Privilege theory, at least to me, basically seems to be garbage. At least in relation to this specific subjects, and specifically to the USA.

How can it be garbage to say that some people experience social circumstances that give them benefit, while others have circumstances that give them disadvantage? By itself, that's a completely non-ideological fact.

Certain phenomena are naturally described within that kind of discussion framework...

Computer sciences don't care what race/gender you are. Men and women are on an exactly level playing field that can be judged solely by their own merit. Girls aren't discouraged from working with computers anymore

I don't understand how you can say that with a straight face... Firstly, that's an absolute statement -- no girl is discouraged from working with computers, at all, ever? In any form, from any person or any media? That's demonstrably untrue.

When was the last time you were in a computer science class?

Damnit, GameDev! I have to quote a whole post just to get this sentence. ****!

How do we know it was a token female instead of someone worthwhile? Because the female in question wasn't even worth including on the poster for the event

Or. How do we know that the game industry is preferential [if not biased] to (white) men? Because the female in question wasn't even considered being included on the poster for the event.

How can it be garbage to say that some people experience social circumstances that give them benefit, while others have circumstances that give them disadvantage? By itself, that's a completely non-ideological fact.

Certain phenomena are naturally described within that kind of discussion framework...

Because I don't believe social circumstance has anything but a small impact. My family was poor growing up, I loved computers, now I'm moderately wealthy. Yes, I know what it's like to have parents fighting constantly over money/declaring bankruptcy. I just don't see how it matters at all to personal development within this specific field. If privilege theory was correct in my case, I'd be poor still. But the real world doesn't work that way, people have decades to better themselves/learn things. If anything, growing up poor was a positive experience, as I learned the value of stretching a dollar (I make 3X a year more than my house is worth).

I don't understand how you can say that with a straight face... Firstly, that's an absolute statement -- no girl is discouraged from working with computers, at all, ever? In any form, from any person or any media? That's demonstrably untrue.

I meant as a whole category of persons. Of course SOME are discouraged from it. SOME guys are discouraged from it as well.

When was the last time you were in a computer science class?

I gave a speech to the school I graduated from 2~ years ago (as an alumni speaker), around 30%~ of the students were female and maybe 40%~ where white.

Alpheus:

Or. How do we know that the game industry is preferential [if not biased] to (white) men? Because the female in question wasn't even considered being included on the poster for the event.

Because this school isn't the industry, and it was headed by someone who has spent years fighting for "gender equality" in game development fields, and they didn't even bother to announce who it was.

Alpheus:

Because I don't believe social circumstance has anything but a small impact.

Anecdotes aren't evidence, and evidence says you are incredibly wrong. e.g. Performance of children in grade school is better predicted by their parent's social class, than their parent's parenting skills. A child of a bad parent with a good income will statistically perform better than a child of a good parent with a poor income. And yes, statistics tells the average story, while anecdotes talk of outliers :P
Ad absurdum of that belief says that a starving Nigerian orphan is pretty much as likely to become a multinational CEO as a middle class American child... which is obviously bollocks - in that case, circumstance has an enormous impact -- so obviously this belief has limitations.
This is simply a philosophy used to make yourself feel ok about being such a non-empathic person. It is not a philosophy that builds great societies (unless you think America is the greatest country in the world(tm), in which case... as you were).

If privilege theory was correct in my case, I'd be poor still.

[citation needed]... no, it doesn't.
It says that you had advantages that a poorer child didn't have, and you had disadvantages that an affluent child didn't have. Those statements are certainly true. If you were to use this theory to try and figure out a social change, you would then go and make suggestions through this lens - which is to alleviate these observed symptoms, which may be arguably a good or bad thing to be doing... but no where does it say that disadvantage = destiny.
You seem to have confused privilege with caste.

The second point refers to the "anti SJW-esqe" nature of a bunch of recent posts here.

Except, in this instance, the 'anti SJW-esqe' posts aren't a "fear" based reply at all, at least not in my case; they are a real made up generally fucked offness that the thoughts, idea and inputs are waved away with one fucking word.

"Privilege"

A word introduced by someone who thinks that the cancelation was right and that the harm done to education of both male and female students is worth some nebulous message; and yet, presumable, would have been just fine with the panel going ahead as was despite there only being one woman on the panel because that is... better? I mean, it is, but hardly.

Hell, I made a few posts pointing out how the inclusion of a women was a poor attempt at diversity anyway but those got ignored it seems... it was only when I advocated that maybe, in this situation (and I was careful to include that phrase on purpose) of someone unexpectedly dropping out that maybe the knowledge was the important thing so that the people in the audience could learn from it and indeed go on to become legends and improve future panels.

