Hack of The Sexes | Hacker News Reader

Hack of The Sexes

hackofthesexes.org

17 pointsinstakill27 comments

> The gender battle has existed for as long as we have. An unending competition as to which sex is better. This is no different, we're just changing the rules and bringing in a few different twists with this contest.

Wow. No thank you.

This kind of thing might be fun and innocent if we were not already living in an industry rife with sexism, inequality, and bro-culture rudeness.

I do agree, but also feel like ANYTHING AT ALL to encourage more women to join in on things like this is a good thing.

Sometimes people need a sense of competition to step up to the plate.

But yea... This is a little too close to being distasteful, considering the way things are. Its a slippery slope though.

> I do agree, but also feel like ANYTHING AT ALL to encourage more women to join in on things like this is a good thing.

Why assume the only effect could be a positive one? It's possible for an idea to discourage women from joining in on things, and furthermore encourage women who've already joined in to feel demotivated. This seems like it might well be one of those ideas.

Also, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Politicians_syllogism.

I can't speak for all women, but as a female developer, I definitely find this event discouraging. I hate being seen as "female dev" instead of just a dev. The last thing I want to do is go to an event that is based on this distinction and could possibly be used as evidence that I am less skilled at my job because of my gender. This is why I only feel truly comfortable at all-women hackathons. It's the only place where I can believe with reasonable certainty that if I mess up it won't lead to a generalization like this: http://xkcd.com/385/

> feel like ANYTHING AT ALL to encourage more women to join in on things like this is a good thing

Not really, unconsidered, blunt, ignorant attempts are as likely to as much damage as they would good.

That is NOT encouragement in any way. a)I appreciate competition as motivation and this ain't it; I prefer competing in such arenas as a person, not as a woman. b) And for other women whom may cite intimidation as one of the issues that keeps them out of tech fields, this is hardly a way to lure them in.

Its like you took the words out of my fingers.

Maybe the top prize could be that everyone has to read Difference and Dominance.

Agreed. I'm a woman and my first thought on sighting this was "Really? Are we seriously on this bullshit?" When I found out it was a woman behind it, I was even more disgusted. I notice she's backpedaled and the poster has been altered, post twitter uproar.

I am very confused about this event. My initial reaction was horror, and I think Twitter agreed [1].

Then I looked into who was behind this, assuming it was a hoax. One of the organizers appears [2] to be Sarah Herbert [3] the CEO of Curious Pixel, a brand/design shop in Kansas City. It seems that Sarah and Curious Pixel are very supportive of women in technology [4].

So, I think this is just a sad case of a well-meaning person creating a tone-deaf message and ultimately being devoured by the Internet.

[1] https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=hackofthesexes&src...

[2] https://twitter.com/hackofthesexes/status/300007467759304706

[3] https://twitter.com/SarahSHebert

[4] http://www.curiouspixel.com/investing-wisely-in-the-success-...

A predictable response, but while I see the point regarding the "tone-deafness" of the message, I think it's also indicative that the attitude behind our "culture" has gone too far towards "holy crap anything that could possibly make anyone feel left out or even appear discriminatory to even the most oversensitive individuals must be utterly terrible and unconscionable."

Your research, to me, makes that a pretty safe bet. A woman who's big on females in tech helps organize it, and without bothering to find this out, everyone screams horrible endemic life-ending sexism at the sight of it. Oops.

I'm not suggesting we shouldn't decry discrimination. I am suggesting we should think and ask before we decide to burn people at the stake for attempting to have a little fun at the expense of a topic some people can't seem to deal with in a moderate and rational manner.

The fact that a woman who otherwise champion females in tech was behind the poster does not excuse it.

Sexism, like many complex issues exists as a continuum, degrees of which can be perpetrated by anyone, including women.

I find it fascinating that you don't seems to think your own advice applies to yourself. Shouldn't you think and ask before you decide that every negative response to this is baseless?

I would respectfully ask you to drop the word "offensive" from your vocabulary. There are people who get offended at things, but that is not about feminism, that is about feeling superior. And arguing with someone who is just trying to feel superior to you is pointless. Ignore them¹.

What we are concerned about here is not offense, but harm. I can see this event going one of two ways: 1) the women "win" and sexist men write it off as rigged/a fluke, or 2) the women lose and sexist men use it to justify their beliefs. There is a significant chance that this event could make women hackers' work harder. That's harm. I know a bunch of women hackers. Their work is already made unreasonably harder by sexism.

I think this world where there are so many barriers to people hacking is harmful. Like, there will be more good meals, and more happy time with family, and more love, and more cool shit, and more justice if we break down some of those barriers. "Offense" has nothing at all to do with it.

¹ I also respectfully ask you to look more closely when people seem "just offended" to you, and think and ask about whether they might be concerned about legitimate harm.

Even assuming the best of intent w.r.t. to tech gender relations, promoting (cis) women in tech at the expense of intersex/genderqueer people in tech is simply not cool.

I suspect the focal point is probably a matter of statistics as much as anything else - addressing 51% of the population, vs ~0.1-0.3% of the population.

I think this is pretty cool. It's a creative spin on the state of gender inequality. God only knows how it will turn out ... but if everyone plays nice and there aren't too many alpha personalities, it would probably end up being a pretty cool experience.

