Sexism In The Tech Industry Takes Center Stage
npr.org
npr.org
These fucktards are the people representing our profession on NPR. NPR doesn't run stories about the other apps presented at TechCrunch Disrupt. The public won't here about that, or really, much of the cool tech that goes on. They'll hear about this, and that's what they'll remember.
Why the hell doesn't someone go up on that stage and kick those idiots off? Who's the goddamn moderator that is in charge and standing their watching this go on, instead of walking up, killing the power, and getting them an escort from the building.
I don't want to be an apologist for my profession, nor my passion. Right now, I am, so it's up to us to put this shit down. Start now.
Circle Shake -> Titstare -> Pre-scheduled break -> Apology
And it was clear- they reacted after they saw the reaction on Twitter. Not after they saw the presentations themselves. If you had those opinions all along how could you stand on a stage and say "up next, Titstare" without even blinking?
Apparently per their Facebook apology, Titstare entered under a different name, with the Titstare name first being seen in the slide deck.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/technology/2013/09/how-avoid-...
That said, I agree. I don't want to have to apologize for my profession.
1) for some definition of controversial including depraved, out-there, insulting-to-community-members, and click generating
This is fairly obvious if you compare the media potrayal of this and how they handle the institutional bigotry problems within feminism. In particular, feminism has a really substantial transphobia problem, including prominent activists publicly outing trans women with photos and full addresses, passing laws designed to deny them access to rape counselling, contacting their doctors to pressure them into denying medical treatment... Anyone who isn't OK with this is shunned by more influential feminists, and the media has fairly consistently sided with the transphobes and against those who point out these issues, even if they'd normally oppose similar transphobia.
Basically, if someone can use a significant chunk of the media to tell everyone how powerless they are, you ought to think about the contradiction before believing them.
A stubborn refusal to confront the problem is what helps these attitudes fester.
The lesson is that flagging this stuff off the page works tremendously well.
*edit
And that's why I flagged it. Not because I'm some horrible sexist, or because I want women to fail, but because I don't want HN turning into Tumblr or SRS. On top of all that, they also tend to be the worst kind of predictable and boring - i.e. the complete polar opposite of what great HN content is. No thanks.
It could mean either, or both, with or without justification. So, no reason to get irate.
In reality, they're known for invading threads, vote abuse, a level of dogmatism and doublethink that would make a Christian fundamentalist blush, and generally being a net negative influence on the site.
Sounds like they are fun and well-loved. :/
I expect this will be voted off too, it already seems to be lower-placed than it ought to be given the number of upvotes. I posted (what I though to be) a very interesting article on Popehat about free speech and the costs contained within a few days ago:
http://www.popehat.com/2013/09/10/speech-and-consequences/
Unfortunately it talked about the Business Insider issue, so was immediately flagged off the front page.
Keep sweeping under the rug, it'll hold lots.
If you read any political, social, gender or non-STEM science based comments (prior to the story being killed) you get the same disgusting mix of sexism, racism, and general ignorance you'd find on reddit. Luckily for HN's image the flag feature quickly hides such ugliness.
What exactly does it mean to confront the problem? I am not planning on giving a sexist presentation so... problem confronted? Am I suppose to do something to prevent others from giving sexist presentations too? I am not in a position to do that, and very few people are (how many people on HN actually run conferences?).
I don't see any actionable call to arms.
A Jewish programmer also had a lol app to determine holocaust survival and the outcomes ranged from 'Nazi comfort boy' to 'gassed immediately' after analyzing your picture. This was a tradeshow/conference for payment solutions. Lots of uncomfortable silence. Later found out the presenter was a comedian some casino had hired. If he had done that at a US tradeshow all of twitter would've exploded in faux outrage
I don't get the Business Insider troll tweets though. I think he forgot Twitter isn't 4chan
For years people (and yes, mostly guys) who were involved in the tech industry and engineering in general were shunned and dismissed by culture at large to be losers and sexual non-entities and therefore lacking in social currency. As a result of this mass dismissal and social rejection, and since most women aren't raised or brought up to deal with rejection and social stigmatization, while some actively participated and reinforced the stigmatization, women in general didn't feel comfortable being in or pursuing a career in a field that garnered such negative attention for a very long time.
