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Jessamyn Smith: Fighting sexist jokes with a Python bot

505 points by dpritchett 15y ago

jtreminio 15y ago
sex·ist [sek-sist] adjective 1. pertaining to, involving, or fostering sexism: a sexist remark; sexist advertising. sex·ism [sek-siz-uhm] noun 1. attitudes or behavior based on traditional stereotypes of sexual roles. 2. discrimination or devaluation based on a person's sex, as in restricted job opportunities; especially, such discrimination directed against women. I don't think the bot is exactly sexist. It's stupid, immature, and beats a dead horse, but actually sexist? While you should probably have a talk with the supervisor, not the general office, about this issue, maybe polluting the chat space with yet another stupid bot isn't the greatest idea? "Annoying" your coworkers into compliance isn't a good strategy, as it will grow resentment towards you and mask the real problem.
- deleted 15y ago
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- unalone 15y ago
  > 1. attitudes or behavior based on traditional stereotypes of sexual roles [...] devaluation based on a person's sex Here're the categories you could argue the bot falls into. The point of the "that's what she said" is to point out when phrases sound like something a woman might have said in bed or during some sort of sexual activity, furthering the already staggeringly vast perception our society has of women as primarily sexual objects. It's not what I'd call "grossly" sexist, but if somebody's objecting to it, she absolutely has a reason to feel uncomfortable about it. I disagree that the supervisor is necessary here. First off, that's making an appeal to authority and such appeals can be pretty irritating; second off, that's trying to solve the problem privately rather than in public space. By making this bot, Jessamyn says that her voice is as valuable as anybody else's voice. If somebody else wants to make a bot that makes crude sex jokes, she can make a bot that quotes notable women. And rather than making a bot that's irritating or one-note, it sounds like she made a bot that has a variety of colorful responses, to the point where one of her coworkers told her how much he appreciates it. Remember that sexism is about the reinforcement of cultural stereotypes, rather than being just about gross bigotry or discrimination. What's sexist is that people assume, in a workplace, that jokes about what women say in bed are acceptable. Those jokes make me a little uncomfortable even in a casual environment; it's kind of gross that people are okay with them at work. The sexism isn't one person consciously thinking "Oh man let's women the butt of jokes about sex!", it's that women-as-sex-objects is such a pervasive trope that we don't notice it unless somebody like Jessamyn points it out to us.
  - tomp 15y ago
    > jokes about what women say in bed are acceptable If they're actually funny (most of the "That's what she said" jokes are not), why not? I can also totally imagine the following situation: Coworker: Did I come too early? Another coworker: That's what he said! Come to think of it, men are also under a lot of pressure in bed, so such jokes are just as in/appropriate as jokes about women in bed.
    - unalone 15y ago
      > If they're actually funny (most of the "That's what she said" jokes are not), why not? It depends on the audience. I think that sexist jokes are in as poor taste in a workplace as racist jokes would be. I'd also be against black jokes or Mexican jokes or Jewish jokes or jokes about Catholic pedophilia. Even if the extent of the joke was something like "I'm not going to the pub with you all, I'm such a Jew", I'd feel uncomfortable; if somebody wrote a bot that was designed to repeatedly make those jokes, I'd be upset. As Jessamyn says: > Now, I admit to having made this joke myself, at times. Once in a while, I even find it funny. What I don’t find funny is a bot we have in our general IRC channel at work, that has some basic AI devoted to determining when to interject TWSS into the conversation. And the joke is not that women say funny things while in bed. The joke is, "Oh, that thing you just said reminded me of fucking a woman." It's funny in high school when everybody's a virgin, and I've found that as my college friends have gotten themselves laid, it's ceased to become very amusing. The same way I haven't heard a black or Mexican joke in a few years that managed to rise above its racism to become even remotely amusing. Jokes about people having sex can be funny; "that's what she said" will always be a joke the brunt of which is the faceless fuck-object woman. Maybe that's fine in moderation, especially if "that's what he said" jokes are mixed in, but I think we all agree that if somebody's feeling upset by the jokes, it's not a huge loss to our comedic palettes to have to find another source of humor, right? We're all capable of rising beyond that?
      - rimantas 15y ago
        And in the end there will be no jokes. > I think we all agree that if somebody's feeling upset by > the jokes, it's not a huge loss to our comedic palettes > to have to find another source of humor, right? No. I strongly strongly disagree. I don't want a thermal dead of society, I don't want knee-jerk reaction to anything I say because I just mentioned some forbidden word, no matter with what intention and what context. We are slipping toward the concept thought-crime, and I surely don't want what. Neither do I want to live in the world where all must pretend, that genders don't exist. You ar offended but what I say? To quote Stephen Fry: "So fucking what?". To think that it is impossible to tell and be entertained by non-PC jokes is as moronic as thinking that you cannot write (or enjoy) crime fiction without being a murderer.
- efsavage 15y ago
  IANA sociologist, but I'd consider TWSS (or the much rarer TWHS) one of those "undertones" types of biases like always asking the female co-worker to take notes or the male co-worker to help you move your desk. Anyways, I think her response was a good one. I would hope that simply asking whoever was running it to shut it down would be sufficient, but I think writing a bot was a good way of making your point in a group of developers as a respectful way of saying "I'm part of this group and I have something to say".
  - tomjen3 15y ago
    Undertones? You mean the classical 'you are guilty and won't admit it'? As for when it should be shot down -- when a majority don't think it is funny. It is called company culture and unless you believe females should have special protection because they are an inferior sex they will properly have to get used to it. And the reason we ask a male to move the desk is because they tend to be physically stronger (with exceptions, I couldn't lift myself of the floor). I haven't asked any females to write notes since grade school.
    - efsavage 15y ago
      "company culture" is what she was trying to fix. If someone has a TWSS bot, I'm guessing there are some more serious bias issues, perhaps like the author said, that people aren't even aware of. "because they tend to be" is the type of excuse/rationalization that starts these problems. Of course men, on average, are stronger, but 99% of the time a woman can help you just as well. Making a decision based on someone's gender is sexism whether there is scientific data or not. We're in a field that has the potential to be the most meritocratic field out there, and we do a disservice to everyone involved not to embrace that.
      - tomjen3 15y ago
        You say fix, I say she tried to destroy it. They had fun, what right does she have to ruin it?
        15y ago
- Harkins 15y ago
  Look up programming jargon in whichever dictionary you found this definition. Something with a common meaning, like 'domain', 'array', or 'tree'. How well does it apply? Words like "sexist", "sexism", "homophobia", and "racism" are jargon for the folks studying gender, psychology, sociology. The common usage, the descriptive usage you see in dictionaries, is not appropriate and will only confuse things.
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- oskarth 15y ago
  I guess what you're saying is that this bot and the TWSS function should be disabled. Right?
  - hythloday 15y ago
    I think if there's a Highlander rule then it's obvious that the less sophisticated bot ought to be culled. Presumably the grandparent post advocates that--especially as it's the only one that a member of the team has spoken out as having a problem with.
- AkThhhpppt 15y ago
  So the one "funny" bot should be wasted on TWSS, which one of the team actively objects to? (And it is a waste: markov chain bots can provide moments of startling poetry. ",)
  - deleted 15y ago
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    - unalone 15y ago
      She SPECIFICALLY says that she's frustrated with how gendered the TWSS joke is: > I took it for granted that everyone was familiar with the “That’s what she said,” joke, but a recent conversation with a consultant friend made me realize some industries don’t feature it on a daily basis. For those who haven’t heard it a million times, the idea is that when somebody says something that could remotely be turned into a sexual joke, e.g. “I’m trying to solve this problem but it’s really hard!” you say “That’s what SHE said,” in a lascivious tone. And describing why she's satisfied with the bot's reaction: > In any case, I feel that I have succeeded in constructively disrupting an aspect of my work culture that made me uncomfortable. "Uncomfortable". Not "annoying". You know that "ignoring what women say and explaining that they're really bothered by something else" is one of the most common responses that feminists have to deal with, right? And that it's disrespectful to suggest that there's a more "rational" explanation for why a woman's upset than that they feel uncomfortable about a sexist environment? I mean, she says close to the beginning: > I asked a number of times to have that bot function turned off, but got the usual combination of being ignored, being told it’s funny, and being told I should lighten up. Emphasis mine. We just had a big ole conversation about that phrase like a week ago. Remember it?
coob 15y ago
I'm struggling to come up with an answer to this question: Has technology ever solved issues with social etiquette?
- mutation 15y ago
  Obviously, it has - for the male participants of IRC chat which found bot "jokes" funny. They have a social bondage now. That's how I saw it.
- perlgeek 15y ago
  Sure, in much the same ways as such problems are solved in real life: if you can't get somebody to behave, he's thrown out. That's /kickban on IRC, for example.
- unalone 15y ago
  Technology, in and of itself, is not a solution. But technology enables us to communicate to broader audiences and in more sophisticated ways, and that can enable individual people to find solutions that didn't previously exist.
- wisty 15y ago
