Comment by gemma | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gemma | Hacker News Reader

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> Minority entities will be teased practically any time they exist, regardless of sector or age, and they need to be taught to handle it well.

Yeah? So this high school programming class isn't so much a programming class as a crash course in coping mechanisms for gender-based harassment?

Please. It's the educator's job to create a safe space for, you know, education--for every student in the class, not just the privileged majority. It's their job to track their students' education and interest level, and make adjustments if either starts dropping. It's not their job to facilitate a hostile environment and let minority students flounder in the interests of 'real world training'. It's not their job to decide that since it's hard for women in tech in real life, it should be hard in their class. Education isn't about maintaining the world we already live in, it's about shaping the world our kids will live in.

You want real world training? Show me an HR department in a software company that's fine with comments like "get in the kitchen and make me sandwich". Which real world are you advocating this high school programming class introduce to a 16-year-old girl?

>Which real world are you advocating this high school programming class introduce to a 16-year-old girl?

The real world where HR thought police aren't sitting in every room of every company. The real world where even HR people try to "make jokes" and be funny. The real world where HR people generally judge the severity of a harassment complaint by favoritism, which reality a blunt HR person (not employed at my current employer) just relayed to me recently. The real world where real humans, not perfectly politically correct robo-trons, must work, play, and engage.

I don't endorse teasing that harms a person's feelings. But I also think we shouldn't be so thin-skinned that we shrivel up and quit the first time a trite, cliched joke is thrown our way, because that happens all the time to everybody (your peers _will_ find a difference to comment upon no matter how mainstream you think you are), and if you can't handle it, you'll have a lot of difficulty handling more serious emotional situations, like getting passed up for a promotion.

It'd be great if the programming teacher first, was made aware of this problem, and the article never claims he was, and second, was able to stop the problem, but there's no guarantee he could've effectively done so even if he tried (and he may have), just as corporate HR departments can't stop all incidents of "harassment" even though they "try".

I believe the author probably wrote the piece primarily as a hypothetical, but I also believe it was bad taste to do so since this supposedly is traceable back to a real person who may not deserve that type of criticism, and I don't believe her fundamental complaint ("someone said something that made my daughter sad, so you all should feel bad :( ") is very worthy of the community's attention.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is why 16-year-old girls leave programming. Remember, guys ganging up on you and telling them to make them a sandwich is just funny! You're so thin-skinned, ladies! thought police!

http://hoydenabouttown.com/20110218.9512/sexist-joke-bingo/

...almost got bingo... good work, cookiecaper.

I didn't say it was funny or that being offended wasn't an OK response. I simply believe that we should handle potentially "offensive" situations wisely, instead of curling up and quitting. It is more than fine to voice your complaint and indicate that a so-called joke makes you uncomfortable and expect your peers to respect those feelings. It is also an effective requirement to recognize that you aren't always going to be able to get people to stop saying things you don't like, and that you can't let it cripple you.

And I only see hits in two squares on the "sexist joke bingo", not that it matters.

kaltai quite specifically called you out for the trope "you're so thin-skinned!". Quoth you:

> But I also think we shouldn't be so thin-skinned that we shrivel up and quit the first time a trite, cliched joke is thrown our way

that's the most PC thing I've seen all week.

and I mean that in the worst possible way.

It's just an easy algorithm for detecting trite arguments! Makes some of these discussion more amusing for those of us who get to hear 'em a lot, and Lord knows we need some amusement.

> Third, "politically correct" is a label principally used by reactionary dullards to dismiss arguments or objections that they see as excessively leftist. It's equivalent to calling someone a commie. Mind you, some people are communists, some people are knee-jerk excessive leftists, etc... but if that's true in a particular situation, you can just explain why it's true. Calling it "political correctness" is just a lowbrow dismissal.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6358263

>is just funny

Why is it that people misreading comments to call them out almost always come off as bigger asses than the people they're replying to?

The post I was responding to did refer to the sandwich comment as a "joke" and jokes are generally defined to be "funny." I would not consider the sandwich comment a joke, myself, since it doesn't fulfill the criteria I have for a joke, but apparently the poster I was responding to does consider it a joke (even if not one he likes, per se). Thus to the poster it does fulfill the criteria for a joke, whether good or not, and thus it is not inaccurate to rephrase those criteria, including funniness.

The poster characterized it as a joke, but did not say that that excused it. Your reading of the post as defending every aspect of the situation is what I object to.

And unfunny, bad-taste jokes are still jokes. I can talk about the KKK member's standup routine and call his words jokes without saying that I found them funny.

Fine members of the audience, I give you the Myers Shuffle.

http://squid314.livejournal.com/329561.html

Will you take the free space kaltai, or can we stop trying to use rhetorical tricks like talking dismissively about(rather than to) and trying to out-meta the other?

I think we're evaluating the circumstances with different criteria. You're looking at the story and relating it to a thin-skinned woman who can't handle non-politically-correct humor in the workplace. I'm relating it to a 16-year-old kid who hasn't had the time or experience necessary to develop the thick skin and snappy retorts that would shield her from her peers' disrespect. She's not getting passed up for a promotion; she just wants to learn programming. It's entirely within the job description of a teacher to notice, step in, and set standards for behavior in the classroom. Even when they're not met, they communicate more than tacit acceptance of bad behavior.

I completely agree that people in general, and women in tech specifically, have to be thick-skinned to survive professionally. Nobody's advocating HR thought police--they'd be unnecessary in this case anyway--or politically-correct automatons. We're talking about kids. Kids! Surely it's not totally out of line to suggest that they could learn better behavior than "get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich". Surely there's a better response to the whole situation than "that girl needs to suck it up and learn how the world works".

For what it's worth, I remember the first time those trite cliches were thrown at me, and they felt neither trite nor cliched. They hurt. I thought I was part of a team, among equals, brothers-in-arms, friends, and I wasn't. I was different, I was other, I was less, I was not welcome. It's a paradigm shift that happens in an instant, and it can be pretty shattering--great for killing enthusiasm and developing thick skin in the future, maybe, but not for learning things in a programming class.

I agree with the thrust of your comment. But as a member of the "privileged majority" who did not have a safe learning environment for most of my school years, I'm tired of getting dumped on online and being told my experience is not valuable or valid in these discussions.

School sucks for nerdy white boys, too. Yes, I'd like to see a safe and healthy learning environment for everyone.

Thank you. If we accept discrimination of minorities as inevitable, then it will be.

Seriously, you can get fired for making the sandwhich joke? Sorry, but the US is really fucked up.

No, you can't. It's not that bad yet.

People can talk about how the real world is without endorsing it or thinking it should continue to be that way.

Do you understand the statement above? If not, I'll quit wasting my time.

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