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Comment by raymondgh | Hacker News Reader

Does the fastcompany article title “The Female Supercomputer Designer Who Inspired Steve Jobs” make an undue spectacle of the designer being female? I think titles like these imply that it’s so shocking that a female inspired Jobs and/or did supercomputer design work that her name & individual identity matter less than her gender. They should just put Tamiko Thiel in the title.

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I was thinking the same thing, and I honestly can't tell. Either way, she had one of the toughest jobs I can imagine and navigated it with badass-tier bravado: that's really what the article should emphasize. Instead of emphasizing the title of "female" over "supercomputer designer", maybe they should have just lead with the Steve Jobs hook (as much as I despise him) and let the reader draw their own conclusions on Thiel.

It's worse than that. Not only does it make a spectacle of them being female, it implies their accomplishments are only notable because they are female, that those accomplishments would not be special if performed by a man. It's exploitative and infantilizing at the same time.

Not at all.

In the 1980s, I imagine that female supercomputer designers were incredibly rare. For one to rise up through the ranks against the tides of sexism in that era and achieve something that ultimately impacted Steve Jobs...yeah, I want to know about that vis-à-vis her being a woman since her experience and achievement is relatively unique to the era.

Why do you consider her gender in the headline a “spectacle” rather than a simple statement of fact? If the headline read “artist” or “Stanford grad” or “Japanese-American” or “MIT alum” rather than “female” would you feel the same way?

While I didn't get as triggered by the inclusion as the OP, I do have to say that out of the example labels you gave, the only one I would consider a good comparison is "Japanese-American" as she did not choose her gender, ethnicity, nor nationality.

The Male Supercomputer Designer Who Inspired Steve Jobs

That sounds as strange as "Female" does in the title

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