And I also didn't say "because of things you cannot know." Yes, there WERE things that I -- and perhaps others -- cannot know, but I also had plenty of evidence I was ignoring because it didn't fit my personal experience. There were studies, stats, research, and yes -- an overwhelming number of personal anecdotes from too many credible women for me to have ignored the possibility for that long.
I still do not know how pervasive or deep the problems of sexism are -- this is not a domain I have studied. But I was wrong to have used my sole personal experience as evidence that there wasn't really a problem.
Also her article doesn't sound to me as if she claims that there is no problem, just that it is obviously not a problem for every woman.
Similarly, I (original Primer author) did a poor job making it clear that I never meant to suggest that every woman has this problem. The goal was to inform people that this is happening and this is a problem, even though you _probably were not seeing it_. Kathy’s experience and post are a very personal revelation of the painful journey of discovery (of this fact) that she went through.
She also made it clear that she had experienced sexism (in some form) at a previous role.
The worst of all possible outcomes is that one day Laura (and others like her) should awaken into the same harsh reality that blindsided you. And that will happen unless we, as a community, seriously address the tolerance we have for behaviour that simply should not be tolerated. We need to be reminded that it exists, and that while the behaviour might not be universally pervasive, a sort of tolerance of it, whether with a grudge or a giggle, is nearly so.
I truly hope that Laura never has her eyes opened in the way yours were, but that hope hinges largely on the scenery changing in the meantime. "Make your users awesome" was a message we needed to hear, and that cry was silenced not merely by direct action, but by tolerance as well. This message, if anything, is more important. Let those who have ears, at least, hear it.
I loved hearing your experience and I thank you for sharing. There is a difference between saying "your experience is wrong" and saying, as you did, "your experience is incomplete." You have evidence that her experience is incomplete: your own experience contradicts it.
We should care about your experience. Any theory of the world that fails to entertain it as possible is, at best, incomplete. I don't see anything wrong with saying so.
I must say though, as a long time reader and fan, and regarding your modesty regarding yourself, that your design insights place you in the top 0.1% of developers, not average as you stated. Also, you mentioned you felt your looks were below average. I would normally never comment on someone's looks since it is inappropriate in a professional environment, but you mention in the article along the lines that you suspect your looks at 55 were not good enough to be discriminated against, but at 55 you were an exceptionally beautiful person, and again far above average. I thought you were closer to 40 than 55. I'll assume your coding skills aren't great like you claim since I have no idea about that as I've not seen your code, but someone with the level of insight into human factors/interaction design comes along quite rarely and your skills and insight there are remarkable and exceptionally valuable. Any company would benefit more from one Kathy Sierra overseeing design than they would from 100 of the best coders.
I'm sorry that you(or anyone for that matter) had to go through what you went through. I want to thank you for keep speaking up for women who may not have the voice to speak up themselves and I hope you continue to do so and because you never know who you may reach with your writing.
This is not debate team. The point is not to frame the discussion so you can "win".
Whether you want to admit it, there are things you can never know. That's incontrovertible. You have two choices: you can throw your hands in the air and say "oh well I'll never know" or you can start to learn how to sense when other people have a depth of knowledge or experience that is unavailable to you, and use their knowledge to help you act in the world.
Many very bright people are constitutionally incapable of working this way. Unless they can reduce a concept down to first principles that are grounded in their personal experience, the concept is wrong to them.
To me, that's a huge epistemological limitation, and I think it will hamper your ability to grow intellectually. I have found that with certain things I had to first accept them and live with them, after someone I trust and respect, with different experience than I have, suggested they were true. Only later, after living with and applying the ideas, was I able to rationalize them.
This realization is the greatest gift Feminist theory has given me, as a thinker.
Thank you! This was a great comment.
That's the exact same argument my dad gave me once about why I should just trust Bush when he wanted to start a war with Iraq so badly. It was even credible, since Bush got classified intelligence reports every morning and I didn't. Needless to say, I no longer trust it.
> I have found that with certain things I had to first accept them and live with them, after someone I trust and respect, with different experience than I have, suggested they were true. Only later, after living with and applying the ideas, was I able to rationalize them.
I believe this tactic is traditionally known as "theology".
In both cases, it's reassuring to finally see a confession that feminism is an exercise in blind faith, and is hence of no use to rational people.
1) in the trust-Bush example, anyone who actually, properly learned “how to sense when other people have a depth of knowledge or experience that is unavailable to you” would have sensed that Bush was full of shit, didn’t know what he was doing, and was a terrible person to have in charge. Honing that skill is incredibly valuable in life, precisely because it protects you from having to blindly trust anyone based on a claim (accurate or not) that they know what they're doing.
2) This is not theology at all. Theology is about accepting a claim despite your inability to rationalize it, or accepting it precisely because your ability to rationalize it is broken or flawed—and both being in the realm of deities.
What erikpukinskis was describing is the process of cultivating empathy and trust, in face of the acknowledgement that your perceived reality is not necessarily accurate (which it isn’t for anyone on the planet). He's saying that there are a lot of smart people who simply cannot believe that “something” is truly happening if they have no personal experience with that “something”, and may, as a result, deny the reality that is that “something”.