Humility is key in something like this. I'd just plant a ref in the middle of the room and anyone who can't be humble in front of the opposite sex would get ejected instantly as though a giant claw came out of the sky and picked 'em up. Like a screaming toddler: zero-tolerance. You're gonna cry and whine again? Boom! There goes your night light, now go back to bed and cut it out.

I'd have a lot of fun in something like this. We're wired differently so there'd certainly be some unique solutions on both side of the chromosome.

Whenever I make a big $$$ bet with a good friend, I can never accept their cash. It feels bad. At the end of the day, as the winner, it doesn't really matter that I won. The pure fact that there was a contest between us and the friendly trash talking is all that matters. Hopefully this ends up being kind of like that. Friendly trash talking, hacking on fun projects, and like I said, no extreme faux-alpha personalities who can't deal with losing.

We all know there is no winner in man vs woman. To quote the Bahai faith:

  The world of humanity is possessed of two wings: 
  the male and the female. So long as these two wings 
  are not equivalent in strength, the bird will not fly. 
  Until womankind reaches the same degree as man, until 
  she enjoys the same arena of activity, extraordinary
  attainment for humanity will not be realized; humanity
  cannot wing its way to heights of real attainment. 
  When the two wings . . . become equivalent in strength,
  enjoying the same prerogatives, the flight of man will
  be exceedingly lofty and extraordinary.

I'm going to refrain from passing judgment, since the link is so thin on details, but I'm seriously having a hard time thinking up ways that this could be anything but a terrible idea.

Any help?

I don't find the gender aspect quite as off-putting as I do the following things:

* No clear rules are stated - how many people can participate, how big can teams be, are there just two teams? What if more women participate than men, or vice versa?

* What will the judging criteria be? Who will be the judge(s)?

* What kind of 'hack' are we talking about? Straight-up coding competitions have been around for a while now and there are well-established principles of how to judge the winners, but this seems to be a competition based around the loosest possible interpretation of 'hack'.

* What prize, if any, will be awarded and to whom?

* If I want to compete, what do I need? Skills? Equipment?

Basically, it feels like the only idea they've got is the 'sexes' part, with no real details on what the 'battle' is all about. It's really impossible to evaluate whether it's a good idea with such little information.

Okay, sit down, and let me elaborate on why this is a bad idea.

I was going to post a kneejerk reaction, namely "This idea is bad and you should feel bad", but that wouldn't help the discussion.

So let me assume you mean the best. Let me assume you want to encourage a better gender balance. And let me tell you that this is a terrible way to go about it.

Aside from the points elaborated in other comments -- and let me stress the "industry rife with sexism, inequality, and bro-culture rudeness" -- this flies in the face of the hacker ethic. To wit:

* Hackers should be judged by their hacking, not criteria such as degrees, age, race, sex, or position

Now, I can hear the defense mechanism riling up right now: "But wait," you say, "we're not judging participants based on their gender, we're just teaming them up that way. The judging will be fair!" And I believe you believe that, with the best of intentions. Nonetheless, you've automatically broken the blindness and impartiality of the judges, simply because they know that it's an uneven distribution. Think of it like a scientific experiment where everyone knows where the placebo is. It doesn't matter who wins; everyone loses, because one side will claim the other got some special consideration. Imagine if you did the same thing, only with college-grads vs. self-taught hackers. If the judge is from Stanford, you lose.

At best, this will fizzle, or go off unremarkably. At worst, you're actively making worse exactly the problem you're trying to fix. At best, this is a trite idea ('boys vs girls' is overdone, schoolyard, and simplistic). At worst, it's actively discriminatory.

Be more creative. You recognize a problem, but this isn't the answer.

Oh gods. Oh, dear, gods.

First things first, the word they're looking for is gender, not sex. Sex is one's biology and matters in a handful of cases (such as certain medical procedures and intimate relationships) where as gender is how one presents one's self. Gender is the thing that they are attempting to differentiate by here. And there aren't just two either. What is a potential participant is neither male nor female? Or both? Congrats, you've just managed to alienate a whole bunch of people who've just had it reinforced that they've no place in society.

Second, the reaction to a "gender battle" shouldn't be something to be applauded or goaded on. Placing people in a group based on their gender and pitting them against each other is at best going to affect the decisions of the judges based on pre-existing prejudcies (conscious or otherwise) and at worst reinforce the ideals that lead to comments like "Why are you out of the kitchen?".

So yeah. This is a bad thing and the organisers should feel bad.

"Pitting", not "pinning". Seriously different meaning there.

Here's a thought:

Stereotyping in broad strokes, men tend to be more "competition oriented" than women.

Men are already well-represented in hacking and tech.

Therefore, the more aggressive and competitive sex is also likely to be more numerous at this event.

So how is this likely to "encourage" females to participate in technology? If anything, it draws more attention to their sex and their "odd man out" status. This is not necessarily a good thing.

I can see this being pretty fun for those involved, as those who aren't will almost certainly take it too seriously... but I have to say, the use of "pinning" instead of "pitting" in the headline gave me a very adolescent chuckle. Perhaps this is someone else's vernacular, because in mine, that usage -- correct or not -- is pretty amusing.

What a travesty.

You just know a transgender dev is going to show up to try and throw the entire event for a loop.

Completely ignorant of trans/genderqueer people and supportive of the oppressive notion of a gender binary.

Just because a woman organised it it doesn't make it okay.

This seems counterproductive.

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