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"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 ab

"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.
- hythloday 15y ago
  Yeah, unfortunately, if there is a gender stereotype to these kinds of conversations, it's that invariably there will be a response from a man saying "you did it wrong", regardless of the particular action the woman took. c.f. "She should have talked to her supervisor" here to "she should have made a witty come-back to the guy directly" to the guy with a low-cut sense of appropriateness.
  - pyre 15y ago
    Is the difference between those solutions really just because she's a woman? I'd like to believe that they are just differences of opinion on the best way to deal with issues. Some people prefer to appeal to authority, while others feel it's better handled by routing around authority and 'handling it yourself.' Depending on what she did, she would be criticized by one group or the other. On the other hand, since this is an issue of sexism, I think that people put on their 'this is a serious discussion' hats which tend to make them more hypercritical than at other times.
    - AkThhhpppt 15y ago
      We'd all like to think that. Unfortunately, there's a pretty widespread tendency to tell people who bring -ism issues to attention that they're Doing It Wrong, You Should Do It This Way That Wouldn't Upset Me Instead. So while they might be reacting with their opinion of a better solution, there's a lot of form of using that exact form of argument to attempt to silence. Also, she was the one in the situation; perhaps she's got good reasons to do it this way, rather than whatever way is being suggested? And isn't it kinda arrogant to think you (the group you, not pyre) know better?
      - yummyfajitas 15y ago
        This sort of bikeshedding shows up all over HN and on all sorts of non-ism issues. For example, infinite scrolling vs pagination: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3759101 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3759101
notbitter 15y ago
This is human nature, not specific to geeks or men. If you call somebody on their bullshit you have to expect some blowback, even if you do it as tactfully as Jessamyn did in this case. What's sad is that one of the guys on the team could have fixed this with much less awkwardness, but apparently none of them stepped up.
jobu 15y ago
"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"." The first one does seem harmless to me, perhaps a bit annoying. The second one though.. is TOTALLY AWESOME.
bmelton 15y ago
Is it okay if we object to her behavior based on the "Two rights don't make a wrong" rule, or is that somehow also hypocritical.
- JulianMorrison 15y ago
  It's not okay because it (1) assumes a false equivalence - the actual counts are more like "a wrong versus a hundred million wrongs" (2) it puts a burden on the victim of sexism to be perfect, while putting no such burden on the sexists (3) it's a variation on victim-blaming.
  - deleted 15y ago
    [deleted]
  - bmelton 15y ago
    I knew when I posted that comment that it would get downvoted, but I honestly don't know when or how "They're bugging me so I'm going to 'take the high road' and bug them back" became acceptable behavior. If it was something my daughter had done, she'd be in trouble for it, but because she has somehow appealed to the vigilante in everyone, while trumpeting the almighty PC agenda of sexism, she's apparently justified in being just as much an asshole as her tormentors. The irony of course being that of course people would treat her as having done "the right thing", because she was "the victim". Just the same as people root for the guy who hacked Sony, or for whatever random "little guy" stands up for whatever negatively though of "big baddie." It still doesn't make it right, and we're supposed to have learned that lesson by the second grade.
    - wpietri 15y ago
      So if I understand your argument correctly, you're saying that a bot posting feminist quotes is as offensive to guys as a bot posting sexist jokes is to women?
      - bmelton 15y ago
        In particular, what I'm saying is that "fighting fire with fire" is a far cry from "taking the high road." In another comment, oskarth posits that she "did everything right" by not going to her supervisor, so as to avoid "turning it into drama". How does this not turn it into drama? Isn't that what supervisors are for? I understand the inclination to avoid being the snitch, but all this does is set her up for equally serious rebukement by management if and when it does get escalated there, and prevents her from having a leg to stand on. Whether or not it is as offensive as the other, I think we all know that it was intended to be at least as annoying. What she's effectively done is the digital equivalent to "I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you." while holding her finger one inch from the face of her co-workers. That's fine and dandy, but she doesn't get to respond like a two year old and also expect me to think highly of her actions.
arjunnarayan 15y ago
She really should write a bot that replies with passive aggressive "lighten up", or "its only a joke" to any instance of complaints.
hosh 15y ago
"... 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." <--- The most important words in the whole essay. Twenty years after writing Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson, the Arbiter of Badassness, wrote in Reamde: "It was then that she cut him off in midsentence and said that it was over. She said it with a certainty and a conviction in her voice and her face that left him fascinated and awed. Because guys, at least of his age, didn't have the confidence to make major decisions from their gut like that. They had to build a superstructure of rational thought on top of it. But not Zula. She didn't have to decide. She just had to pass on the news." I've noticed this in myself and other guys: even if our guts or our hearts tell us we did wrong, we tend to rationalize and defend our actions instead of simply apologizing.
