Catch-22: Tech Blogging As a Woman
codingkilledthecat.wordpress.com
codingkilledthecat.wordpress.com
There are many stories of people overcoming discrimination (say, Indian immigrants being thought to be unfit for executive positions in Silicon Valley), and they make the current hot topic of women in tech look incredibly dumb. We're talking overt discrimination, not occasional pronoun misuse.
Indians in Silicon Valley started a group called TiE to help establish a presence. Does it hurt for them to have labeled themselves as "Indus Entrepreneurs" and try to help each other? Doesn't seem so.
So maybe the right way to overcome this "oppression" you feel is just to quit fucking bitching, put your head down and code, and maybe help a few other women out along the way when you achieve success.
Your misogynist default behavior isn't the fault of the OP and kinda your own failing to overcome.
The onus isn't on the oppressed group to overcome discrimination, it's on the privileged group to cut it out. And downplaying everyday casual sexism just because it's not literally witch burning anymore is a really privileged thing to do!
This one will skyrocket because i may be a woman. And maybe Indian.
Add to that, today's tech environment doesn't make your gender necessarily obvious, except if you choose to shove it into your readers' face. Take the linked blog, for example. It's indistinguishable from any other blog; the name "Amber" might as well be a male's pseudonym, and in any case, it's such low contrast and so small it's almost invisible. I know I skipped over it — also because I'm not typically interested in who wrote an article, but in the article itself.
So we have a population of males traditionally assuming everybody of relevance to technology is a man, and not many non-obnoxious ways for women to establish their gender in their postings (to be honest, I want it to stay that way. Your gender has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm interested in.)
Men need to stop whining and finally end the idiotic assumption that it is fine to use the default 'he'. English has a particularly elegant way out of the dilemma (just use 'they' whenever you'd use 'he') contrary to other languages where you will also need to adjust the inflection of verbs or nouns throughout the sentence.
It's a simple change. Nobody is going to get hurt, and it would do a lot to make women feel more welcome in the (formerly) manly sociotope 'technology'. Why is it such a problem for men to just make such a simple change?
(PS: please don't take my above post about women and their penetration into the technological sphere in the 50s and 60s all too literally. I meant the general population and the accepted role of women in society; I meant not to exclude the extraordinary achievements by some (few enough, unfortunately) women already accomplished in those times.)
I think the author does a great job starting out by highlighting her own contributions via the linked write-up on Git submodules, but beyond the first couple of sentences on the topic nothing, and spends the rest of the article on a tear about the he/she dichotomy in comments.
While I can certainly understand the frustration when people get gender wrong, that seems to be the wrong place to focus on in this topic of women in tech. Is it possibly an indicator of the problem at large? Sure. Does it answer the question "Where are the tech articles written by women"? No.
It does play right into the exact same mold the commenter was talking about, that set this entire entry into motion:
There are plenty of contributions complaining about oppression...where are the technical contributions?
Instead of highlighting great articles from the women in tech, or linking to other women in the industry with well trafficked blogs and talking about their contributions, the author fell right into the category that perpetuates this problem.
Mind you, I agree that there is a rift that rises when people make the wrong assumption, but that's nil imo.
And hopefully, if you understand all that, you won't ask be asking "where are the technical contributions from women?" in the first place. So the question is mute, which is why she didn't answer.
Actually, we have insufficient evidence to know that they are in fact plenty. However, we also have insufficient evidence to say they are rare.
Also, I think you mean moot, not mute. ;)
http://www.javaworld.com/community/node/3512/ http://www.webteacher.ws/2010/07/06/10-terrific-tech-blogs-b...
This article is not one of them. Just because it doesn't answer the question the way you want it to be answered doesn't mean it's "perpetuating the problem".
In fact, one of the indirect points of this article is that demanding lists of female bloggers in the first place is silly - who demands lists of male bloggers?
The reason why groups devoted specifically to women exist is to provide spaces that aren't male-dominated, unlike most other spaces.
You're missing the point of the article. The point is that if she does 'highlight great articles from the women in tech,' then she would be labeled a "female developer" instead of just a "developer." If she doesn't do this, then she gets labeled a male developer. She would like to be labeled "developer," but the two options she can see lead to undesirable outcomes.
This has been said before, but the key thing to take away is the concept of "othering." The author would like to be seen as a developer, not a subcategory of a developer that is somehow different from the norm. Perhaps a better way to demonstrate is to take this to the extreme:
"Instead of highlighting great articles from brown-eyed people in tech, or linking to other brown-eyed people in the industry with well trafficked blogs and talking about their contributions, the author fell right into the category that perpetuates this problem."
