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As David Morrison said, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. "How to signal you are on the side of non-sexists instead of the sexists" is pro
by bethly 9y ago
As David Morrison said, the standard you walk past is the standard you accept. "How to signal you are on the side of non-sexists instead of the sexists" is probably a different thread, though: the original poster wanted to know what strategies marginalized developers had found effective and I shared mine.
It is unsurprising to me that effective strategies end up rubbing people the wrong way. The reason social media posts work as a filter is because they are a minorly-costly signals to send, and the suggestion that people be expected to do extra work to appear trustworthy, rather than being assumed to be trustworthy even though probability isn't on their side, is going to feel threatening. Privileged men feel entitled to the benefit of the doubt, even when it is women who bear the costs when they fail to live up to it.
This isn't just "my preferred topic": this is my life. This is whether I have a fair shot at promotion. It's whether I have to be 150% sure with a giant pile of citations by dudes before I say anything, or people trust my technical judgement. It's whether I can be most productive at my job, or I have to waste a bunch of time managing the anxieties and insecurities of the dudes I work with instead. It's about whether I have to spend time and energy sending Comey-like memos every week to document the sexual harassment against my female coworkers until they all quit or are fired anyway. It's about whether my coworkers will refuse to speak to me for six months because I made work "not fun" by not wanting to hear about his pick up artistry, and still get promoted. After that last one, now I only work places that don't prioritize catering to sexist developers over catering to me. There are plenty of options out there; there is no reason to settle for anything less than an actively anti-sexist workplace.
Many men treat this like an intellectual exercise: it's not. These days, I only work for the ones who already understand that.
- csorrell 9y agoIt seems to me that in an attempt to avoid one type of toxic environment, you've gone to another extreme. What you're really screening for is an environment where everyone is similar to yourself.
- deleted 9y ago[deleted]
- bethly 9y agoIn that they don't think women should have to deal with sexism: damn skippy. Existing in an environment where some people think women should have to deal with sexism sucks. You don't get to be inclusive of both sexists and me, because their "beliefs" are about my actual life. My life is significantly better if the dudes around me will step up when sexism happens and deal with it without me having to even be involved. And it doesn't work if they are only objecting because "this will alienate women!"; it needs to be because they, personally, are hurt by sexism and don't want to be around it. We also exclude programmers who insist on using nothing but GOTOs to structure their code, and sexism is way more annoying for me to work with than GOTO-filled code. You don't really think I should be inclusive of everyone: you just don't think sexism should be allowed to be a deal-breaker. Don't worry, if you want to work at a company that's inclusive of sexists that's way easier to find.
- ionised 9y ago> You don't really think I should be inclusive of everyone: you just don't think sexism should be allowed to be a deal-breaker. Don't worry, if you want to work at a company that's inclusive of sexists that's way easier to find. You're projecting and making a lot of assumptions about the person you are replying to.
- jshevek 9y agoYes, thank you for commenting on this. There is a lot of this happening on this topic, being done by people who are otherwise clearly intelligent. I find it interesting that this dynamic has so much in common with the deeply religious.