- groby_b 15y ago
  At least partially that might well be because society perpetuates the stereotype that gut-reactions are a female thing, guys are really bad at listening to their heart, and in general emotionally stunted. At some point, it becomes internalized - and you see men simply ignoring emotions and feelings that they're well aware of. Sure, it's dressed in sugar coating ("guys are rational!"), but it's still affecting behavior. That's the thing with gender stereotypes - they actually hurt both sides, just in different ways.
  - hosh 15y ago
    Ignoring your gut or your heart is a behavior that can be unlearned through various means, including meditation. Being mindful of your emotions has nothing to do with society and stereotypes, and everything to do with your own habits of the mind and experiencing reality as is.
    - groby_b 15y ago
      And society and prevalent stereotypes shape your habits and how you experience reality in the first place. Nobody is saying you can never get rid of this behavior - just that we're all being indoctrinated from a very early age, and that it takes lots of work to break that conditioning.
rayiner 15y ago
> 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 This is an insightful observation. Guys often like to think that they're much better at taking sexist jokes directed their way. "I have no problem when a commercial makes fun of a guy's inability to do housework!" they say. It's easy to "lighten up" about things that don't actually affect your life. I wonder how guys would react to women constantly making jokes about legitimately sore subjects for men. The stereotypes of men as rapists and child molesters, for example. Men don't seem to "lighten up" so easily when those subjects are brought up.
- Cushman 15y ago
  > The stereotypes of men as rapists and child molesters Whoa. It's obvious when you say it, but I've never even thought about it before-- I can't think of a single joke about that. Lots of jokes about rapists and child molesters, of course, but none about "men" who are implicitly the above. Can you think of any examples at all? Coming up with a few examples that actually hit (white, cis) men where it hurts could be a nice silver bullet against the "it's just a joke" dodge.
  - rayiner 15y ago
    From my group of friends: I have a friend who (jokingly) characterizes her boyfriend's amorous advances when he's drunk as "rape-y." When my male friend mentioned Emma Watson was hot in the most recent Harry Potter movies (when she was 18+), our female friends ribbed him about being attracted to children. When an awkward guy tries too hard to hit on a girl, we might joke that his advances are "kinda rape-y." My female friend absolutely hates being tickled. When threatened with tickles, she might say "if you tickle me I'll cry rape god dammit!" My girlfriend is a bit clumsy and also leaves kitchen cabinets open. She once gave herself a black eye with one, and told all our friends I was physically abusing her.
    - Cushman 15y ago
      Interesting, but not really what I'm talking about-- I don't mean mocking a person in particular, but the sort of jokes one might tell about men which are funny because all men are child molesters (but it's not offensive because of course I know all men aren't child molesters).
temphn 15y ago
In modern American society there are no intermediates for male and female roles. Either women are told to act like a man (become programmers, fight like Uma Thurman and Keira Knightley!) or they are told to become a caricature of a female (a pornstar, a hiphop video girl, a superficial Sex and the City-style consumer). Men similarly are told to either act effeminately (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, getting in touch with your emotions) or they are shown brutish caricatures of men (rap stars and UFC fighters). Ben Horowitz, great as he is in many ways, is the apotheosis of this phenomenon. Punctilious in his text about using the "she" pronoun, he nevertheless quotes rappers like the Geto Boys at the beginning of every essay. Now the Geto Boys, or Dr Dre, or Snoop Dogg, or Fifty Cent...that's misogyny. But they are allowed to make millions and never ever forced to apologize. Indeed, I will guarantee that many of the women complaining about about the sexism in computer science have listened to hiphop, attended concerts, and danced to it at parties without blinking an eye. By any measure Snoop Dogg and Jay Z are more misogynistic than a lowly programmer. Yet the powerful endorse them (recall the New York Times' ad campaign with Jay Z, "Mingle with Moguls") while complaining about the far weaker tea that is sexism in IT. Something is going on here and it's not based upon rational prioritization of targets, going after the loudest and most powerful purveyors of misogyny. It's quite the opposite: going after the weakest.
- MSexton 15y ago
  > Something is going on here and it's not based upon rational prioritization of targets, going after the loudest and most powerful purveyors of misogyny. It's quite the opposite: going after the weakest. It seems rational to me. I don't know Jessamyn Smith, but I personally don't listen to rap, I don't meet rap stars, and none of my friends like rap. I don't hear rap. Co-workers? An IRC bot on a channel she's logged on to every work day? A rational response would be to target the things that are affecting you, constantly. On a larger, societal scale, sure, stopping to misogyny in rap would help more. And it contributes to a culture where it's okay to create an TWSS bot. But it wouldn't help that situation in the short term.

