Don't do it

"The current research tests whether bolstering women’s personal control can eliminate this prevalent gender difference. Across three studies, one correlational and two experimental, results revealed that when women’s sense of personal control is heightened, they become just as willing as men to exert effort and to use direct strategies to initiate relationships. Our findings suggest that the gender difference in participation in the initiation process may be more malleable than previously thought and that feelings of personal control may underlie this gender divide."

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“I’m 26 and my girlfriend is 28 and we’ve been dating for a little over seven months. We both want the same things in life — marriage, kids, close ties to family on both sides, prosperous careers and a house in the ‘burbs. Things have been terrific, the best relationship either of us has been in, we love each other very much and recently moved in together. The thing is, my girlfriend has made it clear that if we marry, she feels like she would be losing a part of herself if she took my last name. It’s very important to me that a family unit share the same last name, though. I’m not a hard line traditionalist and certainly not a macho, domineering type — but I feel like something would be missing, or like I would not be totally and completely loved if my wife rejected that part of me. Likewise, hyphenated names do not sit well with me. We’ve discussed this and I’ve made it clear I will not marry or start a family with someone who will not accept my last name (which, by the way, isn’t something odd or off-putting like, say, “Latrine”). I did not deliver this to her as an ultimatum, rather, as part of a well-mannered conversation in which I also made it clear I would stay with her forever without marriage. I worry, though, that this difference has set an expiration date for our relationship. Am I being unreasonable? — Name Withheld”

You’re not a hard-line traditionalist or a domineering macho type? Good! Then you shouldn’t have a problem with taking your wife’s name if you feel so strong in your convictions that a family unit should share the same surname. Maybe your girlfriend would even be open to creating a new last name you both take when you marry. Still feel like it’s the woman’s job to take the man’s name and you’re not going to marry any woman who disagrees? Well, maybe that traditionalist macho label fits a little more snugly then you’d like to admit.

Does that mean your relationship has an expiration date? Pretty much! If you both want kids and you’re refusing to have them with a woman who won’t take your name, obviously this isn’t a relationship that will last much longer. Maybe it’s time for you to open your mind a little and ask yourself why a name-change is the only way you can feel “totally and completely” loved by a woman. If you aren’t willing to change your name, does that mean you don’t totally and completely love your girlfriend, hmm?

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"Gamers get hella uncomfortable over male sexuality too. Can you imagine a “good male character who just happens to be wearing sexually exploitative outfits because he’s ok with his masculinity?” Constantly has the camera pan lovingly over his asscrack and firm glutes, and big ole dangly ballsack that is totes sweaty from all this MMA and soldiering. Time to hit the showers, and do you, personally, think it’s ok to have a long slow pan up the dude’s package (indiscreetly hidden in a jock of course), to his chiseled physique and erect nipples (pierced). He’s not even a Bond-esque confident man, he’s basically a weird Bowie caricature that’s constantly having near-dickslips in every single cinematic as the completely nonsexualized female characters do their business of being gruff and shooting dudes and advancing the plot. Finally, at the end he falls in love (out of nowhere) and/or is killed by the big baddie."

"I post on reddit often. I usually don’t mention my gender. Sometimes I will mention my family and it will be clear I’m male. Once or twice I posted a picture and I was in it, outing me as a white guy. I’ve never not been taken seriously as a result. Never had to worry about it. Actually – I never thought about worrying about it. Shouldn’t EVERYONE who posts on r/atheist (or other informational subreddits) have the same privilege? I just used the word “privilege” – should that even BE considered a “privilege”?"

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Our research adds to this literature, finding that women and underrepresented people of color reported encountering far more negative workplace experiences than their counterparts.

Were these actions intentionally perpetrated to exclude these individuals? Probably not. Are these individuals being ‘oversensitive’? The data suggest that diverse employees let a huge number of incidents go by and are far more likely to quietly leave rather than complain.

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"But the actions of women are not the cause of their objectification. Women have a lot of good reasons to perform beauty work and to dress sexy, especially in the sexist cultures represented at your average con. Women aren’t the problem, whether they crossplay and eschew femininity altogether or they pull out the sexy Leia costume. The problem is that women who dress sexy, who frame themselves as sex objects, are rewarded by geek culture for doing so. They get attention, approval, and recognition from the culture when they dress as sexy Leia (or any sexy geek thing). They have pictures taken of them at cons, and they get posted and reposted on the internet. They are recognized as geeks (and generally as somewhat authentic geeks, even if they aren’t talked about that way) and welcomed into the community (maybe not as full members, but at least as desirable). There’s nothing wrong with wanting attention and approval in one’s community. What cosplayer and geek wouldn’t want those things? What female geek doesn’t want to be welcomed into the community with enthusiasm and excitement (instead of derided as a harpy feminist or annoying squeeing fangirl)? The problem, then, isn’t what women do, but a culture in which the only way that women can be recognized as a desirable part of the culture is when they participate by making themselves consumable sexy objects for geek men."

"There is a clear double standard when it comes to men, women, and hair removal. Now, perhaps you think shaving and waxing is a vapid issue to bring up, considering the more serious double standards of pay inequity, sexuality, and the like. But the fact is, spending the better part of your life having to shave huge areas of your body just to be considered not disgusting is a big deal."

"Another reason why most cis, straight men, see being hit on as flattering, not threatening. Because they have every reason to expect their “no” to be respected, they see being hit on all the time as having your pick of potential partners; I imagine very few of them really understand the Schrödinger’s rapist phenomenon, and they don’t understand why it can be so difficult to distinguish between an overture that will go nowhere and a potential rape threat, because they have never had reason to suspect the latter."

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Men who treat women like people—that is to say, in the same way they treat other men—generally tend to have no problem being nice to women. They are pleasant in their interactions with women; they are respectful during their interactions with women; they hold friendly and engaging and fun and challenging and sometimes contentious conversations with women; if they are straight men, they acknowledge appropriate boundaries in terms of romantic behavior (i.e. they don’t treat a work environment like it’s a singles bar just because a female person is in it); they don’t ogle or grope women; they regard women as their equals, and are capable of acknowledging women’s different experiences from their own without using that as the basis for treating women like a different species.

Men who treat women like people treat them as individual people, who are deserving of their decency unless and until an individual woman gives them a reason to be guarded, or avoidant, or angry, or whatever—in which case, those feelings are directed at the individual woman who piqued their ire, not at “women.”

They are, in short, nice.

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"My fragile male ego rests much easier knowing that my partner may respect my career and success, but is entirely financially secure on her own. I’d like to think that I can seduce my partner with my personality and rugged stylings. I’d feel pretty lame if I needed an income disparity to appear sexy to my partner."

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Women are underrepresented and on average perform more poorly than men in introductory physics. But a recent study finds that this gap arises predominantly from differential preparation prior to college and psychological factors, rather than differences in ability.

And the effects of these psychological factors can be largely overcome with a brief writing exercise focusing on important values, such as friends and family, learning or even music. This simple “values affirmation” writing exercise generally raised women’s course grades from the “C” to “B” range, a study led by University of Colorado at Boulder researchers has found.

These self-affirming essays, the researchers suggest, assuaged women’s stress about being seen in light of negative stereotypes about women in science. Besides getting better grades, the women also showed greater mastery over the conceptual material, the team found.

Further, the positive effects of values affirmation are most pronounced among women who tended to believe in the stereotype that men are better than women at physics.

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