Women in Technology, Rise of the Anti-Movement | Hacker News Reader

Women in Technology, Rise of the Anti-Movement

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19 pointszdgman17 comments

The problem with this article is that it doesn't actually say much new. The idea that it would be good to have more women in technology, as an end in itself rather than a means to some further end, is fairly widely accepted already.

The next question is how to bring that about, and this is where the arguments bog down, because this is where most of the disagreements are really happening anymore. We can't "move past rhetoric" until we agree on how to move forward, but that agreement is going to require rhetoric in its own right.

The current rhetoric is acrimonious, partisan and has lost feminism a lot of formerly diehard support.

This is true as far as it goes, but what do you propose to replace the acrimonious and partisan rhetoric? We really haven't reached agreement on how to proceed (there's even still some argument about whether we should, though that is mostly in the background nowadays). Without agreement, we've no choice but to talk, and that brings us back to where we are now.

What is the rhetoric achieving? We're hackers, we know how to get things done: figure out what you want to change, measure it as well as you can, then iterate. I find it hard to imagine a measure articles like this would score well on.

Every iteration starts with figuring out what you want to change. This is where we're getting stuck every time.

"has lost feminism a lot of formerly diehard support."

Among what, fairweather "friends"? People interested in equality don't throw a fit when their privilege(s) are questioned.

I rest my case.

You do realize that, without reaching out to me, and other fair minded, humanitarian and inclusionary men, you will never succeed, right?

I'm saying that some persons are more interested in seeming and sounding fair-minded than they are actually looking within. It's far easier to call yourself a "former ally", claim to have "tried", and shrug off any introspection.

If you care, offer up a bit more than tone trolling. If you're actually for equality, you don't just give up that worldview because someone on the internet was curt to you.

They also don't throw a fit when the concept of privilege is questioned, but that tends to get lost in the background noise too.

It may not be new, but it clearly still needs to be said. The way to move forward is exactly as the article says: just stop discriminating. Don't treat female programmers as female programmers and male programmers as male programmers. Treat all of them as programmers. So many well meaning people try to be "inclusive" by singling out women and making a big stink about what they think women want/need/desire/dislike/etc, and then women become the target of people's unhappiness with bad polices that were put in to "help" them, which they never wanted or asked for.

What is discrimination? We don't even have a consensus answer to that question yet, except in terms so broad and vague that they cease to be useful. So we break down into factions that attempt to define it unilaterally, which never ends well.

"Just stop discriminating" sounds like such a simple phrase, but the truth is that it's loaded with very complex and personal issues and meanings. The biggest blowups we've seen recently ultimately reduce to very passionate disagreements about the particulars of what it means to discriminate. Until that gets resolved, we're not going to be able to go very much further.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discrimination

Why is feigned ignorance of a basic, well-understood word such a common approach to argument on HN? I've seen this many times now, where people seem to want to insist "problem X is unsolvable because you can't even define Y".

The word itself is neither as basic nor well-understood as you claim. Even the very Wikipedia definition you link is too vague to be useful. To give a pertinent example, what does it mean to be treated "in a way that is worse than the way people are usually treated"? Is it necessary for someone to be treated differently from others to be treated worse, or is it possible for identical actions to be "worse" for one person than for another? If the latter case is true, then who ought to decide what constitutes "worse," and on what grounds? Is it possible for this arbiter to come to an unreasonable conclusion, and what happens then?

The questions I asked in that last paragraph are not empty rhetoric. Their answers have major ramifications for current debates: I chose these particular questions because they basically define the different sides of the Adria Richards case. Yet each side treats its answers as self-evident and takes that self-evidence as entitlement to act unilaterally, pushing their definitions onto others rather than attempting to achieve consensus. Is it any wonder that things get so heated in such an environment? I'm no more immune to it than anyone else.

Good stuff. True equality is only obtained when everyone is treated equally. Putting women on a pedestal is /almost/ as bad as treating them as inferior.

How do you feel about...

http://raganwald.posterous.com/the-keep

We desperately need more women in tech and that's how we have been pursuing them, desperately. Women don't want to be treated differently and they don't want more focus put on them.

The problem is that I've seen a lot of articles about women in x (and x is often tech) end by saying that women need special programs and mentorship and opportunities and so on; am too lazy to dig them up now but chances are good you've seen them too.

The other issue is that if a specific company gets accused of a gender ratio imbalance, they can point at the special program and mentorship and opportunities as specific things, but it's very hard to show that the company is being "be more inclusive instead of polarizing."

Is the paragraph commenting system on Medium a new thing?

Haven't noticed it before.

EDIT: Introduced April 10: https://medium.com/about/8304190661d4.

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