Sexism | Hacker News Reader

Sexism

kswizz.com

27 pointsSeoxyS45 comments

It's very depressing to see very intelligent people knowingly ignore their received benefit from serious, dehumanizing and alienating structural problems.

Nobody thinks the artificial equalization provided by things like affirmative action actually is equality - the hope is that by putting a finger on the scale in favor of equality of opportunity, eventually society (after several generations of induced equity) will actually become equitable because the society itself has been altered.

to suggest that this is not a worthwhile goal essentially means that you think the status quo is fine because it affords you certain advantages that you did nothing to achieve. if you think that demanding people "lighten up" or accept that they shouldn't be a part of things because they can't hack it is actually an objectivist or libertarian ideal, you just don't understand the unfair advantages you have actually already been afforded by birthright.

"Nobody thinks the artificial equalization provided by things like affirmative action actually is equality"

Do you really think that if women dominated tech, people would be clamoring for more men in it? The few nurses I know have no trouble with the lack of men in their profession. Maybe they're just sexist?

I know a few people who are concerned about the lack of men in primary education (UK - ages 4 to 11) or in nursing and other work.

In education at least, this is usually due to the desire to include strong male role models in childrens' lives, not in a mission for equality.

Yup, a few.

If nursing and primary education were the glamorous professions where the next generation of billionaires were coming from, there might be more clamoring.

there are actually large national and industry-wide efforts to recruit men into nursing. and, in fact, being a male nurse is a huge boon to one's career. though men are only 6% of the nursing population, far more of them have advanced certifications. we'll probably disagree about the reasons for this, but the result is they are more desirable and paid more.

maybe the female nurses you know are happy to have a job where their opinions are respected by their peers. have you actually asked them or are you just assuming because they've never discussed it with you?

I have heard stories of male nurses being repeatedly passed over for promotions. Maybe your closing question was meant to be rhetorical, but the answer just might be "yes".

I know a large number of librarians, some male and some female, and have had a discussion with most of them about the dearth of men in their profession. Most of them are concerned by it. So now we both have anecdotes, hooray!

A mild tangent: When the Internet was being rolled out beyond the initial research labs it ended up being part of the library's remit. Thus there are a bunch of women of a certain age who were there at the early days of the Internet who know a lot about protocols and netiquette etc.

It’s much easier to get hired as a male nurse and those who are responsible will always be looking for more male nurses.

> the hope is that by putting a finger on the scale in favor of equality of opportunity, eventually society (after several generations of induced equity) will actually become equitable

Admirable principle, are you actually consistent with it? For instance, tall people get paid more (six inches = extra $4,734! [1]) and obese people less [2]. If it turns out that the combined adverse effect of being short and overweight is larger than that of being female, are you prepared to make affirmative action in favor of short, overweight people your top priority?

> to suggest that this is not a worthwhile goal essentially means that you think the status quo is fine because it affords you certain advantages that you did nothing to achieve

What if you think it's not worth your while because it's being promoted through ineffective, destructive methods?

[1] http://www.psychologytoday.com/articles/200310/tall-people-g...

[2] http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/health/8337512.stm

>Admirable principle, are you actually consistent with it?

Are you searching for a way to make an ad hominem here, or just fishing for a contradiction? Either way, this seems like a backwards to make the argument. If you believe that the principle behind affirmative action would lead to absurdities if applied consistently, why not just come out and say so?

>What if you think it's not worth your while because it's being promoted through ineffective, destructive methods?

The statement was about whether the goal was worthwhile, not the means.

This person is ostensibly is in favor of gender equality, but he believes that the problem has been overstated and it will simply solve itself. He believes that the world has become more gender-equal in the past decades not because of the relentless struggle of radical feminists, but because somehow men decided to become more civilized. Power struggles are a concept that's alien to him. He's too young to know about a society just a few decades ago in which women weren't able to go to the banks and receive loans without their husbands' permission. He doesn't realize that Mad Men really takes place in our 60s, that is, two generations ago. He hasn't spent enough time trying to picture how it'd be like to be 1 woman in the company of 10 "brogrammers". He doesn't understand that the "brogrammers" are more likely to hire more "brogrammers" until some exogenous force (like Etsy's initiative) fights against that.

