Comment by drawkbox | Hacker News Reader

Comment by drawkbox | Hacker News Reader

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This is a good example of sexism. But also a hint of target marketing, a few things of note...

Since there are less women in tech, technical people assume they are boring most people with technical jargon including most women (probabilistically). I bet if you dropped some technical info early it would knock it out of that mode quickly. I know when a women knows or doesn't know about tech I do change how I talk but I do this with anyone that is technical/non-technical. The old Feynman tune it to your crowd when you educate/market type of steward.

Also since there are so few women in tech, men don't usually work with them during the day and aren't the most alpha, lots of them could be shy or even have difficulty with eye contact at all. If they are introverted even moreso like many programmers are. Many are also young and not married which leads to awkwardness at times with ladies.

I think there are lots of opportunities for really skilled women but these intricacies should be stated more often so people understand and correct their assumptions. People need examples like this to learn how subtle it can be because just hearing 'sexism' doesn't help educate, more women with more examples as it is eye opening and helps understanding of this problem.

This is a common belief of geeks and maybe most people everywhere, that breaking down concepts into more easily understandable elements and working on outreach is something necessary for progress. They also seem to expect the oppressed group to do all the heavy lifting- figuring how to complain in the right tone as well as mustering the energy to complain in the first place.

I'm not sure history suggests that this is the way to go. There's no easy, smooth social change, and self-described "moderates" should give more room for people to be angry. Your post, instead of giving some "advice" on how to help tell the message, should just be doing that instead. Skip this condescending explanation! Stop making it about shy males!

More importantly though, many people think they want to be convinced by cause-effect arguments A, B, and C, and they advocate for that kind of context-less discussion forum, but really what they need is to be allowed to discover A, B, and C on their own terms after being presented with a persuasive experience D. But to make it really connect, you need to get the person involved. Calls of sexism help with that. As an intellectually confident person, people calling me out bluntly and confidently about my sexism got way further with me than people trying to sell me some sanitized variant designed for socially stunted males.

I don't mean to blow up on you or anything, but seriously it's every day on HN that someone who gives the impression that "he sees both sides" and has got it all figured out seems to be taking some awkward position as mediating sage instead of following their own advice and helping craft the message. The overall impression is, of course, one of endless condescension.

I stated outright it was sexism and asked more women to relay those situations so people do understand it. I was just stating from the side of that not all that might be deemed sexism was always meant as such. i.e. usually it is stupidity over arrogance which some assume the latter and more often it is the former. Almost all misunderstandings stem from some aspect of this. Where people are stupid, they need to learn somehow, examples help.

But living in a world with 99% of people not being technical (unless you are at work) you have to assume most people are not and talk to them in that way, nothing to do with gender really. In that aspect talking in a way that a person understands is polite (completely ignoring is another thing entirely -- a good speaker involves all). Once that person lets it be known that they are technical then a new door opens up and you can drop some acronyms. Any person will tune their message to their assumed crowd otherwise they waste alot of air. If you go up to 100 people (or women) and just start talking in programmer/technical jargon most of them will look at you funny. I talk to dudes I work with differently that are in business and programming as well. I don't talk down to them in any way, I communicate. If they get it, all engines ahead, if not, they ask for a simplified version, same deal with aspects of the business on the flipside.

What I see is also a problem in the sexism journey is that sometimes people that are understanding and do see the problem get pulled into it in ways that make them look bad. I almost didn't post the message above because I knew I'd get some of this even though I 100% agree. So they stay away from it, just because there may be gender issues doesn't mean there isn't some give and pull on both sides to help it along.

I think it's a good point, even if it's an unfortunate situation. I empathize with ericabiz - I'd love to see more balance between genders in software development. (and, sadly, I think it's only gotten worse since I started in the 90s). But, having gotten the 'eyes glazed over' look by every professional woman with whom I've tried to talk software within the last year, one just gets sort of trained after awhile. (maybe similar to how women get trained to assume that guys will hit on them.)

