7 ms·

You know this makes me sick. Time and time again, articles pop up here on HN talking about some organization trying to promote and encourage women in technolog

by jmj42 13y ago

You know this makes me sick. Time and time again, articles pop up here on HN talking about some organization trying to promote and encourage women in technology and the comments explode with privileged boys whining about about how "it's not fair" You know what's not fair? A Teacher telling a 12 year old girl that she needs a backup plan because girls getting an engineering degree, well, that's hard. Getting one from MIT, girls just don't do that. With the very next breath telling the boy standing next to the girl that she (the teacher) knows he can get into MIT if he works hard. I'm just sick of it. I'm sick of my little girl coming home crying because some idiot crushed her dream of an engineering degree from MIT because girls don't do that. I'm sick of the privileged idiots here, complaining that women are getting some kind of advantage because they get a free github account. I'm sick of cluelessness. The barriers for women in the workplace are difficult enough, it's worse in tech. The sooner we accept that, and accept that some organizations really are try to make a difference, the better off we'll be. How many times have we read stories about women who are alienated by their peers because their interests align with something that isn't "girlie." Please! I've fought hard to teach my girls that society's barriers are there to be knocked down, that they shouldn't get discouraged and that they can do what ever they want. 18 years later, I'm proud that my oldest has ignored the criticism, the "you can't do that, it's a man's job" BS and is on her way to the Coast Guard where she will train as a rescue swimmer (there's only 7 women rescue swimmers now). I'm proud that my youngest stood up to that teacher and told her: well, perhaps MIT isn't the place for her. After all, MIT engineers ask UIUC engineers for help of the real difficult problems, though MIT will make a fine backup plan. My point is, boys, get over it. I'm sorry you didn't get something for free. Oh wait, you did. You got to be male, a much bigger advantage than a free private github repository. Edit: Spelling/grammer