  Halfway through the article, I couldn't help thinking - "If she can't convince her co-workers to turn off a bot she finds offensive, the place is caustic". This isn't really solving anything. The only difference between this and a well-deserved "fuck you" to the co-workers is it's done in a polite and clever way. It's a smart move, because it makes her look good and anyone who complains look like a sore loser (reversing the situation). It's annoying that the situation exists, but at least she's handling it well.
- Harkins 15y ago
  Yes. An example was posted here in the last few weeks - there's a startup whose name I can't remember that plans meetups of three men and three women. They had a serious problem with cancellations, which was solved by requiring the canceller to record a voicemail to be played to the other people. Cancellations fell off 80% or more. (I'm sorry, I can't remember more specifics - anyone have the link?)
vasco 15y ago
I think this would never happen where I live. Honestly this seems like its the same thing as you guys in the US not being able to say merry christmas because it might offend someone. What's so wrong with being offended anyway? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHMoDt3nSHs&t=3m30s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHMoDt3nSHs&t=3m30s I think people over there just take everything to seriously.
- rmc 15y ago
  Basically you're saying "Lighten up". There is a problem of gender representation in tech. We need to do something about it.
  - alextgordon 15y ago
    Basically he's saying that definitions of sexism vary across cultures, and that where he lives (and where I live), this would not be considered sexist. "Two countries separated by a common language"
- FeministHacker 15y ago
  http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/mar/21/lighten-up/ http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/mar/21/lighten-up/ Lighten up, I didn't mean it, I didn't intend to upset you, so it must be ok!
  - hessenwolf 15y ago
    (article forwarded to well-dressed coder-girlfriend)
  - vasco 15y ago
    What I said is that where I live its not like this. Girls wouldn't make a fuss about this, and would probably make more sexual jokes then guys actually. So yes maybe in comparison you guys need to lighten up as a society or something.
    - Jem 15y ago
DanBC 15y ago
A very nice write up. I say this politely[1] but I thought this was odd: > Now I could run it from one of the development servers at work. Really? Is that kind of thing common? [1] because I don't want to add to the air of general negativity around HN.
- viraptor 15y ago
  Depends on what you mean by a developoment server. You probably don't want to run something like that on a build server, or test environment. On the other hand some places have a general-purpose hosts too. For example at one of my previous places we had a host which basically was just an optional ssh hop (if you needed to run some batch process, it had much lower connection latency) / ad-hoc reporting node / whatever you needed at that point. I don't see anything wrong with running chat bots at that host - at least for internal services. It's a bit different if you wanted to connect to public IRC servers, but it's not obvious from the post whether it was internal-only service or not.
mcherm 15y ago
What a BRILLIANT social hack. Jessamyn Smith, I am thoroughly impressed.
- wpietri 15y ago
  Absolutely. It's also a fantastic resume piece. Two of the things I look for in a resume are a) contributions to an open source project, and b) ability to take a problem and solve it from beginning to end. As a bonus, she's clearly aware of workplace culture and committed to making it better. All good signs, especially for the startup context.
coldarchon 15y ago
I like the page with the quotes about women history. I got 2 ads to lose weight; 2 skype ads of a girl calling me; 1 to date African, 1 to date Indonesian and 1 to date Colombian women. Is that sexist too?
hythloday 15y ago
"It has been fascinating to watch the ongoing reactions. There have been complaints that we have too many bots in the channel now. There have been complaints about it spamming the channel. There were several “Make them shut up!” responses. These are not reactions I have seen the other bots elicit, certainly not with such intensity. One person even complained about the name being too long, though to his credit he realized right after he said that that several other people in the channel also have very long handles. To me, all of this seems like typical geek behaviour: something is making them uncomfortable, and so they attack it on “rational” grounds. Most likely, they aren’t even aware of the gut reaction fueling their logic." This is excellently picked out: most of the disagreements over the term "sexism" hinge around this point. Stuff that doesn't bother you (that another poster here describes as being "tuned-out"), as a man, because your gender plays no part in your job, is experienced differently by your female colleagues, because their gender does. Their experience of seeing "that's what SHE said" (and the death by a thousand cuts of other gender policing) is just as distracting and annoying as the "that's what she really said" bot. If your reaction to this post is "the first one seems harmless but the second is really overstepping the line", please take a few minutes to consider how you would feel if everyone's reaction to that (and everything else you objected to) was "just lighten up".
- oskarth 15y ago
  What I find the most fascinating is that she did everything exactly right and people still feel like she did something wrong. She didn't go to her supervisor and she didn't turn it into a drama. Instead she fought the problem in its own arena by making a IRC-bot to combat the problem, and not only that: the IRC-bot is only selectively used in the exact situation that is seen as problematic and it does so by writing enlightening quotes! In mathematical terms: the function has the exact same range and its value is consistently higher in the absolute majority of all cases. I honestly can't think of a better way to tackle this particular problem, and yet there's all this criticism to her approach. Really? What more do you want her to do? Her quote at the end of the article rings even more true after reading some comments here: To me, all of this seems like typical geek behaviour: something is making them uncomfortable, and so they attack it on “rational” grounds. Most likely, they aren’t even aware of the gut reaction fueling their logic. Interestingly, the intensity of emotion seemed to carry over into subsequent discussions, including one about women in the Python community.
CompiledCode 15y ago
So how can I write a bot to fight the sexism in Microsoft's TV ads? You know the ones... where the husband is the bumbling idiot and the wife is the smart capable one who shuts down his plea to play golf on Sundays. I would love to set that bot loose on all TV shows and ads. So often, a flipped situation would cause outrage of being sexist, whereas if the man is put down, it's "funny." It really bothers me, especially with the "mancession" still going on (outside of IT) and widespread anti-male laws (in family court and other places).
- rmc 15y ago
  Yes, ads (etc.) that portray people as bad based on their gender are wrong. However men are still in an advantageous position. widespread anti-male laws They are small in number compared to the widespread anti-female laws and customs.
  - CompiledCode 15y ago
    Can you give an example? In almost all states, if the wife gets pregnant by another man, the man is still on the hook for child support for the next 18+ years... even if she divorces him and marries her lover. I can't think of an equivalent anti-female law with such devastating long-term impact on the woman. I know this message might be off tangent for the HN board. But if we're discussing anti-female sexist culture and try to erase every incident of women being treated unfairly even in the slightest way, I think it should be allowed to point out that in today's culture, men are also often treated extremely unfairly... and you don't see scores of women jumping to their defense (like the men did in the "Lighten up" thread).
    - raganwald 15y ago
      Your argument says "since (unfair child support laws) then (men treated unfairly) thus not(sexist anti-women culture)" The problem with your argument is that you are not espousing a widely held belief about child support laws being "unfair to men." Thus, a discussion about your argument is likely to devolve into long exchanges about children's rights and anecdotes about ridiculous edge case judgments on both sides. Which is fine, but I think it would be two steps removed from what you're trying to establish, namely that the unfair sexism is somehow balanced. If you're going to construct an argument of the form A -> B -> C, I suggest you pick an "A" that is beyond dispute so we can focus on the validity of A -> B and B -> C.
pencilcode 15y ago
:D :D it's a wonder that white guys never make jokes about white guys in general.
- tomp 15y ago
  We make jokes about black guys having long dicks... Which is, in a way, a joke about white guys (precisely because you never say a joke about white guys having long dicks).
losvedir 15y ago
Huh, it had never occurred to me that some women would be offended by that joke. In my mind, it was sometimes somewhat amusing because it turns the statement your friend just made into one about a penis. I was going to say that now I'll be on the lookout for statement about clams, things that are wet, and so on, in order to bust out a TWHS, but it seems to me that it could be construed as just as offensive to women, because again it reinforces the idea, apparently, that men just think of women as sexual objects. Lose-lose. Personally, I don't think either TWSS/TWHS is "sexist", but they're certainly not appropriate for a work environment.
- mindslight 15y ago
  "omg i'm offended ur heteronormative comment its fucking disgusting take down now" Seriously, after seeing Basho Troll raise such hell last week, I've been quite unsympathetic to anyone who might seem like they're working themselves up to win 15 minutes of fame from the PC flash mob. But this bot is an awesome hack, and exactly the kind of thing people need to do to empower themselves in the face of quiescent low-level offensiveness. It fights the battle in the lighthearted realm of wits, and like all games of wit, whomever caves to forceful methods (say crying to management about too many bots) loses by default.
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olalonde 15y ago
I have noticed an interesting double standard on HN: while working in porn is perfectly fine, saying TWSS jokes is sexist because it objectivizes women as sexual objects.
- hythloday 15y ago
  There's a lot of disagreement as to whether porn is "anti-feminist". The school of thought that says it isn't stresses the importance of female agency (that it's up to the porn actors to decide where they work). I don't see any agency in appearing in a "that's what she said" joke, so I'm afraid I don't see the double standard.
  - rimantas 15y ago
    As if there is agreement that "sexist" jokes (or people telling them) are antifeminist.
    - JulianMorrison 15y ago