Sounds pretty absurd right? Who cares what their eye color is. On the other hand, imagine if everyone got it wrong. Imagine if you had brown eyes but there was a 'default assumption' that everyone had blue eyes. You wouldn't want to make a fuss every time people got it wrong, for fear of being "that person" who is annoying and pedantic, and "hey, it shouldn't matter! Technology is eye-color blind!" But if you don't do it, it gets a little grating when EVERYONE assumes you are something that you're not. It's a catch-22.
The solution is to remove the default assumption that developers are male. That is something that you, not the author, have to do.
Maybe you just picked a bad example, but that would mean nothing to me. I actually generally assume brown eyes- but I don't have brown eyes myself...
For the record I think there is sexism in tech but it mostly starts in jr high and high school - at least in the US.
If someone assumed I was brown-eyed (when in fact I'm blue), I'm not going to write about it, because it is a non-issue.
The issue is around the stigma we place around 'female developers' not the fact we (mis)identify them.
(for the sake of argument I'm going to assume you're male). Imagine you moved to a country with a different language, and your given name sounded feminine in that language. Every time someone met you in person they would look at you strange and go "oh, I'm sorry! I thought you were a woman!" Perhaps you would be assigned to the female dormitory if you studied abroad there, and embarrassingly had to file paperwork to change that.
Would you want to make a small note on your email signature saying "I'm a man!"? I know I would. This is something you would write about, because it kind of is an issue.
These are the kinds of things female developers have to deal with all the time: "wait, you're here for the conference? As a developer? I'm sorry, I didn't realize!" "Okay, but you're not like a developer developer, right?" This shouldn't be the case. The annoying thing is that if a woman writes a note saying "I'm a woman!," they get put in a different class of developer than if they left it off.
Sure, plenty of people will assume you're male (or straight) to start with. But keep writing good technical articles and don't hide your gender, let it come up naturally - just don't make a big fuss about it on day 1. If people read stuff you write, and appreciate your technical competence, and then realise you're female /once they already respect your technical ability/, then the attitude the OP complains about will change.
I reserve the right to let people know who I am at any time and to deliver it how I please. I don't want anyone to tell me I should "let it emerge naturally." If I want to do that then sure, that's very tactful. But sometimes I don't.
The author has an obligation to do nothing. It is up to the audience to change their perceptions.
He does not have any such note in his email, works in a well respected field with a much more even gender ratio and hasn't written about it, because as far as he is concerned it is a non-issue that only leads to harmless, sometimes funny mistakes.
Perhaps your example is just not perfect, but without a good non-gendered pronoun, this is hardly an easy problem to solve. And let's be serious, "he/she" sounds and reads awful, and "they" is dehumanizing. In many languages, ungendered items will takeon the male form, which seems to serve them well.
I say this because she has a Y chromosome and only updated her driver's license to read Female one year ago.
The major thrust of her article is where she presents herself as the typical specimen proving that women both exist in the tech world in large numbers and are oppressed by pronouns in comments on the internet. Unfortunately, her chromosomes, as well as the male privilege she spent the majority of her life reaping the benefits from, make her the ultimate antithesis of her own point, and she does the opposite of dispelling any stereotypes people may harbor.
1. An Ad-Hominem argument is one where you attack the other based on their credentials to have an opinion on an issue without commenting on the argument itself. That's specifically what you did.
2. >>"Refraining from addressing someone's statement other than to label it "ad hominem" is itself an ad hominem argument, however." -- this is a weird piece of logic I must say. See definition of ad hominem above. Where did I challenge your "statement" by saying that you are not un-biased enough to have an opinion. If you still disagree, see http://paulgraham.com/disagree.html and let me know what I am missing
3. Let me respond to your main argument as well - you say that the fact she was a guy "does the opposite of dispelling any stereotypes people may harbor" - ONE - not everyone knows she was a guy. Therefore, most people would take the argument for what it is and think about it. TWO - even if people know she was a guy, why do you assume that other readers are primitive enough that they will let that be a factor? Note - they aren't seeing her in real life - they are just reading an article at their leisure.
It's not an attack on their credentials to have an argument.
I think Jaye might be right.
You've missed the point of the article. It doesn't set out to answer your quoted question with some faux-positive ra-ra laundry list of women's writing. Instead it unasks the question.
