It's a fine example of lengthy mansplaining.
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Why are there no female Audiophiles?
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What does that even mean? It was a question, not a retort.
Do you mean you already answered the question, and I missed the answer somehow?
For all the words you’re making, I still don’t know what your opinion really is. Is it perhaps that women only thrive in fields where men are not interested in competing, and that they are sidelined (consciously or subliminally) in others? Come on, you must have some view on this, it can’t be all woo-woo.
Happy to be enlightened about these things, but maybe in this simplistic viewpoint is some of the utility of Occam's razor?
You have said these things happen, but haven't yet provided a concrete example. Has it happened somewhere else and is documented in public forum posts or are you just speculating that it must happen, either here or on similar fora?
I'd be staggered if these things happened here. Let's say they have (polite, but creepy PMs have been sent) by one or two members (out of thousands), what is the right course of action to take? How can moderators, who as far as I know cannot access PMs of another user, deal with a problem if they don't know about it/it hasn't been reported?
OK, maybe, but are we talking about an adult woman or an infant? Again, I think an adult woman can:
a) say no thanks to any such PM
b) suggest if a man continues he will be reported
c) report immediately to a moderator, probably with swift action following
Why wouldn't an adult women be able to handle herself in such a situation like this, surely adult women (and men, occasionally) have to fend off overenthusiastic suitors in their lives and have some understanding of how to do so.
If 2 or 3 men out of thousands behave badly, I don't think the insinuation that "well, that's just we men, we're bad" is helpful. The percentage does matter, because I think you can no more stop a few people (male or female) behaving like this than stop the earth rotating around the sun. If there are strong measures in place to deal with these events when they occur, what more can be done?
I don't think collective guilt and all men getting a flogging with a virtual cat o' nine tails, because of the actions of a few bad actors is either just or productive, nor do I think it helps increase the numbers of women participating. I think most women are aware it is a minority of men who behave badly, and as long as men who don't do this act swiftly, how do women benefit from such collective guilt?
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A lot of words or a few words - doesn't matter if you're unwilling to read them accurately.
Do you really think my view is that "women only thrive in fields where men are not interested"? Of course you don't think that. It's just a passive-aggressive attempt on your part to try to say that I'm making women into victims. "No sale" means I'm not taking the bait.
Once again, here's what I wrote above that you have completely ignored:
"It's totally fine if 100% of a given occupation are men, or women. What's not fine is if a gender imbalance in a profession can be traced to institutionalized practices or barriers that tend to discourage members of one group who are otherwise interested. For example, women's success and persistence in STEM fields in college is much lower than men's. This is not getting into how many men vs women are interested in STEM majors - this is differences in persistence and thriving among those who pursue STEM fields.
Research has shown that women get fewer mentee opportunities are given fewer opportunities to participate in work that would get their names on co-authored publications, and so on. Some men in STEM are consciously sexist, but most of the issue is unconscious bias and gendered expectations and assumptions placed on young men and women."
If you'd like to respond seriously to my point that it's not just about a simple binary of "not interested" vs "interest but discriminated against," please go ahead. If not, that's fine too - but in that case don't expect anything different by way of response than what you're getting now.
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Appreciate your response here.
Yes of course, adult women can do all the things you mention, and surely some of them do. But the fact that adult women can do that does not mean that they will move forward wanting to continue to participate; it doesn't mean it will have no impact on women's participation in such venues. The fact that it happens in real life too is at the very least a neutral fact with regard to this question, and at worst it actually makes it more likely that some women's participation would be reduced by such online behavior, because why would someone want to voluntarily continue to put up with yet more of that BS in an optional online hobby forum, when they already have to deal with more than enough of it in real-life situations where they have less ability to opt out of it?
As for evidence, I just Googled "women's experiences getting creepy private messages on forums" and it turned up 31,200,000 results. Here's a few links from the first page:
OnePlus Community
Introducing our new OnePlus Community experience, with a completely revamped structure, built from the ground-up.
