Seriously?
bitquabit.com
bitquabit.com
http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/mar/21/lighten-up/
>>
Every time I spoke up about the above crap, I got some sympathy, but I also got some guy who didn't understand what the big deal was. If I wasn't in the middle of being raped or beaten or threatened or fired, guess what I needed to do?
Lighten up.
How long would you put up with it? Do you love anything that much? If your spouse subtly treated you like crap every day, how long would your marriage last? If you saw a friend being treated this way by their boss, wouldn't you tell them to quit?
Or would you tell them to lighten up?
You, person who told me to lighten up, saw one little thing. It didn't seem like a big deal, did it? One little line! One joke! One comment! But it's not just one thing to me: it's one of thousands that I've had to endure since I was old enough to be told that 'X is for boys!' It's probably not even the first thing I've had to deal with that day, unless you've gotten to me pretty early.
That's the main problem with subtle discrimination. It leaves those that it affects the most powerless against it, quietly discouraging them. If they speak up, they're treated to eye rolls at the least, and at the worst, are called oppressors themselves. We're accused of not wanting equal rights, but of wanting tyranny.
While I support Noah's right to say what he wants to say in the US, I do believe that his attention-grabbing tactics are in extreme poor taste and future conferences should take heed that this is what they might be signing up for by getting him as a speaker. Noah seems to be an otherwise smart guy and an excellent businessman. I'm sad that he seems somewhat obtuse to this behavior as inappropriate.
Hypotheticals aside, the biggest problem with your argument is that you seem to be saying that if the OP was a woman, then she'd have more of a point...I hope to think that isn't the case...if the OP's point is flawed then it is wrong if it comes from a woman.
(in the abortion debate, the "men should mind their own business" sentiment is also flawed, especially since there are a good number of women who oppose abortion)
* Insisting sexism is not endemic to software, it's just idiots being idiots.
* Insisting sexism is not endemic to software, it's just jerks being jerks.
* Dismissive pedantry over the claim that women are deterred from software by incidents of sexism.
* Blaming women themselves for not going into software.
And all of it laced with blithe stereotyping language ("panty bunching equivalent", "bitching", "drama" and so on).
This predictably depressing reaction hasn't been good enough for a long time. The reason more women aren't in software is staring us right in the face but we're too busy being dismissively sexist to see it.
Yes, I agree completely. The reason is entirely clear - from a young age, boys are marketed to in an entirely different fashion than girls, parents gently nudge their daughters into more passive roles, and the types of toys that are available for girls that don't reinforce social stereotypes suck in a fashion that I don't think I can explain to someone who isn't raising a daughter.
Lego has finally released some Legos (yeah, I pluralize it) that appeal to girls, and while some of them are lame (a hair salon, for example), others are cool, but the vast overwhelming acreage of the girls' half of any given toy store is filled with pink dolls, barbies, kitchen sets, crap to do with your hair, and the the type of half-assed girl versions of boy toys that make a responsible parent want to burn the place down.
Let me offer an example. I have a pair of friends who are both PhDs in CS, and both work at Google. They have a daughter whom both parents would love to see in engineering. The mom has the following story of when she gave up trying to resist her daughter's inclinations to make everything pretty instead of wanting to build stuff.
Mom left her daughter to play with a box of regular legos for a bit hoping that she would try to build something. When she came back a few minutes later, every green lego was out and a smattering of others scattered over the floor. Her daughter looked up with a big smile and announced, "Look! Here is my lawn, and these are the pretty flowers!"
I have watched this with my own daughter. First, let's be clear, we do not have a TV in our house and she does not see most of that marketing. But everything "girly" that she's been exposed to, she wants. Why? My best guess is that she's keenly aware that she's a girl, she's not a boy, and she actively seeks out clues as to how to not be a boy. At preschool she gets exposed to the idea of what girls play with, and she's happy to go along.
That is in her case it isn't a push from the external environment to be that way. It is a pull from within herself to figure out how to conform.
Whatever the cause, the extreme girl toys you hate are in the store because they sell. The marketing that you hate is done because it works.
