>Is it that evolution has denied most men the finger control, patience, and artistic vision needed to knit?

In one word, Kaffe Fasset…

>Or, is it that a man who knits will spend all his free time engaged in a pastime of no interest to practically every other man he knows?

It is somewhat lonely as a male knitter, but there are all those other women to talk to, nothing wrong with that.

>That almost all the people he can turn to discuss his ideas and knowledge with will be women?

No, my women friends and I don’t always agree on all things, but it’s ok to varying opinions

>Now suppose that knitting took years of advanced training, beginning in high school. How many teenage boys do you think would be eager to enroll in knitting classes? How long would it take for those young men’s skills to be viewed and judged neutrally, rather than being praised as “remarkably good knitting for a man”?

It does take years of experience to be good at it. Men get praised for knitting things like other novelties, check out the new book on knitting for men and dogs by annie modesett

>How would they feel being one of very few men at every knitting workshop and conference they attended? Would others at the conference assume they were there as the spouse of a “real” knitter? Would anyone think to go to them for expertise unless they’d spent years proving that they were the Best Knitter Ever?

Actually, at knitting events men are treated like spouses and sometimes knitting events will shut down men’s bathrooms and turn them into women’s bathrooms without giving any guidance to where they can relieve themselves.

>And yes, we have a number of men in our department who knit. You gotta problem with that?

No

I hear you though, it’s all about equality. Everyone should be judged on the merits of their work, whether it be science or knitting. People should foster others careers/craft equally. But, the realities are what they are, and with every generation there will be a struggle, and things will change… but only in time…

Describing a policy as “macho” isn’t sexist. Not all men are macho. Most of the people who buy into to the cult of machismo are men, but that’s neither here nor there.

In the past, the WHO would probably have done the macho thing and thrown more money at the problem while issuing stirring slogans about victory. Margaret Chan, the new WHO director, is made of wiser stuff. “Can we really do this?” she asked this week. “What will it take?”

I presume that sauce for the goose is also sauce for the gander?

My peers - fellow undergrads, grad students, post-docs, junior faculty - were just as likely to display blatent sexism as the old white-haired men…. Some day I’m going to collect all the stories - some of them still cause me pain.

In lieu of a collection of stories, it would really be nice if you would some day give us a top ten list of the sorts of sexist behaviors you’ve experience or observed in physics departments. I cannot honestly say that I’ve personally observed such behavior, despite having spent a good chunk of my life in physics departments. I’m sure that much of the invisibility of the offensive behavior results from its being a private interaction between the offender and the victim. But still, I would have expected to have noticed something.

Things I’ve never known to happen in the physics departments in which I’ve worked or studied (but might nonetheless have been occurring behind closed doors):

1. Male demands sexual favors as price of advancing or not harming the career of female subordinate.

2. Male informs female that her sex limits her capacity to do physics.

3. Males hire or advance males with inferior qualifications to female candidates.

4. Males insult female with frequent remarks about her physique, gratuitous requests for sexual favors, or other comments intended to demean her.

The reason that I’m interested in specifics is that I’ve also been repeatedly told that there is racial discrimination in academia. Yet, as a racial minority, I’ve personally noticed none of it. Nor have family members in my generation (although older family members have plenty of discrimination stories).

The problem might be that I’m too socially dense to notice discrimination against others or even that against me.

Oscar Nominee Gosling Knits the Stress Away

PS - I notice few women wash by hand nowdays, they use washing machines designed by men.
Ok, ok men and women nowdays design bio-detergents that can wash whites ‘whiter than white’ or colours without colours fading.
But I guess even with multitasking we cannot do everything, we either do physics - particle physics or astrophysics, - chemistry or biology. We either do medicine, - surgery or pharmacy, - we either play soccer or american football, we either play grass hockey or ice hockey, we either play lawn tennis or non-lawn tennis, we either drive a car or catch a bus … we either paint, write poetry, create computer games or throw pots
and yes, sometimes we have multi discipline interests

Just to totally ignore the larger point

Well, that’s the thing about flogging dead horses: it doesn’t really get the horse going, but it does make such a nice self-righteous noise.

I actually found it to be worst with fellow undergrads and then slowly tapering off (though never all the way down to zero). I’m still in the grad student stage, so I’ll let you know if that changes in 5-7 years!

To be honest, I had secretly thought that it would be more prevalent amongan older generation, and that it would slowly die out. I tend to notice it more in older people, but that said I’m male and so probably only notice a small fraction of what goes on.

You know, DeadHorse, the easiest way to stop this discussion is to make it unecessary. So you should try to get personally involved in ending biases and making science more welcoming for women and minorities.

Invcit: It is pretty clear that there are no innate differences in capability that would explain the huge procentual difference between the number of women and men in physics. Check some of Seans older posts for references on that.

I’m mostly writing to thank you Julianne and also Sean for bringing this topic up over and over again, it really makes me happy to see that there are people who care about these things. (Even though the comments often are depressing)

What? You mean this subject has been discussed on CV before? Really? Wow.