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I just want to address your first point.

The harassment women get is much, much worse than men.

Me and my wife are both computer scientists, and have both given talks at many conferences. My wife and our female friends consistently get much more, and much worse, harassment than me and our male friends. There is no comparison, and over time I've seen it grind several women down to the point where they just give up (fortunately not my wife yet).

I think everyone should help to reduce the often hostile attitude in IT and FOSS in particular, and a fairly obvious part of that is to stop treating women so badly. Just treating them like everyone else would be a fine start.

If you don't mind giving the information, what kind of conferences? Industry, academic or both?

Academic conferences are by far the best behaved, which makes sense because everyone there is (generally) being paid to go there by their university.

In general people behave worse when there are less repercussions from work, so at conferences which are free / many people paid out of their own pocket, the behaviour is worse.

If the only reason there weren't more women in tech was because they didn't want to be there, what you say about fixing tech would be true, but it's not. Women are significantly discriminated against, from the day they start engineering courses.

I don't believe you are sympathetic at all. More importantly, you've shown no empathy. I'm assuming she started speaking at conferences because she enjoyed it. Some jackass takes that away from her and you call her out. That couldn't be more illustrative of the problem.

....I don't know how to fix the problem. Will empathizing more fix it? If so, i'll empathize like crazy. But I seriously doubt it will create change. Instead I try to point out what I see as some of the contributing factors to the problem in this particular case. I'm sorry I can't fix sexism, and i'm sorry i'm not being humbling and emotive enough to express that I find sexism wrong. But I don't agree that I am illustrative of the problem.

empathy will fix it.

you are illustrative of the problem because you are a) ignorant of what harassment is really like b) apparently unwilling to imagine it and c) BLAMING THE HARASSED

First of all, I never blamed her.

In my first point I note how people who give talks are subject to attack because they draw attention to themselves. I note how there are men (men who I know personally) who have been attacked as a result. I posit that this kind of behavior is not solely due to sexism.

In my second point I equate running a geek feminist website with running any website wherein people who hate the idea of the website will send hate mail. I posit that one should expect that people who hate you will send you hate mail.

In my third point I am noting that you don't have to quit the whole tech industry because giving talks is not the only thing in the tech industry.

My fourth point is the closest to 'blame' that I get. There's no sugar-coating it, i'm being heartless and cold here. But I don't blame her for not wanting to deal with assholes all day. I suggest that she learn to deal with these people rather than run away from them, but I guess that's not something a lot of people will accept.

My fifth point isn't even related to her really. I just find it super annoying when people try to speculate about something based on anecdotal evidence ("Because of the small sample, there is a larger chance that it may be true but unreliable due to cherry-picked or otherwise unrepresentative of typical cases.")

Second, empathy alone will not fix it.

You can not "win" against sexism by simply wishing it would go away or agreeing that it's completely unfair and unwarranted. Racism didn't completely stop in America, ever, and it only got a little better after people fought and bled to be treated as equals. They had to get right in their attackers' faces and say, Fuck You, I'm Not Leaving. Same for women's suffrage. Empathizing alone doesn't fix anything but your own conscience. You want to stop sexism in tech? Make it stop. Also, before you point the finger at me and tell me I should be the first person to fight their battles, keep in mind that nobody ever won freedom from persecution until they themselves stood up to defend themselves.

Also, I don't need to have experienced harassment personally to have an opinion about it. I'm not black but I think it's really fucked up that black people get treated far worse than I do because i'm white. Amazingly enough, even though I find racism absolutely repugnant, I don't believe every black person who gets fucked with is purely because of racism. I also don't believe every single woman who is fucked with is just because of sexism.

I can't believe I just wrote all that because of a troll. I say sexism is fucked up, and this guy blames me for sexism in the tech industry. Oh well. I should have just ignored you from the beginning.

I say sexism is fucked up, and this guy blames me for sexism in the tech industry.