On the other hand, you've exhibited a classic indicator of unconscious bias by assuming that a woman was complaining. Especially when, as in this case, she clearly isn't.
"complain: to express dissatisfaction, pain, uneasiness, censure, resentment, or grief"
If people can't disagree with you without being accused of bias at the drop of a hat, then we can't have a true discussion.
Recognising bias is important in gender discussions. It doesn't provide many truths but it reveals the falsehoods.
1. Men who believe women do not succeed in the tech world due to social pressures
2. Men who believe women do not succeed in the tech world due to differences that are genetic in nature
For the second group, author Amber Yust only fuels the fire of the stereotype, because she was born a man. For the first group, using herself as an example of a woman succeeding in the tech world is invalid, because she was a man for most of her life and benefitted from all the consequent privileges.
I find it dumbfounding that she wrote this article.
It is like the New York Times saying, "men invented the Internet", or all the people who have written, "Why are there no women programmers?" There are women programmers (22% in the US according to the Department of Labor.) There were women involved in the creation of the net (8% of RFC 1336). Just because there is not equal representation no excuse for erasing those that do exist.
If you mentally turn everyone male unless they are speaking about gender it is unfair to then turn around and complain that women only ever speak about gender. When you were listening to them talk about other things it wasn't that they were men, it was that you assumed they were.
That is all about you, and has nothing to do with the cis* status of the people pointing it out.
It's possible you are very open minded in such a way that even though you don't "see" a group, and its accomplishments, you still consciously afford them the same benefit of doubt as you do for the majority group. Unfortunately, this is not a trait shared by societies and social groups at large.
Also note that their proposed solution doesn't solve anything; it might just prevent you, personally, from being able to complain about it. I'm guessing that is their actual goal.
Perhaps English needs a truly gender-neutral pronoun.
If women really want people to be know them as women then they should make it clear that they are. Hell, the suffragettes persevered through much worse than creepy internet comments.
>Most of the time people use "he" when they don't know the gender of the author. It's not assuming the author is a man.
That's exactly what it's assuming. Why else would you "default" to "he" instead of "she"? Because you assume the author to be a man.
And what the hell is the suffragettes comment supposed to mean? In one sentence you managed to trivialize the way women are treated often in this industry and basically say the equivalent of "They've had it worse, so who cares".
Here's a summary of what I wrote.
1. Sometimes people use "he" to refer to unknown gender.
2. Men outnumber women in tech
3. Men make assumptions because they outnumber women.
4. If women want to make it clear that they are not second-class citizens, they should correct these assumptions.
5. The author of this article feels that if they do (4) they are discriminated against in the form of inappropriate comments etc.
6. I say so what, it's better in the long run.
2. Men outnumber women in tech, making it all the more important not to further alienate the women left.
3. Men make assumptions and then get super-defensive when it is pointed out that their assumptions are wrong.
4. Women attempting to correct those assumptions are told that men's assumptions aren't men's responsibility and women must take responsibility for what random men happen to think.
4.A. Those same men go on to whine about things that are only true in their assumption-filled heads and have no connection to reality. When called on it, they blame women through convoluted logic of refusing to take responsibility for their own actions.
5. The original author reports that sometimes those defensive reactions include harassment, which makes it even less fair to put the entire onus on women who not only are being asked to put in extra effort, but they are also subject to punishment for having done so.
6. Apparently verroq somehow thinks this double standard is fair and "better in the long run", probably because what he means it "it's better for me as a dude, since I don't have to do any work and can keep irrationally blaming women for my failings."
>6. Apparently verroq somehow thinks this double standard is fair and "better in the long run", probably because what he means it "it's better for me as a dude, since I don't have to do any work and can keep irrationally blaming women for my failings."
I said women should speak out against this double standard, even if they get hit with some personal attacks. I like the way you twisted my words to suit your self-righteous indignation.
Sure, you may call me naive to suggest the obvious solution, but do you have any evidence that it won't work?
Do you understand how absurd the position that you've backed yourself into sounds? The people perpetuating the problem shouldn't be part of the solution or discussion? Women should speak up for themselves? Oh really, you mean like the article we're discussing.
Maybe if slaves had just fought harder, right, then we wouldn't have had to help them out?
I never said this. You made it up. Women standing up for themselves is not mutually exclusive to stamping down on asshats.
Funnily enough though, I figured you'd counter with something as vapid and baseless as
>Maybe if slaves had just fought harder, right, then we wouldn't have had to help them out?
