10 ms·

These stories upset me deeply. But as much as they upset me, they surprise me. And that's because until it was just recently, after 20+ years in the computer

• thaumasiotes 9y ago
  > Let's even assume that 90% of the time, things are great for women in high tech. How many women are willing to put up with even 10% (or even 1%) of their time dealing with such behavior? I'm not sure if I would. And then we wonder why so many women aren't interested in technology careers, or leave after a short period of time. This is backwards. In fields women are interested in (say, dancing), they face much more harassment, because their greater interest and the increased competition from other women raise the bar for behavior that will drive them away. Donald Trump has been accused of walking into the changing rooms at his beauty pageants. How many female engineers do you think would tolerate the boss repeatedly walking in on them naked? But a lot of girls would really, really like to be beauty queens.
• ethbro 9y ago
  > to make it completely unacceptable, in every way, for things to continue as they currently are This seems key. Especially if it's "relatively rare but intensely negative events" (as seems to be the case). Imagine if for every one of these stories, a colleague of the person dealing with discrimination or peer of the discriminator had tapped them on the shoulder and said, "Professor, what the fuck are you doing? That's sexist, and you're a terrible human for having done that." And imagine if after three times of the above their peers had said "This is a pattern of behavior with you. We'd feel better if the department were headed by someone with different values." Discrimination survives on awkward tolerance.
  • whatshisface 9y ago
    >Imagine if for every one of these stories, a colleague of the person dealing with discrimination or peer of the discriminator had tapped them on the shoulder and said, I think the problem is that this stuff can be very hard to detect. If there's even the slightest chance of negative repercussions then the few responsible will stop talking.
    • ethbro 9y ago
      I'll respectively disagree. Granted, my personal experience is with antiquated southern racism, but I'd hazard most of the people in the OPs' stories do these things because they don't realize they're wrong. In the "Well, why wouldn't you comment on a woman's pregnancy when evaluating her for a job?" sense. There are certainly overt, aggressive, predatory stories included. But the bulk are things I can see being said in social or professional company. Or as Colleague B puts it: "When asked for a paragraph, my first reaction was that I didn’t have the sort of big bombshell stories being looked for." Borderline, casual sexism is important to vocally fight too.
      • gowld 9y ago
        > Borderline, casual sexism is important to vocally fight too. Perhaps. Ideally. Eventually. But in a choose-your-battles context, borderline casual cases are fodder for contrarian denialists to minimize the over-the-line serious cases. Focus on vocally fighting the most important or most fixable problem first, to make progress.
        • longerthoughts 9y ago
          I get that bringing the slightest offenses to the forefront feeds into denialists arguing that everybody is just too sensitive. That being said, I would bet that women suffer more frequently from these borderline, casual cases than violent, overt ones and I'm much more likely to see the former in broad daylight, especially in a professional context. It's hard to accept that I should brush off sexist comments and hold my tongue until I witness an assault (or whatever the threshold is for intervention-worthy).
• curtis 9y ago
  > ... things are great for women in high tech. Why do so many people keep insisting on believing that the problem is specific to the technology fields? Women face these kind of problems everywhere that they have to interact with men.
  • mikeash 9y ago
    Who says it’s specific to technology? There are plenty of similar stories in other fields.
  • sulam 9y ago
    4 is in the domain of real numbers. Does me talking about 4 somehow imply all the other real numbers aren't real? Yes, women face these kinds of problems in more than just computer science or technology in general. However this article and this post are talking specifically. Perhaps they feel that they cannot fix a problem that exists "everywhere" and are focused on their narrow slice of the domain. This does not prevent you from talking about other slices of the domain, or the entire domain, or working to reduce the problems women and others face in whatever piece of the domain you choose. Also, at the risk of producing a defensive reaction -- why do you believe that the poster believes the problem is specific to the technology fields? What in their statement leads you to the conclusion that they think this is an isolated problem?
  • longerthoughts 9y ago
    While I think you're right that people generally like to pick on tech, I think the portion of the comment you're quoting was only referencing tech to make the hypothetical case more relatable to members of this community.
  • guskel 9y ago
    For all we know, it happens less in tech but because the men are less attractive this kind of attention is more unwanted.
    • gowld 9y ago
      If you know some women who trust you, you should ask them if they'd be happier being underpaid, professionally ignored, or groped in public my more attractive men.
• empath75 9y ago
  I think the reason that a lot of men are surprised about this is that they don’t personally engage in this kind of behavior and have only seen people they know engage in it occasionally, so that can’t believe it’s this widespread, but it really doesn’t take that many aggressively harassing men in an environment to create a completely oppressive environment for women. Especially when they report it and there are absolutely no consequences.
  • InclinedPlane 9y ago
    Especially when reporting it leads to consequences for the victim and not the perpetrator.
• Consultant32452 9y ago
  I think it's important to come up with some hard and fast rules pretty quickly and make sure it's clear to everyone. There was some pretty crappy stuff in those stories. At the same time, we need to be sympathetic to people who make mildly insensitive mistakes but at least appear to be trying to do the right thing. For example, there's a difference between some of those guys getting physically aggressive and the one guy who basically said he'd never worked with a woman and didn't know how to talk to her. Is the latter example okay? No, not really, but we must find a way to not lump that guy in with the physically aggressive guy. The second guy appears to be simply ignorant, but at least open minded enough to admit ignorance and try to awkwardly break the ice to move forward cooperatively. Men and women have only worked together for about 40 years, which in anthropological/cultural time is basically nothing. We haven't figured out the rules yet. Is dating colleagues completely banned? Doubtful. That means we're going to have to accept some awkwardness between people who are trying to figure out if they like each other. But we can simultaneously say it's inappropriate to grope someone, it's not okay to call someone the "token" whatever, etc.
