How shutting out men from the conversation is an obstacle to change

I suspect people will be reactionary because of the title, but the content is much different than what I was personally expecting.<p>As a corollary to the article; I&#x27;ve always felt it&#x27;s critical not to assume too much as a man.<p>The line between being assertive and creepy is very fuzzy and depends entirely on the womans perception of you (which, is essentially unknowable).<p>There is no easy answer, men will in most cases have a certain level of physical dominance over a woman and thus we will always be a potential threat and _must_ endeavour to walk on tippy-toes.<p>However this requires women to meet us half-way. Make your intentions known and don&#x27;t think less of men for not being instigators.<p>As another, unrelated point; As a guy it is _scary_ to attempt being what men are told they should be (confident, assertive, charming) and it takes a significant amount of bravery to do it in what I would assume is the majority of cases. If our intentions are misconstrued or our conduct falls to the side of what&#x27;s acceptable (remember; we&#x27;re usually winging it) then we risk a significant amount of social ostracism. Even approaching a woman is exceedingly difficult.<p>The irony here is that those who don&#x27;t care about their social credibility are the ones that give the rest a poor name by sending unsolicited pictures of their genitals, cat calling and pestering women in workplace environments. &lt;&#x2F;rant&gt;

Maybe we&#x27;ve redefined what patriarchy means, but going by the dictionary this article, and the associated viewpoint, is clearly reversing the cause and effect.<p>In context of broad society patriarchy is &quot;control by men of a disproportionately large share of power&quot;. It is obvious that, given there are a small number of leadership roles, if one gender is more assertive, aggressive or violent (or indeed prone to risk taking - although the article does not mention that one) then that gender will end up with a disproportionate representation in the military and from there social leadership positions.<p>Patriarchy doesn&#x27;t cause male behavior, male behavior causes patriarchy.<p>I&#x27;m throwing an assumption here that armies lead governments. Most countries need a few military victories early on to legitimise their control of territory.

A while back I read about a study that found that when a woman is friendly toward a man she doesn&#x27;t have sexual feelings toward, often the male will mistakenly believe that she does, and act on those feelings.<p>My response was, how is the male supposed to tell the difference? If there is a clear, observable behavior difference between how women behave when they are sexually attracted, and when they are just being friendly, then females should explain it to males when they get old enough to be interested.<p>On the other hand, if there is no observable difference, then females are just creating problems and should not be surprised if things go badly.<p>Women want to be respected as equals. That&#x27;s fine, but in some ways respect has to be earned, and part of how you earn respect is by being open in the signals you send other people, instead of expecting them to read your mind, and then being upset when they fail to do this correctly.

Just as the article states. Treating a date as a binary yes&#x2F;no doesn&#x27;t work when people have contradictory feelings and desires. Perception is everything, and I&#x27;m not sure making a legal framework for consent with verbal and written that turns a quiet nonverbal lean in kiss into an assault, is fair to anyone.<p>This is why I always thought kids should have dating, bullying, assertive training classes. It won&#x27;t fix every scenario, but it would help some of the misunderstandings, and train young people to be more responsive and communicative to others.<p>We have HR classes at work, but nothing for youn adults. We know teens will date each other, and hollywood movies don&#x27;t count as traning. Lets fix this with some simple communication classes.

It seems odd to me that there&#x27;s such a fervent obsession with women in technology, often times coming from men in technology. Why do I not see endless articles about female lawyers or female doctors or even really female engineers, and how we as a society treat them? There&#x27;s probably a few reasons (I read Hacker News, not Lawyer News, for one), but allow me to offer a different explanation: there&#x27;s just too many damn nerds. Tech is inherently more asocial than other fields, combine that with the unique (counter-)culture and you have a veritable melting pot of people who are awkward communicators with unconventional views who are slightly detached from reality.<p>What this means is that a) male-female gaps in communication skills are exacerbated, b) gender disparities are felt more and c) everyone, male and female, is more likely to respond anxiously (e.g. with negative internal feelings) to perceived slights. This leads to a self defeating obsession - the more we lose our collective shit over the gender gap, the more it will widen. I feel like in other industries there&#x27;s flirting and office affairs and platonic relationships and power struggles and lots of other human messes, but tech people have a unique kind of anxiety surrounding male-female interactions.<p>Maybe I&#x27;m just projecting because I have had very few female friends and approaching women romantically turns me into spaghetti but it really seems plausible. Also note that the office that I work in has a pretty good ratio and thus I can say with confidence that the women are as much dweebs as the men are. And of course this doesn&#x27;t mean we shouldn&#x27;t do anything to recruit women. But I think the best way is if everyone just calmed down for like 2-5 years.

My experience is that women vary a lot in how direct they are. I find I get along a lot better with the direct ones as opposed to the ones who expect you to guess what they are feeling, and beat up on you if you get it wrong. My guess is that life goes better in a lot of ways for the more direct ones, though I could be wrong about that.

&gt;&gt;This is not a defence of sexual assault, nor men’s rights activism.<p>There is nothing wrong with men&#x27;s rights activism.

&quot;We are told “parents teach your sons not to rape,” but we stop short of examining what that directive means and truly requires&quot;<p>That&#x27;s called decency and being gentlemen, which are supposed to be general teachings to young men (and girls) in society.<p>If only we could be a bit more coherent about the rest.

A long description of the problem, but short on solutions.<p>This video is much better:<p><a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=7G9tX0wZptM" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.youtube.com&#x2F;watch?v=7G9tX0wZptM</a> — Alexis Jones: &quot;Why We Need Men&quot; | Talks at Google

I think if more men were capable of making such a well thought out and logical argument we’d be farther along, but in many cases men have been extremely defensive and the most attention has gone to those responses rather than something more substantial such as this.<p>That women are socialized to not be the aggressors and must be pursued not be seen as promiscuous is another problem that feeds into unclear boundaries regarding consent. All part of a larger conversation that can’t be had by pretending there is no problem or by blaming all men or all women.

I know my comment will be deemed unsubstantive but I have to say: as a man I felt identified in that text, all women I&#x27;ve been with were like that. That&#x27;s why the idea of consent feels so alien to me: it goes against my very experience with the (different) women I&#x27;ve been with.