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Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment
- Mizza 15y agoThat's a bummer. I thought we were making progress in that regard, but maybe we aren't.
- bunderbunder 15y agoI still think we are. The progress is that this kind of stuff is increasingly discussed in public like this, rather than being allowed to slide. Sadly, I fear it's still going to take a lot more progress before people can speak up without a reasonable expectation of retaliation.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- AdesR 15y agostay classy australia. i'm surprised at the lewdness of images used in the keynote.
- maximusprime 15y agoThere wasn't even any nudity I could find... People should stop being offended at everything.
- michael_dorfman 15y agoThere's a lot of things besides nudity that can render an image inappropriate for use in a conference presentation, and judging from the description in the linked article (There was one image of a pig indulging in sexual activity with a goose...), I don't think it's unreasonable to expect people to be offended.
- maximusprime 15y agoGuess I just have a very high 'offended' threshold then.
- michael_dorfman 15y agoSure; but if you are presenting in public, it isn't your own 'offended' threshold that should be operative, it is that of your audience. And, even there, you probably don't want to shoot for the middle of the pack there-- offending, say, half of your audience wouldn't be much of a success in most contexts. So, while you might not want to scrub down your presentation to a point where no one is offended, you still probably want to stay away from sexual images involving farm animals. Just sayin'.
- maximusprime 15y agoGuess so... most funny birthday cards etc feature "worse" images. It depends what context the images were used in the talk, and if they made sense being there IMHO.
- Peroni 15y agoAnd a third person kept phoning various people's workplaces and accusing them of being involved in child pornography. Seriously? I'm having a hard time believing that this was instigated purely because she's a female developer. Surely there was more to it than her gender for someone to stoop that low?
- anon1385 15y agoIt wasn't just that she was female, it was that she was female and spoke out against the disgusting behaviour she saw and experienced. Sadly this is not limited to the tech community; feminist bloggers in general have to deal with an unbelievable amount of shit.
- Peroni 15y agoEither way, it takes an absolute lowlife to be that over the top over something so trivial.
- rauljara 15y ago"Bayley wrote, in a blog entry for the Geek Feminist website, which she founded..." "This kind of harassment and bullying is endemic in many circles, including towards women in technical communities, particularly if they _complain about community norms_." So no, she wasn't harassed to this degree just because of her gender. She was harassed because she had spoken up about other, less disgustingly over the top issues.
- parfe 15y agoReminds me of http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2938270 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2938270 That story started as a female blogger attacked for being a successful female in tech. It's an easy simplification. Meanwhile, I followed that story and it turns out (unrelated to tech, success, or being female) she was involved in breaking up a marriage (being the other woman) which lead to harassment from a Christian fundamentalist relative. While I have no doubt individuals can be hostile towards women in tech, I generally find posts from people heavily involved in a cause tend to re-contextualize stories to fit their narrative. If you read a blog post from feminists in tech you are going to read a post about how women are mistreated in tech. Which turns a story about an former partner calling up the work place to harass his ex girlfriend into an attack on women in tech.
- jimwise 15y agoNo disagreement with the basic, point, but was a bit surprised by this quote: "So, here's our situation. We have a man (presumably; at any rate he appears to want to be identified as such) in the Australian Linux community, who targets women by sending them private abusive emails from a throwaway address and with a name that can't readily be connected to any publicly known member of the community. His ISP won't hand out information about him without a court order, his abuse doesn’t present the kind of imminent threat to physical safety that might interest law enforcement, and despite Linux Australia’s diversity statement and Linux.conf.au's anti-harassment policies, it's not clear that there’s any practical thing that either of those groups can do about him." Is it Bayley's position that ISP's should give out information on their users in response to warrantless requests -- from private individuals, no less? Is it likewise Bayley's position that law enforcement should be going after people for making lewd comments online?
- dpark 15y agoI didn't read that from the quote. I read it as "It sucks that there's nothing I can do about this", not "The system should change".
- zdw 15y agoUnless he's swapping IP addresses on a regular basis, or hiding on a highly shared server, figuring out who this actually is without any help from an ISP or law enforcement shouldn't be that hard (this is the same way that "why the lucky stiff" was outed), assuming that the person is also an active contributor on other lists. I tend to view this as another example of how anonymity allows people to be jerks (with the requisite comic: http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/ http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2004/3/19/ ).