In the end, I think that he doesn't believe that women's oppression is real. It reminds me of that Kurt Vonnegut letter that was in the front page a few weeks ago. And also of the following (taken from a talk by David Graeber):

"Women are always expected to imagine what things look like from a male point of view. Men are almost never expected to reciprocate. So deeply internalized is this pattern of behavior that many men react to the suggestion that they might do otherwise as if it were an act of violence in itself. A popular exercise among High School creative writing teachers in America, for example, is to ask students to imagining they have been transformed, for a day, into someone of the opposite sex, and describe what that day might be like. The results, apparently, are uncannily uniform. The girls all write long and detailed essays that clearly show they have spent a great deal of time thinking about the subject. Half of the boys usually refuse to write the essay entirely. Those who do make it clear they have not the slightest conception what being a teenage girl might be like, and deeply resent having to think about it."

I agree on all points except the endorsement of Etsy's initiative. I understand that affirmative action-type efforts can lead to changes which are favorable to the oppressed class, however they are still inherently hypocritical in that they shift that oppression to the opposing class. The popular argument is that once this has been done enough times, the two classes will end up on relatively equal footing and society will in the process undergo a fundamental change which supports this equality going forward.

I have to believe there is an alternative method for creating that change in society, though I unfortunately cannot think of one.

I have struggled with this dichotomy for many years. I still feel that "affirmative action" is inherently discriminatory. But I too can offer no alternative to foster change. Considering the circumstances http://www.samefacts.com/2012/04/msm-mainstream-media/womens... I reluctantly accept that the end justifies the means.

I'm thinking I'll probably have to accept the same. I can't rightly argue against it unless I can offer up an alternative, and the need for change is significant enough.

I'd feel a lot better about it if it were at least acknowledged as such by the class it promotes, though.

Affirmative Action[1] is not discriminatory, but it is inherently _exclusionary_.

Discrimination:

> the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or things, esp. on the grounds of race, age, or sex

Is Affirmative Action unjust? No, it is justified by the vast wealth of research backing it and pointing to its success in changing the status quo towards a more equal environment. Is AA prejudiced? No, because prejudice is about not being based on reason or actual experience, and AA is very specifically based on both reason and past experiences.

Being left out of a group that is openly being exclusive may not feel right or sit well on your mind, but that doesn’t inherently make it a case of discrimination. AA can be an exclusive treatment based on gender, but it is neither unjust nor prejudicial, thus it is not discriminatory.

Hope that helps clear up the distinction for you! :)

[1] This is partly why it is no longer called “Positive Discrimination”—because that term is inherently oxymoronic—and instead is known as "Positive Action" elsewhere.

> they are still inherently hypocritical in that they shift that oppression to the opposing class.

Calling affirmative action oppression of the "opposing class" (by which you presumably mean the privileged group) is serious decontextualization, ignoring the entire history of the two groups of people and pretending that the moment in which you compare two individuals is all that matters. The fact is there is a systemic bias against un- or under-privileged groups such that the privileged person will almost always perform better on even an objective assessment, so affirmative action is a systematic correction.

In order for a privileged person and an un-privileged person to be even within spitting distance of one another academically or professionally requires a hell of a lot more work on the part of the un-privileged person, no matter how hard the privileged person worked. Affirmative action recognizes this and rewards that work despite the decontextualizing "objective" assessments that would give the reward to the higher achiever, basically placing a bet that in aggregate, giving these people more opportunity will result in better results.

Will there be errors? Sure. But it's a bit rich to complain about white boys being oppressed by women and minorities.

If you follow the "forced to rename his opensource project" link[1] you'll find that the developer wasn't forced to rename anything.

He had an IM conversation with a female developer friend and concluded: "The truth is that I really do want to encourage women in tech, and a project like testosterone does not do that."

[1] - https://github.com/whit537/assertEquals/blob/master/ANNOUNCE...

Why are those free speech cheerleaders always to opposed to people freely talking to each other, telling each other why they think something is or isn’t a bad idea?

Yep, that's sexism in action, alright. He's exactly part of the problem, and the fact that he's resistant to changing it just shows how pervasive it is.