      Among feminists there is. Heck, there's science: "exposure to sexist humor can lead to toleration of hostile feelings and discrimination against women" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071106083038.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071106083038.ht... The only people trying to argue "lighten up" are anti-feminists.
      - EvilTerran 15y ago
        See, that link should be nearer the top of this thread. That's food for thought right there. On the other hand, "The only people trying to argue "lighten up" are anti-feminists" is a nasty false generalisation -- it ignores apath-feminists (damn, that doesn't work nearly as well as 'apatheists'); those who are thinking "can't we all just get along?", with absolutely no motive to stymie feminism; those who've never done the research, who think feminism's all well-and-good, but tell themselves they're too busy worrying about other things; exactly the sort of people who would find that article insightful, and who might be pushed toward feminism by it. I fear you risk scaring them off by lumping them in with 'anti-feminists' and its implications of misogyny, and may taint that link by association.
pyre 15y ago
Great post! A couple critiques though: > Since the IRC channels I am normally in use SSL, I > had to set up my own channel on a public IRC server > for testing. It took a while to get the settings > right, but finally I succeeded! This part was a little confusing because it wasn't mentioned until Step 3 that LogBot didn't have SSL support. > There have been complaints that we have too many bots > in the channel now. > There were several “Make them shut up!” responses. This part is a little confusing because up to this point of the post you've only mentioned the TWSS and TWSRS bots. It would be clearer had you mentioned that there were a number of bots in the channel. (Unless I missed mention of other bots, in which case disregard.) For example, in my work IRC channel there is a single bot that does everything vs. several single-purpose bots.
oinksoft 15y ago
Step 1: I copied the LogBot code into local files, and tried running it. And the code is pretty much that, with a few extra lines ... a copy and paste job. It really isn't difficult to write an IRC bot using the standard library ... here's my shit one that sits in ##javascript: https://github.com/pigdude/pigbot https://github.com/pigdude/pigbot Edit: I became more curious about what the author works on -- by the favicon, I thought she must be involved with the Debian project! Turns out "Dreamwidth Studios" thought that flipping the Debian logo was an original idea. Digging just a little deeper on the Dreamwidth site makes it seem that the author mostly works on documentation and things like that. So I guess it makes sense that the code is copypasta?
- 3pt14159 15y ago
  You probably found the wrong person. I know the author personally, she is a great hacker and worked for FreshBooks for years before moving to her current job.
  - oinksoft 15y ago
    Maybe I did! It seemed the posting account was a "Denise", and recent changelogs on the project website only attributed documentation changes to her. Her approach to "hacking" sure differs from mine ... from using "#!./tbenv/bin/python" (rather than "/usr/bin/env python" which will find the virtualenv link) making the code unusable for most people out of the box, to requiring a bunch of third-party libs to complete a simple task, to copy-pasta even preserving tutorial docstrings, you have to disconnect from the IRC server to reload the application logic ... it just seemed very sloppy to me.
    - dpritchett 15y ago
      This is all perfectly appropriate for a quick hack. She's not yet hanging her career on the polish displayed in her Python bot. Have you considered submitting a pull request? I'm sure it would be welcomed.
      - 15y ago
drhowarddrfine 15y ago
I'm tired of women wanting men to quit acting like men. If she doesn't like it, is she a woman acting like a woman? I don't want her to behave that way so maybe she should change HER behavior. Get along with others. Nobody's calling her names. Nobody's targeting her.
agentultra 15y ago
What a great idea. I find it's too easy to be ignorant of injustices when you see yourself as principled and everyone else as ignorant brutes. I've been guilty of this. It's the kind of thinking that leads you to conclude that TWS-like bots are just a bit of light-hearted humor. It's the kind of thinking that allows sexism to fly under your radar. You don't participate because you want to live in a world where sexism doesn't exist. It's a noble ideal but it is ignorant. Truth is that even what you don't say has an impact on the people around you. If other people make sexist jokes at the office and you don't say anything about it (especially if it actually does bother you) then you're encouraging the people making sexist jokes. I admire the author for taking a stand. And such a clever way to do it too.
Porter_423 15y ago
I've never really understood the TWSS joke, probably because I'm missing some cultural context. I really, really hope I'm not this kind of asshole about other things without realising.
leon_ 15y ago
> I would write my OWN bot, that responded to TWSS with a quotation from a notable woman. I'd write a bot that would answer with a TWSS-trigger and watch the IRC channel going up in flames :]
- dpritchett 15y ago
  You can actually use a copy of her own talkbackbot to do just that. Just wire up your own trigger like so: def contains_twsrs_response_quote(chat_line): return bool(re.search(r'~ [\w ]+$', chat_line)) Edit: This presumes the responses you're trying to detect match the form "Quote goes here ~ Author of Quote" seen in her quotes.txt.
- deleted 15y ago
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rmcrob 15y ago
Jessamyn finds some of the TTSS jokes to be funny and has even indulged in some herself. Therefore, I don't think TTSS is sexist, per se. Tired? Yes. Childish? Yes. Sexist? No.
stfu 15y ago
There were several “Make them shut up!” responses. May I introduce the gentlemen to the glorious /ignore twsrs command.
- sp332 15y ago
  gentlemen Also women. And small fuzzy creatures from Alpha Centauri.
jenius 15y ago
Not sure if anyone realizes this anymore, but 'that's what she said' is a shortening of "that's what your mother said" - a generic jokey insult (sleeping with someone's mom has been a way to show someone up since the old days). It's not really saying anything about women in general with the "she" - it's referring to a specific 'insult' that's been around for ages. I wouldn't consider 'that's what she said' to be a sexist comment at all, but if others still do that's ok. Just a little history : )
Prophasi 15y ago
I never took TWSS to be demeaning to women (i.e. sexist), rather that it's usually a generic boast about a guy's prowess. Would it make a woman more acutely feel in the minority through juxtaposition? Sure. And obviously jokes to do with sex can make ANYONE feel uncomfortable and are probably inappropriate at work, but it depends on where you work. Making the leap to sexism from that age-old schtick of a guy playing up his junk, though, is a stretch. It's more about the ego of the guy saying it than the hypothetical woman used as a foil. I wonder if gay guys make TWHS jokes.
Prophasi 15y ago
One potential reason the guys in the channel get irritated with it, apart from them being actually sexist and therefore uncomfortable/guilty, is that your starting assumption that they WERE sexist was wrong. To have a preachy bot post nominally inspirational quotes from women, with the ostensible goal of demonstrating with child-like simplicity that women are people too, would get on my nerves for two immediate reasons: 1) I get it, I get it! How many cliches do I have to scroll past before we reach mission accomplished? 2) Someone really thinks I'm stupid. It's propaganda, but worse than that, it's propaganda with an assumed audience of evildoers to thwart -- and I'm included. I get the frustration with the male-centric dev culture and I'd fight back on that for sure, but this kind of holier-than-thou brute force attack levels a possibly undeserved accusation at everyone forced to read it, and it also flouts some of the most basic aspects of psychology in its strategy.
- blahedo 15y ago
  > I get it, I get it! How many cliches do I have to scroll past before we reach mission accomplished? I don't know, you tell me? If you are objecting to the OP's bot but not to the original TWSS bot, it sounds like the mission hasn't been accomplished. > your starting assumption that they WERE sexist was wrong. You sure about that?
paulhauggis 15y ago
She has a huge problem with "that's what she said", but no problem with using the term “brogrammer culture”. If she was a co-worker and used that term, I would go to HR because it offends me. Why? to make a point about the ridiculousness of our society. You get the least bit offended and instead of just ignoring it, you need to make the person go away/get fired. It reminds me of Elementary school. When is this bullshit going to stop?
- wpietri 15y ago
  You realize that bro culture and brogramming are actual, existing things started by guys, yes? And you also realize that she intentionally didn't go to HR about the problem? And you realize that women have been oppressed in our culture by men for, oh, millennia?
  - agateform 15y ago
    I agree that a job post for brogrammer might not seem welcoming towards woman. >You realize that bro culture and brogramming are actual, existing things started by guys, yes? Please tell us your definition of brogramming and brogrammer. From watching the initial joke video on brogramers I understood that brogrammer is a prejudice term for male coder which likes to party, drink alcohol, flirting and is usually more interested in main stream culture. There is nothing wrong with any of those qualities but we still talk about brogrammers as bad people. Aren't we also sexist and prejudice? What would you say about an equivalent sisgrammer term for woman?
    - wpietri 15y ago
      I would say that you seem to have a poor understanding of pop culture in the US. Bro culture is a prexisting thing. See, e.g.: http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=246 http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&#3...
tjstankus 15y ago
Wow. I would argue that you have quite a bit more than "relatively few moments of 'brogrammer' culture" there. A TWSS bot? I can't imagine that ever being okay on any dev team I've ever worked on, including my present team which includes no women. Good on you for fighting back in a way which really speaks to those who needed to hear it most.
batterseapower 15y ago
"something is making them uncomfortable, and so they attack it on “rational” grounds" I don't think this is confined to just geek behaviour -- in my experience, it is typical human behaviour.
zachinglis 15y ago
I think this issue is obviously on a per-company basis. We have a light-hearted attitude towards TWSS jokes here in the office because the female members are as just as bad as any one of the males. We also do Thats What He Said. Jessamyn was obviously uncomfortable, and that's when it should have stopped. Without question. I don't think her gender was a deciding factor in that, more so sensibilities. I appreciate her pro-active stance too. Rather than complaining she tried to beat them at their own game, though I'm not sure it'd help her in the long run. I think it'd piss the rest off - but saying that, is there any way around it? They obviously have not given her the respect she asked for when she told them it was offending her.