- DiabloD3 15y agoMikeeUSA abuses open proxies and tor like mad. He also comes onto IRC channels with random nicks. Soon as he opens his mouth, though, he usually has outed himself. I have referred to that same PA comic in the Darkplaces IRC channel (which hosts frequent games of "ban the MikeeUSA").
- GiraffeNecktie 15y agoIt distresses me that "political correctness" has become a dirty "four letter" word rather than simply a shared understanding that people who address others in a hate-filled, bullying, disrepectful and demeaning way should be actively shunned and censured (i.e. not "censored").
- oconnore 15y agoThat is not political correctness, that is basic respect for a fellow human being. Political correctness goes much farther.
- bunderbunder 15y agoPerhaps political correctness didn't used to mean that. But for a while now the term has mostly only been used as an ingredient of the defensive protestations of people who get called out for displays of bigotry. Consequently, its meaning has shifted.
- oconnore 15y agoNo, because you can offend people without bigotry, and you can be entirely respectful without being PC. The scope of things that can offend the people around you is essentially limitless. Failure to tip toe around your audience's sensitivities is not bigotry, but failure to respect your audience as an equal human being is.
- davidhansen 15y agoWell, the general reason for this attitude goes back to the old phrase "sticks and stones can break my bones but words will never harm me". When someone initiates physical force against you, it is an action being done to you, the consequences of which you cannot avoid due to the laws of physics. We take actual threats of physical violence seriously because of this. When someone says mean things, the above attitude presumes that the consequences to you are entirely within your own mind. One can either be offended or not offended, angry or not angry, etc. The presumption is that the onus of response is on the trollee, not the troll. Modern psychology and neuroscience have some things to say about the degree of distinction that the human mind makes between physical and verbal "forces". It also has some things to say about how much control we actually have over our responses to these forces. But so long as humans like to believe that they are in full control of their own actions, and that lacking this control is a personal fault, the mentality you describe will persist.
- DiabloD3 15y agoAfter reading this article, twice... huh? All I can tell is she is bitching that she didn't get respect purely out of being a woman in tech and nothing else actually substantial. I personally encourage woman to enter various tech industry roles (programming, IT, etc), and women like this push Woman's Rights 2.0 back a decade every time they do this. Also, MikeeUSA is a known troll, and anyone who is stupid enough to fall for his shit rather deserves it. He tends to hang out (and by hang out, I mean banned frequently) in the IRC channel for DarkPlaces, a Quake engine used by many games including Nexuiz and Xonotic, and we can't stand him either. tl;dr: Geek men support Women's Rights; one specific geek woman didn't and suddenly its a new story and somehow its the men's fault.
- DiabloD3 15y agoI'm being downvoted for supporting woman's rights and publicly stating so. Welp, I have karma to burn, I'm not going anywhere.
- matt_yoho 15y agoI think you're being downvoted for poor reading comprehension and for the entirely unnecessary and contextually-inappropriate use of the term "bitching".
- DiabloD3 15y agoBitching is bitching no matter if a guy or a woman does it. If you let political correctness run your life, you are no different than the people who think women should be kitchen slaves.
- michaels0620 15y agoYour public support for woman's rights is undermined by your implication that she is "stupid" for "falling for his shit". It's not like she got duped into giving her bank account information to a Nigerian Prince. She's become a target for bigotry. I also wouldn't call harassing emails, phoning people's work places, and changing an employer's online database as "nothing substantial".
- phaer 15y agoHere is the direct link to the blog post referenced on itwire.com: http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/13/on-being-harassed-a-little-gf-history-and-some-current-events/ http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/13/on-being-harassed-a-littl...
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- alttag 15y agoUnfortunately, this is not the first time this sort of reprehensible behavior has cost the tech community good talent. Kathy Sierra comes to mind. Other notables (male and female) have recently removed their presence from the internet. Although it isn't always clear why, I'd speculate some sort of harassment was at play there too.
- uriel 15y agoWelcome to the Internet. As Paul Vixie pointed out ages ago: "The Internet is not for sissies." Trolls are almost as old as the net, and they are not going to disappear without something short of a big-brother state that makes the Great Firewall Of China look like kids play. So better get used to it. Also remember: "Liberty resides in the rights of that person whose views you find most odious." — John Stuart Mill [Disclaimer: I have often been labeled a troll, and I'm not offended by this label.]
- rickmb 15y agoHarassment goes well beyond trolling, and so does the specific targeting of women.
