the last 30 or so years. What we've proven is that if you bathe girls in self-esteem their entire lives, wrap them in advocacy you-go-girl programs, create a legal work environment that nearly criminalizes masculin behaviour around them, and try with all your might to drag them into certain professions, you will still end up with 80% of women employed in what are essentially specializations of of their tradtional roles - caregivers, educators, administrators, traders... At some point you gotta recognize that ideology is not enough - these other things just don't interest most girls and humanity will not be remade to suit the desired numbers.

Sure, let those who really want to do something different do it. But in recent years it's been way beyond that and verging on gender re-programming to produce the result desired by some ideologues.

In reply to Re^5: Women in Perl - Ada Lovelace Day by punch_card_don
in thread Women in Perl - Ada Lovelace Day by Anonymous Monk

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