Males sending private messages to females they've never met
Males sending private messages to females they've never met
www.discussmeetup.com
Women of Quora, how often do you receive inappropriate messages from creeps on social media?
Answer (1 of 9): I don’t know why I had a request to answer this, as last time I checked I am most assuredly a guy, but I just want to first apologize and express that I am sorry any woman on here or anywhere has ever had to deal with this sort of thing. Mind you I am not apologizing because I ha...
Of course not nearly all of those 31 million results are on-point; I mention the total simply because even if literally 99% of the results are irrelevant, it shows the scope. And of course not every single relevant result will be specifically about an audio- or tech-oriented web forum, but there's nothing special about audio/tech-specific forums in that regard.
But I think the most revealing part of your comment here - and I appreciate it, because several other members here have only IMHO made this point implicitly - is that you seem to think that this is about "collective guilt" and "all men getting a flogging." I find this fascinating given that the explicit claim here has been that it could be only a minority of men who behave in such ways towards women in online forums. So until someone provides evidence or reasoning to the contrary, I must conclude that thinking "all men" are being "guilted" and "flogged" based on the statement that a few men behave badly, reflects a defensiveness and an inability to fully take in and acknowledge the reality of some men's behavior. Not to mention, how can "all men be guilted" when folks like @VintageFlanker , @kemmler3D , me, and others are dudes?
The Americanism that is (fairly or not) brought out for situations like this one: "Hit dogs holler."...
But in all seriousness, yes. Why should anyone feel collective guilt over the actions of some random hypothetical person online? We're talking about possible reasons women might stay away from spaces like this one, and suddenly the conversation turns to individual posters' guilty feelings? Odd and nonsensical to my eye.
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You say that, but you didn't reply to anything I said. You're making broad generalisations about womens' experiences online and say "well, this is obviously going on here too". Sorry, I don't buy that it is.
That isn't an argument and now you're stretching it to audio & tech. Is there something like this going on here (ASR), if so where is it? I have not seen much, if any of the behaviour you describe. Maybe it is happening in PMs, but I think my assertion (based on the kind of forum this is and stringent moderation here) that it isn't going on, is more likely than yours that it is, but is hidden away.
Well, I'm sorry, but that is a faulty conclusion - in the same way that the idea that women are harassed elsewhere, so they must be harassed here or at hi-fi conventions, is a faulty conclusion.
Your position seems to be there is some bad man lurking on every forum, just waiting to pounce. I don't see that to be true - however much you assert it, and again without any substantial evidence.
I'd be happy to have more women come here, but I don't think they aren't coming here because they think they'll have countless PMs by lustful creeps, and if they are, on what evidence? I see little to nothing of that on this forum. So, either that kind of thing isn't here and/or when someone like that does come along, moderation sorts it out very quickly.
On a more productive note, how do you think we should make things more accommodating to women at ASR or at hi-fi conventions?
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I replied, clearly and very specifically, to each of the three main points you made in your prior comment - so your claim that I didn't reply to anything you said is demonstrably false - and you know it.
I never claimed anything is presently going on at ASR - and you know that too. If all you want to know is whether anything like this is presently happening at ASR, then we are in agreement that the most reasonable answer is, "neither of us knows, and based on the information available to us, it appears not." If you want to define the discussion that narrowly, then my problem isn't that I disagree with you, it's that I don't care, because defining the discussion that narrowly makes it a meaningless discussion. And I have a hard time believing there's any way in the world you don't already know that, too.
As for the rest, there's nothing faulty about my conclusions, and you once again are already fully aware that "bad" men don't have to be lurking on every forum in order for this issue to be widespread - and the links I provided show good evidence of that, which you have conspicuously ignored. (And there's plenty more evidence where that came from too.) And once again, no one said anything about "countless" PMs from people "waiting to pounce" - and you know that too.
You're engaged in some pretty relentless strawmanning here, and once again my provisional conclusion is that it's because you're seemingly unable to tolerate engaging with what folks are actually saying, because you feel "guilted" or "flogged" simply by virtue of the fact that you're male. You're the one who rhetorically asked if we're talking about adults or infants, and what adults should be able to hear and tolerate. So maybe take a little of your own medicine.
