A woman rants about man bashy stuff written by “women in tech”
micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com
micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com
0. http://techcrunch.com/2013/03/21/a-dongle-joke-that-spiraled... 1. http://womenformen.org/mission/
It is no wonder that more and more men refuse to express their views about the issue for fear of being called out or for fear of putting their reputations on the line.
But for women in the workplace, it isn't equal because the average man is far more worried about a false compliant from a woman than a man, thus they will work closer with other men, will be more willing to work one on one with other men, and other such small choices. Each choice isn't a big deal, but there are so many that over a few years it can vastly impact working relationships, almost making lite version of the old boy's club.
For example, the male coworkers from an old job I go to eat out with once a week never invite women. Every now and then some come along and they don't deny any who want to join, but in general they want to hang out with 'the guys' because they realize there are different social rules to such a gathering. This leads to them building up social connections that can offer them a greater advantage.
However, i've never had sexual harassment in work, but I do have it in public a few times a year so I do know how it feels.
I'm not sure if it makes a difference but i've been coding every week from the age of 13 (i'm 23 now). I've genuinely have next to always never felt anything but respect from my Male/Female colleagues. I'm a bit of a tom-boy though :).
On the rare occasion I ever felt I was not being taken seriously, I worked twice as hard to show and prove to them why I should be. Okay, fair enough, I shouldn't have to do that but I don't really care, it is what it is, I like the challenge and i'd rather provide evidence through my produced work than argue for ages about crap that won't get me anywhere.
Or complain and blame others. My life is in my control.
And it's not just being female that means I have to do that - people from different ethnic origins will do, people who have disabilities will do to prove their worth. It's just life.
And it's not just being female that means I have to do that - people from different ethnic origins will do, people who have disabilities will do to prove their worth.
As a white male, I'd argue that everyone (at least those, who are on their own) has to prove their worth, especially in a junior position. Taking into account your young age, I guess you fit in this category as well.
P.S. it's always nice to see a girl interested in coding, good luck and may your skills guide your career, not complaints and threats!
I'm not a Junior btw (at 15 I was developing websites, optimising java bytecode using Bcel and writing AI - I don't mean this as bragging, I was working with way more intelligent people than I). I didn't learn much in university in respect to programming because of that...
However, that may explain something there - people will probably look at my age and assume i'm a Junior =). A natural assumption really.
The difference in social conditioning for girls is quite an interesting topic =) (in random comment to the lack in hard-science).
It would be interesting to hear self-aware women speak about on this topic. From what I understand, generally speaking girls for whatever reason prefer (be they via social conditioning or instinctual preference or a combination of both) to play with dolls, as opposed to boys who play with trucks ... as the former, playing with dolls, is indicative of early development of social relationships (people manipulation, to put crudely) while the later, playing with trucks, is indicative of early development of object manipulation ... and this stems from the fact that men and women evolved to fulfill different instinctual roles (sperm is cheap, eggs are expensive).
I'm quite lucky though as I was encouraged to do the things I was enjoyed - my female cousins were not. When their brothers went bike riding, she was told she had to stay home and make cakes. When she asked for gifts for Christmas she didn't get them because they were not socially acceptable for females, so she got dolls.
So, how many choose them because they genuinely like them? And how many choose them because it's enforced and they think it's the social thing to do? How many disney films are all about finding one true love to take care of you?
Also don't forget that we as men often feel the same. Not all of us are super confident. I would say most aren't. And we are also bullied and pushed around.
The renewed push for accepting women in the workplace is simply one instance where a (reasonable) position has been chosen (women should have all the same opportunities as men in the workplace), but anyone who speaks against this position (even if just to improve it, or learn more) is labeled a old-fashioned,bigoted, and much worse.
The answer is to take a position without instantly shaming anyone who disagrees. So we can have an open discussion. The way controversial issues are treated here reminds me of medieval times - if you don't believe, you will be "excommunicated" from society. Debates aren't football games where you watch and cheer for your team to win. Right now, everyone is cheering for the womens side. Dont get me wrong, I am too, but that doesn't mean the other side is wrong/evil.
From the author's referenced post[1]:
> My experience is that men are either not very willing to talk to me one-on-one or, if they are, talking shop is the last thing they had in mind. They are looking for romance, not looking to help me professionally. When I say this to other women, they generally express immediate agreement. Men often deny it, criticize it or just stop talking when I say such things.
Most people are not attracted to most people. What this means is that most of the people you are attracted to won't find you attractive, and most of the people who are attracted to you are not going to be attractive to you.
Given this simple fact, believing that most of your interactions with members of the opposite sex are motivated by romantic interest is simply not realistic, no matter how handsome/beautiful or charming you are.
