10 ms·

At the (alarmingly high) risk of being completely misunderstood, I for one think the whole "sexism in technology" is an issue that isn't worth sparing time to t

by swombat 14y ago

At the (alarmingly high) risk of being completely misunderstood, I for one think the whole "sexism in technology" is an issue that isn't worth sparing time to think about. Some people are jerks. That's true of all contexts of life. Jerks should be shunned not because they are sexist, but because they are jerks. If a guy who's a jerk starts a company, he'll probably hire other guy-jerks, miss out on having some balance on his team, and have a crappy company no one wants to work with. If a non-jerk guy starts a company, he'll probably make efforts to create an environment that's as respectful and balanced as he is, and not hire jerks. Respect is important - I wouldn't hire someone who's consistently disrespectful, no matter their gender. I'd argue that the reason why there's a whole "women in technology" drama going on at all is because a lot of people (quite independent of them being male or female) in the tech scene are jerks. (this is also why this is an even bigger problem online, because as we all know, a large proportion of people follow the GIFT theory online and act like complete assholes, making statements that would get them ejected out of any social situation) Why are there so many jerks in technology? We could spend forever discussing that, but probably for the same reason that any successful industry attracts jerks, male or female. The problem isn't worth worrying about in a generic sense. I look at this as a "intelligent, civilised person vs jerk" problem, not a "male vs female" problem. That problem is as old as the world, and as someone who (I hope) is not a jerk, I don't deal with it using generalities, but targeting specific jerks if they can't be coached into being civilised. In other words, if you identify someone who's regularly being a jerk, deal with them. If you're in charge and you're creating an environment where people are being jerks, look in the mirror. Otherwise, don't waste time thinking about this "issue". Edit: Worth adding that this doesn't mean it isn't worth thinking about the issue of sexism in general - that is something where we still have to make a lot of progress, especially in some parts of the world - but that's not specific to technology at all.

