Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DanielBMarkham | Hacker News Reader

I applaud the author for sharing her feelings. I also note that she does not speak for all women. All we can do is share our own experiences.

I've been through many of these discussions: sexism, racism, ageism, and so on. After receiving many a rhetorical punch in the nose, I have a simple rule: I don't do it, I don't approve of it being done, if I am in management I stop it. I also don't let people yank me around by the emotional heartstrings. I reserve moral outrage for things like millions of people starving around the world, or slavery, or hundreds of millions dying of disease. Others are certainly capable of being moved by whatever they desire, but I find more harm being done by actual people dying than by the compound personality flaws of millions of my fellow citizens.

I don't mean that to be insensitive. Like I said, I am in complete agreement that this goes on and it must stop. Immediately. I'm just saying from prior experience I find that discussions like this never tend to go anywhere productive.

I'm one of the women who don't share her feelings. Maybe it's the word sexism that I have a problem with.

I'm not a programmer and I don't know the specific environment that she described, but I'm a female motorcyclist and I've worked in lots of kitchens and a couple in molecular biology labs. I know the behavior and I've dealt with it. Men behave in curious ways when there's a low female/male ratio, but in my experience, half of it comes out of awkwardness or plain old stupidity on the other side. Some of the more honest comments on this thread testify to that.

The other half is intended to belittle. But seriously, this isn't just at work. This is walking down the street in the city. This is buying something in the store. This is sitting on the bus. And as much as it sucks, getting offended doesn't help.

If this sounds like a long winded "lighten up," please think of it more as a friendly "toughen up." It's the only way to signal the change that you want.

And when the female/male ratio is too high, there are issues too, and not just at work. It can be uncomfortable/awkward for many.

I don't want to generalize, but in my country/city/region/circle of friends/etc, I've found that, for instance, girls tend to talk about their sexual experiences in every detail imaginable, down to comments about their partners. Any attempt to do something to that level of detail among guys would likely be met with a "Whoa dude! Too much information!"

And that's just an example. Not sure if you can relate. In any case, the point is that I think that there will be issues unless the environment is balanced or 100% of the same sex.

As an armchair behavorial therapist, I think this is the only attitude that will end up having a positive benefit (the author also does the right thing by speaking up). There is no use in playing victim; when someone does something to you that you don't want, you have to push back.

For reasons cultural or otherwise, men have a tendency to attempt to subtly dominate people they perceive as weaker. To some people, this seems almost like an instinct, and it's really fascinating how just subtly pushing back or ignoring it seems to stop people from doing it with you.

I don't know a lot about how this manifests itself towards women, but if you are a guy, the best solution is to just push back and perhaps actively study and notice the tricks guys use to achieve social dominance. As a formerly shy guy who was often at the receiving end of this kind of behavior, I think that a lot of these gender problems would even out if all women managed to subtly assert themselves a bit more. It would surprise me greatly if women were exempt from this stereotypical male behavior.

I think these kinds of discussions are immensely productive even when they don't appear to go anywhere.

For a lot of people, these things are subtle and hard to process. It takes time and repetition for them to understand and acknowledge the problem, let alone become part of the solution.

Sexism is taking generations to sort out, so it's unsurprising that we can't see a difference in the course of a single discussion. But I believe that without discussion, we'll see no progress at all.

They may not go anywhere productive in your eyes, which I would imagine means they do not reach a definitive and world-changing conclusion in the course of the thread, but they do increase awareness, particularly in male-dominated arenas like this. Increasing awareness is probably the most important thing that can be done. See klausa's post.

It's also the case that fighting injustice and increasing awareness of societal boulders that need to be broken down might very well lead to larger change that results in less actual dying in the world. For instance: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Missing_women_of_Asia http://www.economist.com/node/15636231

I respectfully disagree.

It was precisely from countless discussions like this that I began to see my sexism. Through patient, non-judgmental, and intelligent discourse, I started to see how I was trained by our society to see women differently, and how my often well-intentioned choices were hurting the people I care about.

I am really really grateful for discussions like this. Messy? Yes. Useless? Hell on.

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