No, you didn't say that. You said it was inevitable and that people should suck it up and stop harping on it. You're not the victim here.

I did say that people should suck it up. I was referring to ignoring the treatment (online) as a better form of dealing with it than running away. But at the same time that confronting the attackers would be a more proactive effort. Not to stop harping on it. I specifically said women should mobilize and work proactively to prevent sexism in the industry, which is far from 'stop harping on it'. But thanks for cherry picking two things I said, displaying them out of context and inserting your own agenda.

keep telling women what to do because you know better, i'm sure that will end the sexism really fast

  > BLAMING THE HARASSED

This is a mantra that I see a lot, but let's stop for a second. If I put a sign above my head that says "Murder Me," can I really be surprised if someone takes me up on the offer? Does stating that mean that I am attempting to absolve the person that murdered me of murder? No, it doesn't.

Put more simply, if you're going to crusade for a cause where the opposite side is likely to get nasty, you should probably be prepared for war. Did Martin Luther King Jr give up because the police brought out fire hoses?

That said, while I can't really empathize, I do sympathize, and find some of the examples of bad behavior that people are highlighting as having happened to women as atrocious. If I found out that someone at my company had shown a naked picture of himself to any interviewee, you can bet that I could make sure that it his/her career was ground into the pavement through word of mouth.

If the only harassment you know is digital I would suggest you don't know either what it is like. Not that I do.

But it will. Empathy is an effective antidote to harassment.

The contributing factors you pointed out seem to signal the message that minorities should expect hatred and suck it up. That's a normalization of the status quo and does not address the issue, it's just being complacent with behavior that should be reprimended but is often taken with the same lack of empathy and thus is ignored.

Most men can't empathyze because they are priviliged (as in, they do not suffer from the same kind of sexism) and completely miss the point.

If you want to understand, truly understand, then read more on feminism, read everything on Geek Feminism and then read on feminism from other sources (they link great sources).

If you reach a point where you you realiza that you ARE privileged and take for granted simple things, that men make the world UNFAIR to women and rile them for being oversensitive, then you may have just grown a bit.

...I don't really care to understand. What little i've read on feminism leads me to think that modern feminism is a passe joke. My guess is modern feminism doesn't connect well enough with the average woman who doesn't complain when the boss grabs her ass or passes her up for the unqualified white male in the boys' club. They need a new strategy and better marketing. Most of all they need solidarity. And maybe a less antagonistic approach to equality, like "human equality" instead of "women's equality." But everybody just defends their own kind I guess.

If you wanna read further than just a little, I suggest: http://finallyfeminism101.wordpress.com/2007/03/14/faq-i-ask...

Your first two points are classic victim-blaming. "You are going to get unwanted attention." Well, yes: there are assholes out there. But you seem to be implying that she is at fault for attracting the assholes, rather than saying there shouldn't be assholes in the first place. We should focus on rooting out the assholes rather than throwing up our hands and saying there's nothing we can do.

I admit there's a fine line here. People doing obviously dangerous and stupid things should not be surprised when horrible things happen to them. But starting a website or speaking at a tech conference are neither dangerous nor stupid. Why are we taking a grin and bear it attitude here?

See here (http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3164269) on why i'm not victim-blaming. I am not trying to imply anything. I'm simply pointing out what potentially motivates sexist assholes.

I only advocate a "grin and bear it" attitude when it comes to getting trolled on the internet in relation to publishing material you know some people will disagree with greatly. You can not wipe out sexists completely just like you can't wipe out racists and religious extremists. These people will always exist. I AM NOT SAYING YOU HAVE TO TOLERATE IT. I am saying, expect it, don't sit there with your head in the sand pretending they don't exist. I'll say it again for dramatic effect: I AM NOT ADVOCATING PRETENDING SEXISM DOESN'T EXIST, I AM ADVOCATING PEOPLE USE COMMON SENSE AND EXPECT EXTREMIST ASSHOLES TO ACT LIKE EXTREMIST ASSHOLES, THEN DEAL WITH THEM ACCORDINGLY

Those are good points and I'm glad you explained them further. It's the expectation that you talk about that we should be careful about. It's too easy to answer, "What did you expect?" as a dismissal, rather than talking about the real issue: bigotry.