We got into doing programming because it allowed us to make and modify games. At my university CS class, a large number of the guys there had similar motivations. Now consider that the majority of video games were marketed towards males at that time and it's not difficult to see a link.
However these days with the rise of casual/social gaming and it becoming more socially acceptable for girls to play video games in general, combined with the fact that blogging and running webstores etc are popular with women we might actually start to see a steady organic shift as more women enter the industry.
In other words, I don't think it's entirely fair to blame the industry itself for everything. Sure, people who are doing things that will actively discourage women from entering the industry or make women already here feel bad about themselves in some way should stop doing that. OTOH when you have an industry that is 90% male it seems inevitable that it will cater to the male demographic first.
First I remember offhand are the "Paradisa" sets from 1993 or so, which were basically the same as other "town" Lego sets, but in pastel colors. Those stuck around for a couple years, then Lego moved onto a different supposedly-girl-oriented theme.
I do recall hearing that they've recently released the latest attempt, but it's not a new idea.
I'm no node.js wiz here, but I think I have a valid idea... maybe the reason that most of the women that didn't become programmers, didn't become programmers because they had no interest in it and didn't want to become a programmer?
Also, does anyone else get the sinking feeling that the reason so many young men on HN feel so strongly about "fixing" the fact that many women have no interest in writing code, is actually more about said young mens' desire to work in an office where they are surrounded by women all day?
{{Citation needed}}
In my head, positive discrimination is another form of discrimination. I know plenty of female programmers and they all got into programming because that's what they wanted to do, not because it was marketed as a career to them and not because they've never interacted with shitty co-workers.
If there's any problem with Software Engineering as a career it's the idea that it's a field for socially-inept nerds that sit in the basement and code away from the outside world. The "evidence" for this attitude is all over the place and in my mind this is as likely to turn women away from the field as much as it is men. When the field decides to stop allowing itself to be further commoditised and demand some respect (and better pay) we might see more women want to join us.
You're right that boys are marketed to differently than girls, and there is still a heavy bias in media, fashion, and toys towards antiquated gender roles.
But it doesn't explain the lack of women in software, because there are record-breaking numbers of women going into fields that were previously stereotypically male. All the physical sciences, law, medicine, you name it. Women are busting out of the traditional gender stereotypes in every direction except software.
So whatever the effects of gender role indoctrination in children, the software industry is doing worse, much much worse than even that pathetic baseline.
Knowing this, IMO blaming the phenomenon on society in general is a huge cop out. We are doing far, far worse than just about any other profession.
Remember, the software industry is where "nerds" go, but the "smart money" is in finance and the "creme of the crop" is in finance.
My thinking is that in aggregate women choose to go to the highest paying, and most socially prestigious fields: law, medicine, finance, sciences in that order.
Of course, sexism is present in software communities. It's spearheaded by the boneheads, condoned by the silent, and condemned by those who would like to see it change. And that's a fine thing.
This is the primary argument I disagree with. As someone who's worked with ad agencies, I can say sexism is so much worse there, yet there are tons of women in advertising. I agree with the poster that this type of thing shouldn't be tolerated in a professional context, but I don't think this is the reason women are not interested in computer science as a major and job choice (it may be the reason they have a high attrition rate once there though)
Advertising and finance (my field) are both known to be sexist and yet there are plenty of women in these fields.
CS/CE/programming is known to be sexist and there are not so many women in this field.
Sexism is a factor, but it's not the only factor.
Sexism, intentional or as a result of boorishness is unacceptable and bad. Needs change, and that needs to be a priority. Got it, agree. Also think that diversity for the sake of diversity is a good thing, as controversial as some people find that.
But the point is: more chauvinistic and sexist industries (eg: finance, advertising, previously medicine) appear to be having little trouble attracting women. So why is it that software puts its gender imbalance down almost exclusively to chauvinism?