To mangle a famous quote, "The greatest trick privilege ever pulled was to convince the privileged it didn't exist."

One of the toughest problems with structural inequalities is that they hide themselves from those who are benefited, largely because they are not directly and adversely affected by the inequality. This is exacerbated by the fact that on the whole, privileged people are not bad people, and coming to grips with how much the system favors you by virtue of being born into the right family can certainly make you feel like an undeserving wretch, profiting off of the misery of countless others. It is vastly more comfortable not to think about these things, particularly when thinking about them often makes you feel even worse when you realize there's no easy way to correct them.

But that discomfort is one price we, as privileged people, should pay. We should live in a shameful awareness of how we benefit from a system that undervalues and exploits people to greater and lesser degrees. We should recognize that denigration of things through sexist, ablist, racist or heteronormative language is an expression of indifference to the suffering of people. We should live our shame because it cannot match what we collectively allow to happen to other people, because otherwise we are passive participants in the continued oppression of other people, and because maybe being painfully aware of what we are doing to them will also make us aware of steps we can take to end the structural oppression.

"If somebody cannot handle some crudeness, I’d postulate that he or she does not belong at a startup, regardless of gender. Because, when shit hits the fan, as it invariably does, we need people who can take it."

What does crude language have to do with ability to handle startup situations where "shit hits the fan"? Someone who dislikes offensive language is somehow unable to handle fast-paced or stressful situations on the job?

He's using it as a litmus test. When people are in fast-paced or stressful situations on the job, the mental "PC filter" can begin to break down, and people may say things they wouldn't have. You can condemn this, but it can happen to the best of us. When it does, it's nice to have a group of people whom the occasional uncouth or unthinking comment rolls off their back like water on ducks.

Alternatively, it's good to have people who won't resort to being offensive in tough situations.

I can't think I've ever been so stressed out I started using racial or sexist slurs.

I agree. However what I'm talking about is when you say something well-intentioned, not realizing that it can/will be taken in an offensive way. This tends to happen more often as you lose sleep and crank up the stress. My impression is that the author is using people's reaction to slurs and the like as a proxy for how they will react to the unintended offenses I mention.

A couple of startup could have used people with better PC filters to keep them out of hot water and keep them out of the news with bad PR.

Oh, PC filters are a good thing, I'm not trying to claim otherwise. I was just trying to clarify what seemed to be a misinterpretation of the author.

Did he read the "Lighten Up" article that he himself linked to? Because it does a great job explaining why "lighten up" is an awful and often offensive response to sexism in the workplace.

We should always strive to remove sexism/racism/whatever-ism from our lives. Even if it's a little bothersome that you shouldn't be calling people "retarded" (or "gay" or "n-----").

It's all very simple. All we have to do is go back to the beginning of time and remove the systematic oppression of women. Then viola - Equal playing field!

> A startup is an intensely stressful environment, and staying sane is crucial.

Imagine that you had been denied access to work purely because of your sex. Or your eye colour. Or something else trivial but outside your control.

Imagine that people said your code was shoddy because of this thing. Imagine that every hour of every day someone made some comment or joke about this thing.

Eventually you'd get a bit pissed off.

You may write a calm blog post pointing out the problems caused by the attitudes of people who don't like brown eyes.

And you get a bunch of people calling you weak and dumb and up-tight. So those people can say what they like, all day every day, and you just have to lighten up, and if you ever say anything (no matter how calmly you say it) they mock you.

You can see how annoying that would be.

> A startup is an intensely stressful environment

That's no reason to accept unacceptable behaviour. We should be working to make things better for everyone. We should be helping people who have good contributions. Saying that startups are stressful becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

> That's no reason to accept unacceptable behaviour. We should be working to make things better for everyone. We should be helping people who have good contributions. Saying that startups are stressful becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy.

What is unacceptable to you is likely completely acceptable to a different group of people, especially when we are talking about workplace environments.

Phrased another way, why should a small, committed group of people who get along very well with a particular workplace culture be forced to change it and shunned by 'the community', not because they are actually doing anything illegal or actively putting up barriers to entry for a certain group of people, but because someone, somewhere, in some sort of underrepresented group might not like the culture?