- tomjen3 15y ago
  She definitely did the right thing by not complaining to management but a startup is not a suit company and therefore there are things that go on there that would not have been accepted in a suit company. There are plenty of employees who like their company that way and if she didn't she is not really suited for the company culture. She can (and should) seek employment elsewhere. She will be better of there. Finally she didn't beat them at their own game. Yes she wrote a bot, but it takes a bit more cleverness to match phrases that to simply reply to a string that is going to be the only thing that bot ever quotes. Too bad too, since she could have made her bot do something that would have been impressive, and perhaps convince others that the bot was sexist by calculating how often the joke was mad at the expense of a male ('it is small and hard to see') versus at the female. That bot would have been impressive and it would have been a much greater hack.
  - mahmud 15y ago
    What a pile of drivel. People have the right to work in non-hostile environment. If she found something offensive, her concerns SHOULD have been addressed. It's a loss for society if everyone who has ever been bullied at work had to quit their jobs. It costs the community tax revenues; it costs the employer productivity and a good worker; and it costs the employee their income. Nothing good comes out of harassing people at work. Descriminatory behaviour at work MUST be addressed, on the spot, by everyone. Don't mythologize startups as a "non suit environment where everything goes". Suit-firms don't have a monopoly on dignity and favorable work environments. Don't sell yourselves short in your eagerness to please and fit in.
tomjen3 15y ago
Man this proves that -women- python programmers have no sense of humor. Yes it is a lame joke. Really lame and yes it should probably have been turned of. But dammit that joke is not sexistic -- just because it involves naked women (and presumably the the guy) doesn't mean it is against women. The joke has been said plenty of times in response to 'it is very small and hard to find', 'it doesn't look like much yet', etc. Go be a feminist somewhere else.
politician 15y ago
The TWSS bot is an interesting application of machine learning. However, it was a mistake to install it on the company's IRC channel, and the Smith was justified in asking for an irrelevant bot which she found offensive to be removed. On the other hand, writing a bot which responds with feminist quotes is just as ridiculous and passive aggressive. The real answer here is for management to step in, exercise some authority, and remove both bots.
A_A 15y ago
Hats off to Jessamyn Smith. Great way to respond to sexist stuff.
geekchick77 15y ago
Update: The creators of the TWSS bot at work volunteered to take it down a few days after my original blog post went up. It is no longer in the channel. Many people seem to have missed that some of my coworkers didn't like TWSS, either, and many of them thought the TWSRS bot was great.
danellis 15y ago
"I took it for granted that everyone was familiar with the “That’s what she said,” joke, but a recent conversation with a consultant friend made me realize some industries don’t feature it on a daily basis." Jessamyn Smith seems to be trying to tarnish a whole industry based on her personal experience. I work in the same industry as her, and it is not a joke I hear very often at all. What she also seems to be missing is that the response of "that's what he said" is also used. The choice of which to use is dependent on the phrase being highlighted.
peterwwillis 15y ago
I was about to get really angry that management hadn't done anything when she complained, but she doesn't specify whether she talked to her manager, a superior or HR at all. If all she did was ask the guys who ran the bot, this is not enough to resolve the issue. On top of that, adding a new bot to antagonize the guys who wouldn't relent only creates a more hostile environment without working out the issues at hand. Bad for any kind of grievance at work. If she did talk to management and HR and still nobody did anything, that place fucking sucks and she should keep fighting or leave. Only the biggest assholes would ignore a person who was offended by an official work bot that makes sexual commentary, about men or women. That shit needs to stay outside the workplace.
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gcb 15y ago
but at the same time, she consider a victory when the bot affects another demographic.
muyuu 15y ago
What's sexist about the "that's what she said" jokes? Maybe it's because these jokes never caught on where I live (UK), but I don't understand why would anyone be offended by that. Any clues? I'd ask my American coworker but she's not in the office.
- prodigal_erik 15y ago
  It highlights accidental double entendres: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=thats%20what%20she%20said http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=thats%20what%... I think it's an objection to making the topic of sex more prominent at work, rather than anything specifically negative about women. The original bot might have been funny for about one day, and I can imagine getting annoyed at the preachiness of the countermeasure.
- wpietri 15y ago
  As mentioned in other recent discussions here, one component of workplace sexism is treating women as instantiations of a stereotype present only to fulfill male desires. Rather than, say, as competent professionals. The classic example is having the woman get coffee. Others recently discussed include having the woman take notes or organize a potluck. Related is calling attention to a woman's body in a way that treats her as a sex object. The "that's what she said" joke could be seen as an example of that women-are-for-sexy-times error. Note that in The Office (the American version at least), the person who makes that joke is Michael, the clueless and offensive boss. That's not an accident.
jjcm 15y ago
Why not just patch the current bot to interject "that's what he said" as well?
georgieporgie 15y ago
There have been complaints about it spamming the channel I have to point out the obvious: the example quote was 34 words long, and presumably it's of unpredictable length and content. TWSS is four words, repeated, and easily filtered out mentally. I don't like TWSS, but I don't think it's fair to call others' reactions irrational.
thadeus_venture 15y ago
The fact that it's called the "talk back bot" automatically puts the author in the victim's chair. To think that a TWSS joke in a chat room not directed at you personally is offensive to you smells of deep irrational insecurity to me. A suspicion supported by the project name. I know women who wouldn't like that joke directed at them, and I don't direct it at them, and I know some who drop more twss jokes than I do. If you overhear someone on street say one though and your first reaction is to be offended to the point of writing a bot that spews quotes of famous women in the chat room, that seems pathological to me.
zbyszek 15y ago
This is tangential to the discussion, but as an obtuse non-American I'm glad to have the phrase in question explained to me (you wouldn't believe I have actually spent some time in the US). The UK equivalant is "as the actress said to the bishop", which combines a Cromwellian suspicion of the immorality of the theatre with the implication of the hypocrisy of the clergy. Is it any better, though? I'm sure the bot could be adjusted to come back with quotes from actresses.
- hythloday 15y ago
  I thought about this earlier today, and I think it is less sexist, because we no longer have the same stereotypes of actresses--it's not an invitation to lazy thinking.
charlieok 15y ago
“I pointed out that it’s trivially easy to have the bot not say anything: don’t say TWSS” That's the best part right there. Perfect tit-for-tat.
fatjokes 15y ago
Are TWSS jokes considered offensive now? If so I'm going to have to go to work with tape on my mouth because usually I just can't turn it off!
mkramlich 15y ago
I hereby move that all further article submissions focused on gender roles or "sexism" be banned from HN. They aren't intellectually interesting, they aren't productive, they tend to bring out the worst in terms of quality of discussion. Yes, I know some of you may disagree with me, but that does not make me evil or less enlightened than you are, so spare me the downvotes. For those of you that do agree with me, I recommend we all start flagging any such articles we do see. Since we're not allowed to downvote articles directly. Sound good? Let's act.
- wpietri 15y ago
  Wow. Disagreeing doesn't make you evil. Trying form a cabal to keep people from talking about and fixing an inequity that favors you sure does, though.
- rayiner 15y ago
  On the contrary, I've found the discussion on this thread to be extremely insightful.
- natep 15y ago
  We shouldn't stop following the guidelines just because you don't like the subject. This was clearly a social hack.
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useflyer 15y ago
A great response to a lousy situation. Mad props to her.
127 15y ago
So she essentially wrote a spam bot and justified it by saying that it's to combat sexism. Sweet.
droithomme 15y ago
She handled it very well. TWSS is funny only as a reference to its use in The Office, where it is said by a clueless sexist imbecile of a boss, always inappropriately. So its use was a sort of in joke between Office fans, and said not seriously. Using it as an actual funny joke, without intent as an Office fan in-joke (which is only funny a few times) is kind of clueless, and it is worthwhile to question it. Using it as an invitation to create an automated system that educates people to women's contributions to the arts and sciences is pure genius. Those at her place of employment who do not respect her solution are simply clueless and are deserving only of pity.
Drbble 15y ago
Sex is not sexist. TWSS is immature, and inappropriate in a group workplace, as is (my personal favorite) replying "YOUR MOM is X" when some X is mentioned. This bot is a cool hack and a nice way to win a battle on your opponent's terms. But TWSS isn't sexist.
sliverstorm 15y ago
There have been complaints that we have too many bots in the channel now. There have been complaints about it spamming the channel. There were several “Make them shut up!” responses. These are not reactions I have seen the other bots elicit, certainly not with such intensity. I'm curious whether there were bots responding to bots before. I personally find bots that regularly talk to other bots several degrees more annoying than plain bots.
gcb 15y ago
now, every time someone says "i will write a bot for that", i can amend "that's what she said" and proceed to the high five. And I didn't even like that joke before.
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505 points by dpritchett 15y ago

