Hacking the Hacker Stereotypes | Hacker News Reader

Hacking the Hacker Stereotypes

wired.com

14 pointsyan10 comments

"loose 22-year-old group of women within the club called the Haecksen (a pun on the German word for witch)."

In case you're wondering, the German word for witch is Hexe so the name sounds like witches. It's interesting with all the language PC in the US (e.g. a lot of articles and books on hackers will use the pronoun she although women in this field, by everybody's admission, are rare) Germans are quite OK with the fact that the word for hacker is masculine. Indeed I think a lot of people would be surprised if there was a movement to change it to die Hacker. There's, of course, die Hackerin but a lot of people here would object to that even more, since it's derived from a "male" form of the word.

Similar situation in French, although, as it predicated by their angst over their language, things are not so easy (http://www.nakedtranslations.com/en/2004/hacker).

On a different note, this word for witch is why those weird signs are called "Hex Signs" (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_sign).

Forced to? No, they chose to.

Hackers respect skill. If they have it, they get respect. If they don't, they don't. Standing in a group of hackers and saying 'You should respect me' will get nothing but sneers and laughter. Starting a group to say the same will have the same result.

Do they have skill? We don't know, because the article focused on them being women and NOT on their skill.

Yes, that's right: The article is exactly the opposite of what they are trying to do. It's perpetuating the myth that women can't be true hackers and can only claim to be.

Nonsense. While many hackers treat women equally, there are also a lot who apply double standards. Women (and feminist guys) working together to highlight this will lead to less sexism and increased respect.

And the article is the exact opposite of perpetuating the myth -- it's highlighting women hackers.

No, it's highlighting a group of women who get together and talk while claiming to be hackers. You can find similar groups

An article which actually does highlight a female hacker. Note that the focus is on her hacks, not on her gender (which only comes up tangentially): http://pastebin.com/8ZN3BVTJ

You appear to have a very narrow definition of hacker. hh66 is one and so are the women in the Wired article.

The point of the article I linked to is not that she is a virus writer, the point is that the article is about her hacks. If the article were about a girl who wrote an information retrieval system, a video game or a database, it would similarly highlight a female hacker.

This wired article is about a bunch of girls who get together and whine about men asking them what distro they run.

Yeah, I'd be disappointed if Wired ran my picture but omitted links to any of my projects. If this article were about men, we'd be ignoring it.

Zirn says that when meeting new male hacker acquaintances, an intense interview-style process often follows. "It’s like they don’t believe you, they have all these questions, they want to know what Linux distribution you use."

I'm not sure^, this is typical of guys in any field. Men tend to argue more about the mechanics of any given field more than women. There's a definite sub-population of guys being all about "the gear" that doesn't exist in the same technical population of women. It's quite similar to photography, where there are a lot of both men and women practicing, but really only men get nuts over the hardware.

Besides, when I meet new hackers, an easy conversation entry point is on operating systems and opinions of tech to get a feel for the other person.

Maybe it's more of a body language thing that isn't getting conveyed through the article's text.

^edit from I don't agree with this

When you say "I don't agree with this," are you saying that she is not reporting her experiences accurately? Most of the technical women I know say the same thing as she does. Body language and tone are a big part of it. Next time you're at a conference, look at how guys interact with your women friends -- and compare notes afterwards to see what you noticed and what you didn't.

You're right about that not being clear. I meant that it's traditional for guys to interact in that way, regardless of gender. Their emotional language may be patronizing, but the content is the exact same as if they were meeting a male hacker for the first time.

I'm more of a design-world person, so I generally don't see the explicit sexism, since women designers are equally respected.

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