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And how many speakers have porn created of them distributed during conferences? And when that happened would you expect at least a small percentage to secretly have a little laugh at it?

There was another post on the front-page just minutes ago called The Distress of the Privileged [1] and it makes the very good point that these things are about a difference of scale.

On the one hand we have one of the most high-profile of tweeters facing regular childish threats; on the other hand we have a not all that well known female presenter having to deal with porn 'of her' being distributed during speaking engagements.

[1] http://weeklysift.com/2012/09/10/the-distress-of-the-privile...

Yes, people are going to attack women in very different ways then men. I can't imagine that many people would want to create nude pics of a guy to insult him. But that's not what I am getting at -- I am trying to say that this incident does not reflect the majority of males, nor does it make the whole IT industry sexist. You can't start saying that everyone/everything is sexist just because one incident of it occurred. Maybe people being bored with her talk had nothing to do with her being a woman -- maybe it was just a boring talk.

Nobody said it reflected the majority of males. Nobody said it makes the whole industry sexist. Nobody said everyone is sexist. Nobody is basing their opinion on one incident.

Tell me more about this "straw man fallacy", though.

See his reply to mine above :)

That's what I was referring to, perhaps a little too obliquely :)

Its been pointed out a number of places that no, this doesn't represent the majority of male developers. It's established it's a small subset of a larger population.

Even so, the fact that its a minority is irrelevant, its the fact that it happens, and the fact that it happens on a regular basis is the issue.

That it happens regularly is what makes it the norm, not that its perpetrated by the majority of people.

And as people that work in the industry, we do have a responsibility for how others act, and we should act accordingly. Yes, it may not directly be our faults, be we do have a responsibility to react to this kind of behavior, and deal with it.

Otherwise, we are condoning it and then it does become our fault. As cliche'd/dramatic as it is, this is exactly the situation that is talked about in "all that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing"

Seriously? What part of sexism in tech fields occurs more frequently than is reported is hard to understand? For every woman who says something, there are several that don't. For every story any woman is telling on the topic, there are several more stories that she probably has but isn't telling because she'd be there all day. $#@?!

And please, say what you have to say without prefacing it with useless declarations like "I'm not XYZ but", like its some kind of get-out-of-jail-free card. If others find your perspective on the topic is warped, then they'll comment accordingly and you won't get a pass. And BTW, issues like sexism tend to exist along a continuum and sometimes even well-meaning people's views may sometimes graze or lie along it, regardless of good intentions.

EDIT: deleted duplicates (was getting error msgs that made me think the comment wasn't being posted).

(And here I go into down-vote territory... :D)

The name of the fallacy this demonstrates is "poisoning the well", as in implying that anyone who downvotes you is just afraid to hear the truth, man........

sexism like it is the norm

As we keep discovering, sexism is the norm for women in general and specifically in our industry. Your blindness to this fact is not evidence to the contrary.

I know several females in the industry who are not afraid of anything, and have never been attacked on the basis of their sex (or even been attacked otherwise).

I suspect that if you asked them whether or not this was true, and they trusted you enough to answer honestly (and after reading your blythe dismissal above, I wouldn't), you'd find this is not the case.

Sometimes people attack just because they don't like the cut of your jib.

Can you point to a straight, white male who's suffered the kind of attention Sarah relates, for no other reason than that someone didn't like the cut of his jib?

the majority of men are "good guys"

The majority of men can be good guys generally, and still be guilty of sexist behaviour that's hostile to women, that drives them out of our industry, and that creates a pervasive atmosphere that no one should have to tolerate. Calling out behaviour like this is not a blanket condemnation of us as irredeemably bad guys, and suggesting that it is, is a way of deflecting information that makes us uncomfortable.

Wow talk about fallacies! :)

Here is one for you:

The straw man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

I am accepting that I am going to be down-voted, not challenging people not to do it. See above fallacy.

As we keep discovering, sexism is the norm for women ... We hear about one sexism case every few weeks here on HN. Of the many thousands of females in IT, do you think they are all just playing the silent card? Or maybe sexism is the infrequent case, not the norm? Sexism is rare for a pretty good reason: lawsuits. Of her 30,000 followers, how many have made sexist remarks? Less than 10? Seems like the norm to me...

We seem to have this conspiracy that sexism is all over the place, it's just that 99 percent of women are being silent about it. Does sexism exist? Yes. Is it frequent? Probably not, but everyone is entitled to their opinion on the matter.

I have a suggestion for you: When you have the opportunity to have a conversation with a woman in technology, ask her about sexism in the industry. Ask her if she's experienced it: if she's received the sort of unwanted geek attention for which Linux conferences are famous; if she's received stupid or sexist comments (c.f. mwetzler's comment above); if she's had to fend off inappropriate advances in a professional setting; if she's had to go through the mental gymnastics that an atmosphere of sexism creates.