sex·ist [sek-sist] adjective 1. pertaining to, involving, or fostering sexism: a sexist remark; sexist advertising. sex·ism [sek-siz-uhm] noun 1. attitudes or behavior based on traditional stereotypes of sexual roles. 2. discrimination or devaluation based on a person's sex, as in restricted job opportunities; especially, such discrimination directed against women. I don't think the bot is exactly sexist. It's stupid, immature, and beats a dead horse, but actually sexist? While you should probably have a talk with the supervisor, not the general office, about this issue, maybe polluting the chat space with yet another stupid bot isn't the greatest idea? "Annoying" your coworkers into compliance isn't a good strategy, as it will grow resentment towards you and mask the real problem.

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unalone 15y ago
> 1. attitudes or behavior based on traditional stereotypes of sexual roles [...] devaluation based on a person's sex Here're the categories you could argue the bot falls into. The point of the "that's what she said" is to point out when phrases sound like something a woman might have said in bed or during some sort of sexual activity, furthering the already staggeringly vast perception our society has of women as primarily sexual objects. It's not what I'd call "grossly" sexist, but if somebody's objecting to it, she absolutely has a reason to feel uncomfortable about it. I disagree that the supervisor is necessary here. First off, that's making an appeal to authority and such appeals can be pretty irritating; second off, that's trying to solve the problem privately rather than in public space. By making this bot, Jessamyn says that her voice is as valuable as anybody else's voice. If somebody else wants to make a bot that makes crude sex jokes, she can make a bot that quotes notable women. And rather than making a bot that's irritating or one-note, it sounds like she made a bot that has a variety of colorful responses, to the point where one of her coworkers told her how much he appreciates it. Remember that sexism is about the reinforcement of cultural stereotypes, rather than being just about gross bigotry or discrimination. What's sexist is that people assume, in a workplace, that jokes about what women say in bed are acceptable. Those jokes make me a little uncomfortable even in a casual environment; it's kind of gross that people are okay with them at work. The sexism isn't one person consciously thinking "Oh man let's women the butt of jokes about sex!", it's that women-as-sex-objects is such a pervasive trope that we don't notice it unless somebody like Jessamyn points it out to us.
- tomp 15y ago
  > jokes about what women say in bed are acceptable If they're actually funny (most of the "That's what she said" jokes are not), why not? I can also totally imagine the following situation: Coworker: Did I come too early? Another coworker: That's what he said! Come to think of it, men are also under a lot of pressure in bed, so such jokes are just as in/appropriate as jokes about women in bed.
  - unalone 15y ago
    > If they're actually funny (most of the "That's what she said" jokes are not), why not? It depends on the audience. I think that sexist jokes are in as poor taste in a workplace as racist jokes would be. I'd also be against black jokes or Mexican jokes or Jewish jokes or jokes about Catholic pedophilia. Even if the extent of the joke was something like "I'm not going to the pub with you all, I'm such a Jew", I'd feel uncomfortable; if somebody wrote a bot that was designed to repeatedly make those jokes, I'd be upset. As Jessamyn says: > Now, I admit to having made this joke myself, at times. Once in a while, I even find it funny. What I don’t find funny is a bot we have in our general IRC channel at work, that has some basic AI devoted to determining when to interject TWSS into the conversation. And the joke is not that women say funny things while in bed. The joke is, "Oh, that thing you just said reminded me of fucking a woman." It's funny in high school when everybody's a virgin, and I've found that as my college friends have gotten themselves laid, it's ceased to become very amusing. The same way I haven't heard a black or Mexican joke in a few years that managed to rise above its racism to become even remotely amusing. Jokes about people having sex can be funny; "that's what she said" will always be a joke the brunt of which is the faceless fuck-object woman. Maybe that's fine in moderation, especially if "that's what he said" jokes are mixed in, but I think we all agree that if somebody's feeling upset by the jokes, it's not a huge loss to our comedic palettes to have to find another source of humor, right? We're all capable of rising beyond that?
    - rimantas 15y ago
      And in the end there will be no jokes. > I think we all agree that if somebody's feeling upset by > the jokes, it's not a huge loss to our comedic palettes > to have to find another source of humor, right? No. I strongly strongly disagree. I don't want a thermal dead of society, I don't want knee-jerk reaction to anything I say because I just mentioned some forbidden word, no matter with what intention and what context. We are slipping toward the concept thought-crime, and I surely don't want what. Neither do I want to live in the world where all must pretend, that genders don't exist. You ar offended but what I say? To quote Stephen Fry: "So fucking what?". To think that it is impossible to tell and be entertained by non-PC jokes is as moronic as thinking that you cannot write (or enjoy) crime fiction without being a murderer.
efsavage 15y ago
IANA sociologist, but I'd consider TWSS (or the much rarer TWHS) one of those "undertones" types of biases like always asking the female co-worker to take notes or the male co-worker to help you move your desk. Anyways, I think her response was a good one. I would hope that simply asking whoever was running it to shut it down would be sufficient, but I think writing a bot was a good way of making your point in a group of developers as a respectful way of saying "I'm part of this group and I have something to say".
- tomjen3 15y ago
  Undertones? You mean the classical 'you are guilty and won't admit it'? As for when it should be shot down -- when a majority don't think it is funny. It is called company culture and unless you believe females should have special protection because they are an inferior sex they will properly have to get used to it. And the reason we ask a male to move the desk is because they tend to be physically stronger (with exceptions, I couldn't lift myself of the floor). I haven't asked any females to write notes since grade school.
  - efsavage 15y ago
    "company culture" is what she was trying to fix. If someone has a TWSS bot, I'm guessing there are some more serious bias issues, perhaps like the author said, that people aren't even aware of. "because they tend to be" is the type of excuse/rationalization that starts these problems. Of course men, on average, are stronger, but 99% of the time a woman can help you just as well. Making a decision based on someone's gender is sexism whether there is scientific data or not. We're in a field that has the potential to be the most meritocratic field out there, and we do a disservice to everyone involved not to embrace that.
    - tomjen3 15y ago
      You say fix, I say she tried to destroy it. They had fun, what right does she have to ruin it?
      - 15y ago
Harkins 15y ago
Look up programming jargon in whichever dictionary you found this definition. Something with a common meaning, like 'domain', 'array', or 'tree'. How well does it apply? Words like "sexist", "sexism", "homophobia", and "racism" are jargon for the folks studying gender, psychology, sociology. The common usage, the descriptive usage you see in dictionaries, is not appropriate and will only confuse things.

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oskarth 15y ago
I guess what you're saying is that this bot and the TWSS function should be disabled. Right?
- hythloday 15y ago
  I think if there's a Highlander rule then it's obvious that the less sophisticated bot ought to be culled. Presumably the grandparent post advocates that--especially as it's the only one that a member of the team has spoken out as having a problem with.
AkThhhpppt 15y ago
So the one "funny" bot should be wasted on TWSS, which one of the team actively objects to? (And it is a waste: markov chain bots can provide moments of startling poetry. ",)
- deleted 15y ago
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  - unalone 15y ago
    She SPECIFICALLY says that she's frustrated with how gendered the TWSS joke is: > I took it for granted that everyone was familiar with the “That’s what she said,” joke, but a recent conversation with a consultant friend made me realize some industries don’t feature it on a daily basis. For those who haven’t heard it a million times, the idea is that when somebody says something that could remotely be turned into a sexual joke, e.g. “I’m trying to solve this problem but it’s really hard!” you say “That’s what SHE said,” in a lascivious tone. And describing why she's satisfied with the bot's reaction: > In any case, I feel that I have succeeded in constructively disrupting an aspect of my work culture that made me uncomfortable. "Uncomfortable". Not "annoying". You know that "ignoring what women say and explaining that they're really bothered by something else" is one of the most common responses that feminists have to deal with, right? And that it's disrespectful to suggest that there's a more "rational" explanation for why a woman's upset than that they feel uncomfortable about a sexist environment? I mean, she says close to the beginning: > I asked a number of times to have that bot function turned off, but got the usual combination of being ignored, being told it’s funny, and being told I should lighten up. Emphasis mine. We just had a big ole conversation about that phrase like a week ago. Remember it?

coob 15y ago

I'm struggling to come up with an answer to this question: Has technology ever solved issues with social etiquette?

mutation 15y ago
Obviously, it has - for the male participants of IRC chat which found bot "jokes" funny. They have a social bondage now. That's how I saw it.
perlgeek 15y ago
Sure, in much the same ways as such problems are solved in real life: if you can't get somebody to behave, he's thrown out. That's /kickban on IRC, for example.
unalone 15y ago
Technology, in and of itself, is not a solution. But technology enables us to communicate to broader audiences and in more sophisticated ways, and that can enable individual people to find solutions that didn't previously exist.
wisty 15y ago
Halfway through the article, I couldn't help thinking - "If she can't convince her co-workers to turn off a bot she finds offensive, the place is caustic". This isn't really solving anything. The only difference between this and a well-deserved "fuck you" to the co-workers is it's done in a polite and clever way. It's a smart move, because it makes her look good and anyone who complains look like a sore loser (reversing the situation). It's annoying that the situation exists, but at least she's handling it well.
Harkins 15y ago
Yes. An example was posted here in the last few weeks - there's a startup whose name I can't remember that plans meetups of three men and three women. They had a serious problem with cancellations, which was solved by requiring the canceller to record a voicemail to be played to the other people. Cancellations fell off 80% or more. (I'm sorry, I can't remember more specifics - anyone have the link?)