cosmez 13y ago
That last paragraph is exactly the reason i hate this sexist talks, it doesn't matter if its the boys or girls that are complaining.. I don't know if that's the case in the place you are living right now but, if you think that being a boy or a girl its an advantage then you are part of that problem.. Boys will always be boys, ignore them and move on.
- eridius 13y ago
  If you can't recognize that men have a vast amount of privilege compared to women, then I don't really know what to say. Last year a man named Geordie Tait posted an article called "To My Someday Daughter"[1]. It's quite long, but definitely worth reading. The context is gaming, but the central thesis is sexism. One quote from the article that really opened my eyes to how radically different men and women view the world comes from section 7 of the article. It's a quote by Gavin de Becker, and it says "Men and women live in different worlds. At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them." And according to my girlfriend, this is not even the slightest bit exaggerated. [1]: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/22786_To_My_Someday_Daughter.html http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/22786_To_My_Someday_...
  - cosmez 13y ago
    Gender problems depends a lot on where are you living. That's not the case where i live in, why? because we do not care about such things, treat woman and man the same way. unlike the old american racism, in modern countries there are no laws that discriminate girls.. why should we teach our daughters to fight for something that's not a problem? Education is all we need, why should they hide their code? they should be proud of it
    - eridius 13y ago
      Where do you live? I have an extremely hard time believing that there is no gender inequality where you live. Far more likely is simply that you're blind to the inequality, having grown up immersed in male privilege.
      - cosmez 13y ago
        Mexico, it looks like you're taking this too personal, keep calm and happy coding :)
      - deleted 13y ago
        [deleted]
dwild 13y ago
How will a private repository will change anything? We are on the internet, most of the time we have no idea which genre you are. Any women will get the same treatment as a men. I understand the issue in "real life" and it must be really awful to have to live that. However the internet should be considered safe for them and for me this action just give them a reason to doubt that they are accepted here too. Giving them the opportunity to hide their code doesn't solve any issue, it just create more issue. We could easily take any argument agaisn't code folding or commit rebase in version control and they would fit perfectly here. You can't solve anything by hiding it. EDIT: Do you think that by removing every girl in engineering classrooms and giving them a private teacher that would help too? It's the same on the internet. Show them that they can be accepted, not that they should be separated.
sneak 13y ago
Please don't conflate people being ignorant of their privilege with legitimate criticism of The Ada Initiative. The Ada Initiative is a destructive and notorious concern-troll organization that is reviled by many feminists of both genders. They hurt all real initiatives for resolving inequality and bias in technology. Supporting them is destructive.
- marquis 13y ago
  Can you back this statement up please? I'm interested to hear where these comments originate.
  - sneak 13y ago
    http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/03/01/stigmatizing-censoring-talk-of-sexuality-in-technology/ http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/03/01/stigmatizin... ...is one good example of their concern-trolling. They dress up their own sex-negative bullshit in feminist clothing and use it to censor and attack people who do not engage in discrimination or sexism in any way whatsoever, based solely on their own personal agendas. It's repugnant to every single feminist (of any gender) that I've spoken to familiar with these events. As far as I can tell, it seems to me to be the outgrowth of various personality disorders possessed by Valerie Aurora, the founder of the Ada Initiative. It serves as a convenient venue for her to attack others under the guise of promoting equal rights. It appears that she only supports equal rights as long as you are presenting exclusively on topics that she approves of.
    - marquis 13y ago
      Thanks for responding. Fortunately women don't have a single Leader so while Valerie may be doing good work through certain initiatives she should find that other women who disagree with censorship will not support these actions.
  - gamache 13y ago
    You can get a flavor for the Ada Initiative ahead. This happened at last year's Defcon. http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/did-feminists-cancel-violet-blues-sex-talk http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/did-feminists-cancel-violet...
raganwald 13y ago
Lewis's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Lewis_(journalist)#Lewis.27s_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Lewis_(journalist)#Lewis....
- jmj42 13y ago
  Perhaps that's true (anecdotally, it does seem to be), yet, I've reached a point that I just can't stand by anymore. I've refrained from commenting on past articles that fall into the same line of reasoning we see here, but, I guess, I've reached a breaking point. We, as men, must stand up and start knocking the entitlement out of those who refuse to recognize their privilege.
marquis 13y ago
For your girl: http://goldieblox.com http://goldieblox.com. The backstory: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/16029337/goldieblox-the-engineering-toy-for-girls http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/16029337/goldieblox-the-...
- jmj42 13y ago
  Thanks, I didn't know such a thing existed. We're a little past it though. Her interests are in industrial robots, and she's been building with a Mindstorms kit for a couple of years now. We're likely to move on to Arduino based projects over the summer break.
  - marquis 13y ago
    Yes, it's for younger girls for sure. Arduino is really going to open her eyes, especially if you can gather data and show how statistics can be used for training and informing computers to help us. If she's interested in programming I think Ruby has the nicest introduction (I'm partial to Python as you get access to a lot of sciency libraries) but I've run through this with 9-12 year olds successfully: http://tryruby.org http://tryruby.org
anoncow 13y ago
You will agree when I say that being a male or a female is not really an advantage or disadvantage. And that either gender should be allowed to pursue whatever they like. If the teacher, society and everyone else in the world says to your little one that she cannot do it, you say to her she can. Because she can and your gender doesn't matter. And when you start telling your daughter that she can, that is one less person in the "society" who says she can't or shouldn't. When you tell your daughter that there is nothing that a girl or a boy cannot do, your daughter will grow up to be one more impartial member of the society. And I think you will agree with me when I say that it is better to have a public repository, if you want to learn(unless ofcourse github wants female programmers to become closed source programmers). By handing out a freebie to the girls, you are telling the boys the exact same thing which your daughter's teacher told her. We don't want girls/boys to become programmers, we want them to become whatever they want to. Having promotional activities for females may send a wrong impresion about a particular field to boys - who are also as human and as impresionable as the girls are in school. How many boys do you think take up engineering, just because it is seen as a manly branch and the society expects them to? I would argue many and that is a massive disadvantage to the boys who want to pursue something else. We should aim at leveling the field instead of providing some people a helping hand at the cost of others. If helping girls take up CS is done by having girls-only CS colleges, free tuition for female CS students or free course material or as in this case free services based on gender, I will say stop. Because boys who are thinking of taking up CS will cry foul. What did your neighbour's son do to not deserve a free github private repo? Instead, try changing the society. Tell your sons and daughters they can do anything. Tell your students that gender means nothing. Tell the teachers at your daughters school to back off and complain about her to the school authorities. To be honest, I have no idea if that will work. But what I do believe is if you start handing out freebies to someone based on gender, it will poison the well for the boys, who will cry foul. It wasn't their fault they were born as boys. Equality - yes. Preferential treatment - no.
- jmj42 13y ago
  Actually, I don't agree with much of what you've said. Men do have advantages, socially, politically, and economically, that women do not have, and those advantages are far more prevalent in STEM fields than most others. These programs, directed at young women, act as a counter-balance (though a weak one) to the societal pressures that keep them out of technology in the first place. When men (of any age) cry foul, well, I just don't have any sympathy. Even with these programs, the scales still weigh heavily in our favor. Up to this point, I've not taken a stance on this particular program, but I will not. There's plenty of research that suggests that the impact of public ridicule on young women is different than the impact on young men. While the reasons for this aren't, necessarily, clear, the reaction is different. Allowing young women to develop their skills in a "safe" environment where criticism can be sought from trusted sources prior to making that work public has been shown to be beneficial. So, in the end, I do support the idea of making it easier for young women to to get private github accounts. As I also support "girls only" clubs that help develop their skills, and counter act the social pressures that push young women away from technology in the first place. These programs do exactly as you suggest, they attempt to level the playing field by giving women certain advantages and encouragement to balance the social, political, and economic advantages that men already have. Until such time as we actually have gender equality, these programs are necessary.
whiterabbit2 13y ago
It's exactly "the teacher" telling an adult woman that she needs a private repository because learning coding is hard, and she needs extra protection from having it open sourced. Women just can't go ahead and do open source, period, they need a backup plan. How exactly is it encouraging and fair to women? You completely missed the point that it wasn't about the free repos. On a top of it, it's Ada Initiative giving their own space on GitHub (upon you emailing them, sigh), not GitHub itself. I myself wouldn't sign up to them, they sound quite toxic and politicized... (for the reference, I'm a woman, a software developer).