But, ericabiz, I recommend going to events solo - you'll meet more people that way. If you get hit on, bring the topic back to software. They'll get the point. Or, alternatively bring one or two female software friends with you. Couples going to events don't work so well, in my experience - regardless of who's the technical one.

Alternatively, wear something that only a coder would wear. Put some technical stickers on your laptop. Give some kind of sign to differentiate yourself.

Alternatively, wear something that only a coder would wear.

You mean a dress? I am a coder and that's what I wear.

Yeah, you should definitely wear that next time.

Did you read the part you quoted? Wear something that only a coder would wear. I've met non-coders who wore dresses.

Clothing is signalling; that's almost its entire purpose at this stage. If 95% of people who wear outfit A are marketers, and you wear outfit A, you're going to (initially) be treated like a marketer. Surprise!

Exactly. A lot of us wear multiple hats, but many of us are only effectively at wearing one at a time.

I sometimes have to act the role of 'business guy', and in those cases, to be most effective, I wear 'business clothes'. However, sometimes I have to act the role of coder. And, in those cases, I wear 'coder clothes'. I don't know what coder clothes are for women, but for guys it's something quite relaxed and laid back. Most coders that I know try to make a statement that 'they're not the business guy'.

I understood "only" to mean "most representative" as it made the most sense to me in this context (example: "she loved him as only a mother would").

But let's play by your set of rules. What would be something nobody but a coder would wear?

Bonus question. If "clothing is signalling", what does a typical coder's outfit say about their ability to come up with non copy-paste solutions?

Double bonus question. What do you think of black coders, who are even less common than female coders? Do you presume they are at a tech event to play basketball? Would you advise them to come in white face so they could provide the right "signalling"?

Also, let's get the numbers straight. Women comprise about 30% of computing workforce, a far cry from 5% that you made up to justify sexist stereotyping: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Women_in_computing#Statistics_i...).

> What would be something nobody but a coder would wear?

T-shirt with a programming joke is the easy answer.

> Bonus question. If "clothing is signalling", what does a typical coder's outfit say about their ability to come up with non copy-paste solutions?

What are you trying to say here? An outfit tells you what someone's into, not how good they are at it.

> Double bonus question. What do you think of black coders, who are even less common than female coders? Do you presume they are at a tech event to play basketball? Would you advise them to come in white face so they could provide the right "signalling"?

If someone's dressed in basketball gear then I'm going to assume they're into basketball yeah. But most black programmers I've met dressed like programmers. And while there aren't that many black programmers, it's the ratio that matters. At a typical tech event, most of the black people you meet are programmers. Most of the women you meet aren't. Most people wearing a suit or dress aren't.

If you want people to think you're a business person, dress like a business person. If you want people to think you're a coder, dress like a coder. If you enjoy dressing as a punk but you're actually politically authoritarian, fine, more power to you, but don't complain when people make reasonable inferences from what you've chosen to wear.

T-shirt with a programming joke is the easy answer.

I go to tech events and I never ever see anyone dressed in t-shirts with programming jokes on them (1). It's mostly the same ole sloppy t-shirt with jeans or chinos. So no, I am not going to wear the dorky scarlet letter all by my lonesome, thank you very much.

An outfit tells you what someone's into, not how good they are at it.

You mean, like, someone in a sloppy t-shirt and jeans is into complete and utter conformity?

At a typical tech event, most of the black people you meet are programmers. Most of the women you meet aren't.

Oh please. Most black people you see at a typical tech event are security and catering. As for the 2nd part of your statement, holy guacamole confirmation bias!

(1) For science, I just googled images for pycon, disrupt nyc, def con and finally just "hackathon" and nope, not a single programming joke t-shirt in sight. So your "easy answer" is anything but - you are asking women, and women only, to jump through extra hoops in order to get a seat at the proverbial table. Talk about a privileged, entitled stance.

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