- burgerbrain 15y agoWhether or not it compares to standard trolling, it still is trolling. You're not going to fix it by complaining.
- propater 15y agoWe can fix it to some extent through public condemnation, raised awareness and demonstration of support to the victims of this kind of behaviour.
- _delirium 15y agoI think unfortunately, in this particular case, you can't fix what seems to be the single biggest problem--- one person who is already widely condemned, banned from forums/IRC when people see him, but nonetheless persists, and keeps reappearing in new guises. I can imagine fixing the more common problems, like pervasive stupid sexist comments everywhere, and inappropriate content in conference presentations, but stamping out every single rare-but-extant crazy stalker seems unlikely. A number of high-profile bloggers, Usenet posters, and forum admins of both genders have attracted unhinged people of that sort, and discussion about what to do about the problem dates back at least 20 years.
- Codayus 15y agoI dunno. I'm sympathetic and all, but this seems to boil down to: "Nasty person A keeps harassing nice person B via email in ways which do not warrant the involvement of law enforcement." Which is terrible and all - especially for person getting the nasty emails - but this really doesn't seem to have any real relevance to anyone who isn't involved.
- maximusprime 15y agoAnd is pretty solvable by setting up an email filter.
- Codayus 15y agoApparently the abuse in question included creation of throwaway email accounts. That makes email filtering harder, at a minimum.
- Tichy 15y agoIf such a thing does not exist yet, and if standard spam filters can't do the job for some reason, I would be interested in creating a filter that can identify harassment mails (or trying to create one...). If the need really exists, let me know.
- maximusprime 15y agoMen have to put up with such abuse harassment and dickery all the time online. Welcome to the internet. Unfortunately us men can't just play the "sexism" card.
- matt_yoho 15y agoSo perhaps it would be generally beneficial to simply oppose online "dickery" and bullying across the board, particularly in cases where there's a component of implied threat beyond the virtual world. "Men are treated unfairly" is an unsympathetic point, even when true.
- ugh 15y agoExamples? It’s rough on the internet, sure, but were I a woman I would think long and hard about revealing my gender. Women are quite visibly treated differently and everyone being oblivious to this sexism (or even belittling it) doesn’t really help.
- _delirium 15y agoStacy Horn has some good examples applied to both genders, even in the 1990s, in her book Cyberville (http://www.amazon.com/dp/044651909X http://www.amazon.com/dp/044651909X), an account of her time running ECHO. Even if only a small percentage of your users are insane, a large community seems to get a few. I do agree women are visibly treated differently, especially in the sense of pervasive weird harassment, like random sexual or hostile comments from dozens/hundreds of users for no reason. The specific issue of crazy stalkers trying to get you fired may also apply to women more frequently, but I'm less sure of that--- 4chan has a history of doing that sort of stuff, mostly to males, and bloggers and website admins who piss people off get it all the time. Both Richard Kyanka of SomethingAwful and Rusty Foster of Kuro5hin have writeups floating around somewhere of some of the harassment they and their families have received due to running popular forums (in rusty's case it more or less caused him to check out). Not really sure what to do about the stalker problem, since that appears (in this case, at least) to have been a single person, and problems that one-in-a-million people can cause are difficult to stamp out. The pervasive harassment problem, of course, could and should be fixed.
- dsr_ 15y agoI hope Skud's life improves with her new career. I'm horrified that she was treated this way by any human.
- agentgt 15y agoThere are lots of bad apples but I'm kind of surprised Skud would just give up on the "whole" industry. I hope someone encourages Skud to continue developing. Even though the tech industry is still majority male I have to think there are many more industries (in particular certain horizontals like sales) that are even worse when it comes to sexual harassment.
- anon1385 15y agoThe problem is that some of the 'bad apples' are senior members of the community who are or were respected and widely listened to. The fact that Eric Raymond is/was taken seriously ought to be hugely embarrassing to the open source community. EDIT: since I got downvoted already I may as well add: ESR is a vile pathetic excuse for a human being. I don't say that lightly, he really is obnoxious. I know he has a big fanbase among the libertarians here but at some point people are going to have to face up to how unacceptable his views are to most people.
- gte910h 15y agoCan you bring cites to this claim? Not challenging you, just I've heard this before, but never anything specific for us who don't know the details.