But cancelling the event threatened some people's "privilege", which is apparently OK... I mean, aside from the knowledge no longer gained I can't see how personally, but the reply to that is "Because you are privileged" and there is no arguing with that term.
(I mean, we are just going to ignore the fact that women lost out and that women have been complaining about missing out because someone might have had their privilege hurt in some way... but if you ascribe privilege to social status and upbringing then their privilege remains the same... and yes, I know I'm repeating myself).

The sad fact is, as I said in the post which got quoted but the top section apparently ignored, you can't magic up a balanced workforce over night - it will take time, but people in the work force today have valuable information but it seems that unless we can match up the White Dudes (although at least two look like they have Asian bloodlines, although stereotypically they are pushed to succeed by their parents so I guess they basically have the same privilege as White Dudes..?) with at least one women we can't spread that information.

If this had been an All White Dude panel from the start, yeah I would have joined the outrage train over that, questioning how they couldn't even find one woman for that panel; but they at least TRIED, even if in a poor way, and it was only due to unexpectedness we ended up in the situation which caused things to be cancelled.

Fortunately its never likely to be a problem for me but, personally, in the fall out from this if I was asked to speak somewhere I'd hesitate because while I'd love to pass on what knowledge I have part of me would now be worried that if one person drops out my time could end up being wasted... that's not a good position to be in at all.

But then, I'm apparently privileged as I'm white and male so my opinion is easy to dismiss with just one word.
Viva Equality eh?

But cancelling the event threatened some people's "privilege", which is apparently OK... I mean, aside from the knowledge no longer gained I can't see how personally, but the reply to that is "Because you are privileged" and there is no arguing with that term.

Did you try? Did you bother to ask the author of this single post for a reasonable explanation?
No? Then you censored yourself; you're oppressing yourself by dragging your own assumptions into the conversation -- that if you do ask, he would've stuck his fingers in his ears and said "I'm right, you're wrong, whitey"!

Fortunately its never likely to be a problem for me but, personally, in the fall out from this if I was asked to speak somewhere I'd hesitate because while I'd love to pass on what knowledge I have part of me would now be worried that if one person drops out my time could end up being wasted... that's not a good position to be in at all.

I think that's more a problem for the woman who apparently pulled the plug -- she's got a wikipedia page with a controversy section now, and is probably being added to some SJW hate lists as we speak. Good luck organising more events with that hanging over you. I say apparently because I'm still unable to find an article on this controversy that cites where they got her crazy quotes from - they could've made it up in order to post a rant for all I know thanks to their shoddy journalistic discipline.

Changing your own behavior because of this one incident is a bit premature.

The event was organized by Anthony Borquez, and he posted the cancellation notice. I can't find the other statements apparently made by Borquez and Fullerton. Fullerton's quotes seem to originate from Tiana Lowe, without attribution.

The sad fact is, as I said in the post which got quoted but the top section apparently ignored, you can't magic up a balanced workforce over night - it will take time, but people in the work force today have valuable information but it seems that unless we can match up the White Dudes with at least one women we can't spread that information.

It probably got ignored (or non-debated) because no one cares to contest that.

A word introduced by someone who thinks that the cancelation was right and that the harm done to education of both male and female students is worth some nebulous message; and yet, presumable, would have been just fine with the panel going ahead as was despite there only being one woman on the panel because that is... better? I mean, it is, but hardly.

Pretty much everyone in this thread is in violent agreement on two points: (a) that the event shouldn't have been cancelled, and (b) that the event wouldn't have had to be cancelled if the speakers were more diverse to begin with.

What doesn't appear to be widely agreed upon is the magnitude of impact of said cancellation. In my view, a handful of students missed out on a networking event, and the internet got to debate diversity in education. Apparently various parts of the internet view the cancellation as equivalent to the sky falling.

Anecdotes aren't evidence, and evidence says you are incredibly wrong. e.g. Performance of children in grade school is better predicted by their parent's social class, than their parent's parenting skills. A child of a bad parent with a good income will statistically perform better than a child of a good parent with a poor income. And yes, statistics tells the average story, while anecdotes talk of outliers :P

That's a very subjective measure though. How can you say someone's a good parent if their kids consistently don't do well

Ad absurdum of that belief says that a starving Nigerian orphan is pretty much as likely to become a multinational CEO as a middle class American child... which is obviously bollocks - in that case, circumstance has an enormous impact -- so obviously this belief has limitations.

This is simply a philosophy used to make yourself feel ok about being such a non-empathic person.

That's why I mentioned specifically to the computer sciences field, and specifically in the USA. Of course countries with flat out caste systems have some semblance of a social structure that enforces privilege. The USA does not.

I'm empathetic, but I express it in different ways, instead of making up fake causes and supressing free speech.

no, it doesn't.

It says that you had advantages that a poorer child didn't have, and you had disadvantages that an affluent child didn't have. Those statements are certainly true.

