Interesting Links for 03-05-2022

[andrewducker]

1. Why does the Scottish Labour leader pretend he does not understand proportional representation? (And when will Scotland have a Labour leader I'd feel okay supporting?)

(tags:labour proportional_representation Scotland politics OhForFucksSake )

2. Donald Trump found in contempt of court, ordered to pay $US10,000 a day

(tags:usa corruption fraud law viaLilysea )

3. Tolkien and Fanfiction - opinions from 1979

(tags:fanfic Tolkien history )

4. Edinburgh Council elections - a ward-by-ward analysis

(tags:politics edinburgh elections scotland )

5. Applying a 1777 style to today's OpenStreetMap data so it can be compared to historical maps

(tags:maps history OpenStreetMap )

6. How to raise girls with confidence

(tags:girls parenting advice children )

Comments

[simont]

#6: I had to click through to the article just to disambiguate the parsing of the title!

(It's "how to raise girls in such a way that the girls end up confident", not "how to raise girls and be confident you're doing it right".)

[andrewducker]

No no, "confidence" is the new software package used to manage the raising of girls. I agree that the capitalisation is unusual, but that's software naming for you!

[simont]

Funny because it's so totally plausible – including the part where the name is also a commonplace word :-)

[anna_wing]

Educating girls in a single-sex environment helps. Teaching them to be generally competent at life, too. A milieu where the only metric and hierarchy that matters is based on your exam results at least leads to lack of confidence based on something other than one's sex...

[channelpenguin]

Of course, some of girl's / women's perfectionism is due to having to be twice as good to be thought of half as well.

And a bit of feeling like a representative for all womankind all the time. There's an attiude differnce I've felt, seen, heard all my life. If Bob is bad at DIY or navigation, then that's just how Bob is, don't get him to put up a shelf or find the venue. If Alice is bad at bicycle repair or maths ... well, *women* are just bad at those sorts of things... (can go in reverse, of course, with child care or cleaning or social skills - but I don't see that as much. Maybe that's me...)

I keep saying we won't have equality until it's equally OK to be crap at things!

[liv]

Wow I am massively annoyed by the advice in #6. I pretty much hate any proposed solution to social problems which focuses on building up the "confidence" of the people who are discriminated against by society. We don't need to encourage anyone to be more "confident", we need to encourage people who hold the power and privilege to actually value others who are different from them.

And the Mighty Girl article makes it even worse by mixing in biological essentialism. Girls over 8 become less confident because adults and male peers bully, undermine and harass them, not because of technobabble about brain structures and hormones. There is no natural innate tendency for girls to be perfectionist and afraid of taking risks and making mistakes; a much more likely explanation is the well-documented bias among people around them who punish girls (and women) much more harshly for mistakes they do make. And then, to add the cherry on top of the shit sundae, blaming women for not being confident enough to succeed in environments where they are actively excluded.

[channelpenguin]

Whilst reserving the right to say I am certain hormones (of whatever flavour) do have *some* effects ....

I'm in massive agreement with you, Liv. Change the environment. Change society. Change that a confident woman is considered "aggressive" (this has literally been said to me multiple times - I always respond "and would you call a man agressive for saying the same thing?"). Change that a confident and competent woman is seen as "scary" and "not attractive" (that's one place where I DO see hormones come in - all teens wanna get laid...) Change that when women speak in group situations 33% of the total speaking time they are seen as 'dominating' the discussion.

I had the immense good fortune to look (and sound, act) so much like a boy until the age of 14, that strangers never had any doubt, I was always addressed as "son" not "hen". I'm sure that helped me a fair bit. I didn't escape all effects, sadly. None of us do.

[naath]

and value 'feminine' talents like caring or nursing or etc. Not that the skills are certainly gendered by istm as a woman in tech that behaving much like a man would gets me good places, but if I were more girly that would be less appreciated I think (I'm kust not, imma nerd, and that's me) (I went to a girl's school, my mum taught maths, my dad was in IT, I had advantages I think)