- anthonyb 15y agoI know of at least one: he sent Bruce Perens a threatening email, enough that Bruce contacted the police. Here's a link: http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1999/04/msg00201.html http://lists.debian.org/debian-devel/1999/04/msg00201.html Edit: his response to receiving one threatening email is pretty revealing, too: http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=290 http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=290
- floatboth 15y agoShe'll develop… music: http://skud.dreamwidth.org/10449.html http://skud.dreamwidth.org/10449.html
- nadam 15y ago"quits tech industry" Quits tech industry because of one troll??? Does this mean she will never hack or never program (for money)? Interesting. I have seen lots of trolls and falemwars on the internet but I could not quit programming for thousands of trolls. This is the only thing I am good at, this is what I fell in love at 12, this is what I do to earn money to support my family... Also trolls have nothing to do with my own projects and the projects of my employer... Maybe she meant she will quit tech politics? (Then she will probably enter another kind of politics, because she is seemingly a 'political person'.)
- floatboth 15y agoShe will program. For music. http://skud.dreamwidth.org/10449.html http://skud.dreamwidth.org/10449.html
- jxcole 15y agoSomebody sends her an email that she doesn't like to her publicly available email address and she decides to quit working in the community? I hate to say this, but attitudes like this will only make the situation worse. Anybody, anywhere can write an email. You really shouldn't take them to seriously. I am honestly surprised that she let her real email address be publicly available anyway. It's important for community leaders to stand up for this sort of thing and publicly disown discrimination. But unless she gives them a chance, i.e. unless the community is anti-female, I can't see this as a good move on her part.
- matt_yoho 15y ago"I am honestly surprised that she let her real email address be publicly available anyway" This is called "blaming the victim". It is bad, and you should consider researching it.
- maximusprime 15y agoThe point is, if your email address is public, expect copious amounts of spam, abuse, scams, and so on. If you get offended by random emails, don't have a public email address.
- autarch 15y agoYou should read her blog post on the issue - http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/13/on-being-harassed-a-little-gf-history-and-some-current-events/ http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/13/on-being-harassed-a-littl... It's a lot more than one email. It's a pattern of harassment by multiple people that's gone on for years.
- funkah 15y agoThat is too bad. It sounds like she was constantly harassed by some crazy troll psycho. Unfortunately leaving tech may not make him stop if he's that dedicated.
- sdafssd 15y agoomg, this is bad add placement by Comcast on this article: http://www.4freeimagehost.com/show.php?i=32dd50b2da94.jpg http://www.4freeimagehost.com/show.php?i=32dd50b2da94.jpg The ad has an attractive woman in classes standing next to a laptop at a hosting facility with the title "The Solution: Comcast Metro Ethernet."
- monochromatic 15y agoTrolls exist on the internet. Bayley is just supporting negative stereotypes about how women can't handle the pressure when she lets a troll get the best of her and changes her whole life because of him.
- scott_s 15y agoExcuse me? At what point do you stop calling someone a "troll" and start calling them a "stalker"? Perhaps the harassment she received was so much that changing her whole life greatly improves her quality of life. Is she still "just supporting negative stereotypes" then?
- maximusprime 15y agoI think the point is that men have to put up with such shit all the time online.
- scott_s 15y agoNo, I don't think they do. And if you think they do, I don't think you understand the scale of what she's talking about. It's linked several times in this thread. Please read it.
- maximusprime 15y agoI've read it. There are billions of disturbed weird people in the world. Lots of them make it online. This is one of them. It's a shame she let it bother her.
- scott_s 15y agoSo it's her fault that a continued campaign of harassment "bothered" her? Have you ever experienced anything like that, or are you just guessing what it would feel like?
- 15y ago
- gaius 15y agoHow do you "quit the tech industry"? Start again from scratch from the bottom in... What?
- rohit89 15y agoShe mentions in her blog post that she is not completely quitting tech. From her blog, >>I’m particularly interested in using open tech to preserve and promote independent music, so you’ll continue to see me around in many of my usual tech haunts.
- pnathan 15y agoI read a private blog of a lady in the games industry, and the level of ordure and harassment she gets is simply unbelievable. It's well beyond anything in the 'people are jerks, suck it up' level. I can well believe Skud got sick of it and is doing other things with her life. I'm going to come right out and say it - if you, or someone you know - has a penchant for writing these sorts of harassing emails, it needs to stop. Quite possibly, professional help needs to be sought. It's simply wrong.
