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> the author fell right into the category that perpetuates this problem.

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.

What is the OP's point? That people don't pay attention to the gender of the writer? If someone did a dedicated study about the last 6 months of top Hacker News and top r/programming articles what percentage do we think would be male authors? I would set the over-under at 95%. (Please don't point out that those audiences are sexist because the OP just showed that the readers don't pay attention to the gender of authors.)

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.

No. What's absurd is that Amber Yust reaped all the benefits of having blue eyes in her profession for most of her life, and then proceeded to author this article about how it's wrong to assume that people in her profession have blue eyes, written with all the fury of someone who had brown eyes for their entire life.

I say this because she has a Y chromosome and only updated her driver's license to read Female one year ago.

This has to be one of the most mind blowing Ad Hominem arguments I have ever seen. Not because it is insulting or anything, but it is just unexpected!

I was not making an argument; I was stating a fact. Refraining from addressing someone's statement other than to label it "ad hominem" is itself an ad hominem argument, however.

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.

Ok, its been about 10 hrs, so maybe you would be able to read this comment objectively:

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.

They are saying that the author is a counter-example to their own argument.

It's not an attack on their credentials to have an argument.

Y chromosome does not equal male. In most cases it does but you can't make a blanket assumption that sex is entirely determined by chromosomes because it is not.

Yes it does.

Watch the last 3rd of this Stanford University lecture on Human Sexual Behavior http://youtu.be/LOY3QH_jOtE (I think the relevant part starts at 1:13)

I think Jaye might be right.

Imagine if there was a 'default assumption' that everyone had blue eyes.

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...

It's a bad example because there's no history of discrimination and oppression against brown-eyed people.

With you're example highlights the amount of 'hype' around the issue though.

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.

> 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.

(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.

The solution is to let it emerge naturally and subtly. Like the advice I've seen given to gays: don't have a big dramatic "coming out", just have a picture of your partner on your desk and let it come up naturally in conversation.

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.

> The solution is to let it emerge naturally and subtly.

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.

If you open with angry social commentary about being a woman in tech, then the perception being complained about is in fact accurate and your audience has no obligation to change it.

As a counter example I have a good male friend, who, even being born in the US, still has a name most often mistaken as female.

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 am reminded of Alistair Cockburn's blurb on the bottom of his website about how to pronounce his name...

The author falls into no such category, having clearly made a considerable contribution already.

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.

> 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.

I'm not sure why you're supplying a definition of "complain" except to confirm my point? Because none of those things are present in the OP.

Recognising bias is important in gender discussions. It doesn't provide many truths but it reveals the falsehoods.

The stereotype is primarily accepted by two groups of males:

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.

She is not presenting a story of "a woman succeeding in the tech world"; she is presenting a story of how everyone assumes anyone who writes a tech article is male.

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.

The point is that she shouldn't need to point out individual contributions by women. Because you'd hopefully understand that women don't go out of the way and say "hey, btw, I'm a girl!". So you'd understand technical articles by women are plenty, but they're not immediately obvious. Because women are not trying to make it immediately obvious. Because the internet is supposed to be gender neutral.

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.

> So you'd understand technical articles by women are plenty, but they're not immediately obvious.

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. ;)

There are other articles that are meant to be lists of female tech bloggers, e.g.

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?

Regarding you last post: it seems curious that there are actually lots of decidedly female tech groups (like geek girls or whatever), whereas male only tech groups would probably be met with outrage. That said, personally I don't need a list of female bloggers.

Because there's no need to create a space specifically to be occupied primarily by men - it already exists in the form of the entire field.

The reason why groups devoted specifically to women exist is to provide spaces that aren't male-dominated, unlike most other spaces.

By that reason it seems a list of female tech bloggers would also make sense.

If it was created as a resource for women, sure. But as the response to a demand by men? No so much.

Why not as a resource for women? It would be difficult to forbid men from using it, though.

> Mind you, I agree that there is a rift that rises when people make the wrong assumption, but that's nil imo.

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.