Comment by oldmanjay | Hacker News Reader

Comment by oldmanjay | Hacker News Reader

Interesting article. One line bothered me

>Maybe it’s because of the still prevalent mindset that women shouldn’t be in engineering at all.

Is this is an actual prevalent mindset? I've literally never encountered it in the last two decades, although I also never attended university. I do assume, as a white male, that I would be approached by other males who would confide such prejudices in me. I've certainly been approached by white people (in non-engineering contexts) who assumed I would be comfortable with racist behavior so I feel like I would be soaking in obvious, blatant examples of this claim, but it has literally never happened.

Is this just an underlying assumption people have, and it goes unchallenged because of the apparent prevailing belief that contradicting a woman about sexism claims is also sexism? Is it a mindset that one finds primarily on campus? Have I just been lucky in selecting employers?

This is true curiosity, although I'll certainly understand if some of you are too emotional about the topic to avoid downvoting me for asking the question. I've had enough tangles over this issue to know that it's fairly rare to find people willing to calmly discuss these things.

Just as an opposite anecdote, I find that I run into it all the time. Sometimes, its from people that are outside of the tech industry itself. Sometimes, it is from people that don't realize that they are saying such a thing. Sometimes, its from people of different cultural background (e.g. Chinese developers). I see this in SF, saw it in Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and in the various countries I've worked in.

I also recognized that it has took me a lot of time and a lot of effort to get to a point where I recognize it. 10 years ago, many of the things that would set off the "Hey; that does seem right" alarm bell would be unconsciously ignored and taken at face value.

If I may presume, I'm going to suggest that your experience may be because you're more 'attuned' to racism than you are to sexism. For me, at least, it takes effort and willful learning to come to better grips with sexism, racism, ageism, etc. It's hard work!

Can you give an example of this 'coded' sexism that's hard for regular people to spot?

It's pretty mild; but someone sent me a twitter message after finding my GitHub account (hey nice projects, etc....) The left was my profile pic at the time, and the right is their final message. The fellow with a beard is my little brother. :) http://i.imgur.com/UuQMpi2.png

In the name of fairness; was your screen name gender neutral or leaning towards masculine at the time? If it's the same as HN (Mr. RRGN, right?) I could see it being a simple parsing error! ;)

Although not a certain identifier many people do rely on screen names to discern gender. I ask because if HN had avatars and I had a picture of me and my sister together, with my current nickname, people would likely assume I'm my sister. Even if the photo focused more on me than her (like your profile pic focuses more on you than your little brother). Simply because my username is a female name. Furthermore, without knowing we were family, many people would also assume we were dating. A mistake that actually occurred at school quite frequently from people who didn't know us, since we were nearly always together.

I'd understand the mistake. Of course, I'd correct them after. But I wouldn't take offense at the mistake. It's silly to expect people to know everything about you (even if you have a bio! Not everyone actually reads those.)

I've been mistaken for a girl even when using a picture of myself and only myself as my profile. The individual who made the mistake actually thought that was a picture of "my boyfriend" and I had a night full of laughter at the mistake (as did they after I corrected them).

I've been asked by online friends if I was male or female - months after meeting them - because it never usually gets brought up. I always ask them which they think I am before answering, out of curiosity, and most of them believe me to be female. I guess I need to cut down on my use of emoticons in shorter text forms and work on speaking more manly? I don't know.

I have a hard time seeing scenarios like this as sexism rather than honest mistakes that simply happen...

E:

My real name is a name used by both genders but more predominately by females rather than males. That probably contributes to the confusion over my gender to those who know me long enough to learn my name. I never actually thought about how my name contributes to the confusion until I typed up this post. I can see why people who attribute my name as a feminine name would think I'm female. Enlightening in a small way.

That's a valid point! It could be. I wasn't offended, but it's an anecdote that supports the idea that women aren't seen as being programmers. Other examples: going to conferences and being asked if I was covering it for a blog. Also not a big deal, but it illustrates the stereotype.

Likewise, if a man goes to a nursing conference, or a conference for elementary school teachers, he will likely face the same sorts of misunderstandings.

Much better examples!