- yummyfajitas 15y agoFoul language and harassment in the games industry? I'm shocked. Perhaps it's just due to white male privilege that I've never been called a "gaaaayyyy nig faggz" while playing online games? [edit: sarcasm. Like anyone who's ever delivered a headshot, I've been told "fu homo chink".]
- DiabloD3 15y agoNo, I'm white, male, and straight, and I get that about once every ten frags or so, more so if I shut out the round.
- biot 15y agoThe games industry does not refer to anybody who plays games but refers to the development of games; in the same way the automobile industry does not refer to anybody who drives a car.
- rorrr 15y agoI don't get it. I worked with many female developers, female CTOs, female IT directors. In 10 years I've not seen any harassment towards them. I've never even heard general statements from male developers, like "women can't code". Am I oblivious, or maybe a different sub-industry?
- britta 15y agoIf you're close to any of them, it may be interesting to ask them. A lot of women in technology (and women in general, and also people in general) choose to not talk much about bad experiences, for many reasons, so there is an underreporting effect - and a lot of harassment also isn't in obvious forms witnessed by other people. Some women are fortunate to not have had a lot of problems, of course - but if you ask a few, especially ones who speak or write publicly about their work, you'll probably hear some painful stories.
- rsanchez1 15y agoI was going to start a rant about how this behavior is encouraged by the macho men online, but this was just one guy harassing her. "Due to harassment" reads as due to harassment from the community, but she gave in to one idiot. She let him win.
- scott_s 15y agoI pointed this out to another poster: http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/11/online-harassment-as-a-daily-hazard-when-trolls-feed-themselves/ http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/11/online-harassment-as-a-da...
- andos 15y agoThe downplaying of the repeated incidents might be encouragement enough, I think.
- i386 15y agoThis sort of behavior coming from members of the Australian FOSS community is unfortunately somewhat of a consistent underbelly. I used to help run and host the local LUG chapter in Sydney for a few years. One particular meeting I had to ask a speaker to leave the premises (hosted in my employers building) for displaying bared breasts during his talk. Unsurprisingly, people walked out. So much of this sort of shit goes on and it's ugly, ugly, ugly.
- mootothemax 15y agoSkimming over the comments here, once again I find myself distressed at the large number of men in the tech community who just don't get it. Whether it's sexist jokes, inappropriate language or illustrations, or plain old stereotypes, it sometimes feels like the tech community's firmly stuck in the 70s. The worst thing is that none of this is difficult to solve, it just involves growing up, frankly.
- sp332 15y agoIt's because they don't intend to be offensive. For example: in the US, holding up two fingers is cool. In the UK, it's offensive. So one group of people can have a set of behaviors that another group finds offensive, but the first group has no idea why the second group is offended because they don't intend offense. I know there are a lot of actually misogynistic people in tech. I'm only talking about the guys who "don't get it."
- itg 15y agoIf you hold up two fingers in the UK and someone tells you it is offensive, you stop doing it. Despite the numerous people who try to educate the guys who "don't get it", they continue their immature ways. I'm not going to give them a free pass.
- deleted 15y ago[deleted]
- itg 15y agoI don't think or have the mindset that women are living in some sort of separate culture from us or there are stark differences between us. It's the trolls, misogynists, etc that treat them differently only because they are women.
- getsat 15y ago> If you hold up two fingers in the UK and someone tells you it is offensive, you stop doing it. Wouldn't this be more analogous to people from the UK coming into a typically US-centric area and complaining about US people holding up two fingers? I agree that it's wrong, but change will probably be slow...
- EthanG 15y agoHmm. I read the whole thing and was surprised and saddened to find it seems genuine. There are some beastly women operating under the flag of feminism, but if I'm any judge of character I don't think Bayley is one of them. I am curious about the removal of code issue, but I'm sorry to say it's a morbid curiosity. I would like to see if my opinion of ESR's judgement of human issues can get any lower.