Great post. The focus should be on the work and getting things done. Gender/race/(other group qualifier) ratios are a matter of fact, not value. Focus shouldn't be on political correctness for the sake of protecting feelings. It doesn't take a Nazi to see that.

People have become over-sensitive, and it's left me asking: Where have all the grown-ups gone?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGAOCVwLrXo

I really have to say I strongly disagree with Kenneth Ballenegger's characterization at the beginning of the second paragraph of the developer who was "forced to rename his open source project." Clicking on the link provided, that's clearly not what happened, unless you call him having a chat over Twitter with a friend of his "being forced." Reading over the guy's account, he was glad to do it, and felt like it was a great step to take. Talking as though it was some sort of situation where people ganged up on him to force him to take down something he worked hard on is more than a little misleading. Here, read it yourself and let me know if you think it sounds like he was "forced":

https://github.com/whit537/assertEquals/blob/master/ANNOUNCE...

That mischaracterization aside, though:

I disagree with almost everything in this article, although I think I see where he's coming from. Yes, for us guys in tech, it can sometimes seem a bit scary watching how much damage it can do when a company gets hammered for sexism on Twitter. I think a lot of us get a sort of fear of that happening to us, and can get a bit defensive when we're told that we've done or said something sexist, racist, or otherwise bigoted. And because we are generally blind to the ways our privilege assists us every day, we tend to feel as though we're the ones being attacked, completely missing the fact that sexism still hurts women and holds them back.

>>We cannot beat sexism until gender is no longer an issue.

This point doesn't make much sense to me at all. I think this is supposed to mean that sexism is a problem when and only when people 'make gender an issue' - and to imply that discussing sexism makes everything worse because it naturally 'makes gender an issue.' The question here is natural - an 'issue' to whom? The whole point is supposed to be that sexism is an issue women in tech have to face even if we men have the privilege of completely ignoring it if we want. It wasn't an 'issue' in 1950 that women were forbidden from holding any authority in the office; it was just a fact of life.

What really bothers me about this standard of victory over sexism - 'when gender is no longer an issue' - is that it sounds distinctly like a request that people please shut up about it already. Particularly when coupled with the next sentence...

>>Keeping up the current level of discourse is making things worse.

... which, by the way, seems demonstrably wrong to me. Does anybody care to cite any statistics about women in tech right now? Women in business? I wonder if there's any metric by which the current discourse is actually making things worse. Sure, it's not fun to have to confront privilege and deal with inequality; but it makes us all better human beings, and that's the point.

Who's going to write 'Privilege 101' for HN?

touches nose

[don't make me do it, 'cause I'll do it if you make me.]

(makes you do it)

> If I call something “retarded,” it should be obvious that it has nothing to do with people afflicted with down syndrome.

And it should be obvious that I'll no longer do business with you, because you're horrifyingly inconsiderate of people around you. Sure, you are not offended; that doesn't mean the person with mental disability they can hide from you won't be, if they overhear you.

This is a pretty bad example for the rest of the article, which I happen to agree with in a couple places. I resist calling things "retarded" as much as I do calling things "gay", and I think the sentiment reflects really negatively upon the rest of the article and the person.

(Edit: Oh look, he's live editing it now that I've called him out.)

Or your coworker with a child with Down's or a customer with a sibling with Down's.

What an ignorant fool.

This article doesn’t say much (except that sexism is super awesome which I don’t think deserves a response) but the one he linked to (about hypocrisy) is incredibly bad (http://kswizz.com/post/8275502957/hypocrisy).

Facebook has very liberal fields for all kinds of stuff. It’s no problem to say that you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster (9,573 fans) or Russel’s Teapot (86 fans). Like Jedis? Facebook’s got your back (2,829)! If you can’t find your religion you can enter your own, even with a description.

Why then is the gender so locked down? There are two choices. It’s not even possible to just say nothing. I mean, what the hell? That’s a serious indicator that Facebook hasn’t done much thinking about gender. That’s just awful for a huge social network with nearly a billion users.

(Also, is he seriously defending saying “retarded” to people? What the hell?)

Actually, it is possible to remove the field entirely, which I'm grateful for as a non-gendered individual.

But yeah, I do wish you didn't have to even select anything.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com