To this day people in the tech field are often marginalized and in order to attract women to the field companies like Google have to produce promo videos that try to convince women to join the industry by suggesting that there aren't that many weirdos in the industry and that most people in the industry are "normal" as opposed to celebrating the beautiful weird male personalities that achieved great things because of their weirdness not in spite of it and helping women realize and embrace the male nerd ethic the went into building this new world:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v...
Notice the attention given to showering and how they gloss over the fact that in reality, the current leaders in the tech world didn't bath regularly when they were building their companies. Bill Gates comes to mind.
The reason why you get push-back from males from the industry when it comes to involving more women in tech isn't because they have some "jock, locker room, and frat" mentality that women are somehow mentally inferior to males and aren't capable of understanding tech. Actually, women in science and engineering classes at major universities tend to be the top students in those classes. Its because they don't think women in general have the fortitude nor the willingness to not shower for days and be content with not going outside while living off cold pizza. While most tech experiences these days don't involve this sort of lifestyle, the anti-social behavior and culture that are associated with the lifestyle still exist and instead of women decrying these prevailing attitudes in tech they should embrace these traits.
Case in point, Elon Musk's ex-wife. Instead of dealing with his borderline autism for what it was, in her blog she attacked him being arrogant and uncaring. Elon Musk is a weirdo and natural introvert who forces himself to be an extrovert to be able to do the interesting and unique things he wants and needs to do in life.
You really don't see the inherent contradiction there? The first half says the problem is assumptions by men about what women will or will not do. The 'solution' buys into this assumption without examining whether it is in any way true.
Who says women do not have the fortitude to not shower for days and live off cold pizza?
Either way, that is something I'd like to see leave this industry too.
"Bob Costas" is playing the same stereotypes he claims to despise when others hold.
Why is everything always about what people are 'saying'? "Who says girls can't play football." Nobody, in the most exacting, chokingly literal sense. Nonetheless, my lived experiences suggest to me that if I want to start a football team, there are better and worse places to look for teammates. If you think that's a political stance, well, I respectfully disagree.
Replace, and I'll delete this one.
> Its because they don't think women in general have the fortitude nor the willingness to not shower for days and be content with not going outside while living off cold pizza.
So what you're saying is that the tech industry is sexist because you need fortitude, not intelligence? Or you're saying that the tech industry prizes fortitude over intelligence?
I guess it's good to know where we stand.
Women can be just as tough as men. Of course, the idea that maybe this kind of banter should be all-inclusive (as it is where my mom works) is simply not up for discussion in the tech community; we're busy telling people there should be no banter at all.
Sorry for being harsh. This has to be just-about the stupidest comment I've seen on HN in quite some time.
If the former, the fortitude to do or not do what? If the latter, I don't really regard it as fortitude. I've worked with people who didn't shower for days, and it wasn't in a computer lab--once it was on a loading dock.
[edit: added missing quotation mark]
app is sexist yeah, but how is looking at tits misogynistic?
The question has been well-covered in a related discussion here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6352595
(My point here is the term, not the man.)
Basically, it's a question of participation vs. objectification--of being in on the joke vs. being the butt of the joke.
We've come around to the idea that anything crude is sexist and misogynistic and this just isn't the case. That concept in and of itself is sexist, because we (men) assume that women are too delicate to handle this stuff. We haven't stopped telling the dirty jokes at work, we just look over our shoulders to make sure the women aren't around before we do. Which creates an environment of exclusion.
Instead we should just stop telling the dirty jokes at work, because they aren't appropriate for work.
These jerks should never have even CONSIDERED presenting this app, because it's offensive. Offensive to women, men, people with devout religious beliefs, investors who took the time to listen to these presentations, and the list goes on.
[1] http://journal.neilgaiman.com/2008/12/why-defend-freedom-of-...
Look, I like boobs as much as the next guy, but there's got to be a line where we go from "yay boobs are awesome" to "okay this is a bit creepy".
How is that different from going to see people play music or act in a movie?
Is an actor "an object"?
How about other people we see as objects/machines to do stuff for us, like someone serving meals at McDondals (or a programmer)? In that interaction, we only value what we get out of them -- they might as well be objects (and in some cases, they ARE replaced by objects, e.g with automation).