  • rosser 9y ago
    > Is the latter example okay? No, not really, but we must find a way to not lump that guy in with the physically aggressive guy. Yes, it's important not to conflate those two very different behaviors. At the same time, however, we need to recognize that both are symptoms of the same underlying issue — and that's the thing that we ultimately have to change, not its case-specific behavioral expressions. "Not as bad as" is a fallacy.
    • Consultant32452 9y ago
      My point is that the "I don't know how to talk to you" guy is participating in the conversation of how we move towards equality. It's as important to be sensitive to confused likely allies as it is to be sensitive to victims of inequality. Obviously you don't know a person by just a couple lines of a story, but it seems very likely he wants to be a positive influence he just doesn't know what to do. It's so very important to assist him in taking the right path while avoiding condemnation. Pointing at him and calling him the same names we call the physically aggressive guys is going to be counter-productive. It's just as easy to consider him part of the problem as it is to consider him a likely part of the solution whose ignorance is the result of the problem.
• InclinedPlane 9y ago
  Every indication has always been that this was the problem with tech and how women are treated in it (and many other fields). They are constantly having to prove themselves, they are constantly denigrated by their coworkers and colleagues, they are routinely made to feel unsafe through sexual harassment of varying severity. Overall they're just treated like second class citizens in the field. And that results in women leaving the field routinely and at basically every transitional step, that's why you see a continual diminishment in the representation of women in the field as you go towards greater positions of seniority and authority. It's not that women can't hack it, that they can't do the work, they just get tired of being shit on constantly and they go somewhere else to make their life better. And yet for years and years and years the constant refrain from the establishment has always been "nah, it must be that women are just bad at this job" or "nah, it must be a pipeline problem". Nobody wants to look themselves in the face and ask whether or not they are part of the problem. Either through not taking women seriously in the workplace, always questioning the work and fitness of women in a way that men don't experience, or allowing a hostile work environment where sexual harassment happens and everyone just sweeps it under the rug or looks the other way. Women have been telling each other these stories about what it was like to work in tech for decades, and they've been telling anyone, including guys, who would listen for years and years as well. Why has it taken so much work for people to actually pay attention?
  • forapurpose 9y ago
    > Every indication has always been that this was the problem with tech ... I agree completely, and it's incredible that so many people with exceptional critical thinking skills could dismiss the universal, consistent reports of the witnesses to these events, in favor of the analysis of people who have no experience at all - themselves and other men. And that includes me: WTF was I thinking? Everyone who experienced these things said the same thing, people who had no direct experience said otherwise, and I believed the latter? If everyone in Honolulu said the grass in Hawaii is dewy in the mornings, and everyone in Ohio said it isn't - why would you even ask the Ohioans? The same applies to the treatment of African-Americans by law enforcement. African-Americans have been talking about it for generations, the same stories over time and across the U.S. Why did it take videos for me to believe it? My guess is that it comes from accepting social norms of the people around me, and dismissing people I didn't interact with. The solution, IMHO, is interacting with people outside your group and people telling their stories, as they did in this article. If you want to know what's really happening on issues like these, forget all your theories - just ask and listen (and zip it). The most ardent theories suddenly become insubstantial in the face of evidence.
• downandout 9y ago
  To be sure, some of this is inappropriate. Asking if someone is the "token woman" is wrong on many levels. But not all of the stories are "shocking". For example, one woman in this article complains that at conferences, men tend to not approach groups of women that are talking to each other, interrupt them, and begin talking to them. Is that unusual or discriminatory? I wouldn't do that, regardless of the sex of the participants in a group chat. Further, in the era of #MeToo, the chasm between men and women in the workplace will grow wider simply because of liability issues. One man's innocent, casual conversation with a female coworker can these days become that woman's #MeToo moment, aired publicly, both in the court of public opinion and in courts of law. This ultimately causes fewer interactions between men and women in the workplace - especially between direct reports and their managers - which can easily lead to fewer advancement opportunities. This is borne out in data. According to a recent study, almost 30% of male managers say they are not comfortable working alone with a woman — more than twice as many as before, according to the same study [1]. I would suggest that articles like this focus on incidents that everyone can agree is atrocious and actionable behavior. If failure to interrupt a group of women talking amongst themselves at a conference is now a #MeToo moment, it's just going to cause deeper concerns about liability, which will in turn cause even more backlash. [1] https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2018/02/06/amid-metoo-backlash-lean-ins-sheryl-sandberg-launches-mentorher-campaign/#2da792c327e4 https://www.forbes.com/sites/natalierobehmed/2018/02/06/amid...
  • tachyoff 9y ago
    I can see the Buzzfeed story now: “White Tech Bro Rudely Interrupts Women To Mansplain Something”. There is absolutely a chilling effect. I mean, do you want men to approach you when you’re having a conversation or do you want them to stay away from your space? At this point, it’s easiest to just retreat and not talk to people. At least then you don’t risk becoming a hashtag.
    • wavefunction 9y ago
      Seems like you've presented a false dichotomy. It's of course rude to insert yourself into many conversations. That's just a social convention.