- peterwwillis 15y agoA couple of points if I may: 1. If you speak at conferences, especially about a non-technical subject like "women in FOSS projects" (which is more likely to get sexists riled up), you are going to get unwanted attention. Pretty much every speaker who speaks on a controversial, or non-technical, or just media-glamorized topic is going to get harassed - if not hacked. It happens all the time to men and i'm sure it happens to women. 2. She started a "geek feminist" website, so that didn't help in terms of getting some sexist asshole's attention. It's like starting a "geek black people" website and not expecting white supremacists to send hate mail. I'm not saying it's justified, only that you have to expect the assholes out there will come out of the woodwork to give you shit. 3. I need to do something that feels rewarding and fun, and the work I was doing - which involved lots of speaking at conferences wasn’t giving me that any more. - So stop speaking at conferences? The tech industry has more going for it than giving talks. 4. If the guy isn't posing a physical threat, suck it up and ignore it. Do you know how many people troll me every week? A lot. But I make myself a target - just like being bullied in school - and thus I need to defend myself or move on. 5. Stop trying to 'get more women in technology'. Why is this seen as a serious problem that needs fixing? Go ahead and work to reduce sexism, I think that's necessary because the internet tends to reduce everything to childish unprofessional behavior. But nobody's code is going to get better just because there's more females working on it. Instead, focus on improving the tech industry as a whole instead of one little facet of it (like the distribution of gender). I'm sorry if I sound unsympathetic. I do sympathize. A friend of mine stopped working in the underground infosec community because he was putting out a magazine and people were sending him hate mail. I understand he didn't want to get shit, but he had to expect haters - it's the fucking internet.
- maximusprime 15y agoWell said.
- __alexs 15y agoWhat exactly is your point? People shouldn't whine that other people are bastards? It seems more than a bit like victim blaming to me.
- 15y ago
- Aloisius 15y agoCan someone please tell me why quitting the tech community would stop someone from harassing you because you are a woman? If anything, you'd think bringing it up to the community and get help tracking down the person would work better. That or public ridicule/shaming. Something proactive. I mean, isn't feminism about fighting back against these degenerates?
- div 15y agoNot everyone wants to go through this kind of battle against an anonymous adversary. I think she has the right not to have her decision to quit questioned. Just because she was the one being harassed does not mean she is suddenly responsible for bettering women's situation in tech.
- floatboth 15y agoShe quit a tech job, not the geek femininsm community.
- Aloisius 15y agoYes, but why would that stop this person from targeting her? If anything, her geek feministing makes her a much bigger target. I guess I don't follow the logic unless she believes this person is someone she worked with and even then, I don't see someone who is truly obsessed from stopping.
- floatboth 15y agoHer job involved speaking at conferences, I guess that's a big reason. She's not giving up.
- aphistic 15y agoThis reminds me of back in University ~10 years ago. In one of my Java courses we had a female professor and one female student. The female student ended up dropping the course within the first month not from harassment by her fellow male students but because the professor was embarrassing/harassing her in almost every lecture by bringing up the fact that there was a female student in the course. As a side note, that same professor said at one point during the course that males were keeping females out of tech by using terms and ideas such as Queues and Sockets. It was an interesting year...
- jff 15y agoRegarding Queues and Sockets: what? Can you give her explanation for that? Was it just "those terms sound difficult and women don't like that kind of thing", or something even sillier like "queues are phallic"?
- aphistic 15y agoWell, at that point sockets were something that really interested me (still do) but I didn't know much about them. I asked her if she could spend a lecture going over them and her response was something like "See? This is why there aren't many women in IT, you men make up terms like Queues and Sockets to keep them out!" It's been awhile but that was the gist of it. I don't know if it was meant in jest but she sounded serious.
- ck2 15y agoHaving been stalked, I can assure you there are plenty of borderline mentally ill out there. I would never put even my first name or my city online anymore, anywhere. Never underestimate the stupidity of people out there with nothing better to do. I'm sorry to see the brave ones out there are still going through this these days.
- Rariel 15y agoI've worked in IP Law and for the Senate and I've never really experienced overt sexism so I kind of thought it was on the decline in the work place. Imagine my surprise when I started joining tech/start-up communities (like this one) and witnessed unparalleled sexism and ignorance. I mean attitudes that make you think you're in the 1800s (once had somebody on HN tell me that women are genetically less likely to want to do tech![!!!!!!!]). I'm still pretty shocked by it and also curious as to why this industry is so antiquated with regard to its' attitudes about women. There are a lot of women who want to distance themselves from the argument. At a SXSW session there were women extremely opposed to even acknowledging the discrimination for fear they'd be labeled a complainer and be seen differently than their male counter-parts (which unless you're an idiot you can see the difference between a man and a woman). I didn't consider myself a feminist before but the tech industry has made me up my feminism...
- endtime 15y ago>(once had somebody on HN tell me that women are genetically less likely to want to do tech![!!!!!!!]) Are you trolling? That does not seem to be a sexist or retrograde statement.
