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No. A thousand times no.

Guys make these comments either a) because they are irredeemable assholes, or b) they don't understand the harm they cause.

If they are permanent jerks, firing them can and will help. For everybody else, then discussion is useful.

There is no reason to accept this kind of bullshit, and I refuse to.

I think you misunderstand. Acceptance is the only rational response when you lack sufficient power to effect change. When crude behavior persists even in the face of a draconian legal environment, complaining about it or writing frustrated blog posts certainly won't fix it.

Your situation is slightly different. As a CTO, you have the power to prevent this behavior in your sphere of influence. But fixing the tech industry in general is beyond your reach.

You should also be aware that you face the other end of the cannon here. If a woman feels maltreated on your watch, you could be held liable even if you are not culpable. In a small startup, this could be enough to sink the ship. Perversely, this gives you an incentive not to hire women. Indeed, posts such as the OP also provide an incentive not to hire women. There's no defending boorish jerks, but beware of unintended consequences when you propose ways to punish them.

Your notion of "rational" is weak. It's the small-minded, self-interested, narcissistic version of the term.

Fixing this problem in the tech industry may or may not be beyond my reach. We'll see. But I will try as long as I'm involved in software. Hopefully I will have made a difference. But if I don't, that's still ok, because then I won't have been one of those assholes who stands around ignoring (or profiting from) injustice. If that's "irrational", then fine, I'm happy to be "irrational".

And personally, I think that blog posts like this are absolutely a part of fixing the problem. Women's suffrage didn't happen because a bunch of old white men suddenly noticed the issue one day. It happened through an immense amount of communication, activism, and education. The original post is a fine contribution to that sort of activity.

I think that blog posts like this are absolutely a part of fixing the problem.

I hope you're right. You're far more optimistic than I am. In particular, I've seen an awful lot of hand-wringing about this subject in the Ruby community over the past five years—most of it similar in content and tone to the OP—and it doesn't seem to be having any effect.

This is one tiny facet of a society-wide problem that goes back millennia. How much progress can you expect in a few years? In the broader scope of things, I'd say we're making great progress.

But that progress has come through continuous effort, not from people saying, "Oh, honey, you should just accept that you can't vote. You'll never change it, so it's not rational to try."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whig_history

I differ with that line of thought in that I don't think it's inevitable. Which is why I think it's so important to push for it. As the US Republican primary shows, there are plenty of people who'd like to roll back things from decades to centuries.

It used to be acceptable to use the N-word in the workplace. Casually. With seriousness.

Things change.

Fuck acceptance.

Acceptance is the only rational response when you lack sufficient power to effect change.

How do you know you lack sufficient power to effect change if you don't try?

Who said nobody tried?

Just out of curiosity, if you went back in time to early America, would you rally some slaves together and tell them all not to put up with the shit from their owners? Would you call them cowards for not all trying to run away? Or would you tell them to "hang in there, things will get better"?

Uhhh, I'd smuggle them somewhere else where they could live free, duh. This isn't exactly the best example.

Also, are you seriously saying that you'd tell folks who will live their entire lives and die as slaves to just "hang in there"?

> Uhhh, I'd smuggle them somewhere else where they could live free, duh. This isn't exactly the best example.

Sure you would, buddy. Just like you're out there beating up the people who are oppressing the original poster, like fucking batman.

> Also, are you seriously saying that you'd tell folks who will live their entire lives and die as slaves to just "hang in there"?

Yeah, I would. Because if you have any foresight, you can see that its a transitional period, and is unsustainable, and is in the process of changing. I can help more people alive than I can dead for smuggling a few slaves out.

"Schindler's List" would have made a lousy movie if he just told people to "Hang in There".

And who says he never did do that? You think he never came across people who were too risky to try to save? Why wasn't he able to save all the jews?

My point was that it's pretty far fetched for anyone to believe InclinedPlane would risk his life saving slaves when he won't even risk his career trying to legally torpedo the original poster's workplace. It's posturing, nothing more.

"Why wasn't he able to save all the jews?"

Because all of the other Germans who didn't agree with what was happening just accepted it and went along.

Are we done here?

> Because all of the other Germans who didn't agree with what was happening just accepted it and went along.

That's not why Schindler didn't save all the jews. The point was risk analysis.

> Are we done here?

Unless you want to inject yourself between my reply to another poster again, yes. Feel free to see yourself out.

Schindler saved a bunch of Jews. More than zero, which is what would have happened if all he said was "hang in there." It's not like your choice is between learning how to cope and trying to assassinate Hitler. There are many options in the middle, with varying levels of commitment required. Calling out bad behavior when you see it is one of them.