I wasn't trying to imply this sort of sexism doesn't happen. Woman being asked which man they are attending a Hackathon with happens frequently! The assumption being they aren't attending on their own or aren't hackers, etc.

I was more worried about cases where genuine mistakes being clumped with sexism when they really shouldn't be.

Seems to be more about premature stereotyping than sexism, if sexism is supposed to mean something like "the belief in the superiority of one of the sexes". There is nothing inherently superior, or good, about being a programmer on GitHub. Some people have other goals, hopes and aspirations, without that making them "bad" people.

Can you elaborate on why spending time and effort to find offensiveness in things makes sense to you?

The concept seems so outlandish to me that I'm not sure how to word the question more politely, sorry.

For me it was just that I had a bunch of experiences where I hurt people and had no idea, only much later finding out, by essentially hearing from a third party about a fourth party doing exactly the same thing I did.

And it was clear that I wouldn't have heard those stories unless I had gone out of my way to understand what the "angry" people were mad about, and waded through quite a lot of background material. It was clear that no one would've trusted me with that kind of story until after I demonstrated that I had done some work to learn the basics of "offensiveness". Which, I had honestly only really done because I was in love with this girl who was into it. Kind of ironic really. I think that's how a lot of how this stuff grows though, you're a homophobe until someone you love turns out to be gay and then all of the sudden you figure it out.

Anyway after hearing enough stories about people like me carelessly, unknowingly fucking up other peoples' days, it clicked that I could never really know how many people I was hurting. And that knowledge just bugs me. I don't just want the illusion I'm being good to the people around me, I really want to feel secure that I'm doing a good job of that. It's how my Dad felt, not that he (or I) are necessarily the best at it. It's just my personality. And that provides the motivation to slow down and try to understand train wrecks that I could easily scoot on right by.

In a strict game-theory sense: if you're aware of what might cause offense to others, you'll inadvertently offend others less frequently, and your conversations/negotiations/etc. will have higher average outcomes.

Of course, I wouldn't usually phrase it in such a coldly logical way, so here's a practical example: when I meet someone in a professional context, I usually ask about background/expertise early on. This way, I avoid making unconscious assumptions like "she probably isn't an engineer" or "these people will all grok the super-technical explanation I'm about to launch into".

Another example: some of my relatives are more religious/traditional, so I avoid topics and words that wouldn't go over well when around them. Or: I'm in Greece, so I don't ask for Turkish coffee. And so on.

Personally I don't spend time and effort to find offensiveness in things - but I'm interested in being informed about the world around me.

For example, I've always found it easy to hail a taxi; it wasn't until a few months ago I learned it can be hard to get a taxi when you're black.

That's information that can be useful if I'm travelling with a black friend or colleague; or discussing the merits of electronic taxi hailing, or the place of taxis in a public transport system.

> Can you elaborate on why spending time and effort to find offensiveness in things makes sense to you?

Offensive things exist, it's simply a matter of whether you want to be aware of things that offend others or not. You can not put in the effort and walk around ignorant of behavior that offends people, or you can put in the effort because getting along with others generally requires not offending them.

For example, if you don't see sexism all around you, you aren't paying attention. If you don't see racism all around you, you aren't paying attention; our society is littered with both and women and minorities don't have the luxury of ignoring them.

> For example, if you don't see sexism all around you, you aren't paying attention. If you don't see racism all around you, you aren't paying attention; our society is littered with both and women and minorities don't have the luxury of ignoring them.

Please do keep in mind that this is an international forum, and the people you talk to mind come from wildly dissimilar societies than you.

For example where i grew up there was relatively little sexism, instead women were often the stronger people who more commonly fed the family. Similarly there was very little racism, though primarily due to a lack of people from foreign countries.

> Please do keep in mind that this is an international forum, and the people you talk to mind come from wildly dissimilar societies than you.

It may be, but largely the people here are from the United States. The international audience is by far a minority. Beyond that sexism and racism run rampant throughout the entire world, that you might be from a place you don't think it's very evident doesn't negate that reality.

> instead women were often the stronger people who more commonly fed the family

That's still sexist, just against men. Sexism doesn't mean putting down women. Not treating the sexes equally is sexist.