shantanubala 14y ago
I think there are two problems: sexism and an imbalance of males and females in technology. They're not the same, though they're linked in some ways. Sexism is hard to address effectively, and attempting to confront it can sometimes make things worse. Proceed with caution. What is easier to address (but still difficult) is recruiting more women -- this can also make it easy to identify sexism, because if more women are present, sexism can be harder to hide. Although I disagree that ignoring an imbalance will make it go away, there is another reason why trying to have more women on your team is important: if 50% of the people consuming software are women, it's quite possible that a team of 90% men is missing out on opportunities. Though Pinterest is a good recent example that most men simply don't appreciate to the same degree as women, there may be some hidden market opportunities that are shrouded by the current gender ratios in technology.
- swombat 14y ago
  Worth clarifying: I'm not saying you should ignore the issue of balance, I'm just saying you should ignore the issue of "sexism in technology". Making efforts to hire a team with some male-female balance is just as worthwhile as making efforts to hire a team that's balanced long other criteria. No one wants to work for an all-male company, just as no one wants to work for an all-female company. There's not even really a need to look at the market opportunities side of things. Balance is just more comfortable for everyone. If you're creating a company and planning you're hiring, and you're not a jerk, you probably are worried about keeping some kind of balance.
  - shantanubala 14y ago
    Yup, I was agreeing with you -- I probably should've made it clearer. I just wanted to point out that people sometimes confuse "sexism" and "imbalance" -- a poor gender ratio doesn't imply sexism, and a good ratio doesn't get rid of sexism.
    - subsystem 14y ago
      "[...] and a good ratio doesn't get rid of sexism" I'm not so sure, I think diversity in general takes away a lot of lazy discriminatory behavior in the long run.
- claudius 14y ago
  And how do you plan on recruiting more women if the percentage of male students enrolling in STEM classes is still far above 50% (with a few exceptions, notably biology/chemistry)? Of course, you could hire all women graduating from such classes, but if you did that while continuing to hire only the top n% of males, you’d create an environment were women are, on average, less capable than men, which doesn’t sound all that great to me, either.
  - swombat 14y ago
    Most companies have roles other than just development... Even development teams have roles other than just developers. In large companies, there are testers, managers, business analysts, etc...
Peroni 14y ago
I've read a ton of blogs and articles on the issue and the one consistent trend I've noticed is that it's a significantly more noticeable problem in the US by comparison to the UK. I'm certainly not denying that sexism doesn't exist in the UK, it simply appears to be less of an issue here compared to our US friends.
- swombat 14y ago
  Perhaps that's to do with general trends in the country rather than anything to do with technology, then...
  - illuminate 14y ago
    Who blames technology? These are all entirely social factors at work.
mtrimpe 14y ago
You're right that it's not specific to technology at all. It's better to think of it as the subset of sexism which occurs in the technology industry. Before downplaying the significance of this it's probably good to keep in mind though that if you're a straight, white, western male, there's a good chance you underestimate the effects of being on the 'losing side' of any one of those axes. As for the article, I can imagine that being labeled this way can be annoying, but it's important to keep in mind that these events are there for the women that do have trouble with these issues and/or for when you do run into trouble. What many people often forget is that while these issues you hear about may not be present in your life at the moment, it's fairly easy for some new arrivals in your company to change the atmosphere into something hostile and hurtful to you. Just imagine how it feels when the suits start taking over and amp that up an order of magnitude or two. It's for those moments that having these groups is so important.
- precisioncoder 14y ago
  You didn't finish your sentence. You mean if you're a straight , white, western, non-geek, that enjoys only conventional hobbies and interests and holds down a conventional job etc etc etc. I would argue that geeks and punks and other "minorities" often have a very up close and personal look at violent discrimination. I've been hospitalized personally and have friends that have been as well despite belonging to the straight white western male demographic. I think one of the reasons that the tech world tends to react so harshly to criticism is a large portion of it's members are outcasts that have finally found a home. When a disenfranchised people find a place they belong they will react violently against any perceived threat to it. Yes many other minorities have it far worse. Yes there is still a great deal of privileged in comparison to the rest of the world. However there's always a sliding scale.
  - mtrimpe 14y ago
    No. I did finish my sentence. I excluded everything that is a choice. Being discriminated based on something that you can't change about yourself is substantially different from when it's based on something you can choose not to. P.S. I realize that orientation starts getting into gray territory, so let's exclude it for the sake of this argument. P.P.S. Although tangential, the remainder of your comment actually explores an interesting theme..
tomp 14y ago
> Jerks should be shunned Now, I might not understand what specifically you mean by "jerk", but I assume you mean "someone who says things that might hurt other people's feelings", i.e. "someone who is not always politically correct (PC)". Personally, I don't have a problem with such people. I don't care what people say, or how they say it; if it's the truth, bring it on, if it's a joke, I won't laugh if I don't understand it, but I prefer a (work) environment where people are free to speak their minds, however controversial and "inappropriate" their thoughts might be, to an environment where everyone is supposed to be PC all the time. In general, I prefer to judge people by what they do (I should improve in this area) not by what they say. For example, I would prefer spending time with a well-meaning jerk, that with a gentleman murderer. Or maybe it's just that I'm a jerk and as such don't mind other jerks. It's true that I'm totally annoyed when people don't tell me something that they think might hurt me (but most likely wouldn't). I consider all feedback as potentially constructive and try to improve based on it.
- infinite8s 14y ago
  That's not being a jerk. By definition a jerk can't be 'well-meaning'. I would classify 'Jerk' behavior as behavior that is totally inappropriate for a given context/situation. For example, a man speaking to a woman in a professional context (workplace, tech conference) and making lewd comments about her appearance.
- swombat 14y ago
  > "someone who is not always politically correct (PC)" Definitely not my definition of a jerk. I have no problem with people being rude, crude, etc. In fact, if you were to sit in our office, you'd find that the amount of lewd jokes going around is alarming! The next thing you'd notice is that most of those jokes are originating from my cofounder/fiancée, and one of her (female) friends who's also employed by us. The guys are actually much more PC than the girls... you might say we have a sexist environment - guys are being abused here! The only thing I find worrying/alarming is that we are already this depraved in an open-plan office where anyone can hear us. I shudder to think of the depths we'll be plumbing once we get our own, private office :-) So, Jerk != un-PC. A jerk is someone who is disrespectful to other people by their meaning, not their words. You can be a jerk without swearing, and you can swear and make lewd jokes without being a jerk.
impendia 14y ago