As a datapoint, I cannot for the life of me understand why a woman wouldn't work in software other than the environment. I enjoy my work thoroughly. It pays well, its engaging, and I find it rewarding. Do I speak for my entire gender? Of course not, but neither does any other woman.
I have spent the last few years automating warehouses. In aggregate, it seems men prefer processes that involve them going and finding and moving things, where women prefer processes that involve them standing still and doing repetitive tasks, provided they're within talking distance of other people. At a supervisor, men and women are equally interested in roles, but anecdotally appear to solve certain warehouse conditions in different ways.
It may be that this is some massive warehouse related conspiracy. Maybe we have been raised to expect men and women to have different gender roles, and society imposes their views on warehouse related problem solving. Maybe it's a sign of sexism? Perhaps fetching items and collating orders naturally leads to sexism and misogyny, where standing within social distance of other people blah blah, lorem ipsum pop science etc.
Or maybe, just maybe, there is a genuine in-aggregate difference in men and women that makes some tasks more fun for some genders than other, in aggregate. I keep stressing "in aggregate" because it certainly doesn't apply to everyone.
However, sexism is a part of the western social fabric. Women that do or do not want to pursue work will invariably find themselves in sexist encounters and situations. Also, industries like finance and advertising have a problem with women being represented in management, esp. at the highest levels due to institutional sexism and discrimination. We already see women leave fields due to those kinds of pressures and treatment, so to paint a picture of those industries being full of well treated women is disingenuous.
Using it to explain lack of women in software where it can't be used to explain lack of women in other fields where it appears more prevalent seems disingenuous.
I can't speak to advertising, but finance and medicine are some of the few employment traditionally open to women: tellers and nurses. Of course, they aren't traditionally represented in the higher levels of those industries. That seems to be changing, but I suspect the "traditional field" aspect is the key-in-the-door there.
Software, and similar science, technology, and engineering industries, don't have those kinds of traditional positions, making the imbalance more obvious and less, well, fixable.
Could you tell me which part of the software industry currently has a majority of women? (We agree that "does" is present tense, right?) I seem to be missing it.
"Computer programmers used to be almost exclusively women."
True. But that was before I was born. And I'm 45.[1]
[1] http://gender.stanford.edu/news/2011/researcher-reveals-how-...
I don't think sexism is endemic to software, at least not more than areas where men are underrepresented.
I don't think this talk was sexist, at least not only to women.
I don't think anyone's to "blame" that women don't go into software. If anything, I've been way more convinced by the explanation that society pressures boys into strict field, like the STEM fields, and girls into "softer" fields.
Fuck style; if it's true, it needs to be addressed.
The fact is that accusing the whistleblower of being impolite is just another barrier thrown up by thin-skinned people who cannot admit they've been wrong. The objective of calling it "bad style" or a "label used to suppress ideas" is itself to suppress the idea that something wrong has happened and must be addressed.
Calling out shitty behaviour is OK, and should be done, so hopefully people will change their behaviour or other come to realise such behaviour is not acceptable. However, taking the stance that everyone, who disagrees even on exactly how or why the behaviour is unacceptable, is sexist, is shitty behaviour in itself.
We're not supporting the behaviour in the article (at least, I hope so). What is happening here is that people disagree with the article exactly why it's not OK. And that this behaviour is not a symptom of endemic sexism in software. So in se, I don't even think the article (and GP) are completely wrong, only that I disagree that this is sexist.
Your style of reasoning and arguing is very familiar to me, and it's not unique to feminists. If you're unable to make compromises, or look at an issue from another point of view, you will stand alone soon enough. Nobody is asking you to give up your ideals, only that you do not call people, who in essence agree with you but maybe for the wrong reasons, sexists and chauvinists.
Calling someone "mysoginistic" when he calmly and reasonably rational commented on a gender related issue, even if you dont agree, is not in bad taste. It's taking a dump on every feminist who worked on enabling women to be able to discuss these issues and be taken serious with that.
Recurring points of view in a certain discussion? Who would've thought about that?
>* Insisting sexism is not endemic to software, it's just idiots being idiots.
