pifflesnort

> Ahh, but that's the guts of male privilege isn't it. Their hard-earned success was much easier to come by than a women whose achieved the same level of success. That's what privilege means. It was easier for man to gain that success than their women counterpart. Perhaps not so rhetorical after all. It just stings. Sometimes the truth does that. And sometimes, the only way to break through the denial of an issue is to take a hard stance.

Do you want to be right, or do you want to be heard?

> As a two word phrase which everyone understands to mean the social theory that men have unearned social, economic, and political advantages or rights that are granted to them solely on the basis of their sex, and which are usually denied to women.

How do you think people react to hearing that what they perceive (often rightfully) as hard-earned success was, in your eyes, unearned?

It's not a productive line of discussion.

> So, yeah, _my_ job is to educate and crusade.

Using divisive and emotional rhetoric just makes people stop listening.

I'd be interested in sponsoring, hosting, or otherwise contributing to non-gendered youth programs that were welcoming to girls and boys.

I don't even know where to start, but I do know that the Ada Initiative's divisive identity politics and concern-trolling aren't something I agree with, and disagreement with their organization doesn't make me a "male privileged" moral bankrupt individual.

> Let's put it this way: words change over time, and if the word changed in the 70s (that was before I was even alive), then it's changed, and the words we use _now_ matter _now_. Language is _never_ static.

I wholly agree. But the usage is not universal (by far), and the reworked definitions are used to hit people over the head.

I call a trans person by their preferred gender because it's the polite thing to do, and I try to be a polite and respectful person. However, bringing it up in this context to hit someone over the head for their word choices is not polite.

> As I said before and above, there has been endless explanation of material harm caused by the cultural situation that women (and other minority groups) face today. If you don't know why, at this point, you're just being willfully ignorant.

Which is why using logic-defying rhetorical anvils is just so counter-productively trite and trivial. It leaves me wondering whether these forms of divisive identity politics are really about the equality they claim to be trying to achieve.

> 1) There's no 'redefinition' going on here.

"However, Money's meaning of the word [gender] did not become widespread until the 1970s, when feminist theory embraced the distinction between biological sex and the social construct of gender. Today, the distinction is strictly followed in some contexts, especially the social sciences[5][6] and documents written by the World Health Organization (WHO).[4] However, in most other contexts, even in some areas of social sciences, the meaning of gender has undergone a usage shift to include "sex" or even to replace the latter word."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gender

That's just 'gender' and 'sex'. The first responder proceeded to redefine 'female' and 'male':

   "Females as a noun is used to refer to lower animals, I believe you mean women."

No reputable dictionary or colloquial usage defines 'female' as a noun to refer to "lower animals."

> 2) You're free to have whatever ethical norms you want, but just like 'free speech,' that doesn't mean you're free from criticism. You can call anyone whatever you like, doesn't mean that I (and others) won't think you're a shitty person, _especially_ after having an explicit conversation about it.

Which one of us gets to tell the other how to behave on the basis of how we feel about it? I find it offensive how you use rhetoric to label those you disagree with as 'shitty' people; it doesn't leave any room for discourse.

I'm reminded of the Stephen Fry quote:

"It's now very common to hear people say, 'I'm rather offended by that.' As if that gives them certain rights. It's actually nothing more... than a whine. 'I find that offensive.' It has no meaning; it has no purpose; it has no reason to be respected as a phrase. 'I am offended by that.' Well, so fucking what."

Indeed, being offended provides no insight into understanding why you're offended, and without explaining why, there's no basis to make a rational evaluation of whether the behavior that offends you is actually ethically wrong.

> Well, let's clear it up then: "Male privilege refers to the social theory that men have unearned social, economic, and political advantages or rights that are granted to them solely on the basis of their sex, and which are usually denied to women."

The useful part is "... which are usually denied to women". The rest is just divisive stereotyping.

> It's actually a fairly useful generalization, and most understand what's implied by the use of the term.

Useful how, exactly? Other than stoking the flames of online discourse, and writing off viewpoints by using "privilege" as a rhetorical bat, I don't see much that can be usefully garnered by pulling the trigger on that particular weapon.

> It's time to get angry, and it's time to put and end to gender inequality. Especially in tech, where we claim to hold ourselves to a higher moral standard.

As far as I can tell, you're getting angry at the wrong people, for the wrong reasons.

You really think the tech industry is responsible for clueless mouth breathers telling your daughters that technology is 'boy stuff'?

I'd look at the educational system and the magazine rack at the supermarket. By the time someone gets to the technology industry, they've already been subjected to a lifetime of indoctrination and have missed out on critical educational opportunities. We're not paid to be educators or social crusaders; we're here to write software, design hardware, and ship products.

We do need to have access to better candidates, and one way to do that is by broadening the pool to draw from, but divisive adults playing at identity politics won't help with that problem.

> There are two reasons why "female" is problematic: ..