> I for one think the whole "sexism in technology" is an issue that isn't worth sparing time to think about. A rigorous, peer reviewed study [1] demonstrated the existence of sexism in orchestra auditions: more women were selected with curtains, so that the reviewers could hear but not see the performers. This is sexism by any definition, presumably perpetrated mostly or entirely accidentally, and not by "jerks". Is the existence of this study compatible with your thesis? [1]: http://public.econ.duke.edu/~hf14/teaching/povertydisc/readings/goldin-rouse99.pdf http://public.econ.duke.edu/~hf14/teaching/povertydisc/readi...
- swombat 14y ago
  That was 15+ years ago. 40 years ago, if we go by shows like Mad Men, the whole world (West included) was definitely extremely sexist by today's standards. We're in 2013 today, things have, thankfully, moved forward a bit. I think if you look at the world today, there are still definitely some issues with institutional sexism, but I do not think they are any more salient in technology than anywhere else. If anything, I'd say tech (at least in the UK) has a pro-female bias, because there are fewer women in the hiring pool, and so if you don't make a deliberate effort to keep your team balanced you'll end up with a sausage fest. In the case of GrantTree, that meant making a deliberate effort to advertise in places which are not predominantly male, and to tweak the wording of our job ads to make it clear that women are very welcome to apply. Last but not least... This is sexism by any definition, presumably perpetrated mostly or entirely accidentally, and not by "jerks". You can be a jerk unconsciously. Surely, most people are - I don't think anyone actively wants to be a jerk. If you look inside your mind and you spot a belief, especially one that you've acted on, that "women can't be as good as men at X", where X is any kind of activity practiced by a large number of men and women, then there's a bit of a jerk in you. There are differences between men and women, and some things men are naturally better at on average (for example, world-class competitive sports where the amount of testosterone in your blood simply makes a big difference in your ultimate performance), but no job I've ever seen advertised touches on anything quite so extreme. Even oil rig workers don't need to be world-class weight-lifting champions. Everyone has some aspects of their mind that are "jerk-like". What makes someone not a jerk in the long term is the constant re-evaluation of otherwise accepted beliefs (usually handed down by their parents) in the face of new evidence. Again, however, that's not at all specific to technology...
calibraxis 14y ago
I think the problem is that, under sexism (and this generalizes to other -isms), males generally don't know they're being jerks. They're not being jerks by the standards of their culture, but the culture is sexist. For example, I know brogrammers, the kind who use pornographic female imagery in their workplaces and talk slides. The guy who identifies most with brogrammer culture (and makes such slides) is otherwise an incredibly nice guy, everytime I've observed. Take an extreme, like slaveowners. Does anyone think they were all stereotypical jerks (aside from their institutional role), or grew black mustaches to twirl? Anyway, I'm in technology, and that's where I can make the most direct impact. So naturally, sexism in tech concerns me. (And BTW, one insititutional problem on HN is that males outnumber females greatly. I keep that in mind when I see which female voices tend to get upvoted — and which don't. The ones which blame females' attitudes, rather than analyze sexist culture?)
- claudius 14y ago
  > I keep that in mind when I see which female voices tend to get upvoted — and which don't. The ones which blame females' attitudes, rather than analyze sexist culture? With 95% of the usernames here I have a hard time telling whether the writer is male or female, so how could this be the basis of an up-/downvote bias that is greater than the usual noise?
  - calibraxis 14y ago
    We can search hnsearch.com for "poll gender". Males consistently outnumber females more than 10X. We can predict some likely outcomes of such a voting/commenting system, which I think are borne out by evidence. (https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=poll+gender&sortby=create_ts+desc https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=po...) (Edit: and this linked article is clearly written by a self-identified female. Hope I understood your question correctly.)
    - Davertron 14y ago
      I think what he's saying is when you're upvoting/downvoting someone, you don't actually know whether they're male or female based solely on the username.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]
Goladus 14y ago
> I'd argue that the reason why there's a whole "women in technology" drama going on at all is because a lot of people (quite independent of them being male or female) in the tech scene are jerks. More likely, it's that there are a lot of non-tech people wanting to cash in on the fact that "women in technology" is a popular political theme right now.
DanBC 14y ago
> Some people are jerks. That's true of all contexts of life. Jerks should be shunned not because they are sexist, but because they are jerks. There are two responses to this. The first one is that some people do not think they are jerks. They do not feel like jerks. Now they're in a situation where they don't hire a woman. They don't say "I'm a jerk, and that's why she didn't get the job". They say things like "culture fit"[1] or "skills" or any number of reasons. But would that same woman have got the job if she was male? This person will say "Of course not. Her sex had nothing to do with it". But cognitive biases are very strong, and they are deep and hard to fight against. The other one is a bit glib, but: That's great, until you're the one who will not get employed because there are many jerks in charge of hiring; or you're the one getting beaten up by jerks because you're gay; or having crosses burnt on your lawn by jerks because you're black; or getting a high-school principal talking to your prospective college and having your scholarship funding pulled because you spoke out about a religious speaker attending a public school assembly.
- mnicole 14y ago
  Thanks Dan, I always enjoy your posts in these threads. Your second paragraph is exactly why this is a big deal and why I always grit my teeth when someone says women don't work in tech because they aren't interested in tech, just as some of the commenters on that article do. My problem with this blog entry -- besides the fact that posts like these garner all sorts of self-pats-on-the-back from men who already outnumber women exponentially, thus making those dealing with these issues feel even smaller than they already do -- is that no one is asking for special treatment. They are just asking for the situations in your post to be out of the picture. I don't know where these phantom extremist tech feminists are that are going around telling people that we need to separate to coexist that people keep complaining about. What I know is that many women seek solace in private mailing lists and women-only coding clubs is because they've experienced enough frustration that they need an outlet to scream and a place to make sure that they're not being irrational or interpreting a situation wrong. The author may be comfortable in her own skin, and she may be able to shake off any ill-will towards her, but not wanting to be treated like an idiot at your job is hardly gender-specific. Men are just as likely to be in that position, but their validation-over-time happens more quickly. They are able to bounce back. They are seen as confident and worthy when they ask for their raises and promotions, as opposed to how women are seen in the same situation. At the end of the day, I think posts like these are just as destructive as ones like Shanley's (https://medium.com/women-and-work/405b2d12d213 https://medium.com/women-and-work/405b2d12d213). Both speak to two sides of the same coin, but unfortunately they take the attitude that their experiences are the only experiences, and thus, here is a guilt-tripping one-size-fits-all solution. A great post on the issue of trying to deal with not talking about gender inequality while dealing with gender inequality is by comedian Sara Schaefer, titled "Taco at the sausage party": https://medium.com/gender-justice-feminism/66fa6d700af2 https://medium.com/gender-justice-feminism/66fa6d700af2 Even if you attempt to ignore everything going on around you, it doesn't change what people are saying and doing about you. At some point, you crack, no matter how much you have been trying to avoid doing so. The attitude shift needs to happen across the board.