by jmj42 13y ago

cosmez 13y ago

That last paragraph is exactly the reason i hate this sexist talks, it doesn't matter if its the boys or girls that are complaining.. I don't know if that's the case in the place you are living right now but, if you think that being a boy or a girl its an advantage then you are part of that problem.. Boys will always be boys, ignore them and move on.

eridius 13y ago
If you can't recognize that men have a vast amount of privilege compared to women, then I don't really know what to say. Last year a man named Geordie Tait posted an article called "To My Someday Daughter"[1]. It's quite long, but definitely worth reading. The context is gaming, but the central thesis is sexism. One quote from the article that really opened my eyes to how radically different men and women view the world comes from section 7 of the article. It's a quote by Gavin de Becker, and it says "Men and women live in different worlds. At core, men are afraid women will laugh at them, while at core, women are afraid men will kill them." And according to my girlfriend, this is not even the slightest bit exaggerated. [1]: http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/22786_To_My_Someday_Daughter.html http://www.starcitygames.com/magic/misc/22786_To_My_Someday_...
- cosmez 13y ago
  Gender problems depends a lot on where are you living. That's not the case where i live in, why? because we do not care about such things, treat woman and man the same way. unlike the old american racism, in modern countries there are no laws that discriminate girls.. why should we teach our daughters to fight for something that's not a problem? Education is all we need, why should they hide their code? they should be proud of it
  - eridius 13y ago
    Where do you live? I have an extremely hard time believing that there is no gender inequality where you live. Far more likely is simply that you're blind to the inequality, having grown up immersed in male privilege.
    - cosmez 13y ago
      Mexico, it looks like you're taking this too personal, keep calm and happy coding :)
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]

dwild 13y ago

How will a private repository will change anything? We are on the internet, most of the time we have no idea which genre you are. Any women will get the same treatment as a men. I understand the issue in "real life" and it must be really awful to have to live that. However the internet should be considered safe for them and for me this action just give them a reason to doubt that they are accepted here too. Giving them the opportunity to hide their code doesn't solve any issue, it just create more issue. We could easily take any argument agaisn't code folding or commit rebase in version control and they would fit perfectly here. You can't solve anything by hiding it. EDIT: Do you think that by removing every girl in engineering classrooms and giving them a private teacher that would help too? It's the same on the internet. Show them that they can be accepted, not that they should be separated.

sneak 13y ago

Please don't conflate people being ignorant of their privilege with legitimate criticism of The Ada Initiative. The Ada Initiative is a destructive and notorious concern-troll organization that is reviled by many feminists of both genders. They hurt all real initiatives for resolving inequality and bias in technology. Supporting them is destructive.

marquis 13y ago
Can you back this statement up please? I'm interested to hear where these comments originate.
- sneak 13y ago
  http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/03/01/stigmatizing-censoring-talk-of-sexuality-in-technology/ http://psychcentral.com/blog/archives/2013/03/01/stigmatizin... ...is one good example of their concern-trolling. They dress up their own sex-negative bullshit in feminist clothing and use it to censor and attack people who do not engage in discrimination or sexism in any way whatsoever, based solely on their own personal agendas. It's repugnant to every single feminist (of any gender) that I've spoken to familiar with these events. As far as I can tell, it seems to me to be the outgrowth of various personality disorders possessed by Valerie Aurora, the founder of the Ada Initiative. It serves as a convenient venue for her to attack others under the guise of promoting equal rights. It appears that she only supports equal rights as long as you are presenting exclusively on topics that she approves of.
  - marquis 13y ago
    Thanks for responding. Fortunately women don't have a single Leader so while Valerie may be doing good work through certain initiatives she should find that other women who disagree with censorship will not support these actions.
- gamache 13y ago
  You can get a flavor for the Ada Initiative ahead. This happened at last year's Defcon. http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/did-feminists-cancel-violet-blues-sex-talk http://motherboard.vice.com/blog/did-feminists-cancel-violet...