You say it like no slave uprisings ever erupted in the course of history. But this is a strawman, unless women are slaves in our society. Some discrimination in tech hardly equates to a life of servitude.
I mean, you don't even understand how offensive it is to sit there and say "I don't care if they're bullied and harassed, they should do it because they should speak up for themselves".
Is that your response to all issues? Gay kids in school should learn to fight their bullies to affect change? Sure, it's a nice idea, I'm sure everyone on HN would love for everyone to feel so empowered, but you must be in one-helluva privileged class to sit in your armchair and hand out recommendations like that without any acknowledge of the personal implications. Again, precisely as the article talks about.
Your posts read, one after another, as someone who is really trying to say "Eh, it's not an issue [for me], if you think it is, you go do something about it".
Then you missed the entire point of the article, or you're more naive than I could have guessed. Again, you act as if "revealing that she is a woman" is without consequence. Or else your "encouragement" is just completely empty and still has no appreciation for the abuse that often results from such a revelation. (For the third time, as the article talks about).
>I also find your "women must be helped" attitude offensive.
If that's what you took away, you haven't been paying a single bit of attention. How many times have I specifically talked about trying to address how men's actions have affected women in tech. Or are you really implying that "We should evaluate how we alienate women" to be "all women are helpless".
I find that gross misrepresentation to be offensive and dishonest.
You can't have your cake and eat it too. There has to be sacrifices for the long run.
>How many times have I specifically talked about trying to address how men's actions have affected women in tech. Or are you really implying that "We should evaluate how we alienate women" to be "all women are helpless".
So buried inside all the cynicism and angst this was you were trying to articulate?
As for your vapid White Knight accusation, I'm not speaking up for women, I'm speaking up for myself against your illogical assertions. Lack of reason offends me. Women are welcome to do whatever they want and they certainly don't need you telling them they are Doing It Wrong.
I believe women should be welcome to highlight their gender or not, because in neither case does their behavior directly hurt me so it's none of my business or yours. I do think men demanding that they do one or the other are way out of line, though, and people taking that as an excuse for why they ignore their existence are just acting scummy.
The obvious solution is for men to stop assuming everyone is male. That, in fact, has nothing to do with women at all and isn't their problem to solve.
Alternatively, instead of requiring every post to be metaphorically coded pink or blue, we could all stop assuming any post not so labeled was written by a man. Your solution requires women to do irrelevant work so that we can continue assuming male-as-default while being wrong less of the time. My solution requires a minor shift in attitude, equally imposed on everyone, that would lead us to be wrong none of the time.
Actually, there is a third option that someone proposed below: we could start assuming every technical blog author was female unless we bothered to find out otherwise and use "she" as the default pronoun.
I can say both from experience and personal perspective that, especially in America, it is a cultural norm to use "he" as a gender-neutral, non-normative pronoun. "They" sounds both awkward and invalid since it is taught as a plural pronoun.
I grew up in the Pacific Northwest, and this is the way I and everyone around me spoke. We never used "he" exclusively as a male pronoun, especially when gender was indeterminate. Some people would correct themselves by saying, "He ... or she..." I myself have spent years training myself to use "they" instead of "he," and I still catch myself using "he" when I clearly mean to use a gender-neutral pronoun.
Please do not put words in people's mouths and assume that when we use "he" it means we think it's a man. Our subculture is different from your own. Our upbringing is different from yours. It is a fallacy to assume otherwise.
Not everyone is a backward sexist.
It has been shown in German and Russian that the gender of inanimate nouns changes how people respond to them. Why do you think that wouldn't be true of referring to everyone as male?
"It"?
"neuter pronoun" links to "Gender-neutral pronoun".
So, we have the word. We just refuse to use it.
If you want a gender-neutral pronoun, "they" works perfectly well. It doesn't matter what you intend when you type "he", everyone reading it will interpret it as male.
A lot of closeted or previously closeted homosexuals can tell you that it's not that terribly confusing. I used "they" for years to refer to a singular person. After coming out, I was accused of lying. My response was that I'd never lied about the gender of someone I was seeing or referring to. No one ever asked.
Which ironically plays into a whole different set of gender assumptions, but that's a can of worms I don't want to open in an already dangerous thread.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender-neutral_pronoun#Invented...
One shouldn't reinvent the wheel.
I'd like to understand the severity of this issue. Can you provide examples of technical articles written by women that were dismissed due to their gender?
