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So what if DHH said in a Twitter comment that he liked breasts and that we should give in to "our animal instincts". Is that sexist? Was he speaking for the who
by Jun8 16y ago
So what if DHH said in a Twitter comment that he liked breasts and that we should give in to "our animal instincts". Is that sexist? Was he speaking for the whole RoR community?
Here are my assertions:
(i) Just because some idiot created slides with naked women on them for his conference presentation, you cannot argue that the software community is sexist or male privileged or whatever.
(ii) Prof. Spertus' comment includes reverse bias: When she writes "[I was] wondering if he had either not expected any women to be there or had discounted the importance of directing his remarks to the women in the audience", she's automatically assuming that those slides would be offensive to women only, i.e. all the men in the audience are brainless cavemen that drool over the oversize pictures on the screen.
- commanda 16y agoI agree. Also about (ii), she was assuming that she could speak for all women in the audience - that just because she found the slides offensive, that all women necessarily would be offended by those slides. A central tenet of feminism is that you cannot ever take the words of an individual and extrapolate them to represent the views of an entire group.
- potatolicious 16y agoI agree and disagree. (i) True, but from my own experience the software field is plenty sexist by itself, with or without the naked slides. (ii) Agree. Tons of reverse sexism happens. Hell, I volunteer at a transitional shelter for women (cooking duties) and get a lot of weird looks and conversations. I certainly get a lot of attitudes about being the only guy there - that I must be looking to hook up/get laid because there's no conceivable way a man could ever want to work for a female cause! Having experienced both sides of the coin, I think it's fairly safe to say that this sort of sexism is not inherent to software, or males, it's human nature and will happen in any place with a lopsided gender balance.