Maybe the tech industry (or a particular subset of the tech industry) is completely dysfunctional, but in my experience, most adult women and men are capable of interacting professionally without believing that all these interactions are somehow romantic in nature or fearing that they will be interpreted as such.
[1] http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2014/03/the-gray-zon...
(I am the author, in case that is not obvious.)
While there is nothing fundamentally wrong with professionally-appropriate "close collaboration" between two colleagues, "close collaboration" is possible without "working late together" or "having dinner together."
In my experience the vast majority of working professionals, even those who forge close ties with their colleagues, don't see working late or dining frequently with colleagues after work hours as being fundamental to "close collaboration." They have their own lives and don't want to be spending their evenings with co-workers, male or female.
> My experience has been that men who aren't attracted react really negatively to me giving off signals that I am interested. So men who are not hoping to sleep with me can have powerful reasons to just not want to work closely with me in the kind of manner that could dramatically further my professional goals.
If a man or woman takes the risk of signalling romantic interest in a co-worker, he or she should be prepared for the possibility that the co-worker will react "negatively." While most adults are capable of handling this situation maturely and kindly, for obvious reasons the rebuffed party will almost certainly experience some level of discomfort after being rebuffed. This is the primary reason folks should be careful about expressing interest in somebody they have to work with. Are you prepared for the potential of self-inflicted awkwardness?
Unless you are frequently signalling romantic interest in the co-workers you are hoping will work most closely with you, I don't understand why you believe men who are not hoping to sleep with you are generally disincentivized from building a healthy and mutually-beneficial working relationship with you.
The only thing I can surmise is that your expectations around what "working closely" with a colleague looks like are unrealistic.
I worked for a large corporation for over 5 years. My opinions on how this works are certainly informed by those experiences. However, I currently do freelance work and my own independent projects. So, when I network now, I am not representing a company or department or whatever. I am only representing myself.
That appears to inherently come with challenges that men do not seem to have. When I try to make professional contacts, I am asking individual men to trust me as an individual. Many of them have far more reason to decline taking that bet than to accept the risks involved.
I have spent a lot of years trying to figure out how to make forward progress on this issue. Framing the problem the way I currently frame it has gotten me far better results than what I used to get. Trying to emulate what men were doing was flat out failing to get me the results I was looking for -- i.e. the kinds of results men got.
There are no doubt many factors involved in determining any particular outcome, so it is not possible to prove my hypothesis beyond a shadow of a doubt. That fact doesn't inherently make it a weaker hypothesis than the rest of them.
Thank you for commenting. I appreciate the engagement.
You previously wrote:
> My experience has been that men who aren't attracted react really negatively to me giving off signals that I am interested.
I'm genuinely confused. If you are not giving signals of interest to men you are interacting with in a professional capacity, how do the reactions of men who you're ostensibly interacting with in a personal capacity relate at all to your professional ambitions?
> When I try to make professional contacts, I am asking individual men to trust me as an individual. Many of them have far more reason to decline taking that bet than to accept the risks involved.
Our backgrounds and experiences might very well be quite different, but I think attitude plays a big role in how your efforts pan out and going into interactions with this kind of world view is not healthy in my opinion.
I am an adult male professional. If there's a good reason we should do business together or help each other professionally, I don't care if you're half squirrel. I don't know what you're asking of the folks you meet, and when and how you're asking, but in my experience, most professionals, male and female, don't harbor irrational reservations about building strong working relationships with colleagues of the opposite sex.
I am sorry that you are confused. But the manner in which you are framing this makes me feel that there is nothing constructive that will come out of any additional efforts to try to clarify anything for you. You are being fairly dismissive and consistently suggesting that if I am not getting the results I desire, it must be that I have personal issues that are hampering my performance and my gender cannot possibly have anything to do with why a woman is getting a subpar performance, and never mind the aggregate statistics that agree that women generally see less success than men do professionally.
Take care.
The mere fact that there exist statistical inequalities between the sexes does not in any way prove that your world view is the root cause of these inequalities.
Small quibble: I am not suggesting that men will only work with me if they are hoping for romance. In most cases, men willing to interact with me because they want romance are of zero value to me professionally. In fact, they often represent an obstacle to my professional goals.
I am saying that heterosexual men generally have reason to be leery of getting too close to any woman at work and, if they are in a committed relationship, can have reason to avoid being close to another woman in any way for any reason. This throws up barriers to networking, collaboration, etc for women that men typically do not face.
I don't know how I can be more clear about that. It doesn't have to involve attraction from either side, though when that is there, it certainly can complicate things.
I see nothing paranoid about men being more hesitant to seriously engage women professionally to a degree they would not hesitate to engage a similarly talented man. The possibility of it leading to problems strikes me as quite reasonable.