It's not about "spending time and effort." It does not require "time and effort" to see injustice, if you have an understanding of what it looks like and (this is important) the causes of it. It's about coming to grips the world as it treats people who are not like you--and a side effect of that is seeing that the deck is stacked and the dice are loaded and that things are much more grim than they appear to people like--well--you or me.

Instead of looking for wrongs, they become apparent to you, and there's a moral duty to not look away.

Why would you bother to learn how to identify security flaws in code? Because you think a system without security flaws would be better and you can't prevent or fix them without seeing them.

There's something weird about the way you phrased this. You're aware that what you said was impolite, but you can't think of a way to be more polite. I think this might be related to the fact that you find the idea of seeing how things that you don't find offensive might be offensive to other people 'outlandish'.

What it suggests is a lack of empathy, which extends to your assuming that other people are also incapable of empathy. Sorry, I'm also not sure how to word that more politely.

Imagine, for a moment, that other people are honest in their assertion that they are offended (for example that women find some common, everyday behavior offensive and sexist).

Imagine, for a moment that other people are capable of feeling empathy for those people (for example, that they have learned, through empathy, to notice the same sexist behavior and find it offensive, even though they are not women).

Then you might realize that they are not 'spending time and effort to find offensiveness', but just capable of empathy. Sorry if that seems outlandish, but.. it's the truth, sorry.

I feel this is just begging the question. It's not about being "capable of empathy" but directing that empathy toward very specific groups of people. To illustrate: how much would you modify your behavior to accommodate someone who is offended by gay marriage?

So now we're left with: why this set of people?

And while I'm sure there is a complex framework of narratives and rationalizations and models of power structures, etc. in support of who gets to be in the in-group and who doesn't, to me it seems mostly like a case of mindless tribalism.

Presenting/accepting horrifyingly bad arguments like "you don't share my viewpoint because you're incapable of empathy" is not done because people actually believe in them, but as a signal of tribal membership.

> To illustrate: how much would you modify your behavior to accommodate someone who is offended by gay marriage?

Not a whit, because after considering the situation I have concluded that same-sex marriage, while it may offend them, does not harm them. There's a world of difference between offended and harmed. My thought process goes, "hey, I can see people being harmed by not being able to get married to the person they love, while these people over there who are offended are going to be just fine not-gay-marrying each other."

I think those who prioritize their offense over others' harm really do lack empathy. (This is why, despite a personal dislike of a number of rather loud social justice activists, I'll go to bat for the causes that they support, while I can be offended by their conduct, they are right and others are being harmed. I am an adult and can put up with being offended to help others not be harmed.)

People seem more sensitive now than before. Or maybe they always were, but now it just isn't taboo to admit it? In any case, just using myself as an example -- I've found that I become more and more sensitive and easily offended the more I involve myself and try to find disagreeable things (see: online echo chambers centred around a common identity of "the other side is bad/laughable/hurtful!"). And in the modern Information Age, that isn't hard at all.

> You're aware that what you said was impolite, but you can't think of a way to be more polite.

Wrong point of view in my opinion. I had the same question on my mind and it needs a qualifier not because it's impolite, but because you might be offended by it. Those are two entirely separate things.

That said, nothing of what you said makes it any easier to accept your answers, for me personally, because i still have no idea what things you're seeing as offensive that you might've missed earlier and i still can't compare whether i would've missed the same things, or whether those things weren't present in my environments.

Would you care to bring up some concrete examples?

> i still have no idea what things you're seeing as offensive that you might've missed earlier and i still can't compare whether i would've missed the same things, or whether those things weren't present in my environments.

That's not what the GP asked. They asked

> Can you elaborate on why spending time and effort to find offensiveness in things makes sense to you?

which is an entirely different question (with a very obvious subtext to boot).

Honestly, i still stand by my post.

I can completely see how the chain of posts, especially when one ignores the first one, may be read differently.

However i personally still read the posts as culminating the in the question:

What are concrete examples, so I may gauge whether i need to pay more attention, or have a different environment?

There's probably not a good way to succinctly prove my capacity for empathy to you, but I think trying to link social grace and empathy is also incorrect in general.