Thats not an excuse. How is that justifying anything? Why do you insist otherwise? Do you have empirical evidence?
>* Insisting sexism is not endemic to software, it's just jerks being jerks.
Same as above. What are you talking about? Nobody "excuses" anything.
>* Dismissive pedantry over the claim that women are deterred from software by incidents of sexism.
A discussion? We're having a discussion? What do you mean not everybody agrees? Oh no!
>* Blaming women themselves for not going into software. "Blaming"? Seriously?
There we go again.It's neither "blaming", nor "excusing". Obviously there might be other factors which doesn't make IT as attractive for women than other fields.
>The reason more women aren't in software is staring us right in the face but we're too busy being dismissively sexist to see it.
Are you serious? There is ONE (1) reason for that? Oh, if reality was that simple of a system!
You don't see the usual grab bag of anybody making excuses for their failures. Which is to basically blame everybody apart from themselves for their problems.
1. Some idiot (a confirmed idiot, in this instance) says something potentially offensive depending on your panty bunching quotient.
2. Someone decries said idiot, flips tables, talks about how the industry needs to change, and can't believe others aren't as outraged as they are.
3. Everyone has their own opinion, and the discourse on HN is relatively polite, but there's also a ton of shadowy downvotes for rational comments that don't seem all that inflammatory.
Here's the reality - idiots say stupid things. Whether it's denigratory to women, men, blacks, Asians, the mentally challenged, furries, or yes even redditors, it will get said. There's no point getting your feathers all ruffled over something like this - I assume it's not a common sentiment among the people who don't get fired from Facebook, and there's plenty of self-aggrandizing idiots out there to give the outragist fodder to the end of days.
Finally, this is just silly:
> start thinking of computing as a professional discipline, instead of a boy’s club.
Computing is neither a professional discipline nor a boys club. Historically, it's been a sausage fest, and computing will never be a professional discipline so long as there are people out there willing to write PHP for fifteen dollars an hour and engineers are put out to pasture at 35.
Computing may be a sausage fest, but there's no reason we can't change that and there's no reason we can't aspire to being a professional discipline.
Aside from the fact that PHP, while I personally would never use it, can and has been used to write scalable software, computing is more than just a few poor coders.
It's a bit like saying that being a doctor can't be considered a profession because there are homeopaths. Your argument is neither convincing or logical.
And it's not like saying that doctors aren't a profession because there are homeopaths, because homeopaths aren't doctors. The segment of our industry that is more EE than CS is highly professional, somewhat organized, and relatively mature for an industry only fifty years old, but they are a small, nonvocal segment of our industry and they tend to distance themselves from the people who call themselves "developers."
Let's put it another way - just because some people dig ditches doesn't stop construction from being a profession.
The fact is that Computer Science is a profession. You might not like certain things about it, but you are deadset wrong if you don't consider it a profession.
The litmus test is whether or not an occupation has a policing organisation who dictates who is allowed to practice it. Lawyers, doctors, civil engineers are professions. Homeopathers, developers and ditch diggers are not.
I'll reference wikipedia, but its more of an unwritten rule. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Profession#Formation_of_a_profe...
Here's 1 easy to find example, note the advertised rate on odesk https://www.sugarsync.com/piv/D8109283_67296521_859910
People writing PHP for $15 an hour in India are seen as the same level as people writing PHP (or other language) for $125 an hour in the US and Europe.
There may always be idiots who say stupid things, but when they are given a venue there is nothing whatsoever wrong with calling them out. That’s the reality.
Why are you getting your panties in a bunch by people pointing idiots out? I really don’t get that.
I would address the the actual problematic elements of your comment, but I'm afraid in this forum such communication usually falls on deaf ears. Suffice it to say its easy to have a fatalist attitude towards "idiocy" when you're not the target in question.
It's becoming quite fashionable to bring this up lately, as if its inherently a trump card to the discussion. The obvious follow up to this statement should be to ask: why did the state of things change? Without any attempt at getting to the bottom of why things changed, the statement itself seems to create more ambiguity rather than clarity.