Your reply demonstrates some standard rhetorical landmines used by fringe groups:

1) Redefine words within your subculture (in this case: 'gender', 'sex', 'male', and 'female') and then use the new definitions to claim externally inconsiderate use of those words.

2) Assume that whether or not someone was offended ultimately defines ethical norms (especially when tied to #1, redefining vocabulary to create reasons for offense).

> If you can't recognize that men have a vast amount of privilege compared to women, then I don't really know what to say.

The locally-defined concept of "male privilege" is quite possibly the least productive gender generalization to use in a conversation about gender equality.

This -- along with redefinitions of vocabulary to justify offense (see the comment about 'female' being offensive), and truisms that assert that any opposition to preferred policy is opposition to gender equality (see the reference to Lewis's law, or your own murder quote), are why these conversations are so pointlessly and ridiculously laden in rhetorical nonsense as to be useless.

> "Men and women live in different worlds. At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them." And according to my girlfriend, this is not even the slightest bit exaggerated.

According to my wife, this is ridiculous and your girlfriend should adopt a more fact-based view of the world.

I looked it up. From 2000 to 2010, there were 128,971 male victims of murder in the US. There were 35,777 female victims.

http://projects.wsj.com/murderdata

To use your own rhetorical approach: if you disagree with me, "then I don't really know what to say". (sarcasm intended).

Compared to advancing your knowledge of programming, CAD, et al, it's a lot easier to bolster your ego and social standing with video games, so that's what those kids do.

I think the solution (for schools, anyway) would be adult-led structured activities where intelligence and hard work are rewarded: electronics/robotics/programming clubs, with long-term group projects where people with varied levels of experience can be accommodated.

I'd naively like to believe that gender can be left out of it, other than making a structured effort to recruit students irrespective of gender.

> Are you saying that 90% of the female population has no balls?

No. The major hurdles to becoming a programmer are crossed long before it becomes time to put code in a github repository.

> Or is it more likely that due the systemic method of education, girls don't get interested in programming because by the time they are taught it, the boys are in the computer lab making a ruckus and they'd rather go socialize elsewhere.

Given that there aren't any well-considered studies that show fundamental non-socially-caused cognitive differences between men and women, and that behavior seems to be entirely mutable and culturally-driven, then the fact that "they'd rather go socialize elsewhere" is likely the result of considerable cultural programming outside the immediate realm of putting code into a machine.

Of course, it's not that simple -- yours is a broad and inaccurate generalization of what girls want in school, and of how boys behave in school. Personally speaking, I didn't want to spend any time in the computer lab either, because the only people in there were super-nerds playing video games for hours.

> ... except with a passing glance at someone who feels slighted for something that doesn't affect him at all.

If the Ada Initiative didn't affect the rest of the industry at all, then they wouldn't be considered effective at their mission.

Whether or not you agree with the way they approach their mission is another question.

To quote another story on the front page:

... that’s what happens when we hold events for women in IT when there aren’t that many women in this industry – we tend to broaden the definition of women in IT.

The software industry exists to write software, and ideally it's good software. We're not here to engender happy feelings about bad code. If you're worried about immature people non-constructively mocking your code, then the solution is to realize that those people are unlikely to be particularly great developers themselves, and aren't worth paying attention to.

Any sufficiently experienced and mature developer ought to know better than to throw stones from the glass house of their own imperfection. It's better to join or create a welcoming community of experts, than trying to create a coddling safe-space where equally inexperienced people can provide each other with congratulatory pats on the back.

In a conversation that's already quite likely to run off the rails, playing a one-sided vocabulary shaming game is unlikely to improve the dialogue.

People are also free to criticize Github for any reason they want to.

Personally, I think the Ada Initiative is doing far more harm than good. They're pushing a strange brand of coddling and gender privilege.

> Instead, they are going on the record and saying its not true.

It's not like "going on record" means anything; truth is an oddly malleable thing. What's true today might not be tomorrow, what is said to be true may only be what the speaker needs you to believe is true, or it may be the speaker only believes it to be true.

The best predictor of what's to come is past experience and objective observation, not the words of people who have both incentive and ego wrapped up in propagating a particular narrative.

[edit] From another comment, here's an e-mail from the Parse team, from 1/15/2013 -- only 3 months ago:

"Being acquired isn't part of our game plan for now. We want to build a viable business that people can use and enjoy. We have 50k apps built on our infrastructure and a huge customer base that is growing rapidly. Everyday we have more and more Basic, Pro, and Enterprise users paying us for our awesome services."

https://gist.github.com/brianpattison/5463282

When you're dealing with venture capitalists, the truth is whatever they need the audience to believe.

Does that make his statement more or less likely to be accurate?

Said every founder of every acquired company, ever :)

Are you referring to Etacts (acquired by Salesforce)?

> Seeing as how I had to google PKI to see what it was, I doubt I'd be able to build a Parse-like service in one afternoon.

