Sure she's a good tech blogger, but what does she look like? | Hacker News Reader

Sure she's a good tech blogger, but what does she look like?

blogs.techrepublic.com.com

16 pointsmaggie16 comments

Honestly, I have to say I consider this a stupid discussion.

On the Internet, where people are anonymous, you are going to have more rude comments from men. The male of the species is hardwired to see women as sexual objects and while that doesn’t forgive crude comments it does point to their cause being an evolutionary fact. Men are programmed with a strong sex drive to propagate the species.

So men are, by their nature, sexually driven and hence crude. But that crudeness is already considered socially unacceptable and that’s why the great majority of men don’t make them. So having a "discussion on the topic" is stupid.

Because all a discussion would yield is the rational conclusion that crude comments are wrong which we already know and which won't stop those who make them from continuing to do so.

Here's why it is not stupid.

What you mentioned explains the current. But it doesn't imply that the future will be like it.

Another example: you spot a rock moving in space. Hey, it has been moving along this path, because it always has been. We can stop talking about it, and expect it to move in the same direction. Or, we can talk about it, and decide to exert force on it to change its direction.

The fruit of an intelligent discussion on this topic can lead to positive changes in behavior. Many people tend to overlook this, which I find to be an unfortunate side effect of the growing number of people who study, in some form or another, evolutionary psychology: that's how it is now, that's how it's going to be. They complete the first step of explaining why, but they don't go a step beyond that and think, knowing this, what can we do about it? In my opinion this is one of the most important traits of humans and human-related discussions: their ability to learn to self-evolve. /rant

To preempt any rebuttals, notice that I am not making any assumptions about positives and negatives here.

I can see what you're getting at, but I think the point Tom was trying to make was that even if 99% of men are non-sexist and make reasonable on-topic comments on female bloggers, the vocal sexist minority is still going to be there and make stupid comments.

Indeed, it's not very optimistic. I think a solution would be if more sites implemented HN's rating system which hopefully would increase the ignorability of crude comments.

That's like saying that because men are more testosterone driven and prone to violence, society should just accept it because any discussion about it would be "stupid".

Your assumption is that your opinion that violence (or crudeness) is socially unacceptable implies that opinion is shared by everyone. Clearly it is not, as is evident from the fact that these things happen. Do not underestimate the power of a strong community response to influence the behavior (if not opinions) of individuals. You should also not underestimate the value of a strong condemnation to the victims of such crudeness/violence. After all, how should these women know that the majority of men consider this behavior unacceptable if that majority doesn't pipe up?

I wouldn't put all those comments in the same category. I think some of these guys are trying to say that to them, a woman can be both intelligent and attractive. So it's a form of self-praise (I am this advanced, and in a post-feminist way) rather than trying to exclude women. That said, it does show that they are still thinking about women primarily as objects to be gazed upon, rather than say, a colleague to learn from or work with.

I don't know if that is fixable, or if the fix would be desirable. Corporate environments have stamped out a lot of overt sexism, mostly due to the fear of lawsuits. But they can't make people be truly non-sexist, so mostly they just train people to fear any reference to sex or sexuality. Meanwhile, people still hold sexist opinions, privately. The glass ceiling is still there.

And as for the charge that the Web 2.0 environment is a huge boy's club; as far as I can tell that's true.

I have no idea what I would do if I was female in this industry. Probably go do something else, which is what most of them end up doing. Google has the best deal for women who want stability, but obviously not everyone can work there. Maybe consulting, or start your own company.

>> "Meanwhile, people still hold sexist opinions, privately"

Most men are genetically programmed to enjoy looking at beautiful ladies. That makes them sexist... but there's not really any cure, and I do not see why we would want any cure.

See, this is exactly what I'm talking about. Your idea of being non-sexist is mixed up with being non-sexual.

Sexism is discrimination. Sexuality is, what it is.

Since being non-sexual is an impossibility you conclude that sexism is permanent. To me that seems very wrong.

and I do not see why we would want any cure.

For the same reasons we might want cures for racism. Wasted human potential. Economic injustice.

I don't know how we get there, but somehow we have to have a world that's able to deal with sexuality but also not discriminate in the workplace on the basis of gender or attractiveness. Maybe better, objective metrics?

>> "Sexism is discrimination."

But our minds are programmed to discriminate. If a nice looking lady is doing a presentation on SSL, most mens brains will be in a struggle over what to concentrate on. Her body, or the content of the talk.

Two things...

First, if you are going to make a distinction between sexism and sexuality than explain what the distinction is and not just your opinion of each thing.

Second racism, wasted human potential and economic justice don't help us continue to exist as a species.

Sexism, at least in the workplace, is about: unequal rewards for work of equal value; hostile working environments that target individuals based on gender; and more besides.

Sexuality is so complex that I hesitate to define it here, but do you really think it necessarily includes paying a woman less, promoting them less, listening to them less? Or puerile insults?

No, that does not make most men sexist. You can enjoy it without extrapolating that physical judgment into other domains. And even if you can't help that, which I doubt, you can certainly stop yourself from posting the kind of comments described in the article.

But exactly the same thing happens in other instances... "Awesome new image matching written in Java" --> "hahaha Java is so crap!!!"

If someone can't make a good argument, they look for other things to respond to - language choice, photo, silly sounding name, etc.

It's just a fact of life and I don't think anyone should take it personally.

Well, you know what they say - on the Internet, nobody knows you're a dog. ( http://randomknowledge.wordpress.com/2007/12/30/on-the-inter... ).

A part of the problem is that on the net you're usually not held to account for your comments, as they're usually posted anonymously (or somewhere on a site with like-minded people). (Mind you, the existence of anonymity on the net is overall a good thing in my opinion).

4chan.org (parts of it very nsfw) is of course the prime example of what happens when you remove all constraints and let anybody upload and comment anything anonymously. A seething cesspool of sexism, racism and a bunch of other -isms.

Another relevant comic is a recent PVP thread, with this one pretty much summing up the article in question - http://www.pvponline.com/2009/04/03/no-comment/ .

And to round it off, John Gabriel's Greater Internet Dickwad Theory can be found here,

http://us.st12.yimg.com/us.st.yimg.com/I/yhst-34640480252896...

(Usually not big on linking to images, but just this once I'll go with the one pic equals a thousand words saying).

Why put your photo on the net if you don't want comments on it?

That's called treating the symptom, not the disease.

Additional recognition. Sometimes an 8-20 character long name may not suffice.

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