How much bad will does it take to interpret that, fairly biologically obvious, remark in some twisted way to mean "women are not people"?
Right. Pussy as shorthand for sex is problematic because it reduces a woman to her sexual organs, it objectifies them. Would you enjoy being reduced to your penis?
That he's using women as substitute for "pussy" and that his phrasing juxtaposes them with "people" (even though that wasn't the intent, I agree) only highlights the problem further. I understand what he was trying to convey, but that doesn't excuse the wording and the attitude it reveals.
Beyond that, what exactly are you supposed to think when Noah Kagan, someone who has already made hugely sexist statements in the past, wants to tell you about "the 3Ps of entrepreneurship"? That kind of statement is a lead in, and that he tried to backtrack when the audience reacted is irrelevant. Reducing anyone to their body parts at all is a big problem and is a horrifying thing to say, but women and trans folk suffer much more from this kind if rhetoric then cisgender men do, so don't pretend that this kind of statement is OK or is no big deal.
> Also, how do you know his statements weren't actually directed at lesbians, who are attracted to similar private parts, why assume he was targeting straight men?
The orientation of the folks in the audience is not the issue, it is the reduction of people to sex objects for conquest that is the problem.
> in this case, again with so little context, I would lean towards !lighten up everybody!
Saying that people need to lighten up is a dismissal that says you don't really think that this is a big deal and you don't care about the issues this brings up for many people. This kind of attitude perpetuates these kinds of incidents and makes it harder for people whose lives are directly affected by this kind of shit.
But the general gist is that he was trying to not say "pussy" and maybe his mind isn't making the kind of mental leaps we're expecting of him. He did include both genders, though, and you can't fault him for misspeaking. Obama said he wanted to send more jobs to China last week, and no one was flipping out about that.
Really? I did a search for "Obama + China + jobs" and saw plenty of Mitt Romney literature complaining about Obama's overall China policy, but didn't see a specific line about sending more jobs to China.
Here's a recent article that says Obama was re-opening the unfair-trade case against China. That seems anathema to what you claim: http://thecaucus.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/09/26/in-ohio-obama-...
[1] If someone missed it http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bu...
In any case, these aren't the same situations. The OP claims that the speaker talked about three "P's" and made it obvious what the unmentioned third P was. Or are you saying that the speaker meant to just talk about the "two Ps"?
http://www.reuters.com/article/2012/09/26/us-usa-campaign-ob...
I'm really not sure why he's being invited to speak if he still hasn't learned to be so misogynistic.
Let's stop making parrot posts about this issue and make posts about what you can actually do about it. It's one thing to complain about injustice, but once there are hundreds of people complaining about injustice and not a SINGLE person so much as proposing anything we could possibly do about it, it becomes a waste of time.
Everyone knows that many people think there is a problem. Continuing to state this over and over is stupid. Propose a solution instead.
As for what to do about it, step one: don't use this kind of crap in your own presentations. Step two: if you see someone else doing so, protest. Step three: go out of your way to read works by women, listen to women speak and otherwise diversify your professional environment.
There are at least as many posts made about things to do about this. Check out the Ada Initiative, for example. However, if you read through the comments on this article and every other you'll probably notice that many people don't think there is a problem. When solutions are proposed, as they often are, they are routinely ignored because people are unwilling to accept that this behavior is a problem, is a pattern or is part of a broader social dynamic.
It is not just about shaming individuals; it is about addressing the underlying assumptions that developers are male, women are the sexual objects developers desire and it is somehow hilarious to point this out. That is impossible until people do, as you do, accept that it is a systematic issue and not an isolated incident that should be ignored.
Have some patience for the people who are slightly slower; when they all come around, there won't be any more of these to post here, much less one a week.
but the 3 p thing. is it supposed to be "penises"?
[edit: huh. so now here's a clear case where number of votes visible would be a useful feature in HN! my guess is that "pussy" was what was intended (or misunderstood), in the context of the post.] [edit to clarify the previous edit: there used to be two replies; one for "penis" and one for "pussy"] [also, to explain how i didn't get this, i'm a uk english speaker, who left the country some 20 years ago, so "pussy" isn't really part of my vernacular - i think back then, at least, it was an american word.]
