7 ms·

> I see women writing about these meta-topics of "being a female programmer" far, far more often than any actual technical aspect. I used to wonder about this

by klunger 11y ago

> I see women writing about these meta-topics of "being a female programmer" far, far more often than any actual technical aspect. I used to wonder about this myself. But, then I met some ladies that write technical blogs anonymously, or under male or gender neutral pseudonyms. This was because of the harassment they experienced themselves, or witnessed in others, when they originally set out to write as a woman in tech. So, I suspect that women writing about getting women into tech is one of the few ways that they feel comfortable publicly contributing to their field (even if not from angle they may have originally preferred).

gurkendoktor 11y ago
Why would women be harassed for blogging about programming, but not for meta-blogging about the experience of being a female programmer (as the OP)? Is one really less dangerous than the other?
- EliRivers 11y ago
  Why would women be harassed for blogging about programming There are a great many total dickheads on the internet. Really. It's hard to comprehend just how many utter dickheads are running around out here. The exact reasons why? I've never really understood all of it. Some of it is because it makes them feel like big men, showing off to their dickhead friends; I've seen them come back to crow about it and they seem to get some kind of approval from their peers.
  - tomp 11y ago
    You haven't really answered parent's question.
    - EliRivers 11y ago
      Perhaps I need to repeat it in fewer words; "because they gain peer approval by doing it". I also edited what I said to remove some of the additional discussion and data, to make it simpler to see where I said it was for peer approval.
  - Ntrails 11y ago
    > There are a great many total dickheads on the internet. I really hate this line of thought. The internet is not a different place to the real world, and the truth is that there are a great many people in your town/city/country/world etc who are kinda obnoxious.
    - geon 11y ago
      > The internet is not a different place People act differently on it, though.
    - tim333 11y ago
      Yeah but the internet is more anonymous.
    - douche 11y ago
      If you act like a total dickhead in real-life, you're apt to get your teeth knocked in, which tends to modulate dickheadsian behaviors.
      - coredog64 11y ago
        I would also add that it's easier to be a dickhead online. You don't have to be particularly witty in real-time, and once you've gotten a working schtick, what wit you do have can be replicated via copy-n-paste.
    - tbrake 11y ago
      > The internet is not a different place to the real world In certain vague, slightly pointless ways (i.e. "it's just people doing things on a thing" ) they're exactly the same, sure. The specifics of what is possible in terms of breadth and time are vastly different though. With regards to the topic at hand - and assuming I am a jerk - I can find 50 different programming blogs and write sexist epithets in the comments in ten seconds flat. I cannot do that in the real world to 50 different people in that time frame nor with the same lack of repercussion.
    - geofft 11y ago
      There are a great many total dickheads in the real world, but in the real world, it is much more difficult to mask your gender than on the internet. For a good account of total dickheads (in a nerdy subculture, no less) in meatspace, see http://latining.tumblr.com/post/141567276944/tabletop-gaming-has-a-white-male-terrorism-problem http://latining.tumblr.com/post/141567276944/tabletop-gaming... If this were online, I bet the author would have assumed a gender-neutral / default-to-male pseudonym in a heartbeat.
- mcv 11y ago
  My impression is that some men (trolls, MRAs, you know the type) are uncomfortable with women talking about technical topics, but have no problem as long as they restrict themselves to "women's issues", which would probably includes "women in tech".
  - zo1 11y ago
    Really, you're clumping "Men's Rights Activists" with trolls and saying that they are uncomfortable with women talking about technical topics? That is very blatantly stereotyping.
    - cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
      You've run into the "it's okay when we do it!" mentality here from the poster you're responding to. In their mind, stereotyping, prejudging, and wildly generalizing is completely and totally wrong, a crime on the level of hate speech and misogyny, but they will engage in stereotyping, prejudging, generalizing, and demonizing groups that they disagree with because in their mind they're fighting the good fight, and only bad people would disagree with them.
      - mcv 11y ago
        Where am I prejudging groups on who they are? I'm only calling people out on their behaviour: the people who attack women who speak about tech. I'm labeling them trolls and MRAs, because I think those are the most likely motivations for why people might specifically attack women. Of course there are plenty of trolls who are concerned with entirely different things, and of course there are MRAs who don't attack women like that, but I'm at a loss about what other groups would be motivated specifically to shut down women who speak about tech or similar topics.
  - cbsmith 11y ago
    There's also a number of them who probably skip over "women's issues" articles. Likely not enough though...
- ZeroGravitas 11y ago
  I think the unfortunate truth is that they'll get harassed either way. But, if you restrict your blogging to the arcane aspects of database replication or whatever, then you can "pass" as a man. This option isn't really available if you are blogging your experience "as a woman in tech" so this self-selects for people who can cope with abuse, are already receiving so much they won't notice any extra, or that think it's worth it to be a visible example to others.
  - amelius 11y ago
    > I think the unfortunate truth is that they'll get harassed either way. Are women in tech harassed more than "average" women? I wonder if this is true both in real life and online.