Hey man, lighten up.

Not to mention the Allies not giving a shit.

I think threatening to fire men for commenting on women's dresses counts as trying.

"Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man."

And yet you have two people in this thread saying "I see myself in what you complain about and I don't like it". It's interesting that you draw from that "nothing can ever change" (my phrasing).

You put quotes around the phrase "nothing can ever change", and yet that phrase doesn't appear in the parent comment. I suggest restricting yourself to rebutting arguments I actually made.

How would you characterize the difference between "the problem is unfixable" and "nothing can ever change"? They are substansively the same position.

I thought it was clear from context, but I've added a clarifying clause. The point is that, if firing people for commenting on low-cut dresses doesn't work, complaining about it in a blog post certainly isn't going to do the trick. The problem is unfixable using the means at the disposal of the OP. In this case, although the outcome is lamentable, leaving the industry may be a rational response.

Firing people is clearly an extreme option; it might be worth asking kcunning if she felt that was an appropriate reaction (I'd guess not). Writing a blog post, on the other hand, has generated half a dozen people changing their minds about how much sexism they're prepared to put up with (ranging from "I am confronting my own active sexism and resolving to change it" to "I am more inclined to speak up to challenge active sexism when I see it"). Speaking for myself, it was a series of posts like this that gave me the confidence to start calling other men out when I saw active sexism take place. I suppose you could argue that everyone in this thread who is appearing to change their mind is lying, but that seems to be begging the question--purely on the responses I'd suggest that the preponderance of evidence is that writing blog posts does produce incremental change.

I don't think they're lying. I think they're a drop in the ocean.

Don't lighten up—accept

You're asking someone to learn to live with being bullied and to accept discrimination. And through this endorsement of their behaviour you contribute to the problem.

You are a horrible person.

Just out of curiosity, if you went back in time to early America, would you rally some slaves together and tell them all not to put up with the shit from their owners? Would you call them cowards for not all trying to run away? Or would you tell them to "hang in there, things will get better"?

Slaves were in imminent danger of being killed for minor offences. The situation isn't really comparable.

Also, I'm not accusing Katie of cowardice.

Slaves were in imminent danger of being killed for minor offences.

Were they? I'd bet that everything you've ever read or seen about slavery was produced by abolitionists and their intellectual descendants. Perhaps this might slightly color your views on the subject.

By the way, before you call me a horrible person again, please read carefully. Nothing in the above paragraph implies an endorsement of slavery.

Well, it's not my area of expertise...

If you'd like to direct me to where I can read a more balanced view of the history of slavery I would be pleased to read it.

Sure thing.

The West Indies As They Are (1824) by Rev. Richard Bickell. It was written about slavery in Jamaica, where conditions were almost certainly worse than in the American South. http://books.google.com/books?id=Y4QZYM7MOUcC&printsec=t...

South-Side View of Slavery (1854) by Nehemiah Adams, a Unitarian minister and abolitionist. http://books.google.com/books?id=sCg7P2c3W5MC&printsec=t...

American Negro Slavery (1918) by Ulrich Phillips. http://books.google.com/books?id=7E1_n7O9KvIC&printsec=t...

Counseling someone to accept a situation is not the same as endorsing it. And acceptance is the only rational response when you lack sufficient power to effect change. Indeed, the OP's decision to leave the tech industry is an implicit acknowledgment of her acceptance. That's a rational decision. Posting a whiny (albeit well-written) essay about it isn't—at least, it's irrational if she wrote it to help solve the problem. If she was simply venting, and attempting to garner attention and sympathy, then the post served its purpose well.

That's all well and good but we're a far cry away from concluding there's a lack of sufficient power to effect change. We're not counseling someone who's just become paraplegic about their hopes of running a triathlon, this is a situation with room to improve. And just because we may not be able to improve it 100% doesn't mean we don't try. Criminal behavior will always exist as long as society exists but that doesn't mean you disband the police.

I disagree on almost all points.

The attitudes and actions of certain people made someone's job so bad that they quit the industry. I am appalled by that, and I strongly disagree that they should have just put up with it. I don't think her leaving the industry signals acceptance; merely that she's been bullied out of it. I think this essay (I also disagree that it's "whiny") may, in some small way, help other people become aware of sexist behaviour.

Amen. Don't let the downvotes bother you, you're seeing 100% clearly and not blinded by the irrationality that seems to be filling this thread.