by swombat 14y ago

shantanubala 14y ago

I think there are two problems: sexism and an imbalance of males and females in technology. They're not the same, though they're linked in some ways. Sexism is hard to address effectively, and attempting to confront it can sometimes make things worse. Proceed with caution. What is easier to address (but still difficult) is recruiting more women -- this can also make it easy to identify sexism, because if more women are present, sexism can be harder to hide. Although I disagree that ignoring an imbalance will make it go away, there is another reason why trying to have more women on your team is important: if 50% of the people consuming software are women, it's quite possible that a team of 90% men is missing out on opportunities. Though Pinterest is a good recent example that most men simply don't appreciate to the same degree as women, there may be some hidden market opportunities that are shrouded by the current gender ratios in technology.

swombat 14y ago
Worth clarifying: I'm not saying you should ignore the issue of balance, I'm just saying you should ignore the issue of "sexism in technology". Making efforts to hire a team with some male-female balance is just as worthwhile as making efforts to hire a team that's balanced long other criteria. No one wants to work for an all-male company, just as no one wants to work for an all-female company. There's not even really a need to look at the market opportunities side of things. Balance is just more comfortable for everyone. If you're creating a company and planning you're hiring, and you're not a jerk, you probably are worried about keeping some kind of balance.
- shantanubala 14y ago
  Yup, I was agreeing with you -- I probably should've made it clearer. I just wanted to point out that people sometimes confuse "sexism" and "imbalance" -- a poor gender ratio doesn't imply sexism, and a good ratio doesn't get rid of sexism.
  - subsystem 14y ago
    "[...] and a good ratio doesn't get rid of sexism" I'm not so sure, I think diversity in general takes away a lot of lazy discriminatory behavior in the long run.
claudius 14y ago
And how do you plan on recruiting more women if the percentage of male students enrolling in STEM classes is still far above 50% (with a few exceptions, notably biology/chemistry)? Of course, you could hire all women graduating from such classes, but if you did that while continuing to hire only the top n% of males, you’d create an environment were women are, on average, less capable than men, which doesn’t sound all that great to me, either.
- swombat 14y ago
  Most companies have roles other than just development... Even development teams have roles other than just developers. In large companies, there are testers, managers, business analysts, etc...

