3 ms·

I'm not "vilifying men or the masculine". I am a dude. Also a dad, of a STEM college boy and a STEM HS girl. Also a dad, of a STEM college boy and a STEM HS gir

I'm not "vilifying men or the masculine". I am a dude. Also a dad, of a STEM college boy and a STEM HS girl. Also a dad, of a STEM college boy and a STEM HS girl. I like beer and pork fat and whiskey and cars. Glad to hear it. I'm happy to keep talking to you about this stuff, but I will not do that if you're trying to trap me in some weird ideological conflict about the persecution of men. Well, likewise. I don't want ideological conflict, though sometimes I feel it's foisted upon me. I'm also quite open to the idea that something in the subculture of programming could be pushing women away. Please don't take my mention of vilification as an accusation, and my apologies if it came across that way. I don't think anyone can deny that the whole area of discussion has a history of someone vilifying someone else, so I think that steering away from that is useful. When have I ever tried to ideologically trap you? If there was ever anything ideological I'd associate with you, it's this phrase about, "the social compact." (Not that I'm absolutely against redistribution. It just sounds like reparations between sovereign powers from centuries ago.)

tptacek 9y ago
I didn't say anything about men being bad, I don't believe there is anything intrinsically bad about men, and in fact I reject a lot of hypotheses about gender disparity based on "masculine behavior" explanations, such as the notion that women are put off by competitiveness (I am married to an extremely competitive woman engineer and, through her roller derby escapades, have met more than my fair share of other competitive women). You implied that I did. I'm shutting that down hard. Thanks for acknowledging. Like I said: I think our field is weird in that home computing deprofessionalized it. I think programming methodology also deprofessionalized. I don't think it's a weird observation to make that our field stagnated or even regressed and that a lot of practices and technologies we work with today are (a) rooted in the 1970s and (b) ignore decades of subsequent research. Since you can trace a lot of badness in our field back to home computing (which: to be clear, was a very good thing! life is complicated!), I find the "we're male dominated because hobbyist computing in the 1970s was an insular and chauvinist culture" explanation pretty powerful. I think all these things feed into each other, too. There can be more than one explanation.
- deleted 9y ago
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- stcredzero 9y ago
  I didn't say anything about men being bad I never said that you did. You only impute that from the juxtaposition of the sentences. I only said that vilification wasn't such a good idea. Given that we are talking about the potential downsides of "an insular and chauvinist culture," I think it's useful to say one should be circumspect about vilification. Assume incompetence before maliciousness, and all that. You implied that I did. Not at all. You are stating that I implied that you did, however, and that's simply not true, which I have stated above. In this, you are implying that I am a liar. Let me "shut that down hard." I've already apologized so either provide your evidence, or be calling me a liar. (a) rooted in the 1970s and (b) ignore decades of subsequent research. Aww, hell. Also ignore research from the 60's and from common practices of just 5 years ago! I think all these things feed into each other, too. There can be more than one explanation. Are there other de-professionalized fields?
  - tptacek 9y ago
    I don't know. Are there? The home computing revolution was a weird inflection point. Medicine got more scientific over the last 200 years, steadily so, not less. The law has steadily remained formal and accredited since the founding of the country (and presumably long before). I'm sure there are similar cases, but this might be the biggest one in recent memory. Again, part of my claim is: this is not really a surprising or weird argument. It's pretty obvious from the recent history of the field. You can argue that it doesn't have as much explanatory power as I'm giving it, but I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that the underlying phenomenon didn't occur.
    - stcredzero 9y ago
      I don't know. Are there? Popular Music? Fiction writing? Journalism? Creating video content would qualify. (Possibly relevant: YouTube's audience is mostly male, while Tumblr's is mostly female. IIRC, the audience for video pornography also tends to skew male, while written erotica skews female.) The home computing revolution was a weird inflection point. Basically, it's the start of when computing went from a tool for accounting/administration/bureaucracy to also broadly encompassing media. Many of the de-profesionalized fields I mention above are associated with media. Again, part of my claim is: this is not really a surprising or weird argument. It's pretty obvious from the recent history of the field. I do think you're onto something.

tptacek 9y ago

I didn't say anything about men being bad, I don't believe there is anything intrinsically bad about men, and in fact I reject a lot of hypotheses about gender disparity based on "masculine behavior" explanations, such as the notion that women are put off by competitiveness (I am married to an extremely competitive woman engineer and, through her roller derby escapades, have met more than my fair share of other competitive women). You implied that I did. I'm shutting that down hard. Thanks for acknowledging. Like I said: I think our field is weird in that home computing deprofessionalized it. I think programming methodology also deprofessionalized. I don't think it's a weird observation to make that our field stagnated or even regressed and that a lot of practices and technologies we work with today are (a) rooted in the 1970s and (b) ignore decades of subsequent research. Since you can trace a lot of badness in our field back to home computing (which: to be clear, was a very good thing! life is complicated!), I find the "we're male dominated because hobbyist computing in the 1970s was an insular and chauvinist culture" explanation pretty powerful. I think all these things feed into each other, too. There can be more than one explanation.

deleted 9y ago
[deleted]
stcredzero 9y ago
I didn't say anything about men being bad I never said that you did. You only impute that from the juxtaposition of the sentences. I only said that vilification wasn't such a good idea. Given that we are talking about the potential downsides of "an insular and chauvinist culture," I think it's useful to say one should be circumspect about vilification. Assume incompetence before maliciousness, and all that. You implied that I did. Not at all. You are stating that I implied that you did, however, and that's simply not true, which I have stated above. In this, you are implying that I am a liar. Let me "shut that down hard." I've already apologized so either provide your evidence, or be calling me a liar. (a) rooted in the 1970s and (b) ignore decades of subsequent research. Aww, hell. Also ignore research from the 60's and from common practices of just 5 years ago! I think all these things feed into each other, too. There can be more than one explanation. Are there other de-professionalized fields?
- tptacek 9y ago
  I don't know. Are there? The home computing revolution was a weird inflection point. Medicine got more scientific over the last 200 years, steadily so, not less. The law has steadily remained formal and accredited since the founding of the country (and presumably long before). I'm sure there are similar cases, but this might be the biggest one in recent memory. Again, part of my claim is: this is not really a surprising or weird argument. It's pretty obvious from the recent history of the field. You can argue that it doesn't have as much explanatory power as I'm giving it, but I don't think anyone can reasonably argue that the underlying phenomenon didn't occur.
  - stcredzero 9y ago
    I don't know. Are there? Popular Music? Fiction writing? Journalism? Creating video content would qualify. (Possibly relevant: YouTube's audience is mostly male, while Tumblr's is mostly female. IIRC, the audience for video pornography also tends to skew male, while written erotica skews female.) The home computing revolution was a weird inflection point. Basically, it's the start of when computing went from a tool for accounting/administration/bureaucracy to also broadly encompassing media. Many of the de-profesionalized fields I mention above are associated with media. Again, part of my claim is: this is not really a surprising or weird argument. It's pretty obvious from the recent history of the field. I do think you're onto something.