Comment by HedgeMage | Hacker News Reader

Comment by HedgeMage | Hacker News Reader

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> it makes me think: this might be a problem. Is it harder to be a hacker if you > also have an interest in social media and graphic design and popularity and > friendships? Are we defining "hacker" to include only people with bad social > skills and no interest outside of technology? I hope not.

I never said any such thing. I didn't say "you are pretty, what are you doing here?". I said:

>> you're not a programmer, what are you doing here?!

I am a highly social hacker, and a polymath to boot. I have a vibrant love life, good friends from all walks of life, and plenty of non-coding interests: writing, reading, psychology, music, crafts (I do leatherwork, weave rugs, sew, do native american loomed seed beadwork, etc), backpacking, martial arts, and more.

What I don't do is walk into a room and tell a woman who's good at something I'm not -- a dancer, for example -- that she's being graded not on her ability to dance, but on whether she looks like my idea of what a dancer should be. I don't demand that her math skills (something just as orthogonal to dance as fashion is to coding) be evaluated instead of her dancing.

In my not-so-humble opinion, if you can't code, you don't get a vote on how it is or isn't okay to be a female (or any other) coder, period. Wave that "feminist" flag all you want, I'm not buying it. Women in generations before me didn't burn their bras so I could be judged on my fashion sense instead of my work.

Which feminist told you to dress or look a certain way? No doubt, there are feminists in the margins who think that way, but the vast majority of feminists I’ve ever met or talked to would be absolutely abhorred and disgusted by someone telling you how to dress or look. That’s certainly what I think. Gender policing is disgusting.

I’ve real trouble integrating what you are saying with what I’ve heard feminists say about the issues you are talking about.

>Which feminist told you to dress or look a certain way?

In my experience, feminists are more obsessed with making sure other women are dressed "correctly" than just about any other demographic outside of conservative christian republicans. Have you never read an article by a feminist about X or Y movie character is demeaning to women because she dressed too sexy, or wore something that the feminist herself would never wear?

Criticizing how fictional women are dressed is not the same as criticizing how real-life women are dressed. When a man draws or designs a female character with "sexy" clothing, it's likely sexualizing that character for male viewers to ogle. When a woman decides to dress that way, it's personal expression.

When I see feminist criticisms of how female characters are dressed, they're not criticizing three dimensional autonomous characters that happen to wear revealing clothes. They're criticizing usually stock characters that perpetuate stereotypes about women and objectify.

That being said, some feminists (or should that be "feminists"?) absolutely do police women's clothing choices, and that's just as wrong from them as it is from anyone else.

>Criticizing how fictional women are dressed is not the same as criticizing how real-life women are dressed.

Who do you think portrays them on tv and in movies? Fake women? Give me a break.

>When a man draws or designs a female character with "sexy" clothing, it's likely sexualizing that character for male viewers to ogle. When a woman decides to dress that way, it's personal expression.

I like how if a man does it, it's sexist, but if a woman does it, it's "empowerment." I guess men aren't allowed to write empowered female characters. And yet, if they don't write them--that makes them misogynists, too.

>They're criticizing usually stock characters that perpetuate stereotypes about women and objectify.

In my experience, this is just very elaborate justification for plain old jealousy of another woman's looks.

> Who do you think portrays them on tv and in movies? Fake women? Give me a break.

Oh, I had forgotten actresses write their own roles and pick their own wardrobes. And since most producers are women [0], most directors are women, most writers are women[1] and most people behind the scenes are women [2], I don't know what I was thinking. You're absolutely right: Men really have no influence on the process at all.

/sarcasm

>>When a man draws or designs a female character with "sexy" clothing, it's likely sexualizing that character for male viewers to ogle. When a woman decides to dress that way, it's personal expression.

>I like how if a man does it, it's sexist, but if a woman does it, it's "empowerment." I guess men aren't allowed to write empowered female characters. And yet, if they don't write them--that makes them misogynists, too.

I'm comparing a woman's personal choice to a man's choice of how women are portrayed. Men can dress as they wish. What they shouldn't do is objectify women.

[0]: http://www.screendaily.com/news/production/percentage-of-wom...

[1]: http://www.thewrap.com/tv/article/tv-writing-remains-white-m...

[2]: http://entertainment.time.com/2014/01/15/report-women-are-st...

It's very common for readers / viewers to feel that elements of a story represent a world view that is much wider than the specific bounds of that particular story. If you read 1984 without reading Orwell's goals, how would you characterize his goals? Is he trying to say something about all societies, or is his book concerned only with _that_ society? The more superficial the interaction with a work, the easier it is to mistake an author's perspective.

I think these sorts of differences in perspective are common to people in general. Some of it is jealously, but a lot of it is simply a failure to understand or take into consideration the viewpoint of the piece.

> In my experience, feminists are more obsessed with making sure other women are dressed "correctly" than just about any other demographic outside of conservative christian republicans.

Dress and body policing of women is a reflection of misogyny, of which women and men both participate. However, it is definitely wrong to do so whether one considers themselves feminist or not.

> Have you never read an article by a feminist about X or Y movie character is demeaning to women because she dressed too sexy, or wore something that the feminist herself would never wear?

Media representation criticism != body policing of actual people.

>Media representation criticism != body policing of actual people.

Except that in many cases, it's actual women being criticized.

True, however there are examples of the latter, vide how Nixie Pixel was treated at OSCON 2012.

Why did fashion come up in this article at all? There is no reason to believe that a woman who wears heels and makeup can program any less well than a woman who doesn't. Or that girls that read fashion magazines aren't interested in computers. Fashion and dress are irrelevant.

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