For Fathers of Daughters | Hacker News Reader

For Fathers of Daughters

jules.thegrommet.com

47 pointsrmason33 comments

This is something that I've struggled with for my daughter.

I want her to walk into my job and feel like she belongs.

However, given the current state of dickheads in IT, that's going to be a tall ask. Her mother is a doctor, so its not like she doesn't have role models.

We made a conscious effort not to make her "lady like", that is, like a boy we encourage her to be arrogant (self belief), not to take any crap (fight if she has to), make jokes, and to stand up for her opinion.

The problem, is that she's not with us at school (otherwise that would be weird) So we are at the mercy of those people's opinion of what a woman/man should be.

Her first nursery was very good, run by exceptionally tough londoners. (I don't care if he's a boy, he's going to have to learn how to hold a baby, best start now & Of course she's playing with the drill, she can't wait for some bloke to put up a shelf now can she?)

The second nursery was less useful:

Staff: "Your daughter acted up today, it was very unusual"

Me: "oh? what did she do?"

Staff: "well she got into an argument with another child, You daughter said that her dad did her lovely plaits this morning. The other child said dads don't do hair. We saw that something was going on, and once they told us, we said [daughter's name] you know your dad didn't do your hair(looks at me with a "oh kids" face). She got very angry after that, we're not sure why"

Me: "I did do her hair."

Staff: "oh"

There was another time when a kid said that girls can't be doctors. This sort of shit is easy to pick up, and it becomes ingrained.

> the current state of dickheads in IT,

This is needless and hurtful

But not untrue.

I'm in IT, and don't feel hurt by it. I have a hard time imagining who would feel hurt by a throwaway line that's so very non-specific, especially when it's referring to a phenomenon that's so real and important. I have an easy time imagining who would feel angered by this line, however.

Oh so now we are playing the insinuation game? Classy

so is a mountain unsolicited dick picks, and constant questioning of skill because someone's got a vagina.

but you know, your hurt is more real.

not all companies have the same culture, maybe you should ask yourself why you’re willing to work with people who you aren’t willing to expose your daughter to

I work at a very nice company. We make sure that people aren't bullied, its a core principle. But I am just one devop in one small company.

I have a great many friends from all over IT, and the female ones all have the same problem: dickheads.

On github,/hackernews/other change your name to something feminine, stick a profile pick up from https://thispersondoesnotexist.com/ and experience the dick forcing it's way into your PRs DMs and email.

> There was another time when a kid said that girls can't be doctors. This sort of shit is easy to pick up, and it becomes ingrained.

Nearly half of doctors in the UK are women. I remember going to see my friend who'd joined med school in Scandinavia and being amazed by the proportion of young women in his year.

I don't get where people are picking up the stereotypes from though. There's plenty of female empowerment stuff in kid's books, and schools are pretty keen to push equality in educational opportunities as well.

> IT

The thing about IT though is that it's like an unofficial freemason society. You recognize each other by certain rituals and values. It's not just your daughter who'd feel outside, grown men who aren't in the club will also feel a bit foreign. And in fact this is the case with a lot of skilled professions. Say you took her to a lawyer's chambers? Why would she feel any more at home there?

> We made a conscious effort not to make her "lady like", that is, like a boy we encourage her to be arrogant (self belief), not to take any crap (fight if she has to), make jokes, and to stand up for her opinion.

This is incredibly stupid parenting. You want your daughter getting in fights with boys? Making terrible jokes? This could end so poorly.

I disagree.

My daughters are “lady-like”, in that they are feminine. That has different definitions to different people, obviously, but to us that means that she is capable of carrying herself with grace, dignity, and class.

They’re also stubborn, strong-willed, and capable. They get the same advice from me as I got from my father: don’t start a fight, avoid a fight if you can, but if you have no other choice, fight. Fight hard and win, so there won’t be a second one.

We live in a fairly rural area in a very “Red” state, and my 11-year-old is currently saving her money for a new machete. She loves knives and carries at least a good pocket knife everywhere. If she’s wearing jeans, she has a Ka-Bar hunter’s knife.