vasco 15y ago

I think this would never happen where I live. Honestly this seems like its the same thing as you guys in the US not being able to say merry christmas because it might offend someone. What's so wrong with being offended anyway? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHMoDt3nSHs&t=3m30s http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fHMoDt3nSHs&t=3m30s I think people over there just take everything to seriously.

rmc 15y ago
Basically you're saying "Lighten up". There is a problem of gender representation in tech. We need to do something about it.
- alextgordon 15y ago
  Basically he's saying that definitions of sexism vary across cultures, and that where he lives (and where I live), this would not be considered sexist. "Two countries separated by a common language"
FeministHacker 15y ago
http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/mar/21/lighten-up/ http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/mar/21/lighten-up/ Lighten up, I didn't mean it, I didn't intend to upset you, so it must be ok!
- hessenwolf 15y ago
  (article forwarded to well-dressed coder-girlfriend)
- vasco 15y ago
  What I said is that where I live its not like this. Girls wouldn't make a fuss about this, and would probably make more sexual jokes then guys actually. So yes maybe in comparison you guys need to lighten up as a society or something.
  - Jem 15y ago

DanBC 15y ago

A very nice write up. I say this politely[1] but I thought this was odd: > Now I could run it from one of the development servers at work. Really? Is that kind of thing common? [1] because I don't want to add to the air of general negativity around HN.

viraptor 15y ago
Depends on what you mean by a developoment server. You probably don't want to run something like that on a build server, or test environment. On the other hand some places have a general-purpose hosts too. For example at one of my previous places we had a host which basically was just an optional ssh hop (if you needed to run some batch process, it had much lower connection latency) / ad-hoc reporting node / whatever you needed at that point. I don't see anything wrong with running chat bots at that host - at least for internal services. It's a bit different if you wanted to connect to public IRC servers, but it's not obvious from the post whether it was internal-only service or not.

mcherm 15y ago

What a BRILLIANT social hack. Jessamyn Smith, I am thoroughly impressed.

wpietri 15y ago
Absolutely. It's also a fantastic resume piece. Two of the things I look for in a resume are a) contributions to an open source project, and b) ability to take a problem and solve it from beginning to end. As a bonus, she's clearly aware of workplace culture and committed to making it better. All good signs, especially for the startup context.

coldarchon 15y ago

I like the page with the quotes about women history. I got 2 ads to lose weight; 2 skype ads of a girl calling me; 1 to date African, 1 to date Indonesian and 1 to date Colombian women. Is that sexist too?

hythloday 15y ago

"It has been fascinating to watch the ongoing reactions. There have been complaints that we have too many bots in the channel now. There have been complaints about it spamming the channel. There were several “Make them shut up!” responses. These are not reactions I have seen the other bots elicit, certainly not with such intensity. One person even complained about the name being too long, though to his credit he realized right after he said that that several other people in the channel also have very long handles. To me, all of this seems like typical geek behaviour: something is making them uncomfortable, and so they attack it on “rational” grounds. Most likely, they aren’t even aware of the gut reaction fueling their logic." This is excellently picked out: most of the disagreements over the term "sexism" hinge around this point. Stuff that doesn't bother you (that another poster here describes as being "tuned-out"), as a man, because your gender plays no part in your job, is experienced differently by your female colleagues, because their gender does. Their experience of seeing "that's what SHE said" (and the death by a thousand cuts of other gender policing) is just as distracting and annoying as the "that's what she really said" bot. If your reaction to this post is "the first one seems harmless but the second is really overstepping the line", please take a few minutes to consider how you would feel if everyone's reaction to that (and everything else you objected to) was "just lighten up".

oskarth 15y ago
What I find the most fascinating is that she did everything exactly right and people still feel like she did something wrong. She didn't go to her supervisor and she didn't turn it into a drama. Instead she fought the problem in its own arena by making a IRC-bot to combat the problem, and not only that: the IRC-bot is only selectively used in the exact situation that is seen as problematic and it does so by writing enlightening quotes! In mathematical terms: the function has the exact same range and its value is consistently higher in the absolute majority of all cases. I honestly can't think of a better way to tackle this particular problem, and yet there's all this criticism to her approach. Really? What more do you want her to do? Her quote at the end of the article rings even more true after reading some comments here: To me, all of this seems like typical geek behaviour: something is making them uncomfortable, and so they attack it on “rational” grounds. Most likely, they aren’t even aware of the gut reaction fueling their logic. Interestingly, the intensity of emotion seemed to carry over into subsequent discussions, including one about women in the Python community.

CompiledCode 15y ago

So how can I write a bot to fight the sexism in Microsoft's TV ads? You know the ones... where the husband is the bumbling idiot and the wife is the smart capable one who shuts down his plea to play golf on Sundays. I would love to set that bot loose on all TV shows and ads. So often, a flipped situation would cause outrage of being sexist, whereas if the man is put down, it's "funny." It really bothers me, especially with the "mancession" still going on (outside of IT) and widespread anti-male laws (in family court and other places).

rmc 15y ago
Yes, ads (etc.) that portray people as bad based on their gender are wrong. However men are still in an advantageous position. widespread anti-male laws They are small in number compared to the widespread anti-female laws and customs.
- CompiledCode 15y ago
  Can you give an example? In almost all states, if the wife gets pregnant by another man, the man is still on the hook for child support for the next 18+ years... even if she divorces him and marries her lover. I can't think of an equivalent anti-female law with such devastating long-term impact on the woman. I know this message might be off tangent for the HN board. But if we're discussing anti-female sexist culture and try to erase every incident of women being treated unfairly even in the slightest way, I think it should be allowed to point out that in today's culture, men are also often treated extremely unfairly... and you don't see scores of women jumping to their defense (like the men did in the "Lighten up" thread).
  - raganwald 15y ago
    Your argument says "since (unfair child support laws) then (men treated unfairly) thus not(sexist anti-women culture)" The problem with your argument is that you are not espousing a widely held belief about child support laws being "unfair to men." Thus, a discussion about your argument is likely to devolve into long exchanges about children's rights and anecdotes about ridiculous edge case judgments on both sides. Which is fine, but I think it would be two steps removed from what you're trying to establish, namely that the unfair sexism is somehow balanced. If you're going to construct an argument of the form A -> B -> C, I suggest you pick an "A" that is beyond dispute so we can focus on the validity of A -> B and B -> C.

pencilcode 15y ago

:D :D it's a wonder that white guys never make jokes about white guys in general.

tomp 15y ago
We make jokes about black guys having long dicks... Which is, in a way, a joke about white guys (precisely because you never say a joke about white guys having long dicks).

losvedir 15y ago

Huh, it had never occurred to me that some women would be offended by that joke. In my mind, it was sometimes somewhat amusing because it turns the statement your friend just made into one about a penis. I was going to say that now I'll be on the lookout for statement about clams, things that are wet, and so on, in order to bust out a TWHS, but it seems to me that it could be construed as just as offensive to women, because again it reinforces the idea, apparently, that men just think of women as sexual objects. Lose-lose. Personally, I don't think either TWSS/TWHS is "sexist", but they're certainly not appropriate for a work environment.

mindslight 15y ago
"omg i'm offended ur heteronormative comment its fucking disgusting take down now" Seriously, after seeing Basho Troll raise such hell last week, I've been quite unsympathetic to anyone who might seem like they're working themselves up to win 15 minutes of fame from the PC flash mob. But this bot is an awesome hack, and exactly the kind of thing people need to do to empower themselves in the face of quiescent low-level offensiveness. It fights the battle in the lighthearted realm of wits, and like all games of wit, whomever caves to forceful methods (say crying to management about too many bots) loses by default.
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olalonde 15y ago

I have noticed an interesting double standard on HN: while working in porn is perfectly fine, saying TWSS jokes is sexist because it objectivizes women as sexual objects.

hythloday 15y ago
There's a lot of disagreement as to whether porn is "anti-feminist". The school of thought that says it isn't stresses the importance of female agency (that it's up to the porn actors to decide where they work). I don't see any agency in appearing in a "that's what she said" joke, so I'm afraid I don't see the double standard.
- rimantas 15y ago
  As if there is agreement that "sexist" jokes (or people telling them) are antifeminist.
  - JulianMorrison 15y ago
    Among feminists there is. Heck, there's science: "exposure to sexist humor can lead to toleration of hostile feelings and discrimination against women" http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071106083038.htm http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/11/071106083038.ht... The only people trying to argue "lighten up" are anti-feminists.
    - EvilTerran 15y ago
      See, that link should be nearer the top of this thread. That's food for thought right there. On the other hand, "The only people trying to argue "lighten up" are anti-feminists" is a nasty false generalisation -- it ignores apath-feminists (damn, that doesn't work nearly as well as 'apatheists'); those who are thinking "can't we all just get along?", with absolutely no motive to stymie feminism; those who've never done the research, who think feminism's all well-and-good, but tell themselves they're too busy worrying about other things; exactly the sort of people who would find that article insightful, and who might be pushed toward feminism by it. I fear you risk scaring them off by lumping them in with 'anti-feminists' and its implications of misogyny, and may taint that link by association.