- untog 11y ago
  I'm pretty sure they get harrassed for both, but it's possible to write a tech blog in a gender neutral way, while it is not possible to write a "my gendered experience in tech" post in a gender neutral way.
- rndstr 11y ago
  Males do not have the option to write a post about «being a female programmer». This does not pose a threat for the insecure males but a well-written post about tech does.
- chris_wot 11y ago
  Ever heard of GamerGate?
  - cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
    I can't say that I have. Educate me.
    - chris_wot 11y ago
      Google it.
- vertex-four 11y ago
  Women are harassed when they do both, but as a general rule women who are willing to put themselves out to be harassed are involved in politics in the first place, thus the willingness of women who are willing to write at all to write about the political subject that is being a woman. "If I'm going to be harassed for writing anything, I might as well write about something that only someone with my perspective can write." You'll also tend to find that women who blog about tech tend to hide their gender a bit more or post on community blogs, or their posts about tech will be on a blog with a wider scope.
- 4bpp 11y ago
  The question what kind of harassment we are talking about seems pretty relevant here. Stories such as http://tech.mit.edu/V136/N9/harassment.html http://tech.mit.edu/V136/N9/harassment.html seem to suggest that overbearing, desperate romantic attention (often followed by lashing out when the advances inevitably turn out to be futile) generally is counted as such. In that light, I find the fashionable narrative about boys getting angry about cooties in their club to be somewhat questionable - what if the "unwanted attention" rather than the "sheer malice" type of harassment constitutes the bulk of it? I imagine the typical perpetrator in that case is a man with negligible romantic experience, who is not particularly attractive, lives in a social environment with a 10:1 M:F ratio and statistically may well be encountering someone of the opposite sex who actually nominally has something nontrivial in common with them for the first time. The "something in common" part is contingent on actually signalling being a capital-p Programmer culturally (e.g. by blogging about programming), rather than someone who appears to be closer to a social activist who just happens to have a job in programming (and might as well be the secretary staffing the front desk for the purpose of commonalities, as far as the would-be harasser can see). Grasping at straws inevitably ensues, and there are sufficiently many around that some don't react gracefully when the straws snap.
  - huherto 11y ago
    Perhaps the elephant in the room is the large number of young men in our profession that feel desperately lonely.
    - cpfohl 11y ago
      Really? And that's anyone else's problem but their own because...? Sorry, learning social skills, learning to manage your time so you can meet people, etc. is not the job of an employer or a profession as a whole. I'm sure there's plenty of lonely garbage men (purposely phrased as "men"), but no one's suggesting that the public works departments should be ensuring there's more women in the departments for their men to hang out with and fall in love with.
      - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
- OJFord 11y ago
  Those 'meta-blogging' are probably more likely to be resilient to the harassment, seeing it as something they're already fighting. In technical writing, I imagine you'd just think "I don't want that in the comments [or to deal with moderating them]". I definitely agree that the answer is to just shut up about being inspiring, and be inspiring. (To any future CS student - not just women/schoolgirls!)
facepalm 11y ago
I'm not convinced that the tech bloggers get harassed because they are female. Look at any hacker news discussion and things can get heated quickly, irrespective of gender. Look at the classic "Apple vs PC" wars and so on. For any technical opinion you voice, you will find scores of people who dislike it intensely (Java vs Ruby, is JavaScript a serious programming language, is agile stupid...).
- kqr 11y ago
  I don't mind being harassed for preferring Emacs over Vim – it's a choice, after all. I can argue rationally for why you are wrong if you contradict me. I do mind being harassed for being a man rather than a woman – that's not something I chose. I was born that way. I can't change that nor can I argue rationally for why I decided to be that way.
  - facepalm 11y ago
    Well if the comments are like "shut up, woman, you can not know anything about this", I agree with you. I am just not sure that is the way it is - or if it is just the usual critical comments and women think they get especially bad comments.
  - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
    >it's a choice, after all. What about religion. It is an interesting intersection of 'is a choice' and 'protected demographic'. And why should it be any more acceptable to harass someone for what they choose? Is it more acceptable to discriminate against a Hispanic individual for choosing to identify with their heritage (a choice) than to discriminate against them for being Hispanic (not a choice)? Both seem wrong to me. >that's not something I chose. I was born that way. What about those who are of a different gender/sex than they were born? What about people who choose to change their gender? Even your response itself can be an issue, as there is an implication that others are born a given gender and cannot change it.
    - kqr 11y ago
      > What about those who are of a different gender/sex than they were born? What about people who choose to change their gender? If you actually speak to these people, they will inform you they didn't "change" their gender. What you are referring to is the practise of fixing the body to conform to the expectations of the gender they were born with.

by klunger 11y ago

gurkendoktor 11y ago

Why would women be harassed for blogging about programming, but not for meta-blogging about the experience of being a female programmer (as the OP)? Is one really less dangerous than the other?