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.

hythloday 15y ago
Yeah, unfortunately, if there is a gender stereotype to these kinds of conversations, it's that invariably there will be a response from a man saying "you did it wrong", regardless of the particular action the woman took. c.f. "She should have talked to her supervisor" here to "she should have made a witty come-back to the guy directly" to the guy with a low-cut sense of appropriateness.
- pyre 15y ago
  Is the difference between those solutions really just because she's a woman? I'd like to believe that they are just differences of opinion on the best way to deal with issues. Some people prefer to appeal to authority, while others feel it's better handled by routing around authority and 'handling it yourself.' Depending on what she did, she would be criticized by one group or the other. On the other hand, since this is an issue of sexism, I think that people put on their 'this is a serious discussion' hats which tend to make them more hypercritical than at other times.
  - AkThhhpppt 15y ago
    We'd all like to think that. Unfortunately, there's a pretty widespread tendency to tell people who bring -ism issues to attention that they're Doing It Wrong, You Should Do It This Way That Wouldn't Upset Me Instead. So while they might be reacting with their opinion of a better solution, there's a lot of form of using that exact form of argument to attempt to silence. Also, she was the one in the situation; perhaps she's got good reasons to do it this way, rather than whatever way is being suggested? And isn't it kinda arrogant to think you (the group you, not pyre) know better?
    - yummyfajitas 15y ago
      This sort of bikeshedding shows up all over HN and on all sorts of non-ism issues. For example, infinite scrolling vs pagination: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3759101 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3759101

notbitter 15y ago

This is human nature, not specific to geeks or men. If you call somebody on their bullshit you have to expect some blowback, even if you do it as tactfully as Jessamyn did in this case. What's sad is that one of the guys on the team could have fixed this with much less awkwardness, but apparently none of them stepped up.

jobu 15y ago

"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"." The first one does seem harmless to me, perhaps a bit annoying. The second one though.. is TOTALLY AWESOME.

bmelton 15y ago

Is it okay if we object to her behavior based on the "Two rights don't make a wrong" rule, or is that somehow also hypocritical.

JulianMorrison 15y ago
It's not okay because it (1) assumes a false equivalence - the actual counts are more like "a wrong versus a hundred million wrongs" (2) it puts a burden on the victim of sexism to be perfect, while putting no such burden on the sexists (3) it's a variation on victim-blaming.
- deleted 15y ago
  [deleted]
- bmelton 15y ago
  I knew when I posted that comment that it would get downvoted, but I honestly don't know when or how "They're bugging me so I'm going to 'take the high road' and bug them back" became acceptable behavior. If it was something my daughter had done, she'd be in trouble for it, but because she has somehow appealed to the vigilante in everyone, while trumpeting the almighty PC agenda of sexism, she's apparently justified in being just as much an asshole as her tormentors. The irony of course being that of course people would treat her as having done "the right thing", because she was "the victim". Just the same as people root for the guy who hacked Sony, or for whatever random "little guy" stands up for whatever negatively though of "big baddie." It still doesn't make it right, and we're supposed to have learned that lesson by the second grade.
  - wpietri 15y ago
    So if I understand your argument correctly, you're saying that a bot posting feminist quotes is as offensive to guys as a bot posting sexist jokes is to women?
    - bmelton 15y ago
      In particular, what I'm saying is that "fighting fire with fire" is a far cry from "taking the high road." In another comment, oskarth posits that she "did everything right" by not going to her supervisor, so as to avoid "turning it into drama". How does this not turn it into drama? Isn't that what supervisors are for? I understand the inclination to avoid being the snitch, but all this does is set her up for equally serious rebukement by management if and when it does get escalated there, and prevents her from having a leg to stand on. Whether or not it is as offensive as the other, I think we all know that it was intended to be at least as annoying. What she's effectively done is the digital equivalent to "I'm not touching you. I'm not touching you." while holding her finger one inch from the face of her co-workers. That's fine and dandy, but she doesn't get to respond like a two year old and also expect me to think highly of her actions.

arjunnarayan 15y ago

She really should write a bot that replies with passive aggressive "lighten up", or "its only a joke" to any instance of complaints.

hosh 15y ago

"... 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." <--- The most important words in the whole essay. Twenty years after writing Snow Crash, Neal Stephenson, the Arbiter of Badassness, wrote in Reamde: "It was then that she cut him off in midsentence and said that it was over. She said it with a certainty and a conviction in her voice and her face that left him fascinated and awed. Because guys, at least of his age, didn't have the confidence to make major decisions from their gut like that. They had to build a superstructure of rational thought on top of it. But not Zula. She didn't have to decide. She just had to pass on the news." I've noticed this in myself and other guys: even if our guts or our hearts tell us we did wrong, we tend to rationalize and defend our actions instead of simply apologizing.

