The commenters that preceded me would do well to remember her article is a venting on Tumblr, and not the conversation she had with her co-workers or manager. Denigrating her tumblr post for being an inappropriate work attitude misses the point.
People probably think it's cliche because she uses the air conditioning is patriarchy argument.
And your response is another, classic example of the same problem; you're willing to give the guy in the story the benefit of the doubt while summarily dismissing the woman's complaint.
In other words, in a literal case of "he said, she said" you side with the male by default. Uncool.
In other words, when a woman writes an entire post about an experience: "I perceive sexism at my workplace", your immediate reaction is "your perception is invalid, given the facts!" even though you don't work there and don't know any of the people involved.
Sexism.
I apologize for the confrontational tone, but I am so frustrated by the casual misogyny among otherwise intelligent people on venues like HN.
This is true regardless of whether you find their rhetoric agreeable or not.
I am debating flagging this piece. I see no good coming of it and I am frustrated that this stuff gets upvoted and then verbally pissed on when better stuff gets ignored.
I actually think the company in question handled this really well. It will be interesting to see what they do next though, I would honestly have troubles with this person if I had to go back to work with them after this.
> men readily speak up to disagree with us, rarely speak up to agree, validate, genuinely encourage, etc.
There are men in this very thread stressing the importance of speaking up for women regardless of facts in all public conversation as a political action.
Aside from that, no one should expect anyone else to go to bat for them (and they should expect to get called out on their mistakes). It's the way the world works for men and women.
This is what I submitted today (yes, I wrote it -- not really relevant to why I am aggravated): https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10453412
It has one upvote and no comments. Meanwhile, plenty of people are happy to piss and moan about how this woman is Doing It Wrong, upvote this and fill it up with ugly comments.
I would like to see a great deal more focus on how to solve this. This is not it.
Having flagged this piece, I plan to move on. I think this does not help anyone.
I do agree with some of your points though. Focusing on (and talking to) women who are succeeding in tech would be much more productive than hostile, aggressive or "ironic" feminism. That would include this piece. I don't know how an author can talk about rapey bros then complain that someone uses the word "chicks". If anything her ad hominem is much worse.
I liked this from your post:
> We go looking for an obstacle to break through and fail to find it. We show up equipped with tools to destroy a barricade only to find there is no barricade and the people we are facing feel threatened by and unwelcoming of us because we are weirdly armed to the teeth for a battle that should not happen, and if it does happen, it harms the cause of women rather than helping women.
I would argue that this is what lukev is doing in this thread and like you say, it's not winning any converts.
I think the only thing I really disagree with in your stance is that you greatly over estimate the support system available to men. There's a reason women now outnumber men in higher education. While the stories of master/apprentice, captain/crew are nice, the reality is most men are extremely isolated and left to fend for themselves. Just like women.
I think there are important differences. I think I just have a lot more work to do to adequately convey them.
I notice it (my piece) still doesn't have more upvotes. So presumably you did not upvote it. Nor did you comment there. You commented on it here. I will suggest that keeps the focus on a piece you think is doing it wrong and does nothing to redirect focus to a piece that is at least trying to look for real answers.
Anyway, I have work to do.
Thank you for the comment. Take care.
I commented here because I strongly disagree that this type of public blasting of hr issues is appropriate.
Your piece is definitely sensible and well written even if I don't agree with it.
You aren't obligated to upvote it. But upvote does not denote agreement per se.
/pedantic
...
> You can upvote it to say "Yes, I would like to see more of this on HN."
I'd do a lot more of the latter if not for the former. Because HN uses the same mechanism for both I tend to avoid up-voting stories unless they are stories I want to bookmark for later reference. If they are just interesting but not something I think I'll need to refer to later I avoid up-voting so as to not clutter up my bookmarks.
I wish HN separated up-voting from bookmarking, like Reddit does.
You're drawing a false dichotomy. The third option (other than going to his manager or being a jerk) would have been to realize that not everyone at work is going to be his friend, and not complain about feeling uncomfortable because this woman wasn't acting towards him in the way he assumed she should.
A mature person would only complain to his manager about someone's behavior if it was clearly in violation of societal norms (hostile, racist, sexist, etc.). Feeling vaguely uncomfortable about somebody doesn't fall into that category.
The fact that there are so few female programmers shows that the problem is education and culture. Take kids' books - 95% of the time it's the boy who goes on adventure, and the girl just sits there waiting to be rescued or given by her father to the male hero. Then you go to toy store and the girl toys are all about makeup and nail polish, while the boys get to actually do stuff. I really don't understand how women can take this shit, and I say this as a white male.