Code Like A Girl – A rundown of the gender clash in a dev bootcamp

While the behavior of the men involved in this story is inappropriate, the responding behavior–"the 'wins' in this bit of a gender clash"—are just as detrimental to building a unified community. Having more women in the software industry would be great for everyone, however I don't know if this kind of response is the best way to do it.

It's a difficult problem, and one that exists in plenty of communities outside of technology. While it's unreasonable to expect completely equal representations of each gender, more can be done to make women feel welcome. Most of which is just men acting professional.

That said, sexualization of either gender will never disappear until we start producing children as the World State does.

Pretty unfunny and juvenile, it seems that there was one person "Ryan" being sexist - and instead of calling him up on it, the author continued under the assumption that all the other guys were sexist.

It's an amusing anecdote, but I can't really identify with anyone in the story. I've never heard nor said anything resembling what Kiki described. I don't recall even thinking anything in ballpark of such blatant, hostile sexism. It saddens me that people such as "Ryan" exist.

Kiki's reaction is understandable, but I don't think it's productive. Most people don't realize when they're being jerks. If you respond in-kind or demonize them, they often react by escalating. If you let the person know how they came across to you, and avoid clashing egos, it can be a beneficial experience for both parties. This advice isn't just theoretical. I've had good results with the similar problem of racism.

Lastly, I feel compelled to comment on a bit of the post that is unrelated to the main topic: I'm constantly astonished that smoking is still a thing. Cigarettes are harmful, repulsive, and (most importantly) expensive. A nicotine vaporizer can give the same effects with almost no downside. Whenever I make the acquaintance of a smoker, I mention this as nicely as I can. So far, I've gotten about a 50% conversion rate. If you know anyone who smokes, I urge you to discuss vaporizers with them.

This is tremendously funny, and the revenge is delightful. I applaud the courage of these women!

That's some pretty terrible behavior on the side of the participants mentioned, but I'm not sure it's productive to encourage the rhetoric of a "gender war". It certainly makes it psychologically more difficult for me to side with women in tech.

I would think negatively about males making sexist remarks, and I would think negatively about colleagues making a dick rating app about their peers. Who's winning?

I am not convinced that sexism in tech is much more amongst men than women. As a technical guy, I've had my share of meetings with female founders often looking for devs or a technical founder. It is extremely common for the woman I am meeting to make a sexist joke about nerds/men/women. I am personally not impacted by it except for being super cautious in my response out of fear that it may be misconstrued as anything but humor by someone(the direct contact I am meeting who may made the original sexist remarks or by someone overhearing us).

To give you an idea, I recently had coffee with a female founder via an intro from a friend. A good percentage of her conversation was about how she will lose weight and make herself look much prettier if I joined as CTO. This stuff doesn't really offend me until I begin thinking that "oh I am supposed to be offended by this since I bet if similar things were said to a woman, there'd be a riot."

Every single thing I read about supposedly atrocious male behavior in a group of males is replicated amongst certain groups of women. Just saying.

Though I can appreciate making jabs and having fun like this, if their goal was to, quoting:

We should be calling people out, setting good examples, proving people they’re wrong.

They haven't really achieved any of these things. It probably gave them satisfaction, but let's not overinflate the significance of a tiny culture jam like this.