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From about 5 years ago, in audio engineering:
Why Aren’t There More Women Working in Audio?
Like with many STEM-oriented fields, music production and sound engineering are dominated by men—though that’s very slowly changing.www.theatlantic.com
(First 5 articles are free I believe, otherwise a paywall)
Quote from the article (emphasis supplied):
"Since training an engineer from scratch is a lot of work, the industry is increasingly turning to colleges to teach audio professionals. Which brings up another possible reason for the lack of female producers: Women don’t take as many music-engineering classes. At Berklee, for example, only 15 to 20 percent of students in engineering classes are women, Rogers says. According to an AES convention paper presented in 2016, male students regularly outnumbered female students 5 to 1 at the Recording Engineers Institute in New York. This year, the University of Colorado’s Recording Arts Program reported seeing 45 female applicants compared to 170 male applicants.*
From just a year ago:
Audio engineers are almost all men. This Seattle program was created by women to change that
The music industry is packed with men, but the disparity is especially apparent among audio engineers. These Seattle women are working to change that.www.seattletimes.com
Quote from the article (emphasis added):
"The music industry in general is packed with men, but nowhere is the disparity more overwhelming than behind the glass of the audio engineering room. A 2021 report from the University of Southern California, with funding from Spotify, found that while women only make up 21.6% of recording artists, and 12.6% of songwriters, they account for a meager 2.6% of producers and audio engineers (whose jobs are not necessarily interchangeable, but are often grouped together). A 2016 survey from the Audio Engineering Society found 7% of its 12,000 members worldwide identified as women, though respondents could opt not to share gender."
It seems like more investigation would have to be conducted - for example, is that 7% figure real, or did more AES women members share their gender than men?
But putting that aside for a moment, the data you've cited here combine to form a good example of the kind of data that are often investigated when looking at this issue: if 20% of engineering class enrollees are women, but only 7% of AES members are women, why might that be?
Again, there could be many explanations. But I will say that the fall-off from college course enrollment to professional placement and persistence that is suggested - not proven, but suggested - by that 20%-to-7% disparity, is consistent with broader studies about women's overall persistence and thriving in STEM.
I will note again, for the benefit of some of our members who appear to have some form of selective blindness when it comes to reading words on a screen, that none of the above questions why only 20% of engineering course enrollees are women to begin with. Right now I'm taking that "only 20%" for granted as a "normal" baseline, and looking at how 7% represents a significant drop from that baseline. Why only 20% of women enroll in engineering courses is another question, and IMHO it's well worth looking into; but I'll leave that aside for a moment so as not to "collectively guilt and flog all men."
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As for evidence, I just Googled "women's experiences getting creepy private messages on forums" and it turned up 31,200,000 results. Here's a few links from the first page:
https://psmag.com/environment/digital-culture-creepypms-and-the-women-who-receive-themOnePlus Community
Introducing our new OnePlus Community experience, with a completely revamped structure, built from the ground-up.community.oneplus.com
Males sending private messages to females they've never met
Males sending private messages to females they've never metwww.discussmeetup.comWomen of Quora, how often do you receive inappropriate messages from creeps on social media?
Answer (1 of 9): I don’t know why I had a request to answer this, as last time I checked I am most assuredly a guy, but I just want to first apologize and express that I am sorry any woman on here or anywhere has ever had to deal with this sort of thing. Mind you I am not apologizing because I ha...www.quora.com
I've skimmed this discussion but...
Given this subject tends to turn on whether there is some inherent differences between males and females that predict divergence in some of their interests, like audio, the same question could be asked about what you googled above: if it is females who overwhelmingly are harassed by males, does this arise from some inherent differences between males and females? Or is it mostly down to some form of "socialization/cultural" factors? But then, if so, what would explain how those forces arose in the first place, if not something we'd identify in male vs female traits? I dunno. From what I've seen, mostly peripherally since it's not a subject I've studied, there seems to be plenty of data people will cite for either side, in terms of supporting some level of innate differences in interests/behaviour, vs something closer to a blank slate between males and females in that regard.