And here's the crucial part: don't argue with her about it. Do it as a fact-finding thing, a survey. Just say you're trying to learn. Ask questions to draw her out and clarify things, but don't share your opinion (especially those above), because that will interfere with the information gathering, especially if they perceive that you're asking only to dismiss or reject what she's telling you.

Women are very frequently silent about sexism because speaking up about it not only fails to address the issue, but worsens the severity of it. What started as inappropriate flirting turns into sexually abusive comments; or an argument in which an experience in which they feel quite obviously wronged, gets trivialized as a misunderstanding or oversensitivity on their part.

everyone is entitled to their opinion on the matter

Absolutely, but some opinions are backed up by a lot of data, and those opinions tend to be more worth having.

> and have never been attacked on the basis of their sex

Do you really know this, or do they just never ever mention it?

I agree that everyone with enough followers will be the victim of attacks. But those attacks often take the easy route - someone who is Jewish will have anti-semitic rants posted about them; a woman will have graphic depictions (in text or imagery) of what people "want to do to her"; etc. It's fine to call a hateful attack sexist if it's using sexist tactics for the attack.

And it's a fact that women are more likely to be attacked than men. This is easy (but laborious) to prove - you get a list of conferences and speakers in 2012, then ask speakers if they had any attacks, then categorise and finally run some graphing / plotting software.

(I didn't downvote you BTW.)

Thanks - all good points :) As usual, the small sample of women I know is not necessarily indicative of anything, but of all the women I know, not one of them has complained about sexism; for all I know any of them could have been subject to it.

I have been subject to a few attacks myself over the course of my life for being born a Jew (although technically I have always been more of an atheist or agnostic). But it never once bothered me that much, because I know many Jews have had it far worse, both in the past and present. Likewise, I kind of cringe a bit when we complain about these #firstworldproblems, because there are women who are getting stoned to death for cheating on their husbands right now. I don't think that sexism should be ignored, but I do think we have a tendency to focus on the most trivial (relatively speaking) instances of it.

> But it never once bothered me that much,

Yeah, but do you take the time to scold other Jewish people who do get bothered by that stuff?

Also: let's not drag out the Bigger Fish to Fry Fallacy (there's probably a better name for that...). Just because problem B is worse than problem A doesn't mean it's not worth it for some folks to focus on A. Also: what are you doing about either of these problems? That is to say, what is your moral standing to tell others which problems are worth pursuing and which are not?

For glob's sake, I wish people would stop saying "I'm not sexist BUT..." or "I'm not racist BUT..." or "I'm not a homophobe BUT..."

Because:

A) You're setting yourself up for failure.

B) Show, don't tell.

but most importantly C) it's hardly ever useful to denote any one person as racist or sexist or whatever. It's thoughts and ideas and biases which are much more usefully labeled so.

So, great, you are not sexist: you do not willfully do women ill. But do your ideas and unconscious actions support that intention? I would start by reflecting on the need to say "key word: equal", as though there are some politically significant number of people wishing for something beyond that.

No buts, I just wanted to make it apparent from the start that I am not sexist. "Equality" is all that I want, and it bugs me when people start saying things like "the industry is filled with sexism" or "sexism is the norm" or "most males are sexist" because it is simply not true. Or it is true, and 99.999 women just choose to be silent about their cases of sexism. It is insulting when people attack males as a single group based on some edge cases.

> Or it is true, and 99.999 women just choose to be silent about their cases of sexism.

They are far more silent that you think. Ask some actual women about it some time.

> It is insulting when people attack males as a single group based on some edge cases.

You're right, that would be insulting, if it were at all what was actually happening in this plane of reality.

Of course it's true that sexism exists - plenty of women do choose to be silent on issues of sexism. It is an incredibly hard to bring up such a personal thing when you want to be taken seriously professionally.

It is insulting when people attack males as a single group based on some edge cases.

Men are so sensitive about sexist comments when they perceive they're the targets. Lighten up, dude, I'm not sexist :)

Maybe you're not sexist, but I dispute your simple truth. I have been on the same conference speaking circuit that Sarah has for 9 years now, and not once have I been on the receiving end of a similar attack.

I am a male. I have had my ideas challenged, but no one has ever made it personal. Do you really think most female speakers are so lucky?

If you have to preface your comments with "I am not sexist," there's probably something sexist about the words that are going to follow. You're hitting a lot of the derailing for dummies points here...

I think, based only on hunch and not recorded data I can source, that the more attractive the female the more likely they are to become a target of such behavior.