Peroni 14y ago

I've read a ton of blogs and articles on the issue and the one consistent trend I've noticed is that it's a significantly more noticeable problem in the US by comparison to the UK. I'm certainly not denying that sexism doesn't exist in the UK, it simply appears to be less of an issue here compared to our US friends.

swombat 14y ago
Perhaps that's to do with general trends in the country rather than anything to do with technology, then...
- illuminate 14y ago
  Who blames technology? These are all entirely social factors at work.

mtrimpe 14y ago

You're right that it's not specific to technology at all. It's better to think of it as the subset of sexism which occurs in the technology industry. Before downplaying the significance of this it's probably good to keep in mind though that if you're a straight, white, western male, there's a good chance you underestimate the effects of being on the 'losing side' of any one of those axes. As for the article, I can imagine that being labeled this way can be annoying, but it's important to keep in mind that these events are there for the women that do have trouble with these issues and/or for when you do run into trouble. What many people often forget is that while these issues you hear about may not be present in your life at the moment, it's fairly easy for some new arrivals in your company to change the atmosphere into something hostile and hurtful to you. Just imagine how it feels when the suits start taking over and amp that up an order of magnitude or two. It's for those moments that having these groups is so important.

precisioncoder 14y ago
You didn't finish your sentence. You mean if you're a straight , white, western, non-geek, that enjoys only conventional hobbies and interests and holds down a conventional job etc etc etc. I would argue that geeks and punks and other "minorities" often have a very up close and personal look at violent discrimination. I've been hospitalized personally and have friends that have been as well despite belonging to the straight white western male demographic. I think one of the reasons that the tech world tends to react so harshly to criticism is a large portion of it's members are outcasts that have finally found a home. When a disenfranchised people find a place they belong they will react violently against any perceived threat to it. Yes many other minorities have it far worse. Yes there is still a great deal of privileged in comparison to the rest of the world. However there's always a sliding scale.
- mtrimpe 14y ago
  No. I did finish my sentence. I excluded everything that is a choice. Being discriminated based on something that you can't change about yourself is substantially different from when it's based on something you can choose not to. P.S. I realize that orientation starts getting into gray territory, so let's exclude it for the sake of this argument. P.P.S. Although tangential, the remainder of your comment actually explores an interesting theme..

tomp 14y ago

> Jerks should be shunned Now, I might not understand what specifically you mean by "jerk", but I assume you mean "someone who says things that might hurt other people's feelings", i.e. "someone who is not always politically correct (PC)". Personally, I don't have a problem with such people. I don't care what people say, or how they say it; if it's the truth, bring it on, if it's a joke, I won't laugh if I don't understand it, but I prefer a (work) environment where people are free to speak their minds, however controversial and "inappropriate" their thoughts might be, to an environment where everyone is supposed to be PC all the time. In general, I prefer to judge people by what they do (I should improve in this area) not by what they say. For example, I would prefer spending time with a well-meaning jerk, that with a gentleman murderer. Or maybe it's just that I'm a jerk and as such don't mind other jerks. It's true that I'm totally annoyed when people don't tell me something that they think might hurt me (but most likely wouldn't). I consider all feedback as potentially constructive and try to improve based on it.

infinite8s 14y ago
That's not being a jerk. By definition a jerk can't be 'well-meaning'. I would classify 'Jerk' behavior as behavior that is totally inappropriate for a given context/situation. For example, a man speaking to a woman in a professional context (workplace, tech conference) and making lewd comments about her appearance.
swombat 14y ago
> "someone who is not always politically correct (PC)" Definitely not my definition of a jerk. I have no problem with people being rude, crude, etc. In fact, if you were to sit in our office, you'd find that the amount of lewd jokes going around is alarming! The next thing you'd notice is that most of those jokes are originating from my cofounder/fiancée, and one of her (female) friends who's also employed by us. The guys are actually much more PC than the girls... you might say we have a sexist environment - guys are being abused here! The only thing I find worrying/alarming is that we are already this depraved in an open-plan office where anyone can hear us. I shudder to think of the depths we'll be plumbing once we get our own, private office :-) So, Jerk != un-PC. A jerk is someone who is disrespectful to other people by their meaning, not their words. You can be a jerk without swearing, and you can swear and make lewd jokes without being a jerk.