So, given that there are sexist assholes out there willing to harass women, what are some options beyond tolerance and turning-the-other-stupid-cheek? I'm not advocating violence, I'm thinking more like sexist asshole outreach, or something. I dunno.

Beyond commenting on these stories as they come up, what can we do as a community? Education (starting with "sexism exists and happens near you"), open dialogue with less fear of reprisal, etc? Like, "I may be a sexist and I'd like to talk to other people willing to understand what I'm trying to sort out"?

These stories are like toxic waste on all sides: sexism and racism are touchy stuff that I think most people don't even want to talk about and, if they do, are afraid that they're saying it wrong.

Yeah, it's pretty hard to have a dialogue about this stuff without it devolving into a bitter quarrel. I agree that we need practical solutions and a plan of action to give to people.

The first thing we need is to open up lines of dialogue. What is sexist and what isn't? How can guys act or what can they do to improve working conditions? Are there ways we can work with employers to get them to make changes that foster more cooperation and less divisiveness? You could get a kind of town hall discussion going to get more ideas.

I do think you have to work with the sexists to help them change. It's not going to be a night and day thing... I imagine most people who are sexist find nothing wrong with the way they behave. So part of it may be not demanding they follow a strict moral code, but just tone it down at first. Work with the most extreme cases and get more widespread community support to show that kind of stuff (like putting tits in a presentation) is unacceptable. Probably getting a lot more men to speak out will help.

Then you can work it the way you would any other PR job. Make some kind of bumper sticker that (in a way that isn't too pretentious or annoying) says you agree all people should be treated fairly and equally, including specifically women. Some kind of logo that represents treating people nice and not making negative jokes, or considering all possible options instead of only helping your friends. Maybe some slogans. I was never good with advertising and my marketing skills are weak, so i'll leave all that up to the professionals. But the idea is, get the companies to put this stuff up around the office and lead by example so it's much less acceptable within a group to act out.

You could even get different events to officially endorse some effort to end unfair treatment of all people in the tech industry. This is more important to me as it would mean getting people to look past things like nationality/race (don't just give the indians the cheap jobs), gender (the transsexual person is just as good at being a manager as anybody), etc. I think everybody can get behind this and it can specifically underscore the unfair treatment of women.

Going back to the sexist thing, i'd like to see some public humiliations by the community at large of anyone who does something really stupid against women. You get the whole community to speak out against specific cases of sexism and I think it'll hit home more for the other sexists as a kind of warning to keep those thoughts and feelings to themselves. It may not solve anonymous hate e-mails but it should definitely help tone down sexism in the workplace.

I'm sure there's lots of other aspects i'm not thinking of. I hope people reply and add more ideas.

> getting trolled on the internet

Online mysoginy is quite well beyong trolling. And the troll starts writing frequent death/rape threats and posts your real address to boot, it's not trolling. See that it does happen: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Kathy_Sierra_incident

And maybe a less antagonistic approach to equality, like "human equality" instead of "women's equality."

I am pulling this out of something else you said to say I am female and agree with some of your points. But I will also note that a) You need to stop yelling and stuff. It's hurting your cause. b) If you can't stay calm in the face of the relatively mild "attack" you are being subjected to, what makes you think women should just be able to take something far worse?

I agree with some of your points. But what you are advocating is very hard to do and you are not doing a good job of walking the walk. If you can't walk the walk, then it's best to shut up and quit while you are behind. Talking the talk is the easy part.

Peace.