One of my favorite photo sequences of my oldest daughter is a day that began with her winning the “Peach Princess” pageant, followed by the two of us spending all afternoon driving backroads and trails in my Jeep, and ending with her sitting in a booth at a local Mexican restaurant wearing a Spider-Man tee. She had messy sun-bleached hair, wind-burn on her cheeks, and a big smile on her face.

> You want your daughter getting in fights with boys?

If a boy touches her in a way that she doesn't like, or if someone corners her, I want her to do what any boy is encouraged to do. Fight her way out. (if one boy pushes another, it is expected that the pushee stands his ground. Why should a girl be any different?)

I want my daughter to be pragmatic, not passive. Leadership is mostly pragmatic arrogance. (I can make these people achieve more, etc. I don't want her to believe that shes the only person to lead. ) In retrospect, arrogance is the wrong word.

> This could end so poorly

You wouldn't be saying this if she was a boy. The insinuation that a girl is not as strong as a boy is bollocks. The only thing that is different is expectation. I expect my girl to fucking lay bullies out. Not sit there an take it, because "girls can't punch" or some shit.

> Making terrible jokes?

not until she's a parent. I want her to make funny jokes

You encourage her to be arrogant?

Arrogant is not a positive quality. Maybe you are looking for a different word?

Definition of arrogant 1: exaggerating or disposed to exaggerate one's own worth or importance often by an overbearing manner 2: showing an offensive attitude of superiority

> We no longer sell it (the author’s decision to just use Amazon, a male-led business, alas.)

This is where I stopped reading. Pity author has to include such divisive comments. Given this is addressed to fathers of daughters of which I am one I don't see why it was necessary to include such remarks.

Why is that divisive?

All she's saying is that she recommends trying to do business with and otherwise promote powerful women, if you can. It's not always possible. But being aware of it is a positive.

I have a hard time seeing how you can get so offended by such things. (I am a single dad of a daughter, so I start thinking that way myself)

Nothing wrong with promoting women owned businesses. I really do not see the need for that line given the title of the post. A post directed at men. Its a slippery slope, should I also tell my daughter not to drive cars made by companies owned by men, not fly in planes made by men. Definitely not the advice I will be giving my daughter. I will tell her she can be whatever she wants to be as long as she works hard at it.

She didn't say that. She said that she recommends that parents of daughters do their best to promote businesses run by women, so that their daughters are more likely to be exposed to women as role models.

Not sure where you are getting that she was suggesting telling the daughters themselves do that. Her approach is to point a daughter into growing into a powerful woman herself.

Very different thing.

Sure there is, there's a lot wrong with it.

Would you be so sanguine about promoting businesses because they are not women owned? Why can't you see that it's just discrimination against men?

Because you believe it's fine to discriminate against men, which is offensive and wrong.

Whenever you catch yourself engaging in tribal identity-based discourse, apply the reciprocity litmus test: swap identities and read the resulting statements:

"We no longer sell it (the author’s decision to just use Amazon, a female-led business, alas.)"

"All he's saying is that he recommends trying to do business with and otherwise promote powerful man, if you can. It's not always possible. But being aware of it is a positive."

If it comes across as crass, the initial statements are also likely to come across as crass, for a different population segment.

Sorry, that isn't a reasonable litmus test.

I am a white, English-as-a-first-language Anglo-Saxon male. Have been my whole life. And it's been pretty damn nice.

If someone makes critical stereotypes about white Anglo-Saxon males, I don't tend to get offended. And yet I am aware that making critical stereotypes about any of the less privileged classes (women, people of color, etc) is simply not ok, and those on the other side of it have every right to be offended.

Likewise, I don't get bent out of shape that I'm not allowed to attend a "women's programmers meetup," nor that I can't start a "men's programmers meetup" group without coming off as a sexist pig.

If you don't understand why this is true, I don't know what to say.

This is the same thing. I don't think Jeff Bezos is going to get too hurt that he's being discriminated against for being a man. He'll be ok.

While certainly flattering to tell someone you want your daughter to be just like them, it’s probably better to train your daughter to be able to be like someone you admire — if that’s what she chooses — than to definitely steer a kid for a particular destination. For my daughters (and so sons) this starts with a solid, classical education featuring the trivium and quadrivium. This trains the mind to memorize and process: to collect data and convert it to knowledge. Beyond that: intangibles like a strong work ethic, empathy, compassion, and kindness to others rounds out the essential basis for any profession.