raganwald 13y ago

Lewis's Law: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Lewis_(journalist)#Lewis.27s_law http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Helen_Lewis_(journalist)#Lewis....

jmj42 13y ago
Perhaps that's true (anecdotally, it does seem to be), yet, I've reached a point that I just can't stand by anymore. I've refrained from commenting on past articles that fall into the same line of reasoning we see here, but, I guess, I've reached a breaking point. We, as men, must stand up and start knocking the entitlement out of those who refuse to recognize their privilege.

marquis 13y ago

For your girl: http://goldieblox.com http://goldieblox.com. The backstory: http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/16029337/goldieblox-the-engineering-toy-for-girls http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/16029337/goldieblox-the-...

jmj42 13y ago
Thanks, I didn't know such a thing existed. We're a little past it though. Her interests are in industrial robots, and she's been building with a Mindstorms kit for a couple of years now. We're likely to move on to Arduino based projects over the summer break.
- marquis 13y ago
  Yes, it's for younger girls for sure. Arduino is really going to open her eyes, especially if you can gather data and show how statistics can be used for training and informing computers to help us. If she's interested in programming I think Ruby has the nicest introduction (I'm partial to Python as you get access to a lot of sciency libraries) but I've run through this with 9-12 year olds successfully: http://tryruby.org http://tryruby.org

anoncow 13y ago

You will agree when I say that being a male or a female is not really an advantage or disadvantage. And that either gender should be allowed to pursue whatever they like. If the teacher, society and everyone else in the world says to your little one that she cannot do it, you say to her she can. Because she can and your gender doesn't matter. And when you start telling your daughter that she can, that is one less person in the "society" who says she can't or shouldn't. When you tell your daughter that there is nothing that a girl or a boy cannot do, your daughter will grow up to be one more impartial member of the society. And I think you will agree with me when I say that it is better to have a public repository, if you want to learn(unless ofcourse github wants female programmers to become closed source programmers). By handing out a freebie to the girls, you are telling the boys the exact same thing which your daughter's teacher told her. We don't want girls/boys to become programmers, we want them to become whatever they want to. Having promotional activities for females may send a wrong impresion about a particular field to boys - who are also as human and as impresionable as the girls are in school. How many boys do you think take up engineering, just because it is seen as a manly branch and the society expects them to? I would argue many and that is a massive disadvantage to the boys who want to pursue something else. We should aim at leveling the field instead of providing some people a helping hand at the cost of others. If helping girls take up CS is done by having girls-only CS colleges, free tuition for female CS students or free course material or as in this case free services based on gender, I will say stop. Because boys who are thinking of taking up CS will cry foul. What did your neighbour's son do to not deserve a free github private repo? Instead, try changing the society. Tell your sons and daughters they can do anything. Tell your students that gender means nothing. Tell the teachers at your daughters school to back off and complain about her to the school authorities. To be honest, I have no idea if that will work. But what I do believe is if you start handing out freebies to someone based on gender, it will poison the well for the boys, who will cry foul. It wasn't their fault they were born as boys. Equality - yes. Preferential treatment - no.

jmj42 13y ago
Actually, I don't agree with much of what you've said. Men do have advantages, socially, politically, and economically, that women do not have, and those advantages are far more prevalent in STEM fields than most others. These programs, directed at young women, act as a counter-balance (though a weak one) to the societal pressures that keep them out of technology in the first place. When men (of any age) cry foul, well, I just don't have any sympathy. Even with these programs, the scales still weigh heavily in our favor. Up to this point, I've not taken a stance on this particular program, but I will not. There's plenty of research that suggests that the impact of public ridicule on young women is different than the impact on young men. While the reasons for this aren't, necessarily, clear, the reaction is different. Allowing young women to develop their skills in a "safe" environment where criticism can be sought from trusted sources prior to making that work public has been shown to be beneficial. So, in the end, I do support the idea of making it easier for young women to to get private github accounts. As I also support "girls only" clubs that help develop their skills, and counter act the social pressures that push young women away from technology in the first place. These programs do exactly as you suggest, they attempt to level the playing field by giving women certain advantages and encouragement to balance the social, political, and economic advantages that men already have. Until such time as we actually have gender equality, these programs are necessary.

whiterabbit2 13y ago

It's exactly "the teacher" telling an adult woman that she needs a private repository because learning coding is hard, and she needs extra protection from having it open sourced. Women just can't go ahead and do open source, period, they need a backup plan. How exactly is it encouraging and fair to women? You completely missed the point that it wasn't about the free repos. On a top of it, it's Ada Initiative giving their own space on GitHub (upon you emailing them, sigh), not GitHub itself. I myself wouldn't sign up to them, they sound quite toxic and politicized... (for the reference, I'm a woman, a software developer).