pyre 15y ago

Great post! A couple critiques though: > Since the IRC channels I am normally in use SSL, I > had to set up my own channel on a public IRC server > for testing. It took a while to get the settings > right, but finally I succeeded! This part was a little confusing because it wasn't mentioned until Step 3 that LogBot didn't have SSL support. > There have been complaints that we have too many bots > in the channel now. > There were several “Make them shut up!” responses. This part is a little confusing because up to this point of the post you've only mentioned the TWSS and TWSRS bots. It would be clearer had you mentioned that there were a number of bots in the channel. (Unless I missed mention of other bots, in which case disregard.) For example, in my work IRC channel there is a single bot that does everything vs. several single-purpose bots.

oinksoft 15y ago

Step 1: I copied the LogBot code into local files, and tried running it. And the code is pretty much that, with a few extra lines ... a copy and paste job. It really isn't difficult to write an IRC bot using the standard library ... here's my shit one that sits in ##javascript: https://github.com/pigdude/pigbot https://github.com/pigdude/pigbot Edit: I became more curious about what the author works on -- by the favicon, I thought she must be involved with the Debian project! Turns out "Dreamwidth Studios" thought that flipping the Debian logo was an original idea. Digging just a little deeper on the Dreamwidth site makes it seem that the author mostly works on documentation and things like that. So I guess it makes sense that the code is copypasta?

3pt14159 15y ago
You probably found the wrong person. I know the author personally, she is a great hacker and worked for FreshBooks for years before moving to her current job.
- oinksoft 15y ago
  Maybe I did! It seemed the posting account was a "Denise", and recent changelogs on the project website only attributed documentation changes to her. Her approach to "hacking" sure differs from mine ... from using "#!./tbenv/bin/python" (rather than "/usr/bin/env python" which will find the virtualenv link) making the code unusable for most people out of the box, to requiring a bunch of third-party libs to complete a simple task, to copy-pasta even preserving tutorial docstrings, you have to disconnect from the IRC server to reload the application logic ... it just seemed very sloppy to me.
  - dpritchett 15y ago
    This is all perfectly appropriate for a quick hack. She's not yet hanging her career on the polish displayed in her Python bot. Have you considered submitting a pull request? I'm sure it would be welcomed.
    - 15y ago

drhowarddrfine 15y ago

I'm tired of women wanting men to quit acting like men. If she doesn't like it, is she a woman acting like a woman? I don't want her to behave that way so maybe she should change HER behavior. Get along with others. Nobody's calling her names. Nobody's targeting her.

agentultra 15y ago

What a great idea. I find it's too easy to be ignorant of injustices when you see yourself as principled and everyone else as ignorant brutes. I've been guilty of this. It's the kind of thinking that leads you to conclude that TWS-like bots are just a bit of light-hearted humor. It's the kind of thinking that allows sexism to fly under your radar. You don't participate because you want to live in a world where sexism doesn't exist. It's a noble ideal but it is ignorant. Truth is that even what you don't say has an impact on the people around you. If other people make sexist jokes at the office and you don't say anything about it (especially if it actually does bother you) then you're encouraging the people making sexist jokes. I admire the author for taking a stand. And such a clever way to do it too.

Porter_423 15y ago

I've never really understood the TWSS joke, probably because I'm missing some cultural context. I really, really hope I'm not this kind of asshole about other things without realising.

leon_ 15y ago

> I would write my OWN bot, that responded to TWSS with a quotation from a notable woman. I'd write a bot that would answer with a TWSS-trigger and watch the IRC channel going up in flames :]

dpritchett 15y ago
You can actually use a copy of her own talkbackbot to do just that. Just wire up your own trigger like so: def contains_twsrs_response_quote(chat_line): return bool(re.search(r'~ [\w ]+$', chat_line)) Edit: This presumes the responses you're trying to detect match the form "Quote goes here ~ Author of Quote" seen in her quotes.txt.
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rmcrob 15y ago

Jessamyn finds some of the TTSS jokes to be funny and has even indulged in some herself. Therefore, I don't think TTSS is sexist, per se. Tired? Yes. Childish? Yes. Sexist? No.

stfu 15y ago

There were several “Make them shut up!” responses. May I introduce the gentlemen to the glorious /ignore twsrs command.

sp332 15y ago
gentlemen Also women. And small fuzzy creatures from Alpha Centauri.

jenius 15y ago

Not sure if anyone realizes this anymore, but 'that's what she said' is a shortening of "that's what your mother said" - a generic jokey insult (sleeping with someone's mom has been a way to show someone up since the old days). It's not really saying anything about women in general with the "she" - it's referring to a specific 'insult' that's been around for ages. I wouldn't consider 'that's what she said' to be a sexist comment at all, but if others still do that's ok. Just a little history : )

Prophasi 15y ago

I never took TWSS to be demeaning to women (i.e. sexist), rather that it's usually a generic boast about a guy's prowess. Would it make a woman more acutely feel in the minority through juxtaposition? Sure. And obviously jokes to do with sex can make ANYONE feel uncomfortable and are probably inappropriate at work, but it depends on where you work. Making the leap to sexism from that age-old schtick of a guy playing up his junk, though, is a stretch. It's more about the ego of the guy saying it than the hypothetical woman used as a foil. I wonder if gay guys make TWHS jokes.

Prophasi 15y ago

One potential reason the guys in the channel get irritated with it, apart from them being actually sexist and therefore uncomfortable/guilty, is that your starting assumption that they WERE sexist was wrong. To have a preachy bot post nominally inspirational quotes from women, with the ostensible goal of demonstrating with child-like simplicity that women are people too, would get on my nerves for two immediate reasons: 1) I get it, I get it! How many cliches do I have to scroll past before we reach mission accomplished? 2) Someone really thinks I'm stupid. It's propaganda, but worse than that, it's propaganda with an assumed audience of evildoers to thwart -- and I'm included. I get the frustration with the male-centric dev culture and I'd fight back on that for sure, but this kind of holier-than-thou brute force attack levels a possibly undeserved accusation at everyone forced to read it, and it also flouts some of the most basic aspects of psychology in its strategy.

blahedo 15y ago
> I get it, I get it! How many cliches do I have to scroll past before we reach mission accomplished? I don't know, you tell me? If you are objecting to the OP's bot but not to the original TWSS bot, it sounds like the mission hasn't been accomplished. > your starting assumption that they WERE sexist was wrong. You sure about that?

paulhauggis 15y ago

She has a huge problem with "that's what she said", but no problem with using the term “brogrammer culture”. If she was a co-worker and used that term, I would go to HR because it offends me. Why? to make a point about the ridiculousness of our society. You get the least bit offended and instead of just ignoring it, you need to make the person go away/get fired. It reminds me of Elementary school. When is this bullshit going to stop?

wpietri 15y ago
You realize that bro culture and brogramming are actual, existing things started by guys, yes? And you also realize that she intentionally didn't go to HR about the problem? And you realize that women have been oppressed in our culture by men for, oh, millennia?
- agateform 15y ago
  I agree that a job post for brogrammer might not seem welcoming towards woman. >You realize that bro culture and brogramming are actual, existing things started by guys, yes? Please tell us your definition of brogramming and brogrammer. From watching the initial joke video on brogramers I understood that brogrammer is a prejudice term for male coder which likes to party, drink alcohol, flirting and is usually more interested in main stream culture. There is nothing wrong with any of those qualities but we still talk about brogrammers as bad people. Aren't we also sexist and prejudice? What would you say about an equivalent sisgrammer term for woman?
  - wpietri 15y ago
    I would say that you seem to have a poor understanding of pop culture in the US. Bro culture is a prexisting thing. See, e.g.: http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&key=246 http://www.mediaed.org/cgi-bin/commerce.cgi?preadd=action&#3...

tjstankus 15y ago

Wow. I would argue that you have quite a bit more than "relatively few moments of 'brogrammer' culture" there. A TWSS bot? I can't imagine that ever being okay on any dev team I've ever worked on, including my present team which includes no women. Good on you for fighting back in a way which really speaks to those who needed to hear it most.

batterseapower 15y ago

"something is making them uncomfortable, and so they attack it on “rational” grounds" I don't think this is confined to just geek behaviour -- in my experience, it is typical human behaviour.