Assume for the sake of argument that, as you suggested, you've identified a statement in the course of conversation that someone else might find offensive. What's your recourse and how does it benefit society?

If you've simply misinterpreted the person's meaning (which I'd argue is more often than not the case), you probably force them to spend time clarifying and maybe they endeavor to spend more time and effort to avoid similar misunderstanding in the future - all to avoid the hypothetical situation where they might have actually offended someone (who could have just asked for similar clarification).

Perhaps instead you've actually identified some unintentionally disclosed socially unacceptable bias that the person holds. The offense you've taken is still imaginary (I guess you'd argue it's actually empathetic) so chances are you're not in a good position to reshape that person's belief system - especially since hiding the belief in the first place suggests they know it's socially unacceptable. Rather, you're more likely just teaching the person to hide their bias more convincingly. I think most people find hidden bias much more insidious.

The best case, I suppose, is shaming some intentionally offensive statement. This one seems reasonable to me. However, if the statement was intentionally offensive, you probably didn't need the mental gymnastics to identify it in the first place.

I'm open to any counter-arguments you might have; I just thought I'd clarify my own stance since your accusation seemed a little harsh.

As a white male, why would you expect to experience the mindset that is specific to women?

Perhaps you do encounter it, but just think it's so normal that you don't even recognize it.

The most obvious example I encounter is: a woman who may be of average or above average attraction, and the assumption is she is not an engineer, but instead:

a. Marketer

b. Sales

c. Social Media Manager

d. Community Manager

e. Office Assistant

Further examples--attractiveness means a woman got where she is because of something other than her technical ability.

Or even that attractiveness is even relevant at all.

My understanding is that girls tend to hear this from the people they look to for guidance -- teachers, guidance counsellors, friends, and parents.

I'd also recommend an anecdote by Michael Kimmel, see the section "MAKING PRIVILEGE VISIBLE" at http://www.fjaz.com/kimmel.html.

> My understanding is that girls tend to hear this from the people they look to for guidance -- teachers, guidance counsellors, friends, and parents.

Aren't most of their teachers, friends, and roughly half of their parents women?

> Aren't most of their teachers, friends, and roughly half of their parents women?

Social norms which preserve group (race, sex/gender, caste, etc.) roles are rarely present among only the group whose acceptable roles under those norms are also those most valued.

Perhaps. But if you look at the current distribution of gender in engineering they may not advocate exploring those professions because historically it wasn't common for someone to advocate the same for them. The key is breaking that cycle so people feel free to explore whatever they're interested in.

3/4 of teachers in the US are women and almost half of them are in their 30s or younger.

I find it nearly impossible to believe that, in this environment, girls aren't encountering "you go girl!" from their teachers, multiple times a day.

The literature says you are wrong.

For example, a 1999 review[0] of the literature noted that teachers "tend to stereotype mathematics as a male domain, [...] overrate male students' mathematics capability, have higher expectations for male students and more positive attitudes about male students".

Look, if even ONE woman in computer science said to you that her high school math teacher told her that she wouldn't be well suited for Computer Science, you don't tell her, "I find it impossible to believe you." Chances are, dozens of other men have already said the same thing -- and that can be just as discouraging as the original comment.

[0] http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/0013188990410106

> Is this just an underlying assumption people have, and it goes unchallenged because of the apparent prevailing belief that contradicting a woman about sexism claims is also sexism?

I think you are not familiar with what sexism is, and confuse it with misogyny. There is nothing about sexism to contradict, and beliefs, prevalent or otherwise, have nothing to do with it. Sexism is simply a state of affairs where women have less power than men in society. Sexism in tech is a fact, especially in software, as it is the only white-collar industry that has seen female participation consistently drop over the past couple of decades, unlike other industries (including science, medicine and other form of engineering) where women participation has been steadily on the rise. As tech is an industry that holds a lot of power, the decline in women participation is sexism.

Your claim that you personally have not witnessed overt misogyny has, therefore, little to do with the reality of sexism. Arguing with women or men about the reality of sexism is also unnecessary, as it is a proven fact.

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