It does seem obvious that we need to be open to having all our intuitions and stereotypes over turned, as many of them certainly have been (e.g. the general results of women making inroads in to previously-male dominated realms over the past 100 years, and the number of women now in fields mostly thought of the domain of men in previous times). And encourage an openness in possibility for people of any sex, in terms of their pursuits.
In terms of the specific subject, why aren't there more female audiophiles, I'd agree that the best way to answer the question would be some level of rigorous research, where we can get beyond intuition, anecdote and stereotypes.
Yet at the same time, it is pretty hard to see beyond personal experience, since it seems so strong, and so reliable. I've known countless audiophiles, almost all men, and whenever the talk of our wives/girlfriends comes up: even with high end gear being available in the house, there is usually a total lack of interest from the females in the house, or at best a vastly lower amount of interest in the gear. Not always, but to the point it is always surprising when anomalies come up, the exceptions proving the rule.
And then there is the male-dominated audio shows, audio salesmen, audio companies, and obviously audio forums.
I've seen people suggest that it's the men in the hobby that make it unwelcoming and uncomfortable for females, and if men would just knock it off, you'd perhaps see a significant influx of female audiophiles. Once again, there is likely some empirical fact as to whether that claim is true or not, and I'm not aware of having hard data either way. But I have to admit: I don't really see that dynamic. I don't see a significant amount of truly toxic behaviour, directed at females, in most audiophile forums. It's mostly people shooting the shit about gear. Is there some misogyny? No doubt one can find unsightly comments. But a lot of it? Not that I've seen. I see more male audiophiles wishing the females in their lives appreciated the hobby too, than being toxic about it. But...I could be just naive or blind in this regard.
The discussion is about why women aren't audiophiles or present at hi-fi conventions/on this forum, not whether there is some greater problem with harassment on the internet. You can't just move the goalposts of the thread/discussion as you please.
It is important when debating to stick to the topic in hand, if you introduce a completely different scenario to make your point, then you are doing something called moving the goalposts.
It is not my definition, it is the purpose of this thread. You can always start a completely different thread, but what you are attempting to introduce is tangential to this one.
Thank you... I think!
Would this comparative ASR bar-graph qualify as the ultimate "whatAboutism" you are discussing?
Should you "report" it as such?
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Nope - you keep asking for evidence that it’s presently happening here at ASR. That’s the goalpost-moving.
Well then, given you said this:
Why aren't there more women here or at hi-fi shows even? It seems like it isn't because of creepy PMs. Maybe we can put that suggestion to bed?
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It’s clearly multiple factors. Why are you so hung up on ruling out the very common factor of unwelcome communication as one of those factors? And why is it so hard for you to acknowledge that mentioning some men’s’ behavior is not “collective guilting and flogging of all men”?
I wonder if I can take a moment of ASR time to thank my biological mother for bringing me into this world!
Thank you!
Thank you!
Well, if it is very common, but not happening here, then maybe it is less common (on forums like these) than a number of people have presumed it to be. It is not hung up, it is an investigation into to why there are so few women who consider themselves audiophiles and/or frequent forums like these. If we can rule out this factor, then it means we can move onto others - simple.
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I doubt there are none. My mom, born 1919, was an expert at things like home plumbing repair. She once replaced the motor in the washing machine. She was a nurse who was more interested in the science side of the job. She was as good a diagnostician as a lot of doctors. She didn't care too much about audio although she listened to music all the time. She appreciated it when the SQ was better. I think it's a cultural thing. Most girls are raised according to gender behavior norms. My mom had a strong curiosity drive and loved to learn how to do stuff. She also taught my brother and me the basics of cooking and housework.
instead she could have been arguing with people about how many angels dance on the head of a pin, thankfully she had better things to do with her time...and now you are here, doing the argument for her insteadI wonder if I can take a moment of ASR time to thank my biological mother for bringing me into this world!
Thank you!
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Once again the slippage from audio/tech-oriented forums in general to ASR in particular.
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