Incidentally, I'm just answering the question. The one speaking the original sentence I don't have much time for.
It's merely another ``There is misogyny in CS, we gotta do something''.
Lacking in OP:
- hard facts how it impacts us,
- useful proposals,
- *any* insight.Here's a useful proposal - stop making sexist comments in your talks.
The above I hope you can take as insight.
Having said that, I don't believe such remarks should have a place in any professional conference.
There's also research to say mixed gender teams perform better along some axes, but that's peanuts next to the numbers game.
It's not a matter of "lighten up". It's a matter of "stop being sexist and hostil to women". The onus is not on the victim to change her behaviour, but rather very much on the transgressors!
What industries do these women participate in?
I'm not trying to justify the actions of people in IT. I'm all for it to become the paragon for the treatment of women and set the standard for the rest of the working world. However, I'm not sure IT is unique in this regard so it does not really explain why woman are drawn away into other, just as hostile, professions.
Agreed, there's significant disparity. My whole point is, that's all clear by now, no need to re-iterate every other day on top of HN. Now we want hard data and plans to act upon. But posts like OP are merely me-too rants.
> It's an issue because there aren't enough people in IT full stop
Please, PLEASE stop that cliche.
Not enough people in IT for what -- saving human lifes by creating CAT scanners and whatnot? Programming navigational computers for space exploration? Building the proverbial `Next Big Thing'? Or just for creating cute little flash games and sloppy AAA titles?
The mission-critical stuff gets cared of. It always was did, for several decades now. The haggle for more cheap labor goes for nonessentials, like enterntainment and business-line CRUD apps. Which are merely nice to have.
There's not enough skilled professionals from the buyers' perspective. There's too many skilled professionals from the sellers' prespective. Oh gasp the horror of open market.
TLDR version: conference organizers need to stop tolerating this sort of thing. Everyone involved should "admit you screwed up, apologize, and tell me how you’ll prevent this in the future."
Seriously, if you think this is inappropriate for HN, flag it, upvote stuff you do think is appropriate and then go comment on something interesting.
Don't mean to rant at you, but I see 'flagged' so often in comments recently - its just noise.
Repeat after me: people you are harassing and oppressing DO NOT HAVE TO EXPLAIN TO YOU why you are screwing them over.
EDIT: Also, there is so much information about sexism in US culture, esp. in regards to tech communities. The Geek Feminism wiki linked to in the article is a good starting point. That you come demanding someone hand you info on a silver platter instead of doing the right thing and reading something to figure it out is really points out how much of a sexist you are.
I find it ironic that you are saying that people should explain their points of view to be understood by others. The article these comments are under is one such piece: an author explaining why what was said at this conference was a problem. Your response to this new information was dismissal: that what the author saying is not valid for you so you won't consider it.
For people that suffer micro-aggressions like this every day, no amount of evidence and explaining they offer is enough, and sometimes attempts to even stand up for themselves results in direct violence. It is not up to those who are being mistreated to make you change or to serve your interests -- you are in the position of privilege and have the means to learn. What you really believe is revealed in your actions: challenging those who reveal an uncomfortable truth and/or talk about their personal experience.
EDIT: I mistakenly thought that hackinthebochs was dexen, so this response is misleading. I'm leaving it intact for context.
On the other hand, it is certainly the civil thing to do to avoid causing offense when in public, especially in a professional setting. However, there is still a question of how much one is required to alter their behavior to avoid causing offense. This is why explain the cause of offense is very helpful.
> You know why there are no women in CS programs? Because they see shit like this
Citation needed.
We need more Grace Hoppers. I didn't create the {{fact}} tag all those years ago to be used for crap like this.
"It's self evident that if you are offensive towards women, it's less likely they will participate in IT or Computer Science."
Quoting the citation needed tag is just a whimsical way of stating it, there's no need for personal offense.