Final comment: I am a heterosexual male in a committed relationship and I have never avoided a professional relationship with a woman out of fear of the "problems" you refer to. Interestingly, there are many women decision-makers today and the number of women in positions of power and influence will only grow, so men who avoid relationships with women as you suggest are just as likely to find their own professional and business interests harmed. Fortunately, I simply don't believe that most male professionals are operating the way you believe they are and I have met plenty of men and women with strong professional networks who reflect that.
If you want to blame me for that, saying that it's my weakness that is the problem, I can agree with you. But I'm not trying to discriminate against you, or put a glass ceiling on your career, or anything like that. I just know that I can be tempted, and if I give in, it will really mess up my life.
Unfortunately, that can still leave you blocked from your professional goals. I don't know how to fix this.
2. How many times in your career have you found yourself working closely with a woman who you found attractive and who made it clear she was interested in you?
3. In these situations, how many times were you the woman's superior, equal or direct report?
I think answers to the above would be more beneficial to this discussion than the admission that you could theoretically be tempted by a co-worker to cheat on your wife.
2. Once. I found her attractive, and I think she was at least willing to become interested in me. (Of course, I'm a clueless male geek, so I easily could have been mistaken.)
3. Her equal.
So, yeah, it hasn't happened to me very much. But the time it did, I did what I felt I had to to make sure that nothing happened. (What did I do? I sent one message that I wasn't going to play, and I asked a male co-worker that I trusted to hold me accountable for what I did and thought about her. It was enough.)
In a career of 30 years, you found yourself working closely with a total of one woman who you were attracted to and who you thought might be "willing to become interested" in you. This co-worker was your equal, and you dealt with your feelings in what seems like a mature manner that caused no professional harm to you or her.
Where's the problem that needs solving?
Thank you.
> Where's the problem that needs solving?
I was responding to Mz's post about how men who were not attracted to her reacted negatively to her. My point was that men who are attracted can be just as difficult.
It's fine if you don't see the problem based on my personal situation. In fact, I prefer it that way...
Where does it end?
"From what I have experienced, it looks to me like an awful lot of men do not want to engage women professionally for fear that it will lead to scandal of some sort" - any comments from guys on this? Are you ever hesitant to engage out of fear of a scandal?
When hiring, or even contacting, a woman is more dangerous than a bad business decision, any uncomfortably immature and sexist "boys' club" becomes better, in all practical and moral senses, than attempting to be nice to predators and sociopaths and being punished for that.
Socially responsible people would try to avoid driving the "enemy" into justified paranoia, because (as the linked article argues) everybody loses. I'm afraid there's not enough social pressure to behave normally.
And I'm no one, with no fame or high position.
Yes. Absolutely yes.
As far as I'm concerned my female coworkers don't exist. I think it is sad, but I'd rather treat them like ghosts than lose my job because one of them felt I looked at them funny or in the wrong way. Any meetings require a minimum of 3 people - I refuse to be alone in the same room because if it comes down to a he said/she said, she is the default. Same reason why male college professors avoid being alone with female students.
It's absolutely stupid that I have to be a sexist asshole because my other option is to risk my job due to the very real possibility of fraudulent claims of being a sexist asshole. I suppose there is a bit of irony in there as well.
I eventually switched teams for a far more interesting opportunity. Avoiding this colleague with a victim mentality was not at all a motivating factor for my move, but I can't say that it wasn't a huge relief to no longer work with this person directly. The entire time we worked together, I assumed that it was possible that I may eventually end up at the wrong end of one of those unpleasant interaction that would end up biting me in the ass because I have the privilege of being assumed to be the transgressor in such situations due to my perceived gender identity and perceived race (fwiw, I'm a mixed race pomosexual, but people don't know that unless I tell them).
I actively/consciously make sure not to single out people based on their identity, but observed behavior is another manner entirely. Once someone outs themselves as a wearer of victim-colored glasses, I get especially leery. I recognize however that most people aren't going to give the benefit of the doubt and identify this nuance, so I can see how many colleagues would avoid working with those whose identity correlates statistically with wearing victim-colored glasses. The threat of scandal with those wearing victim colored glasses begets avoidant behavior in those who perceived identity puts them in the group most likely to be the loser in the event of any ambiguous scandal.
Overall I consider victimhood culture to be a super toxic approach that fosters isolation.
http://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2015/09/the-rise...
2 - Some people are psychotic so I'm not surprised people stay silent.
Overall, I thought it went really well and I am quite pleased.
The whole premise of the post seem to be that women should know their place. A woman overreacting over being felt up is "whining", while men have been punching people in face over petty things for decade. Some men hesitate to work with women. So? Women didn't have it easy in the past. Now men share the world with women and those that can't work with them won't have many opportunities.
Really now?
Name one where women are outperforming men at the top. I'm genuinely curious.
Forget it. It seems like Caitlyn Jenner won it this year.
http://dailycaller.com/2015/10/21/caitlyn-jenner-named-woman...