groby_b 15y ago
At least partially that might well be because society perpetuates the stereotype that gut-reactions are a female thing, guys are really bad at listening to their heart, and in general emotionally stunted. At some point, it becomes internalized - and you see men simply ignoring emotions and feelings that they're well aware of. Sure, it's dressed in sugar coating ("guys are rational!"), but it's still affecting behavior. That's the thing with gender stereotypes - they actually hurt both sides, just in different ways.
- hosh 15y ago
  Ignoring your gut or your heart is a behavior that can be unlearned through various means, including meditation. Being mindful of your emotions has nothing to do with society and stereotypes, and everything to do with your own habits of the mind and experiencing reality as is.
  - groby_b 15y ago
    And society and prevalent stereotypes shape your habits and how you experience reality in the first place. Nobody is saying you can never get rid of this behavior - just that we're all being indoctrinated from a very early age, and that it takes lots of work to break that conditioning.

rayiner 15y ago

> 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 This is an insightful observation. Guys often like to think that they're much better at taking sexist jokes directed their way. "I have no problem when a commercial makes fun of a guy's inability to do housework!" they say. It's easy to "lighten up" about things that don't actually affect your life. I wonder how guys would react to women constantly making jokes about legitimately sore subjects for men. The stereotypes of men as rapists and child molesters, for example. Men don't seem to "lighten up" so easily when those subjects are brought up.

Cushman 15y ago
> The stereotypes of men as rapists and child molesters Whoa. It's obvious when you say it, but I've never even thought about it before-- I can't think of a single joke about that. Lots of jokes about rapists and child molesters, of course, but none about "men" who are implicitly the above. Can you think of any examples at all? Coming up with a few examples that actually hit (white, cis) men where it hurts could be a nice silver bullet against the "it's just a joke" dodge.
- rayiner 15y ago
  From my group of friends: I have a friend who (jokingly) characterizes her boyfriend's amorous advances when he's drunk as "rape-y." When my male friend mentioned Emma Watson was hot in the most recent Harry Potter movies (when she was 18+), our female friends ribbed him about being attracted to children. When an awkward guy tries too hard to hit on a girl, we might joke that his advances are "kinda rape-y." My female friend absolutely hates being tickled. When threatened with tickles, she might say "if you tickle me I'll cry rape god dammit!" My girlfriend is a bit clumsy and also leaves kitchen cabinets open. She once gave herself a black eye with one, and told all our friends I was physically abusing her.
  - Cushman 15y ago
    Interesting, but not really what I'm talking about-- I don't mean mocking a person in particular, but the sort of jokes one might tell about men which are funny because all men are child molesters (but it's not offensive because of course I know all men aren't child molesters).

temphn 15y ago

In modern American society there are no intermediates for male and female roles. Either women are told to act like a man (become programmers, fight like Uma Thurman and Keira Knightley!) or they are told to become a caricature of a female (a pornstar, a hiphop video girl, a superficial Sex and the City-style consumer). Men similarly are told to either act effeminately (Queer Eye for the Straight Guy, getting in touch with your emotions) or they are shown brutish caricatures of men (rap stars and UFC fighters). Ben Horowitz, great as he is in many ways, is the apotheosis of this phenomenon. Punctilious in his text about using the "she" pronoun, he nevertheless quotes rappers like the Geto Boys at the beginning of every essay. Now the Geto Boys, or Dr Dre, or Snoop Dogg, or Fifty Cent...that's misogyny. But they are allowed to make millions and never ever forced to apologize. Indeed, I will guarantee that many of the women complaining about about the sexism in computer science have listened to hiphop, attended concerts, and danced to it at parties without blinking an eye. By any measure Snoop Dogg and Jay Z are more misogynistic than a lowly programmer. Yet the powerful endorse them (recall the New York Times' ad campaign with Jay Z, "Mingle with Moguls") while complaining about the far weaker tea that is sexism in IT. Something is going on here and it's not based upon rational prioritization of targets, going after the loudest and most powerful purveyors of misogyny. It's quite the opposite: going after the weakest.

MSexton 15y ago
> Something is going on here and it's not based upon rational prioritization of targets, going after the loudest and most powerful purveyors of misogyny. It's quite the opposite: going after the weakest. It seems rational to me. I don't know Jessamyn Smith, but I personally don't listen to rap, I don't meet rap stars, and none of my friends like rap. I don't hear rap. Co-workers? An IRC bot on a channel she's logged on to every work day? A rational response would be to target the things that are affecting you, constantly. On a larger, societal scale, sure, stopping to misogyny in rap would help more. And it contributes to a culture where it's okay to create an TWSS bot. But it wouldn't help that situation in the short term.