If the guy isn't posing a physical threat, suck it up and ignore it

Judging by a lot of the comments on here, this seems to be what really makes people here upset. That she didn't just 'suck it up.' That she's complaining. A cardinal sin for men, since we get much more pressure to show that we can 'suck it up', are tough enough not to let things like this get to us, etc.

The thing is, women are probably going to feel more threatened by this sort of harassment, than a man in a similar situation. It's almost as if there's a history of violence towards women, initiated by men, that makes women react differently to threatening behavior from men.

I agree that it's a cold statement to make. But there's very few options for dealing with harassment, no matter you are in what walk of life. You can either A) ignore it, B) run away from it, or C) confront it. I suggest option A because to me that's the easiest thing to do in this case.

There's a history of violence against men initiated by men as well. AFAIK, men are more likely to be attacked by men than women are. (Not addressing the question of sexism — just the misconception that men are somehow "safe" from violence.)

What exactly is your point? People shouldn't whine that other people are bastards? It seems more than a bit like victim blaming to me.

Well I made several points. If you want a TL;DR then it's "i'm sorry women get harassed sometimes, but this case is not the norm because she was much more of a target than most women in tech"

> She started a "geek feminist" website, so that didn't help...

This comes across similar to the excuse: "well of course she got raped - look at how she was dressed".

Feminism only became a "dirty word" during President Reagan's term. Susan Faludi wrote a very good book titled Backlash explaining how the backlash against feminism started, who did it and what motivated them.

http://www.amazon.com/Backlash-Undeclared-Against-American-W...

> Stop trying to 'get more women in technology'. Why is this seen as a serious problem that needs fixing?

I used to be a member of SWE (society of women engineers) back in college. One of their large studies (done in the mid 90s, which I think was jointly done with NSBE - national society of black engineers) revealed 3 important things about engineering education in the US:

1. It appears that high school guidance councillors were discouraging women from enrolling in engineering programs. It might have alternatively been that they were encouraging men to enroll in engineering and just not encouraging women. There wasn't enough data to support either conclusion. The M/F ratio among the population is very close to 0.5. The M/F ratio among engineers is well over 10. That there is such a difference points out that there is a problem. We don't run around with guns and blow stuff up - we sit in chairs all day - so the arguments that people use to justify excluding women from combat are worse than useless when you're considering technology.

2. That women in engineering drop out of engineering at twice the rate that men drop out of engineering. The folks doing the study didn't have an answer for that, but it wouldn't surprise me if it was because so many of us are jerks.

3. Engineering is seen as "uncool". Movies and TV shows portray engineers as nerds - and that nerds are uncool and unpopular.

My response to the victim-blaming part is here (http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3164269) and here (http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3165026).

That there is such a difference points out that there is a problem.

No, it points out that there is a difference. There's thousands of differences between men and women. This one happens to be about employment in engineering jobs. You could claim it's just because of sexism, but it would be nice to have proof that it's that and not (for example) that there's just not as much interest from women in engineering jobs. I have no idea why you brought up combat, though, as I never mentioned it...

On your point #2, it wouldn't surprise me if they dropped out because of a number of factors and the bulk of them just happened to be the same cultural and sexual differences which make men and women different in general. But it would be really nice to have real evidence of something rather than wildly speculate.

On point #3, the current generation is in love with the idea of nerds and geeks. They're sexy and intelligent, according to pretty much every person on OkCupid.com (I think they actually have infographs on that too...). However, I can tell you definitely that being a geek was highly uncool when I grew up. It's the only reason I got into computers - I had no social life and computers were an escape. I'm not an engineer so I don't know what that's like. I could speculate (again) and say that based on my female friends who are geeks, not one of them is the stereotypical bubblegum hottie cheerleader type. Why? Beats the hell outta me. If we could solve that maybe we could get Paris Hilton to take up nuclear physics and little girls would grow up with a positive role model instead of what they have now, which is largely pretty drunken sluts on TV and tabloids.

> But it would be really nice to have real evidence of something rather than wildly speculate.

http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Issues

Well said.