- flatline 15y agoI think this highlights the problem nicely: the recipient of the comment took it that way, and you don't seem to understand her response.
- franticpedantic 15y agoI think your attitude highlights a big part of the problem nicely as well. Whether or not women are more, less, or as interested in tech on average than men due to biological predisposition should be treated as a scientific question, not outright rejected as absurd because it could hurt someone's feelings. Maybe it's not a worthwhile question to examine, but to say it's wrong because it's offensive is incredibly unscientific, and geeks often are more interested in truth than getting along. This attitude is totally different than harassing people, being disrespectful towards people, or discriminating against an individual. But when advocates of women's rights or whatever cause group these two separate attitudes as the same, there will be backlash from would-be sympathizers.
- gatlin 15y agoAnother day, another HN thread about misogyny and sexism in STEM, and another sampling of "hackers" who can't seem to agree 100% that sexism, harassment, and stereotyping are categorically wrong. It's not even the overt sexism that is the problem. It's the educated troglodytes making up bullshit like "civilization has always been like this" and "she invited harassment with such bold feminism" and "this just proves women can't handle pressure." That half the community seems to have reached adult maturity is good; that half has not is so incredibly depressing and tiresome
- forensic 15y agoThey think they're educated because they know ruby. They're not educated. Most of these people are the same types who think the humanities are "for girls" and "unscientific"
- hugh3 15y agoAnother day, another HN thread about misogyny and sexism in STEM Actually, we're not talking about STEM in general, we're talking about computer programming in particular. As I was reading this thread, I was just thinking about how other parts of the STEM community aren't nearly so bad. For instance, if you go hang out in your local university's maths (or physics) department, you'll find many of the same conditions. You'll find an overwhelmingly male group, ranging from slightly nerdy to very nerdy, with a sprinkling of a few women. But you won't find these sorts of problems occurring nearly so often. Why? I think it's part of a culture of professionalism vs unprofessionalism, and it's largely age-driven. A university department is dominated (socially if not numerically) by people in their forties and fifties, giving the workplace a much older, quieter, more professional feel than you get in a tech company where just about everybody is in their twenties. It's just a matter of having plenty of adult supervision around, I think. Linux user groups are even worse. They combine the worst features of a party (a lack of professionalism) with the worst features of a high tech workplace (a twenty-to-one sex ratio) so it's not surprising that bad things can happen there.
- DanBC 15y ago>For instance, if you go hang out in your local university's maths (or physics) department There's the trans-gendered (male to female) mathematician who'd disagree. She says that when she used to give talks (as a male) she got respect, but now people say things like "Her brother was better" not realising it's the same person.
- bkrausz 15y agoLast year at FooCamp I went to a panel about women in tech (I believe I was the only guy) for two reasons: 1) I have no qualms about offending people if I feel my point is valid, and in fact enjoy being in situations where I risk such things (I find it incredibly rewarding to have meaningful discussions about things that are considered taboo). 2) To find out what the problem was Let me clarify #2: I didn't see a problem within my circles other than the fact that there were few women in startups. I didn't see blatant sexism, I didn't see harassment, I didn't see something that I was comfortable changing to encourage women in my industry. I still occasionally quote South Park or make a dirty joke, but nothing targets women specifically: I just can have a crude sense of humor. Was that what women were concerned about? Were they offended by my jokes, expecting me to be stiff as a board to avoid offending them? In my opinion that's expecting special treatment and is sexism in and of itself. In my YC class the 4 women were respected and treated like peers. Yes, I'm sure there was some flirting, but I didn't see anything that I wouldn't consider more offensive than I've seen guys do to each other on a regular basis. What I learned was actually very interesting: from their perspective I was not the problem. Somehow in the middle of the media hype about sexism, I had assumed I must be doing something wrong and was trying to figure out what was inappropriate about my behavior. It turns out there's a whole group of men in tech who are blatantly offensive, harassing, and generally sexist towards women just because they were women. I genuinely think most men are in the better bucket: we aren't offensive, and provide mostly non-hostile work environments. We are not part of the problem. On the other hand, I bet a lot of us aren't part of the solution. This needs to not be a "men vs women" battle: this needs to be a "people vs jerks" battle. There are a few sour apples poisoning the environment for everyone, and it needs to stop. I do think the only way to fix this is for there to be a social change, but most men just need to change the way they act towards other men. Don't allow it to be ok when one guy crosses the line, and don't just assume HR will take care of it. Call him out on it. I'm confident that that's all 99% of guys need to (and can) do to help with this problem.
