Sexism

I dunno about what the other guy is referring to, but the American Psychological Association concluded recently that, while boys do better on achievement tests, girls get higher classroom grades, and that this has been the case for several decades.

This excerpt from the report I find to be especially interesting:

http://www.aftenbladet.no/nyheter/okonomi/jobb/Navnet-pavirker-karakterene-3105671.html#.U30c1SgS6F8

What I was saying was that it wasn't due to anti- male-pro-female bias.

I know nothing about the Lego vote thing, so I can't really comment on that, even though it's not even relevant any more since this thread just moved on way too fast for me.

What does TERF stand for?

Trans Exclusive Radical Feminism.

I don't speak Norweigian, but if Kzickas is to be believed, that article literally shows that teachers favor girls over boys in his home country. Wouldn't that be a pro-female bias?

I'm a bit skeptical of the article since I don't speak Norweigian and can't tell what it says, but if there's anyone else here who speaks Norweigian who can give me an idea of what the article is saying I'd appreciate it. I can't seem to get it to run through Google Translate for some reason.

Thanks. I just Googled some of their stuff, and oh my god, they are some horrible people. Feminism is for women's rights, all of them, and that includes transgender women.

I have to admit, though, while in the mainstream movement it's not as bad as that, it is linked to a problem I have with the movement. It still focuses on women with more privilege, who don't need rights and support as much as other women do. I think that's definitely improving a huge amount, in fairness, like compare today's feminists with the suffragettes in 1900s England, but it's not gone yet.

If you're excluding a group of women like that then you're an absolutely useless feminist. That goes for lots of groups, like gay women or disabled women or black women, not just transgender ones.

I don't speak Norweigan, but Swedish is close enough. It's basically saying that if you sign a paper with a female name you're more likely to get a higher grade. This case was a master's degree thesis in economy, I believe, or however you translate that. There are also some interesting details about surnames, foreign names, and dyslexia affecting scores.

This picture shows the important parts http://www.aftenbladet.no/incoming/article3105667.ece/BINARY/w380/navn2.pdf

Gutt means boy, jente means girl, navnestatus means status associated with the name, høy means high, lav means low, poeng means points. All of that can be confirmed by online dictionary

Do they know why there's different results? Also, what's with the big giant gap between Ronny and Alexander?

edited 21st May '14 4:31:52 PM by QueenPanic

My interpretation is that if you have a high-status name you're going to get a better grade, which is far more noticeable if you're male.

A very interesting article on sexism in the Magic: the Gathering community. As someone who's very passionate about Magic (my username is a portmanteu of two of my favorite expansion sets), I found it to be a very fascinating read.

Not really. Ronny konsidered the stereotypical hick name in Norway. Also the drop seems connected to

Correct, but girls at evry class level did better than boys of every level, so the gender komponent is important.

I'd been wondering what your username was supposed to be. Zendikar and Innistrad. Good taste.

I believe "Never attribute to malice that which is adequately explained by ignorance," is appropriate there. It's so easy for a lot of people to default to sexism as the cause as soon as there are some signs pointing that way, rather than to look for other possible causes.

Certainly. But the name for males had a more notable difference than the overall gender difference.

My opinion on Lego Friends is that it's unholy conglomeration of Lego and Mattel doll lines meshed together and less appealing than either. Yet I feel like parents buy them for their girls only because Legos are awesome but most sets are boy-oriented. Even the "Lego City" line (which is by far the most gender neutral of the sets outside the Classic sets), from what I've seen working in the toys section of retail, push the boyish aspects more (such as the focus on trucks and cars and whatnot. I do like the fire station though, but that may be bias since my dad was a firefighter for years.)

But what really gets me about the "Lego Friends" line is how restrictive it is compared to other Lego sets. Lego has always been a series that encouraged creativity. As in "This doesn't have to be a house! It can be a car, a plane, a horse! A hospital! Go wild!". With the Friends line it seems to encourage "This can ONLY be a Bakery. This can ONLY be a boat. This can ONLY be a car etc." It kind of reminds me of that "It's a doll!" "What does it do?" "Be a doll!" comic. (And before I continue, this is my computer desk◊.)

I wouldn't be so miffed with the Friends line if it encouraged creative play over Barbie-styled playset play like regular Legos. That idea of modifying one of the castle sets to a more peacetime scene with princes, princes, king, queens and horses (all that medieval stuff that little girls love) and marketing it towards girls would be awesome. Even if I would prefer it that Legos went back to their more gender neutral advertising before the "Legomaniac" phases that shifted Lego to being more of a "Boys toy".

@ Kzickas I can think of three alternate explanation for this

1: Like another poster said, people with high class names are more likely to get better grades, so if the girl names in the study were chosen to (for whatever reason) to sound higher class than the boys names they would tend to score higher. This could be a flaw in the study, but this effect could also show up if, for example, girls' names with low class connotations become unpopular more quickly than they do for boys.

2: I've read pretty often that people of both genders tend to dislike masculine girls/women and feminine boys/men. If the paper were written in a stereotypically "girly" style, it would make sense that a girl submitting it would get a better reaction than a boy.

3: The catch all of "they did the study wrong." I can't read Norwegian, so I couldn't tell you how likely this is.

The first two do seem a bit flimsy, and aren't actually all that much better than the default.

Out of curiosity, is it considered "less sexist" to have a work alternate between genders for extras that speak and mooks/Red Shirts to die rather than having it always default to male (or in some cases always female)?

Yes? Pretty much by definition?

With various caveats like: Don't sexualize the deaths of the female Red Shirts.

Addendum : Unless the same sexulization is applied to the male redsirts, other wise it is still the same thing just less broad.

In an ideal work, the sex of the redshirts can be pretty much ingnored since there fates and makeup would be about equal

Speaking of...

That almost looks...painful.

hulkse

I was thinking the same thing

By the way, it seems that the new villains of the latest Legend Of Zelda spinoff Hyrule Warriors have been revealed, one male, one female. Guess which one dresses like a stripper.

I'm a little bit disappointed, honestly. Zelda is a series that I've always admired for having many diverse and well-developed female characters, none of whom dressed like something you'd see out of a Dead Or Alive game. Thankfully this isn't Nintendo's doing since the game is being developed by Tecmo Koei.