How are those cases different, except in the puritan way of "it involves sexual desire" so it's bad?
So there's looking at boobs and there's looking at boobs. There's looking at the boobs of someone who wants you to look at their boobs, either they are an adult model or a consenting adult who's thought "Hey, this guy/gal is alright, I'm okay with them seeing my boobs". In that situation all is well with the world, they're either fulfilling a role for cash purpose or they've decided to extend a level of intimacy.
(sidenote: not a puritan, I think sex and sexuality is a big part of our society and we ignore at far too often, and discuss it even less)
Isn't that exactly what bikini models are also there to do?
>There's looking at the boobs of someone who wants you to look at their boobs, either they are an adult model or a consenting adult who's thought "Hey, this guy/gal is alright, I'm okay with them seeing my boobs". In that situation all is well with the world, they're either fulfilling a role for cash purpose or they've decided to extend a level of intimacy.
And how's that different from what that app was about out?
Didn't it use professional models and such?
(Seriously asking, haven't read about that part)
If someone had come to the conference and broadcast music that was far, far too loud and which obviously impeded people's experience of the conference, nobody would be defending them. What these guys are doing isn't a lot different.
The kids angle is fairly important - I got a lot of value from hanging out at os2 and linux user groups when I was young. Professional orgs and conferences can be an escape from the heavily stratified world kids are stuck in for most of their lives, and help people develop interests early.
"[...] the remedy to someone saying or writing or showing something that offends you is not to read it, or to speak out against it." (ephasis original)
I have yet to see much (if any) advocacy for making disgusting, sexist, immature apps illegal (which would then make this a freedom of speech issue). I have, however, seen plenty of advocacy for keeping this crap out of our community. Which is, incidentally, exactly what the article you linked advocates (see the quote above).
We're all (supposed to be) adults, and we (should) know better than that.
(edit to indicate emphasis is not mine)
I guess the disturbing part is what makes these guys think they can be this open about it. Wall Street has rampant sexism but I'm thinking they are smart enough not to show it is a public forum.
Clearly in the context of TechCrunch Disrupt making sexist jokes is a problem, but Rickrolling Arrington as our CTO did one year when he showed a backwards search engine (you went from a bunch of results to figure out what the query was that would return those kind of thing) just 'funny' (for some definition of funny, since it was pretty late in the Rickrolling meme but I digress).
But the maturation process, the one where you look at a situation and predict which behaviors will be ok for the group or not ok for the group, is something that you can't teach but you can learn.
[1] "Murder" is a useful foil to have this discussion around as there are so many different contexts in which one person may feel compelled or desire to take the life of another.
B = {all areas ∈ Tech | area interests TNY readership}
A ∩ B = ________
The question is not "Why are there so few women in IT?", it's "Why are so many men in IT such jerks?"
Both are questions, neither is the question, and the second is an important question in large part because its premise is part of (but not all of) the answer to the first.
On an 100% unrelated note, Adria Richards has transitioned from "Technology Evangelist" to "Programmer"?
On other hand, developers, both male and those few females are not the most eloquent people, however women were always welcomed, especially developers.
Talking about sex or using crude sexual humor is NOT sexism. It may be inappropriate for a professional environment (especially if kids are around) but it is not sexism; there is no discrimination nor an intent to put someone else down.
> Talking about sex or using crude sexual humor is NOT sexism
Creating a selectively hostile environment is a (fairly significant) legally recognized form of discrimination based on sex, and both of these can be (and not infrequently are) mechanisms that create such an environment, so it is, at best, an oversimplification to say that they are not sexism.
Its selectively hostile because of disparate impact due to occurring within a cultural context in which sensitivity to these issues is not even approximately evenly distributed by sex.
> Religion offends me—being around it makes me uncomfortable—but that doesn't give me the right to tell people to stop talking about.
Being human gives you the right to do that (just as the same thing gives other people the right to ignore you when you do, in most circumstances.)
This, of course, is completely orthogonal to the question on discrimination, as something being discrimination is not a pre-requisite for someone to have a right to tell people to stop doing it.
With it hitting NPR, I suspect this has irreversibly damaged his professional reputation.
/provocateur