- tptacek 15y agoI thought the same thing, and argued (I felt persuasively!) on behalf of that perspective for many years. Then I watched my wife Erin, who has as many years of experience in this industry as I do, interview for tech jobs. Please take my word for it that this is not a "few bad apples" problem.
- tnicola 15y agoBeing a female in a tech industry is legal. Having a public email address is legal (and understandable if she is a keynote speaker at an open source conferences). Rockrolling is an acceptable form of trolling. Sending someone an explicit email from an untraceable email address is not only unacceptable behaviour, but all those trying to justify it by saying, 'he didn't mean it' or 'she was asking for it (in so many words) are just as sociopathic as the original sender. On what planet is what he did acceptable, appropriate or even funny?
- someone13 15y agoAfter doing some reading about the issue, I'm wondering - what's stopping people from posting the harassment they receive online? Some sort of centralized registry of inappropriate emails - I don't see any reason to NOT publicly shame the kind of people that send these disgusting messages. Even if it's only a pseudonym, or a disposable email, it's better than silently taking it, IMHO.
- anigbrowl 15y agoYou're onto something with this idea.
- zasz 15y agoI don't understand it when people think that someone should just suck it up when they get harassed. Why is it so hard for them to give the woman the benefit of the doubt that these are indeed extremely frightening, and disturbing enough that a reasonable person would want to leave? Why can people not give her the benefit of the doubt that she is a reasonable person responding to deeply unreasonable emails? For a silly analogy, I don't understand why the troll face is funny, but I don't call people retards for thinking that it is.
- mahyarm 15y agoWhy aren't there many men in dance, ballet and elementary school education?
- mahyarm 15y agoDon't downvote, it's an honest question.
- Homunculiheaded 15y agoI've worked both in environments that are 10:1 women to men and 1:10 women to men. All of the "oh women just don't understand a good joke/don't ball bust/don't talk dirty" is pure BS, in female dominated environments I've encountered plenty of that. The one thing I've never encountered was anyone who made me feel even slightly out-of-place due to my gender (male). On the other hand I've been in male dominated, tech environments that make me feel uncomfortable even as a man. I've heard men discuss their wives education as a merely something to do so that they could marry a programmer, seen numerous times where women are put on the spot for their gender ("whoa there's a girl in this class"), incredible amounts of misogyny, continual use of the "men"/"girl" dichotomy and the cherry on top of all of this is the "oh women are just being sensitive/can't take a joke/etc" whenever this is brought up. With a background in the humanities I've actually spent a lot of time reading up on gender studies and reading real (ie not the pop culture) feminist writings, and it's frankly embarrassing how regressive even reasonably intelligent tech teams can be (and disgusting how awful the less talented ones are). To refuse to see this issue despite the incredible amount of evidence that it exists if ignorance of the highest order, which of course is to be expected anywhere this type of behavior is a problem.
- mkramlich 15y agoI wish this kind of thing never appeared on HN. This kind of thing, involving gender/harassment/PC-ness always tends to devolve into flamefests and pedantry, and nothing tangible comes of it. Demonization, stereotypes, extreme generalizations, cherry picking, etc. Over and over and over again. My take: there are bad people in the world, yes. And we have no control over them. Sometimes bad things happen. And we have no control over that. Knowledge, education, maturity are not equally distributed, and not all people share the same behavior or values as we'd like. News at 11. Let's move on. Please. :)
- i_c_b 15y agoI used to feel exactly the same way you do... but to be honest, over time, I'd say these kinds of conversations have actually gradually affected my viewpoint. I agree that the conversations, _in the comments_, never seem to resolve, but never underestimate the impact on people who aren't typing. Knowledge, education, and maturity aren't equally distributed, but conversations like this, even if they are exasperating, are one way to change that. It's affected me, anyway.
- tekromancr 15y agoI love the tech field in general, and programming in particular. I only just learned about how bad this problem was recently. It saddens me to know that a large segment of the population is being pushed away from something I think is amazing and beautiful by assholes who think... I don't even know what they think.
- thedelimiter 15y agoShe was working on a cooking robot, right? As long as she is working on cooking robots that stay in the kitchen, women should be welcomed in tech.