No it isn't.
"Nearly half(47%) of all girls say thatthey would feel uncomfortable being the only girl in a group or class. 57% of all girls say that if they went into a STEM career,they’d have to work harder than a man just to be taken seriously"
Or http://ilabs.uw.edu/sites/default/files/Cheryan_Meltzoff_Kim...
"Statistical analyses indicated that gender disparities in interest and anticipated success in the stereotypically designed classroom were mediated by women’s lower sense of belonging in that environment."
Next time, do your own homework.
http://ajnoffthecharts.com/2009/06/16/do-male-nurses-face-re...
The 2004 federal survey of the RN population found that only 5.8% of RNs were men. This results from the profession’s use of caring philosophies that perpetuate the stereotype of women being more caring than men, as well as from the use of language that isn’t gender neutral and the failure to recruit men.
http://allnurses.com/general-nursing-discussion/sexism-nursi...
As a male in nursing, I feel that I am sometimes treated differently because of my gender. I believe that I am expected to carry a heavier patient load with less assistance from my female coworkers.
After a while, if they're still being a dick, I'll just go somewhere else and find people to work with that aren't egocentric and dumb.
That's one of the reasons why working with my brother is so awesome--he knows me well and doesn't assume I'm a "non-computer-person".
GIRLS DO THIS TOO. Some girls also assume that girls are less technically inclined.
My whole life, I've just had to keep on going and showing people what I'm capable of. Since I'm a white girl who likes wearing dresses, people don't expect it, but they find out soon enough.
But the comments should be turned off. This is such a heated topic and are there aren't any right answers to this problem besides "keep it in mind, don't do what they did". What can possibly be discussed here besides emotional bickering from both sides. It does not seem productive and is not interesting conversation.
The way I interpret that sentence, using the very little context supplied, is
profits, people, and sex
yaknow, sex with women, men, whatever
remember that song from the 90s opp = other people's "privates | p | p" or whatever you want "P" to stand for.
Without more context, that's exactly what I get from that, nothing anti-women whatsoever.
So why do we tolerate the same behavior when it comes to men's experiences vs. women's experiences? This isn't all that complicated. You didn't live the last N years of your life as a woman. You can try to reason about it. Maybe you'll come close. But you just don't have the experience.
Sexism is bad, and should be exterminated, but I can't help thinking that, just maybe, some jobs appeal to some sexes more than others (in the aggregate. I realise there are individual exceptions).
If you really think this is the cause of lack of women in CS, you've never raised a woman.
Here's a hint: it ain't the men.
P.S. What sort of stupid comment is "you've never raised a woman"? What, you can only be upset about sexism if you've had children? Or, for that matter, have a daughter?
That there is someone voting you up is a real shame.
it looks to be the sort of comment whose context was discarded and ignored so you have something to get angry about.
In other words, he's saying that you can't comment on this if you've never had a daughter to raise. How else do you interpret that?
In fact, that's exactly what I'm annoyed about. I've not taken him out of context. I'll thank you not to tell me I have. It is very stupid to say you can't comment on hostility to one segment of the population will disuade many of thos people from taking up IT or Computer Sciense just because you are not part of that population, or that you would have had to be a parent of one of those people.
edit: as has been pointed out by sp332 (I can't reply), it appears I have indeed being following through a logical fallacy.
I am in the process of "raising a woman", so regardless if my fallacious reasoning about what I thought of the original comment, the proposition still proves to be false :-)
"he's saying that you can't comment on this if you've never had a daughter to raise".
no, i don't believe that's what he's saying at all and i have no idea how you extrapolate that. moreso, i'm not sure we have sufficient evidence that cheeze is male like you suggest.
It's easy to disprove it too. It's a universal quantifier. If I find just one person who had "raised a woman" who thinks the way he says you can't, then the proposition is proven false.
In other words, he's saying that you can't comment on this if you've never had a daughter to raise. How else do you interpret that?