zachinglis 15y ago

I think this issue is obviously on a per-company basis. We have a light-hearted attitude towards TWSS jokes here in the office because the female members are as just as bad as any one of the males. We also do Thats What He Said. Jessamyn was obviously uncomfortable, and that's when it should have stopped. Without question. I don't think her gender was a deciding factor in that, more so sensibilities. I appreciate her pro-active stance too. Rather than complaining she tried to beat them at their own game, though I'm not sure it'd help her in the long run. I think it'd piss the rest off - but saying that, is there any way around it? They obviously have not given her the respect she asked for when she told them it was offending her.

tomjen3 15y ago
She definitely did the right thing by not complaining to management but a startup is not a suit company and therefore there are things that go on there that would not have been accepted in a suit company. There are plenty of employees who like their company that way and if she didn't she is not really suited for the company culture. She can (and should) seek employment elsewhere. She will be better of there. Finally she didn't beat them at their own game. Yes she wrote a bot, but it takes a bit more cleverness to match phrases that to simply reply to a string that is going to be the only thing that bot ever quotes. Too bad too, since she could have made her bot do something that would have been impressive, and perhaps convince others that the bot was sexist by calculating how often the joke was mad at the expense of a male ('it is small and hard to see') versus at the female. That bot would have been impressive and it would have been a much greater hack.
- mahmud 15y ago
  What a pile of drivel. People have the right to work in non-hostile environment. If she found something offensive, her concerns SHOULD have been addressed. It's a loss for society if everyone who has ever been bullied at work had to quit their jobs. It costs the community tax revenues; it costs the employer productivity and a good worker; and it costs the employee their income. Nothing good comes out of harassing people at work. Descriminatory behaviour at work MUST be addressed, on the spot, by everyone. Don't mythologize startups as a "non suit environment where everything goes". Suit-firms don't have a monopoly on dignity and favorable work environments. Don't sell yourselves short in your eagerness to please and fit in.

tomjen3 15y ago

Man this proves that -women- python programmers have no sense of humor. Yes it is a lame joke. Really lame and yes it should probably have been turned of. But dammit that joke is not sexistic -- just because it involves naked women (and presumably the the guy) doesn't mean it is against women. The joke has been said plenty of times in response to 'it is very small and hard to find', 'it doesn't look like much yet', etc. Go be a feminist somewhere else.

politician 15y ago

The TWSS bot is an interesting application of machine learning. However, it was a mistake to install it on the company's IRC channel, and the Smith was justified in asking for an irrelevant bot which she found offensive to be removed. On the other hand, writing a bot which responds with feminist quotes is just as ridiculous and passive aggressive. The real answer here is for management to step in, exercise some authority, and remove both bots.

A_A 15y ago

Hats off to Jessamyn Smith. Great way to respond to sexist stuff.

geekchick77 15y ago

Update: The creators of the TWSS bot at work volunteered to take it down a few days after my original blog post went up. It is no longer in the channel. Many people seem to have missed that some of my coworkers didn't like TWSS, either, and many of them thought the TWSRS bot was great.

danellis 15y ago

"I took it for granted that everyone was familiar with the “That’s what she said,” joke, but a recent conversation with a consultant friend made me realize some industries don’t feature it on a daily basis." Jessamyn Smith seems to be trying to tarnish a whole industry based on her personal experience. I work in the same industry as her, and it is not a joke I hear very often at all. What she also seems to be missing is that the response of "that's what he said" is also used. The choice of which to use is dependent on the phrase being highlighted.

peterwwillis 15y ago

I was about to get really angry that management hadn't done anything when she complained, but she doesn't specify whether she talked to her manager, a superior or HR at all. If all she did was ask the guys who ran the bot, this is not enough to resolve the issue. On top of that, adding a new bot to antagonize the guys who wouldn't relent only creates a more hostile environment without working out the issues at hand. Bad for any kind of grievance at work. If she did talk to management and HR and still nobody did anything, that place fucking sucks and she should keep fighting or leave. Only the biggest assholes would ignore a person who was offended by an official work bot that makes sexual commentary, about men or women. That shit needs to stay outside the workplace.

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gcb 15y ago

but at the same time, she consider a victory when the bot affects another demographic.

muyuu 15y ago

What's sexist about the "that's what she said" jokes? Maybe it's because these jokes never caught on where I live (UK), but I don't understand why would anyone be offended by that. Any clues? I'd ask my American coworker but she's not in the office.

prodigal_erik 15y ago
It highlights accidental double entendres: http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=thats%20what%20she%20said http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=thats%20what%... I think it's an objection to making the topic of sex more prominent at work, rather than anything specifically negative about women. The original bot might have been funny for about one day, and I can imagine getting annoyed at the preachiness of the countermeasure.
wpietri 15y ago
As mentioned in other recent discussions here, one component of workplace sexism is treating women as instantiations of a stereotype present only to fulfill male desires. Rather than, say, as competent professionals. The classic example is having the woman get coffee. Others recently discussed include having the woman take notes or organize a potluck. Related is calling attention to a woman's body in a way that treats her as a sex object. The "that's what she said" joke could be seen as an example of that women-are-for-sexy-times error. Note that in The Office (the American version at least), the person who makes that joke is Michael, the clueless and offensive boss. That's not an accident.

jjcm 15y ago

Why not just patch the current bot to interject "that's what he said" as well?

georgieporgie 15y ago

There have been complaints about it spamming the channel I have to point out the obvious: the example quote was 34 words long, and presumably it's of unpredictable length and content. TWSS is four words, repeated, and easily filtered out mentally. I don't like TWSS, but I don't think it's fair to call others' reactions irrational.

thadeus_venture 15y ago

The fact that it's called the "talk back bot" automatically puts the author in the victim's chair. To think that a TWSS joke in a chat room not directed at you personally is offensive to you smells of deep irrational insecurity to me. A suspicion supported by the project name. I know women who wouldn't like that joke directed at them, and I don't direct it at them, and I know some who drop more twss jokes than I do. If you overhear someone on street say one though and your first reaction is to be offended to the point of writing a bot that spews quotes of famous women in the chat room, that seems pathological to me.

zbyszek 15y ago

This is tangential to the discussion, but as an obtuse non-American I'm glad to have the phrase in question explained to me (you wouldn't believe I have actually spent some time in the US). The UK equivalant is "as the actress said to the bishop", which combines a Cromwellian suspicion of the immorality of the theatre with the implication of the hypocrisy of the clergy. Is it any better, though? I'm sure the bot could be adjusted to come back with quotes from actresses.

hythloday 15y ago
I thought about this earlier today, and I think it is less sexist, because we no longer have the same stereotypes of actresses--it's not an invitation to lazy thinking.

charlieok 15y ago

“I pointed out that it’s trivially easy to have the bot not say anything: don’t say TWSS” That's the best part right there. Perfect tit-for-tat.

fatjokes 15y ago

Are TWSS jokes considered offensive now? If so I'm going to have to go to work with tape on my mouth because usually I just can't turn it off!

mkramlich 15y ago

I hereby move that all further article submissions focused on gender roles or "sexism" be banned from HN. They aren't intellectually interesting, they aren't productive, they tend to bring out the worst in terms of quality of discussion. Yes, I know some of you may disagree with me, but that does not make me evil or less enlightened than you are, so spare me the downvotes. For those of you that do agree with me, I recommend we all start flagging any such articles we do see. Since we're not allowed to downvote articles directly. Sound good? Let's act.

wpietri 15y ago
Wow. Disagreeing doesn't make you evil. Trying form a cabal to keep people from talking about and fixing an inequity that favors you sure does, though.
rayiner 15y ago
On the contrary, I've found the discussion on this thread to be extremely insightful.
natep 15y ago
We shouldn't stop following the guidelines just because you don't like the subject. This was clearly a social hack.
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useflyer 15y ago

A great response to a lousy situation. Mad props to her.

127 15y ago

So she essentially wrote a spam bot and justified it by saying that it's to combat sexism. Sweet.

droithomme 15y ago

She handled it very well. TWSS is funny only as a reference to its use in The Office, where it is said by a clueless sexist imbecile of a boss, always inappropriately. So its use was a sort of in joke between Office fans, and said not seriously. Using it as an actual funny joke, without intent as an Office fan in-joke (which is only funny a few times) is kind of clueless, and it is worthwhile to question it. Using it as an invitation to create an automated system that educates people to women's contributions to the arts and sciences is pure genius. Those at her place of employment who do not respect her solution are simply clueless and are deserving only of pity.

Drbble 15y ago

Sex is not sexist. TWSS is immature, and inappropriate in a group workplace, as is (my personal favorite) replying "YOUR MOM is X" when some X is mentioned. This bot is a cool hack and a nice way to win a battle on your opponent's terms. But TWSS isn't sexist.

sliverstorm 15y ago

There have been complaints that we have too many bots in the channel now. There have been complaints about it spamming the channel. There were several “Make them shut up!” responses. These are not reactions I have seen the other bots elicit, certainly not with such intensity. I'm curious whether there were bots responding to bots before. I personally find bots that regularly talk to other bots several degrees more annoying than plain bots.

gcb 15y ago

now, every time someone says "i will write a bot for that", i can amend "that's what she said" and proceed to the high five. And I didn't even like that joke before.

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