Then it's something you would learn, and those several afternoons would mean that you'd be well equipped to tackle a similar problem in an afternoon later.

Basic x509 certificates and PKI is really something an iOS developer (or any developer, really) should be able handle. Understanding this stuff is pretty central to just about all secure communications we have between clients/servers anywhere. It's not like you have to reimplement a crypto library; you just need to know the basics of how they work.

It also means you own the system, don't get screwed over when Parse gets bought, and all for just a little bit of work.

Seems like a small amount to pay for something that will essentially run itself indefinitely.

> Yes. (at least on iOS, not sure about Android or Win)

er, what? It's an afternoon's worth of work, involving basic PKI and TCP sockets. I know it's an afternoon's worth of work, because I've done it in an afternoon.

Unfortunately, intentions about how you'll operate after an acquisition are just wishes.

There's a huge corporate political apparatus that just paid a lot of money for the right to implant their thumb print on how you do things. You may be able to push that day forward, but unless you wind up in charge, there's not much long-term hope.

Congratulations on the acquisition, but sorry about the acquisition.

> Call people douchebag for their actions.

Like choosing to wear a stupid-looking $1,500 distraction-generator?

> It wasn't so long ago that you were a douche if you walked around in public talking into a cell phone.

You still are. It's still considered rude to subject everyone to your cell phone call. These people walk up to the register while on a call, block the sidewalk while distracted, and otherwise are clearly not actually with us in this universe.

http://conversations.nokia.com/2011/07/12/breaking-the-rules...

http://dl.acm.org/citation.cfm?id=2438977

http://formingthethread.wordpress.com/2012/06/13/cell-phone-...

> Or if you drove around showing off your crazy automobile contraption instead of riding a horse like a normal person.

Yep, the 'showing off' part is still douche.

> Or if you wore a timepiece strapped to your wrist, instead of on a chain in your pocket like a proper gentleman. (And later, if the watch on your wrist was some kind of ugly LCD thing, instead of a handsome analog face.)

This one too. Once watches stopped being a functional item (the advent of phones), they became douche status badges.

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/07/fashion/watches-are-redisc...

http://www.npr.org/2012/04/30/150719282/in-cell-era-timepiec...

Now, imagine if you hadn't had to profile at all, or even drop to C, because you'd written algorithmically efficient code, and could rely on the runtime executing it well?

Think of all the saved time ...

People who believe in proving 'technical inevitability' via probability don't understand shipping a product, from conception, to funding, development, and marketing.

People with genuine vision inspire others to lift their work above mediocrity; to look beyond themselves at a broader vision of the world.

If all it took to ship great products was consensus decision making by smart, highly technical people, then we'd have had be year of Linux on the desktop by now.

> It's a somewhat common stance from people who haven't worked in consumer web before to assume that these strategies are the result of arrogant people looking down and disrespecting their user base. The reality is that no one I know assigns any value judgment to any of these observations - but we will follow where the data leads us.

You can either target the high road, and the customer base (and margins) that come with that, or target just the data while aiming only for mass appeal. I've always worked for companies that target the high, but to each their own.

> Take a dating site as an example - you click on the link to read the message, which causes you to browse more profiles, which causes you to message a few more users - improving your chances of success overall and creating more interactions for other users.

So you don't think users are capable of making that decision on their own? There's no other way to provide a fair exchange of value so that users want to visit the site, other than holding their message(s) hostage?

Clearly I hit a nerve by praising Apple. You can argue that they're doing things contrary to what some user's might want, but I have a hard time seeing where they're doing it for self-interested reasons.

As far as I can tell, the people on the ground there genuinely believe what they're doing is what's best for their users. That's quite a bit different from knowingly sacrificing user experience for something you know isn't best for your users.

It's a shame that the leading comment on hacker news is that smarmy and user-detrimental business behavior is a good thing. Then again, the audience is as much "startup hustlers" as it is hackers, if not more so.

Do you actually believe Apple made those choices to benefit themselves at the cost of their users?

> As I said to your other comment, sometimes it's in everyone's best interest to promote engagement. If you're running a product with a strong social component, it isn't an "arbitrary business priority" to want to get people back to the site.

If you can't get people back to the site by providing value, then it's worth spending time figuring out how to provide that genuine value, rather than trying to force your users into it.

As you said, good judgement is key.

> Define "worse". People will complain about doing all sorts of things that are better for their long-term interests.

It's telling that you're comfortable deciding on your user's behalf what is better for their long-term interests, in a way that just so happens to benefit your perceived interests.

> If you're building a product that provides greater value to users with greater user engagement, then it's in everyone's best interest to promote user engagement, even if that means upsetting the people who would rather gain the benefits of your product without actually using it. You can't make all of the people happy all of the time.

If you're building a product that provides greater value with greater engagement, then it's in everyone's best interest to drive engagement by giving users value that makes them want to be engaged, rather than playing tricks like annoying them with e-mails that contain no content.