I think the disadvantes I had were small if any, and the advantages other kids had were small if any. Quite frankly, poverty isn't a big deal if you want to go into computer sciences in the USA.

(unless you think America is the greatest country in the world™, in which case... as you were).

Arguably it's in the upper percentiles depending on what you value, but that's a whole other can of worms. I know someone (a communist I met in central park about a decade ago) who believes North Korea is the best country in the world (with Albania as a close second). He was right in his own subjective view, as is everyone else.

A word introduced by someone who thinks that the cancelation was right and that the harm done to education of both male and female students is worth some nebulous message; and yet, presumable, would have been just fine with the panel going ahead as was despite there only being one woman on the panel because that is... better? I mean, it is, but hardly.

Pretty much everyone in this thread is in violent agreement on two points: (a) that the event shouldn't have been cancelled, and (b) that the event wouldn't have had to be cancelled if the speakers were more diverse to begin with.

What doesn't appear to be widely agreed upon is the magnitude of impact of said cancellation. In my view, a handful of students missed out on a networking event, and the internet got to debate diversity in education. Apparently various parts of the internet view the cancellation as equivalent to the sky falling.

No. They view it as "no platforming". A group of male can't share knowledge unless a women joins in too.

In the same light, look at this:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/men/thinking-man/men-wont-volunteer-to-help-the-scouts-for-one-depressing-reason/

And this leads into a third factor. Since 2007, it has been compulsory for girls to be admitted to the UK Scouts (no reciprocal agreements allow boys into the Brownies or Girl Guides). This drive to encourage “cross-gender participation” was a huge success: there are 83,363 female members aged between 6-25. But it's possible that this boom has exacerbated the shortage of adult male volunteers willing to come forward.

It is interesting what equality means these day.

I wanted to write more, but I've seen enough of such thread I can see where this is headed. Besides, I've read that some of my points have been mentioned. And I agree with

conqestor3.

So in the end, because a woman pull out (name witheld?) the whole thing cancelled last minute ( 3 - 4 hours before starting) and an audience as some poster mentioned, only 33 % white and 50% male missing out with meeting industry legend. And people ask for more non white and non male people to enter the industry. And pulling out this kind of stuff (limiting knowledge).

They created monster and the monster eat their own? Oh well...

The second point refers to the "anti SJW-esqe" nature of a bunch of recent posts here.

For the record, I have nothing but respect for people who wish to improve opportunities for all people in society. I take specific issue with the language used starting on page 2 which seemed to aim to marginalize specific points of view (and people) based on a person's immutable characteristics. If we can agree, for instance, that demanding a demographic head count in order to express an opinion is unhelpful then I think we can move forward.

The SJW/anti-SJW echo chambers are unfortunately familiar with a lot of gamedev people these days, thanks to the whole #gamergate thing... which btw is kind of a banned topic here now due to how controversial it is.

Certainly, that makes sense.

The concept of privilege is much greater than this one caricature that you're focused on. Within that concept, as with any concept backed by a common word, there's a near endless set of meanings. Within those meanings, there is the small sub-section of "Privilege theory", which mostly fits the thing that you're deriding... However, this just happens to be an academic model that provides a context for social analysis. As a sociologist, you can use that tool when appropriate, and use other models when appropriate.

I can appreciate that there may be a serious loss in translation here, maybe much akin to how quantum physics gets consistently misinterpreted by the public.

Social science, however, unlike hard science, has to rely on an interpretive framework. Historically, it has been possible for these frameworks to be demonstrably wrong yet still widely promoted. The 'noble savage' is one example that once dominated anthropology. (Steven Pinker in Better Angels of Our Nature has argued that there was a 'mafia' of popular academics that kept this theory alive in part by leveling charges of bigotry at critics.)

I have concerns that history is repeating itself.

You can also use it quite sensibly, for example, a recent study on non-conscious racism here found that people with foreign-sounding names are less likely to be granted an opportunity to inspect a rental property outside of the advertised inspection times, while people with "normal" sounding names were more likely to be given that favor.

You do allow that this could have less to do with racism and more to do with tribalism, though? If the study simply shows outgroup/ingroup bias (Russian names as likely to be rejected as Nigerian names, for example) then we can't simply attribute this to racial bigotry.

Just because some minority has their own weird little internet subculture that's abusing the word, that doesn't mean that I've got to put on academic blinkers myself. I can just choose to let them do their thing without me.

Sure, but where we likely disagree is my view that the ROOT of this particular framework is demonstrably wrong in so many cases and moot in so many others as to be suspect. That to me should be worrying.

I deal with this problem by not having a Tumblr account - not by attempting to tear down the ideas that they've misappropriated and perverted.

Granted and I agree that that's wise, but I think you're giving a free pass to something that needs a greater amount of attention, given how divisive and undermining it is toward true diversity work.