And he’s saying that, for him at least, it was necessary to learn to accept these things as true, first, before being able to figure out and rationalize them on his own, later, without having to be personally exposed to the problem for it.
And that’s called empathy, not theology.
As for Bush, it's factually true that he did have a depth of knowledge that was unavailable to me. What was harder to tell was whether he was using it correctly. Perhaps you have a telepathic sense of whether or not people are correctly using the information they have access to; perhaps you don't, but confirmation bias gives you the persistent illusion that you do.
I'll just close by saying that I don't claim to know very much at all more than provisionally--I'm willing to have my understanding updated based on new information, and I'm comfortable with people coming to different conclusions from different sets of information. What I'm not willing to do is grant other people write access to my beliefs based upon my emotional estimate of their credibility.
Firstly theology isn't a good comparison because god isn't a concept that can be 'experienced' or disproved. The issues that feminists talk about are generally not like this: if you really want to know how much more physically threatening the world seems as a woman, one could feasibly have a sex change operation or similar to allow you to experience the world as a woman. Or if you aren't so arrogant as to discount all knowledge that you didn't directly experience yourself, you could ask a large number of women and see what they have to say.
Secondly, you seem vastly ignorant about epistemology and how science works in general. Ultimately it very much is a system of trust in people and institutions. Your categorising of knowledge into "theology" and "real knowledge" based on one requiring faith is a false dichotomy.
I can only imagine how awful it must be to know you in real life if you never trust a single thing other people say to you without verifying it yourself (that is my way of saying you are a terrible human being).
I trust that other people have evidence that I don't and that they can't give to me. I can even accept it as some sort of indirect evidence, so that if other people unanimously tell me that Nevada exists and practically no one disagrees, I accept the claim. What I can't do is accept a seemingly dogmatic ideology like feminism based solely upon trusting some, but clearly not all women. I can be influenced by it, and when presented with direct and indirect evidence I can allow that evidence to upgrade my estimate, but in my experience feminists are unaccepting of anything short of full, dogmatic agreement. That--the attitude of any ideologue--is as good a marker as I've ever found that someone isn't using their evidence correctly.
My working estimate so far includes a pretty reliable heuristic--it's always more complicated. Feminism, like any ideology, is actually pretty enlightening from a certain perspective, since it raises a lot of issues that can complicate our understanding of the world. But the problem is, the world is even more complicated than the feminists themselves think.
So yes, I listen to indirect evidence, but I don't buy other people's conclusions wholesale. And far from being arrogant--I'm often more willing to throw my hands in the air and admit I really don't and can't know the answer to the question. I struggle with things like voting a lot because of this.
There are volumes of feminism that I understand, and could explain to you, in purely rational terms. The vast, vast bulk of beliefs I have that are considered "feminist" fall into this category. So no, I don't think feminism is an exercise in blind faith.
Provisional reliance on the beliefs of trusted second parties is only one of my many ways of knowing.
I also object to calling it "blind faith" because it's not blind. I've vetted the source. It is a kind of faith. Maybe you can call it "provisional faith". If there is solid evidence I certainly use that first. But in many cases there is no evidence. For example, when someone says they were raped I will rarely ever see any conclusive "evidence" one way or the other, so any evidence-based approach to understanding will fail.
I think a person's own experience should always form the bottom line of their world view, though. Otherwise you simply get completely lost. How do you know whom to believe? There will always be people claiming contradicting things. Ultimately you have to at least trust yourself. At least I have drawn that line for myself at some point. I still take into account that I could be wrong, but to sway me, more is required than a mere "believe me, I have more experience than you".
Of course there are also things where it doesn't really matter. Not every decision questions my whole world view. If I work together with somebody more experiences and they say "let's stick to Postgres instead of using MongoDB" or whatever, I have no problems following their advice (I would then perhaps try MongoDB on another, less risky occasion).
I can't argue with it, I can't know when I'm wrong and when I'm not, and I can't know when I know enough to make any particular decision. (Particularly the last - the number of times I've thought, this is a trivial problem, with a trivial solution, and been proven completely wrong is just huge).
I just assume: "I know as much as I do at this moment", and I make decisions as best as I can. And then I keep learning, and deciding.
This argument ("You are wrong because of things you cannot know") is not one which should make you feel bad about your decisions (or change them), it's one that should encourage you to go elsewhere to learn more about the subject - if you care, and you believe the speaker.
If you are wrong because of things you cannot know from personal experience, as long as your opinions are formed from personal experience they will be incorrect. So, seek out other people's experiences even if, especially if, they conflict with your own.
Though now I'm starting to sound like a stoner. "Broaden your mind, dude..."
I read it as more of a precautionary tale: don't immediately dismiss something because you haven't seen it happen first hand, or it's not an issue within your immediate circle.
I intend in no way to diminish KS' personal experience, it just seemed odd as a response (to me anyway).
To put it into an extreme example: I think it must be possible to say "I have never been raped" without being accused of claiming that nobody has ever been raped.
> To put it into an extreme example
Please don't.
Also, I suppose Laura has more experience with not being harassed, so why dismiss her opinion out of hand?
Anyway, this one is not going to be resolved by logic...
Do you really believe that every woman will experience harassment eventually?