The brogrammers and geek feminists won. There's no turning back.
(not saying that you are using the term 'brogrammer' like that, just posing a more general question).
I don't think there's any way to say it in a non-derogatory way if the central message is derogatory. The article seemed to be saying, we have a culture, and if you people infiltrate it, there is a good chance you will ruin it. I happen to agree with him.
Her, for whatever it's worth.
>There are progressive, libertarian, anarchist, moderate, communist, conservative, liberal, and reactionary hackers, just the same as can be said for women, bisexuals, Texans, or engineers who aren’t hackers.
The sentence only really makes sense if the final 4 traits are describing the author.
I have no idea if Meredith is bisexual or Texan.
For what it's worth, I don't recall intending anything in particular with that list of adjectives, but you never really know about authorial intent.
There are people who aren't like me who are hackers. Also there are people who are like me who aren't hackers.
The list of people who aren't like her is: progressive, libertarian, anarchist, moderate, communist, conservative, liberal, and reactionary.
The list of people who are like her is: women, bisexuals, Texans, or engineers.
Why else would she come up with 4 random traits? They obviously have something in common: they describe her.
The "who aren't hackers" part doesn't apply directly to engineers. It applies to the entire list. So if you were to parenthesize it to show precedence it would be "(women, bisexuals, Texans, or engineers) who aren’t hackers." Not "women, bisexuals, Texans, or (engineers who aren’t hackers)."
The actual word was invented as a joke in a parody video, as a portmonteau of "bro" and "programmer". It then got picked up as an slur for "disliked man in the tech world".
It has also a bit "hipsterish" connotation - brogrammer is someone who's "not really into it". "The true nerds" were programmers before it was cool.
At least that's how I understand this term. "disliked man in the tech world" is much too broad, as so called "brogrammers" are supposed to dislike "true nerds".
Likewise, some of the most technically talented people in node identify as feminists.
Thinking about it (which I'm forced to because my Twitter timeline is full of this), I don't think anyone really is trying to tear down programming. I think the problem is the false narratives we tell ourselves about the other side.
I don't know how on earth you reached that bizarre conclusion. For starters, if that's what it means, then how would it be derogatory and then why would people be complaining about the word?
Also, great article.
Ok, I went there for the sake of the quote, but as someone who spent most of high-school maintaining an online forum about nerd topics on a Hardened Gentoo[1] Pentium III[2] server in the floor of his own bedroom; I still find I cannot quite empathize with the fear of "insiders"/"normals" that the OP talks about and which other comments seem to echo. Not saying I can't imagine it, or that it's not real, but it wasn't like that for me. In my experience: video-games were utterly mainstream, MTG/D&D where "a bit weird, but hey, to each their own", computer programming was cool (not a super popular hobby to pursue, but people seemed either neutral or genuinely impressed if you did).
Many of those cherished "hacker values"? They are now mainstream ideals: Net neutrality! Wikileaks! "I prefer texting than talking on the phone"! ;) Everyone I know is now in an online forum or another (Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/Reddit). Not saying all of the values have been popularized, but many have. Our pop culture now a days makes more fun of jocks than of nerds. It has more nerd heroes (specially for middle-school/high-school aged kids) than "popular" heroes. Freaking LoTR is one of the biggest movie franchises of all times!
Besides, it's not like the groups have no intersection. Geek feminists often are or were at some point "weird-nerd" girls or "weird-nerd" guys that agreed that the world was, among all of its unfairnesses, biased to take male as the default. So we are not excluding just those "not from our tribe" (whatever that means), we are excluding "those from our tribe happen to be different from what we picture our tribe to look like". Even for those genuinely not part of the culture you might naturally want to associate with? Well, we still need to interact with and do business with them in a civilized manner. That's all any diversity advocacy I have ever read demands: not that you be friends with anybody, but that you be willing to interact respectfully with everybody.
"Brogrammer" is less well defined. But the most gym-going and adventurous friend I have is also among the most nerdy, smartest and occasionally painfully awkward people I know. Also, the most social person in my circle is a gregarious, party going, business savvy, MIT engineering trained woman that in the right crowd can make jokes consisting entirely of function plots.
There are no three cliques against other! There are many ideas, associated with different stereotypes, let's try not to pit armies of stereotypes against each other, and be open to the ideas! If that's not a hacker value, then I don't what is.
[1] Why Hardened Gentoo just to host a small PHP forum? Because it was there...
[2] Gives the age away fairly precisely, doesn't it?