EliRivers 11y ago
Why would women be harassed for blogging about programming There are a great many total dickheads on the internet. Really. It's hard to comprehend just how many utter dickheads are running around out here. The exact reasons why? I've never really understood all of it. Some of it is because it makes them feel like big men, showing off to their dickhead friends; I've seen them come back to crow about it and they seem to get some kind of approval from their peers.
- tomp 11y ago
  You haven't really answered parent's question.
  - EliRivers 11y ago
    Perhaps I need to repeat it in fewer words; "because they gain peer approval by doing it". I also edited what I said to remove some of the additional discussion and data, to make it simpler to see where I said it was for peer approval.
- Ntrails 11y ago
  > There are a great many total dickheads on the internet. I really hate this line of thought. The internet is not a different place to the real world, and the truth is that there are a great many people in your town/city/country/world etc who are kinda obnoxious.
  - geon 11y ago
    > The internet is not a different place People act differently on it, though.
  - tim333 11y ago
    Yeah but the internet is more anonymous.
  - douche 11y ago
    If you act like a total dickhead in real-life, you're apt to get your teeth knocked in, which tends to modulate dickheadsian behaviors.
    - coredog64 11y ago
      I would also add that it's easier to be a dickhead online. You don't have to be particularly witty in real-time, and once you've gotten a working schtick, what wit you do have can be replicated via copy-n-paste.
  - tbrake 11y ago
    > The internet is not a different place to the real world In certain vague, slightly pointless ways (i.e. "it's just people doing things on a thing" ) they're exactly the same, sure. The specifics of what is possible in terms of breadth and time are vastly different though. With regards to the topic at hand - and assuming I am a jerk - I can find 50 different programming blogs and write sexist epithets in the comments in ten seconds flat. I cannot do that in the real world to 50 different people in that time frame nor with the same lack of repercussion.
  - geofft 11y ago
    There are a great many total dickheads in the real world, but in the real world, it is much more difficult to mask your gender than on the internet. For a good account of total dickheads (in a nerdy subculture, no less) in meatspace, see http://latining.tumblr.com/post/141567276944/tabletop-gaming-has-a-white-male-terrorism-problem http://latining.tumblr.com/post/141567276944/tabletop-gaming... If this were online, I bet the author would have assumed a gender-neutral / default-to-male pseudonym in a heartbeat.
mcv 11y ago
My impression is that some men (trolls, MRAs, you know the type) are uncomfortable with women talking about technical topics, but have no problem as long as they restrict themselves to "women's issues", which would probably includes "women in tech".
- zo1 11y ago
  Really, you're clumping "Men's Rights Activists" with trolls and saying that they are uncomfortable with women talking about technical topics? That is very blatantly stereotyping.
  - cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
    You've run into the "it's okay when we do it!" mentality here from the poster you're responding to. In their mind, stereotyping, prejudging, and wildly generalizing is completely and totally wrong, a crime on the level of hate speech and misogyny, but they will engage in stereotyping, prejudging, generalizing, and demonizing groups that they disagree with because in their mind they're fighting the good fight, and only bad people would disagree with them.
    - mcv 11y ago
      Where am I prejudging groups on who they are? I'm only calling people out on their behaviour: the people who attack women who speak about tech. I'm labeling them trolls and MRAs, because I think those are the most likely motivations for why people might specifically attack women. Of course there are plenty of trolls who are concerned with entirely different things, and of course there are MRAs who don't attack women like that, but I'm at a loss about what other groups would be motivated specifically to shut down women who speak about tech or similar topics.
- cbsmith 11y ago
  There's also a number of them who probably skip over "women's issues" articles. Likely not enough though...
ZeroGravitas 11y ago
I think the unfortunate truth is that they'll get harassed either way. But, if you restrict your blogging to the arcane aspects of database replication or whatever, then you can "pass" as a man. This option isn't really available if you are blogging your experience "as a woman in tech" so this self-selects for people who can cope with abuse, are already receiving so much they won't notice any extra, or that think it's worth it to be a visible example to others.
- amelius 11y ago
  > I think the unfortunate truth is that they'll get harassed either way. Are women in tech harassed more than "average" women? I wonder if this is true both in real life and online.
untog 11y ago
I'm pretty sure they get harrassed for both, but it's possible to write a tech blog in a gender neutral way, while it is not possible to write a "my gendered experience in tech" post in a gender neutral way.
rndstr 11y ago
Males do not have the option to write a post about «being a female programmer». This does not pose a threat for the insecure males but a well-written post about tech does.
chris_wot 11y ago
Ever heard of GamerGate?
- cuckcuckspruce 11y ago
  I can't say that I have. Educate me.
  - chris_wot 11y ago
    Google it.
vertex-four 11y ago
Women are harassed when they do both, but as a general rule women who are willing to put themselves out to be harassed are involved in politics in the first place, thus the willingness of women who are willing to write at all to write about the political subject that is being a woman. "If I'm going to be harassed for writing anything, I might as well write about something that only someone with my perspective can write." You'll also tend to find that women who blog about tech tend to hide their gender a bit more or post on community blogs, or their posts about tech will be on a blog with a wider scope.
4bpp 11y ago
The question what kind of harassment we are talking about seems pretty relevant here. Stories such as http://tech.mit.edu/V136/N9/harassment.html http://tech.mit.edu/V136/N9/harassment.html seem to suggest that overbearing, desperate romantic attention (often followed by lashing out when the advances inevitably turn out to be futile) generally is counted as such. In that light, I find the fashionable narrative about boys getting angry about cooties in their club to be somewhat questionable - what if the "unwanted attention" rather than the "sheer malice" type of harassment constitutes the bulk of it? I imagine the typical perpetrator in that case is a man with negligible romantic experience, who is not particularly attractive, lives in a social environment with a 10:1 M:F ratio and statistically may well be encountering someone of the opposite sex who actually nominally has something nontrivial in common with them for the first time. The "something in common" part is contingent on actually signalling being a capital-p Programmer culturally (e.g. by blogging about programming), rather than someone who appears to be closer to a social activist who just happens to have a job in programming (and might as well be the secretary staffing the front desk for the purpose of commonalities, as far as the would-be harasser can see). Grasping at straws inevitably ensues, and there are sufficiently many around that some don't react gracefully when the straws snap.
- huherto 11y ago
  Perhaps the elephant in the room is the large number of young men in our profession that feel desperately lonely.
  - cpfohl 11y ago
    Really? And that's anyone else's problem but their own because...? Sorry, learning social skills, learning to manage your time so you can meet people, etc. is not the job of an employer or a profession as a whole. I'm sure there's plenty of lonely garbage men (purposely phrased as "men"), but no one's suggesting that the public works departments should be ensuring there's more women in the departments for their men to hang out with and fall in love with.
    - Lawtonfogle 11y ago
OJFord 11y ago
Those 'meta-blogging' are probably more likely to be resilient to the harassment, seeing it as something they're already fighting. In technical writing, I imagine you'd just think "I don't want that in the comments [or to deal with moderating them]". I definitely agree that the answer is to just shut up about being inspiring, and be inspiring. (To any future CS student - not just women/schoolgirls!)