Catch-22 means you can't do something without doing another thing first, but you can't do that first either because it relies on the thing you wanted to do in the first place. It's a closed circle with no way in.
This, however, it's just painful. Women can't emphasize their gender without being ridiculed by assholes, but they can't hide it because they would then be helping prolong the ridicule for others.
"You're either part of the problem, or part of the solution." Sitting back and doing nothing allows the problem to continue. I'm as guilty of doing nothing as anyone.
I really don't care who wrote the article, only that it's a good article. If I see something techie don't by a woman, I generally think "Good for her" and then continue on with life. I don't assign any special weight to her words at all. They still stand on their own.
On the other hand, my experience is that closed communities are a lot better about not discriminating. If someone says, "the op is a She", everyone apologizes, switches, and continues on.
Open communities, where any asshole with a keyboard can leave a comment, tend to be slums. Assholes know they can post their opinions without censorship, so they do. Constantly. There's repercussions, either.
As much as I like finding random stuff on the net, the only communities worth joining are the private ones. And there's precious few of those any more.
Couldn't this be solved by a little 'about the author' section at the end of your articles? Pull in your gravatar and add a couple of sentences about yourself. Now everyone knows you are a woman, and you didn't have to change your background to hot-pink to do so! :)
> Sure, I could go out of my way to make it obvious that I’m a woman. I could put my name at the top of my blog or on my About page, or I could mention it in passing in my writing. That’s not something a male author has to do, though. Furthermore, doing so results in harassment and having my writing dismissed/trivialized/tokenized because of my gender. Hence why I don’t (or at least, hadn’t until this post).
I don't think this point is correct. The technical nature of computer science/technology makes it easier to judge a work by its technical merits, not by authorship.
I also don't think that for example on HN it should be possible to "pay" with technical contributions for non-technical contributions, like, for every x relevant articles you would be allowed an irrelevant article. Ideally, every article should stand on it's own (probably not realistic, but an ideal to attain to).
Chromosomes have nothing to do with it.
Obviously, you know that what you're saying is hateful or you wouldn't have created a burner account in order to post it.
Amber has benefitted from male privilege for most of her life. If people believe male privilege, brogrammer environments, etc. are why women aren't seen in the tech world, Amber has done nothing to disprove it.
She is literally the worst possible piece of evidence to use to disprove the stereotype.
This is not a burner account and I am not transphobic.
Chromosomes are only part of sex differentiation in utero. Many of the developing embryo's/fetus' sex characteristics, both neurological and physiological, are the result of how it responds to the particular mix of hormones it is exposed to at different developmental stages. Sometimes the levels of androgens and estrogens are not consistent throughout the entire development process so the baby can be born with neurological characteristics of one sex but physiological characteristics of the other.
Trans men and women usually undergo hormone replacement therapy which sends their body through a second puberty; they develop the secondary sex characteristics of their transitioned sex. These hormones also influence emotional responses and other psychological aspects in the same way they would influence a cis (non-trans) person.
Several studies [1] have shown that there are similarities in brain structure of trans individuals to their cis counterparts. The most common hypothesis used to explain physiological differences in trans individuals is that infants are exposed to androgen levels that are either too high or too low, causing the brain to sexually differentiate towards a different sex than other parts of the body.
So, while trans women may have benefited from male privilege in their lives pre-transition, they may not necessarily "think like men". (And the inverse is true for trans men.)
In addition, wages for trans women tend to fall post-transition, while wages for trans men increase. [2]
Amber faces the same sexism as all women, and her physiology and brain structure are likely quite different than those of a cis man. That she was assigned male at birth is less relevant than you think.
[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Causes_of_transsexualism#Brain_... [2] http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/04/lgbt_wage_gap...
Second, it's quite possible that being a transgender woman would subject the author to even more discrimination, so what's your point? That Yust doesn't count as a real woman succeeding in the tech world because she was born with male intellectual attributes?
Google her. You'll see a lot of news about her suing the DMV over her gender.
At the very least, it confuses everything she says. She spent most of her life as a man, and succeeded as a man... And now she's trying to use her tech articles as an example of a woman succeeding. Some will take the message to be 'You can succeed as a woman, but only if everyone thinks you're a man.' and that's not the case.
* I don't know her and can't speak for how she thinks.
Did you make a throwaway account specifically to troll? Why else would you be such an ass as to not refer to the author with the appropriate pronouns?