There are no three cliques against other! There are many ideas, associated with different stereotypes, let's try not to pit armies of stereotypes against each other, and be open to the ideas!
In broad strokes I agree with you. For a few reasons, not the least of which because I don't exactly agree with the authors analysis. I differ from you in specific as there is a difference between being accepting of the ideas and people who live them, versus adopting it for myself. Being "open to" an idea means the former, yet often euphemistically implies the latter.
I see the author's point in the way people with more social power than myself ask for my conformity, to their benefit and my cost. It's framed so politely, everything is these days, but sometimes I don't want to adopt another persons standards. Only then do you see how serious they are about getting you to conform.
They were more than signals, they were the culture that reflected the values we identified with: the wonder of discovery, the beauty of places that didn't exist, the value of smarts and imagination. Those values are nerd values and are also mainstream values. It is a point of agreement for which we can all start to talk. I think most nerds I know define nerdom by what they like and the acceptance of obsessive liking of an idea, not by any other "kind of person".
> I see the author's point in the way people with more social power than myself ask for my conformity, to their benefit and my cost. It's framed so politely, everything is these days, but sometimes I don't want to adopt another persons standards.
That's usually fair. But what happens when what people are pointing out is that your standards are unjust and are harming them? It is one thing for people asking you to, say, dress in a suit and a tie (an arbitrary imposed standard that really couldn't matter less unless you want to impress the people who like suits). It is another when the standard they are asking you to adopt is "don't grope us, don't assault us, don't insult us, don't provide cover or plausible deniability to those who willfully grope us or assault us or insult us.". Taken to the hyperbolic extreme, if someone imposes on me from the outside the standard that I should not kill people (assuming it weren't already within my own personal standards), it is still an imposition, but one they are within their rights to make.
Social justice advocates really are as transparent as the name: they advocate for (social) justice. If your standards are unconventional but just, go ahead: you can be into D&D and feminist, you can be a furry and feminist, you can be an otaku and feminist[1], you can be into BSDM and feminist, you can be as weird as you wish to be and still treat people well even if awkwardly. You don't even need to be an advocate for gender equality, just do a good faith attempt at not perpetrating or upholding injustice. But if your standards are unjust or they facilitate injustice, why wouldn't people be allowed to point that out to you and request that you change them?
Keep in mind that often, nerd feminists are not insiders encroaching into the outsider's safe space, but outsiders within a larger group of outsiders, trying to avoid being harmed by manipulative people skilled in the culture of the larger outsider group. They are often those of us, that we are allowing to be bullied, by others "like us".
And, do people do unjust oppressive things in the name of justice and anti-oppression? Sure. Mob-mentality online shamming campaigns often are such injustice, at least when focused on individuals who are not powerful public figures (be it DongleGate or GamerGate, and I think there is still one of those that is far far worse). We should mention and call this out as well, but that doesn't mean that the points about there being injustice in nerd culture (as in pretty much any culture) are invalid.
[1] Do I even need to mention you can be a brony and feminist? ;)
So you're obviously aware why conversations about where the line between activism and asshole-ness is always turns to shit. You'll understand why I'm gonna bail on this conversation.
Take this whole discussion, for example. My takeaways are that:
1) There is a group/generation/subset within nerd culture that has had "social norms" and "proper conduct" used as a weapon against them, in order to attack them over what they feel is unintentional social clumsiness or voluntary disregard of norms they don't agree with, without intent of harming anyone. I tend to trust what people tell me, so I now believe this is a significant grievance for a number of people. It was never quite as large a part of my own experience with nerdyness, but I acknowledge it has been for others.
2) Public shamming is an effective tactic (in pointing people to the existence of a problem), but also a terribly aggressive one towards the person being named. Specially if they are only been picked as an example of what is considered bad only because of how common the behavior is and the toll it exerts on people in aggregate, not just that particular instance. This is, by the way, a point I have seen made before, within activist communities. I'd still argue naming and shamming is a valid response in cases of obvious ill intent or physical harm (e.g. rape), but not for all types of "inappropriate behavior" (in which I am including unintentional or miss-measured psychological harm).
Could you, reciprocally, consider giving some though as to whether some of the things people label as unwelcoming, harmful or oppressive within a subset of nerd culture might be real grievances as well? How about considering whether the people exposing these grievances really come from outside the community, or from within? Or whether or not, if the grievances are real, they are right to demand that the culture addresses them?
And, while I stand by the point you quoted, I'd still wager more oppressive things happen in the name of "this is how we always have acted" and "you are not really part of this group", than in the name of anti-oppression.