facepalm 11y ago

I'm not convinced that the tech bloggers get harassed because they are female. Look at any hacker news discussion and things can get heated quickly, irrespective of gender. Look at the classic "Apple vs PC" wars and so on. For any technical opinion you voice, you will find scores of people who dislike it intensely (Java vs Ruby, is JavaScript a serious programming language, is agile stupid...).

kqr 11y ago
I don't mind being harassed for preferring Emacs over Vim – it's a choice, after all. I can argue rationally for why you are wrong if you contradict me. I do mind being harassed for being a man rather than a woman – that's not something I chose. I was born that way. I can't change that nor can I argue rationally for why I decided to be that way.
- facepalm 11y ago
  Well if the comments are like "shut up, woman, you can not know anything about this", I agree with you. I am just not sure that is the way it is - or if it is just the usual critical comments and women think they get especially bad comments.
- Lawtonfogle 11y ago
  >it's a choice, after all. What about religion. It is an interesting intersection of 'is a choice' and 'protected demographic'. And why should it be any more acceptable to harass someone for what they choose? Is it more acceptable to discriminate against a Hispanic individual for choosing to identify with their heritage (a choice) than to discriminate against them for being Hispanic (not a choice)? Both seem wrong to me. >that's not something I chose. I was born that way. What about those who are of a different gender/sex than they were born? What about people who choose to change their gender? Even your response itself can be an issue, as there is an implication that others are born a given gender and cannot change it.
  - kqr 11y ago
    > What about those who are of a different gender/sex than they were born? What about people who choose to change their gender? If you actually speak to these people, they will inform you they didn't "change" their gender. What you are referring to is the practise of fixing the body to conform to the expectations of the gender they were born with.