> Get female doctors and dentists for your daughter.

This one is the most insightful for me that I never thought about. It's similar to the easy mode advice of reading books with female leads, which is just have the daughter around other women doing things in male dominant areas.

It'll be interesting to see what the effect of a women US president will have. But I think the changes will be slow, only really taking effect once the kids who 'had a female president' in their history books grow up.

Easy for pediatricians, too, since like 60% of them are women.

From my experience in my city it is more like 90% women.

I'm a bit in two minds about this one.

Let's generalize it a bit. Say your kid is a member of some demographic, and very few in that demographic have done some thing that your kid is interested in. What are you gonna do? IMO it's better to just find a positive role model and make sure the kid understands they are a role model because of qualities pertinent to the role.

Another thing is that those positive qualities tend to have nothing to do with any demographic. They tend to be such well known qualities that it's a bit cliché: hard work, perseverance, humility, team player, positive attitude, and so forth. There's not really any of those that women would not have as a result of being female.

I'm not sure going out of your way to find female service providers is useful. Your kids are going to be smart. If they see daddy is trying to rig the outcome of a hiring process, they are going to wonder why women need that help in the first place.

What you can do is be realistic about how things actually are in the world:

- It's true that women still do most of the child related stuff, and your daughter is going to have to think about how that affects her choices.

- It's true that people will have prejudices about who can and can't do a given thing. Some of those things will be true, and some will be false. It's in everyone's interest to acknowledge the things that are backed by evidence, and to inform everyone about the things that aren't.

- Some sneaky people know how the prejudices are set up, and they capitalise on it. "She isn't tough enough" and that kind of BS that's often part of corporate politics. For those kinds of things I'll tell my kid how the game works and she can decide how to play it. But it's a feature (or a bug!) of how the world works, and it doesn't help to deny it.

He's absolutely right about talking about it to boys and men. Somehow it happens at my other kid's all-boys school they get ideas about what girls can and can't do, and it's not right for them to be perpetuating myths that damage the chances for everyone to make the most of their lives.

> Basically, I believe the aphorism: you can’t be it if you can’t see it.

That sentiment is so limiting. I teach my daughters that the whole human experience is theirs to draw heroes and role models and inspiration from.

Any human, no matter sex or gender or race or ethnicity can serve as inspiration to them.

It’s time to end the artificial divisions. We are humans and we can all inspire each other.

I want my daughters to think they can be Bill Gates or Louis Pasteur or Marie Curie or Albert Einstein or anybody else without any artificial limitations.

I really enjoyed reading this article as a way of reevaluating my approach to gender inequality, but I have a problem with the title and main premise.

Why do you need to have a daughter to support gender equality? Aren't these values equally as important to instill in your sons? Aren't they values we should embrace regardless of whether or not we have children?

For parents of children seems more fitting

That is missing the point. Boys have a lot more role models that they can see themselves emulating, for instance Jeff Bezos, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates, Larry Page, Sergey Brin, Mark Zuckerburg and so many others. Even more so if you look back in history (Einstein, Newton, Edison, etc)

It takes a concentrated effort to expose little girls to role models that are the same gender as them. For whatever reason, girls like to emulate other females, and unfortunately there are a lot more Kim Kardashians and Ariana Grandes and Taylor Swifts than there are famous women software developers, scientists, tech entrepreneurs, and so on.

(nothing against Taylor Swift. but aiming for a career in entertainment is a lot higher risk than studying technical pursuits as the male examples above did)

Political propaganda on the front page. Oof.

Oh yes, I'm sure your daughter needs a double dose of feminism, because feminism, is, like, something that our current society totally lacks.

Because if some cure isn't working (or even having the opposite effect) of course the problem is that you're not applying it enough, you need to double or triple the dose!

(Sarcasm, if you're the kind of person who needs the hint.)

Tl;dr be a stereotypical feminist. I expect higher quality content on HN.

Maybe you should try submitting some content then, instead of just shooting down others.

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