'Too hot to be an engineer' – women mark Ada Lovelace Day | Hacker News Reader

'Too hot to be an engineer' – women mark Ada Lovelace Day

bbc.com

15 pointsyitchelle21 comments

Why do people think this is a compliment?! "You're way too hot to be an engineer," said a man in the lift of her block of flats when she wore a T-shirt from program-sharing service Github. An awkward attempt at flattery, perhaps? "It definitely was not a compliment," she countered. "I was dumbfounded. What do you say to something like that?

That's probably exactly what it was - an awkward attempt at flattery. An expression of interest, in an attempt to see if the interest might be mutual. After all, there's no logical reason attractive women can't be engineers.

Are women really so brittle they have to take offense at something like that? Do they really think they're somehow Striking a Blow Against The Patriarchy by humiliating some poor guy for not navigating the PC minefield?

"...not navigating the PC minefield"

I see variations on this phrase all over the place, and I don't understand it. It really isn't that hard to avoid saying offensive and distasteful things to women (or anyone else, actually). It's almost always obvious that some statements are pretty offensive or at the very least make people uncomfortable, and it only takes the smallest modicum of common sense and tact to avoid saying those things. "You're too hot to be an engineer" is an awkward thing to say to a woman in an elevator, and if you're a woman in tech, you're bombarded with those statements weekly. It's not about being brittle. It's about letting people know when what they're saying is garbage. If anything, the men complaining about how they don't like having to think before speaking are brittle.

Speaking as a man that manages to "navigate the PC minefield" every day, it really isn't difficult. I promise.

>It really isn't that hard to avoid saying offensive and distasteful things to women (or anyone else, actually).

No, actually, for some guys it is hard. If it's not hard for you, well, that's great. But the world is full of clumsy men.

Part of professional life is understanding how to communicate with others and how to know before you say something how it will be taken. Some people aren't good at this, and those people should work on it until they get better at it. I wouldn't blame anyone who makes an honest effort. But many more people in my experience simply aren't interested in learning how to communicate with people that are different from them. In these cases, this mentality of blaming "PC culture" is just allowing people to remain lazy and ignorant.

Thank you. Blaming "PC Culture" is people being on the ignorant defensive.

> But the world is full of clumsy men.

But that doesn't excuse them from making offensive statements.

Seriously, if it is hard for some men I pity their total social incompetence and life of drooling over animated women in games.

I've solved the problem the easy way. I absolutely under no circumstance speak to a woman outside of whatever minimal dialogue needs to be done for work. Not a word more. You can not and do not control what people take offense over and what one person takes as a compliment another person will take as an insult.

If I hold the door open for a woman - I'm a sexist pig in her eyes (remember, chivarly is benevolent sexism). If I slam the door in their face by not holding the door open - I'm a sexist pig in her eyes (by being a misogynist pig who "made sure the door slammed in her face", regardless of my intent). There's no winning move because it comes down to the individuals' perspective. If they want to see sexism in my action (holding the door open vs letting it slam in their face) they will see it there and there is nothing I can do to control that.

Should I stop entering doors with woman nearby in case I fail to read their minds and know if I should hold the door open or let it slam in their face?

And no - "holding the door open for everyone" is not the answer. That's what I was already doing before I got bitched at for holding the door. Thanks to that individual - the door now slams in everyone's face.

I hold the door open for everybody, and I've never been accused of sexism. I usually just get smiles from everyone. If a woman were to call me a sexist for holding the door open for her, I'd shrug it off. I'm not so fragile that I avoid speaking to anyone of the opposite gender just because I'm too thin-skinned to deal with the hypothetical situation where someone, somewhere, might think me a sexist.

Your first problem is assuming it was a hypothetical situation. Your second problem is projecting that because it hasn't happened to you it hasn't happened ever or that it is normal behavior. Then finally, you decide to tell me to grow thicker skin.

You argued against all of the above on the other side of the coin. But the moment its an issue that doesn't affect you, you're quick to resort to the arguments you're advocating against?

That "PC Minefield" is avoiding that "someone, somewhere will think I'm a sexist". Which is the problem you admit to existing but don't care about. You'll care when you're the one being seen as a sexist with a Twitter hate-mob at your employers' heel demanding you be fired for an offhand comment or action that wasn't even sexist unless twisted and taken out of context.

It's not about "growing thicker skin" it's about avoiding HR. If I don't speak to them or deal with them, there can be no case for harassment. I consider it job security.

I understand your point of view. From a pure job security point of view, withdrawing from women unless necessary is simply being sensible and and little more than an intelligent act of minimizing risk.

However when job security is taken out of equation (for whatever reason) and this situation is seen in a new light, it becomes evident that this whole thing is problematic for men as a whole. It means that the bully-boys and feisty-femmes are allowed to win via men giving up on standing up for themselves, ensuring actual equity (such as meritocracy) and defending against non-emphathetic SJWs.

I hear this from a lot of guys.

> After all, there's no logical reason attractive women can't be engineers.

The absence of a logical reason does not mean that there is not a popular perception of an inverse correlation between physical attractiveness and intelligence (and this isn't entirely restricted to one sex.)

I mean, unless we know the person in the lift was an idealized Vulcan, the absence of a logical reason to believe something that is implied to be the basis of a statement they made -- especially something where there is ample evidence of a common perception in the broader culture -- is not a reason to dismiss the possibility that they might have actually believed it and had that belief motivate the statement.

    > a T-shirt from program-sharing service Github

I love media trying to explain Github.

That's a fully adequate description of Github to a lay audience.

Really? I would prefer 'code-sharing service' even if the point is to emphasise the sharing over the version control - makes it clear that we're talking about the program code, not about distributing binaries.

The lay audience understands the "code"/"program" distinction; to me, saying "program-sharing service" suggests somewhere the layman can download a program from (e.g. cnet) - Github sort of offers this now with releases, but that's certainly not an intended or good mechanism to use for the lay downloader.

> The lay audience understands the "code"/"program" distinction

In my experience, professional business people with a day to day involvement as business SMEs on IT projects are quite likely not to really make the distinction you insist the "lay audience" understands, and I doubt very much that the general lay audience, with even less awareness of computing, does.

Sure they do. They think we all look like characters straight out of _Hackers_, writing funny glyphs and doing crazy things really fast - and they know sure as hell the programs they end up using don't look like that.

I guess what I'm driving at is that if you told my little brother that "Github is a program-sharing service" he'd think be thinking it was an app store.

I don't understand how this women is the main victim here. There is a person who holds a prejudice of expecting people in nerdy fields to be ugly, and she breaks that expectation. Is she the one who suffers from it, or is it all the other people he interacts with and thinks "yeah, just another ugly nerd"?

This is anti-nerd more than anti-woman.

While there may be an expectation from non-geeks that geeks are "ugly", it is rarely something that mentioned to men.

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