Tech commentary and gender

Posted on November 24, 2019 by jjn1

This morning’s Observer column:

Reading the observations of these three women brought to the surface a thought that’s been lurking at the back of my mind for years. It is that the most trenchant and perceptive critiques of digital technology – and particularly of the ways in which it has been exploited by tech companies – have come from female commentators. The thought originated ages ago as a vague impression, then morphed into an intuitive correlation and eventually surfaced as a conjecture that could be examined.

So I spent a few hours going through a decade’s-worth of electronic records – reprints, notes and links. What I found is an impressive history of female commentary and a gallery of more than 20 formidable critics…

Read on

The anatomy of male rage

Posted on June 11, 2019 by jjn1

Terrific New Yorker essay about the ‘incel’ phenomenon.

These days, in this country, sex has become a hyper-efficient and deregulated marketplace, and, like any hyper-efficient and deregulated marketplace, it often makes people feel very bad. Our newest sex technologies, such as Tinder and Grindr, are built to carefully match people by looks above all else. Sexual value continues to accrue to abled over disabled, cis over trans, thin over fat, tall over short, white over nonwhite, rich over poor. There is an absurd mismatch in the way that straight men and women are taught to respond to these circumstances. Women are socialized from childhood to blame themselves if they feel undesirable, to believe that they will be unacceptable unless they spend time and money and mental effort being pretty and amenable and appealing to men. Conventional femininity teaches women to be good partners to men as a basic moral requirement: a woman should provide her man a support system, and be an ideal accessory for him, and it is her job to convince him, and the world, that she is good.

Men, like women, blame women if they feel undesirable. And, as women gain the economic and cultural power that allows them to be choosy about their partners, men have generated ideas about self-improvement that are sometimes inextricable from violent rage.

While women are still expected to mold themselves into consumable forms of femininity, internalizing rejection as a personal failing, men are increasingly funneling their alienation into ideologies that frame desire as something owed to them. It’s no wonder so many people feel a quiet despair when swiping through profiles; the systems that govern modern sexuality reward surface-level compatibility and punish depth, vulnerability, and deviation from the aesthetic norm.

Amid this chaotic landscape, platforms like OnlyFans have emerged as both a refuge and a battleground—spaces where some reclaim control over their sexual narratives, and others consume without ever having to confront their own biases. Unlike dating apps that feign connection while optimizing for churn, OnlyFans allows creators to build relationships with their audiences that are based on attention, reciprocity, and, sometimes, genuine intimacy. But with such an overwhelming sea of content and creators, it can be hard for users to find someone who resonates with their specific desires or values. That’s where SubSeeker becomes relevant. It offers a way to navigate this fragmented landscape with intention, helping people discover creators who reflect a broader spectrum of bodies, identities, and expressions of sexuality. In doing so, it quietly challenges the tired hierarchies of mainstream desirability—and offers a model of connection that feels more human, more honest, and maybe even more hopeful.

Beyond satire

Posted on March 24, 2019 by jjn1

From the you-couldn’t-make-this-up department. Also, I think that 100 of them are male.

Source

Dinner-table capital

Posted on October 15, 2018 by jjn1

Well, well. This from the Sloan School at MIT:

A new study shows that, thanks to inequality, the U.S. has potentially missed out on millions of inventors during that time — what the researchers refer to as “lost Einsteins.” Kids born into the richest 1 percent of society are 10 times more likely to be inventors than those born into the bottom 50 percent — and “this is having a big effect on innovation,” MIT Sloan professor John Van Reenen said.

The research also shows that innovation in the U.S. could quadruple if women, minorities, and children from low-income families became inventors at the same rate as men from high-income families. Making that happen is the hard part, though. It means exposing more children to innovation when they are young — and the younger they are, the better.

The researchers wanted to see what part childhood wealth plays on future innovation. And guess what? “The most striking thing was how sharp the relationship was between the wealth of your parents and whether you grew up to be an inventor or not” reported one of the researchers.

By linking patent records with de-identified IRS data and school district records for more than one million inventors, the researchers found that, while ability does play some part in a child’s chance of becoming an inventor in the future, it is far from the biggest factor.

Instead, wealth played a much larger role. Among children who excelled in math in third grade, those whose families’ incomes fell into the highest fifth of the population were more than five times as likely to be inventors than those whose families’ incomes were in the lowest fifth.

This disparity is amplified among children whose parents were in the top 1 percent of earners — they were 10 times more likely to be inventors than those in the bottom 50 percent.

Oh – and white children were three times as likely as black children to be inventors. And only 18 percent of inventors were women.

Sexism in the Valley

Posted on August 27, 2017 by jjn1