Sorry you've got a logical fallacy there. Raising a woman is sufficient but not necessary. If you raised a woman, then you would not think that. But there might be other reasons for not thinking that, other than raising a woman.
I do hope I have un-boggled your mind.
Not sure what sort of responsibility I need to bear here, incidentally. I'm certainly saying that if you make IT hostile or women you bear some of the blame for the lack of women partaking in it.
Oh, it might help to note that I'm male, and I'm in IT.
Are there idiots out there? Yes.
But STOP BLOWING THIS SHIT OUT OF PROPORTION.
You're worse than the feminists.
You're a dude, right? How the heck would you know? Most of this crap is directed at women. A priori means means you're going to miss out on a very, very large subset. This plus the fact that you're convinced it's blown out of proportion suggests mind-bogglingly large confirmation and selection bias.
Frankly, in the context of this comment, your suggestion that anybody is worse than the feminists is a compliment.
What I meant to say is that it isn't the men who are responsible for the lack of women enrolling in comp sci. Everywhere young girls turn, they are told to be pretty, nurturing and sexist (yes, sexist.) Including if not exclusively from their mothers and aunts. They are taught that their value comes from their relationship with a man. So when I say it isn't men, I mean it's the family, extended family and the community which reinforce gender stereotypes.
I would hope that an engineer mindset would use the "5 why" rule instead of the "DUHH BLAME THE IDIOT"
it's time we stop this annoying let's treat women the same crap. we're not, when was the last time you saw someone treat a coworker better because he was a good looking chap? now, when's the last time you or someone else treated a good looking girl better, just because she was a good looking girl? besides, how many times did you see a banker get hired with long hair and beard without suit?
as for this part:
"We’re better than this. Act like it. Treat your fellow developers with the same respect you’d treat someone you met on the street: basic, common courtesy. It’s not exactly asking a lot, so quit making it seem so hard to attain."
if you really treat your fellow developers like you treat people on the street, maybe you should rethink the way you treat people on the street. i treat people by merit, and they get an extra bonus when theyre a good looking lady. but when i see some moron being in a good position just because she's a good looking girl, you can bet ill treat her the way she deserves. when you want sometime you have to make sacrifices. I didn't exactly get my programming knowledge handed to me on a silver platter. my taekwondo teach had to beg his master for some of his knowledge. I can tell you plenty of stories about this. you want something, you have to show that you really want it. and no i'm not talking about sex, or sexism. You asking for free labour.
as for you yourself, you want an extra cake. you want to be able to spew your feminist nonsense and then expect everyone else to speak in politically correct terms.
you know what the meaning of the word tolerance is? it means to tolerate ones opinion even though you might not like it. it doesn't mean that you have to subdue to someone elses ideals just in order for them to become happy. you got that part wrong. now I don't like your attitude, but I tolerate it.
here's some food for thought. i've said a million times and i will keep repeating it. a lot of really awesome software that might strike you as not so good business, but is actually much more successful than the most valuable companies was built by hotheaded people, that didn't always treat each other in the best language possible.
Now here's the part you don't get:
How can a bunch of people that don't really like each other build awesome stuff TOGETHER?
because of respect. They respect each others opinions, they respect each others work, they might not like each other by they respect each other. This respect is merit based. The kind of respect you're talking about is not respect. It's social conventions that you made up in your mind with your friends. It holds no real value, it creates nothing.
by the way, even if you don't accept it, you have the same evolutionary traits as anyone else. men need someone to reproduce with, women need someone to protect them. the funny part is, most of us will never even notice.
* confirmation bias * selection bias * fundamental attribution error * backfire effect
There's also the whole "born on third base and thinks he hit a triple" component here.
"Look, someone said something stupid. Let's call out the whole community for that. Because white males are literary Hitler or worse."
Yes, there are jerks. It's time to get over it.
As a white male, however, I'd like to say to other white males (and everyone else) - cut out the bullshit sexism in your tech talk. I didn't come for your ridiculous views on women when I go to these talks. I care about tech. Your sexist views detract from your message, and I'll consider you a moron if you think sexist jokes are funny.