impendia 14y ago

> I for one think the whole "sexism in technology" is an issue that isn't worth sparing time to think about. A rigorous, peer reviewed study [1] demonstrated the existence of sexism in orchestra auditions: more women were selected with curtains, so that the reviewers could hear but not see the performers. This is sexism by any definition, presumably perpetrated mostly or entirely accidentally, and not by "jerks". Is the existence of this study compatible with your thesis? [1]: http://public.econ.duke.edu/~hf14/teaching/povertydisc/readings/goldin-rouse99.pdf http://public.econ.duke.edu/~hf14/teaching/povertydisc/readi...

swombat 14y ago
That was 15+ years ago. 40 years ago, if we go by shows like Mad Men, the whole world (West included) was definitely extremely sexist by today's standards. We're in 2013 today, things have, thankfully, moved forward a bit. I think if you look at the world today, there are still definitely some issues with institutional sexism, but I do not think they are any more salient in technology than anywhere else. If anything, I'd say tech (at least in the UK) has a pro-female bias, because there are fewer women in the hiring pool, and so if you don't make a deliberate effort to keep your team balanced you'll end up with a sausage fest. In the case of GrantTree, that meant making a deliberate effort to advertise in places which are not predominantly male, and to tweak the wording of our job ads to make it clear that women are very welcome to apply. Last but not least... This is sexism by any definition, presumably perpetrated mostly or entirely accidentally, and not by "jerks". You can be a jerk unconsciously. Surely, most people are - I don't think anyone actively wants to be a jerk. If you look inside your mind and you spot a belief, especially one that you've acted on, that "women can't be as good as men at X", where X is any kind of activity practiced by a large number of men and women, then there's a bit of a jerk in you. There are differences between men and women, and some things men are naturally better at on average (for example, world-class competitive sports where the amount of testosterone in your blood simply makes a big difference in your ultimate performance), but no job I've ever seen advertised touches on anything quite so extreme. Even oil rig workers don't need to be world-class weight-lifting champions. Everyone has some aspects of their mind that are "jerk-like". What makes someone not a jerk in the long term is the constant re-evaluation of otherwise accepted beliefs (usually handed down by their parents) in the face of new evidence. Again, however, that's not at all specific to technology...

calibraxis 14y ago

I think the problem is that, under sexism (and this generalizes to other -isms), males generally don't know they're being jerks. They're not being jerks by the standards of their culture, but the culture is sexist. For example, I know brogrammers, the kind who use pornographic female imagery in their workplaces and talk slides. The guy who identifies most with brogrammer culture (and makes such slides) is otherwise an incredibly nice guy, everytime I've observed. Take an extreme, like slaveowners. Does anyone think they were all stereotypical jerks (aside from their institutional role), or grew black mustaches to twirl? Anyway, I'm in technology, and that's where I can make the most direct impact. So naturally, sexism in tech concerns me. (And BTW, one insititutional problem on HN is that males outnumber females greatly. I keep that in mind when I see which female voices tend to get upvoted — and which don't. The ones which blame females' attitudes, rather than analyze sexist culture?)

claudius 14y ago
> I keep that in mind when I see which female voices tend to get upvoted — and which don't. The ones which blame females' attitudes, rather than analyze sexist culture? With 95% of the usernames here I have a hard time telling whether the writer is male or female, so how could this be the basis of an up-/downvote bias that is greater than the usual noise?
- calibraxis 14y ago
  We can search hnsearch.com for "poll gender". Males consistently outnumber females more than 10X. We can predict some likely outcomes of such a voting/commenting system, which I think are borne out by evidence. (https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=poll+gender&sortby=create_ts+desc https://www.hnsearch.com/search#request/submissions&q=po...) (Edit: and this linked article is clearly written by a self-identified female. Hope I understood your question correctly.)
  - Davertron 14y ago
    I think what he's saying is when you're upvoting/downvoting someone, you don't actually know whether they're male or female based solely on the username.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]

Goladus 14y ago

> I'd argue that the reason why there's a whole "women in technology" drama going on at all is because a lot of people (quite independent of them being male or female) in the tech scene are jerks. More likely, it's that there are a lot of non-tech people wanting to cash in on the fact that "women in technology" is a popular political theme right now.

DanBC 14y ago

> Some people are jerks. That's true of all contexts of life. Jerks should be shunned not because they are sexist, but because they are jerks. There are two responses to this. The first one is that some people do not think they are jerks. They do not feel like jerks. Now they're in a situation where they don't hire a woman. They don't say "I'm a jerk, and that's why she didn't get the job". They say things like "culture fit"[1] or "skills" or any number of reasons. But would that same woman have got the job if she was male? This person will say "Of course not. Her sex had nothing to do with it". But cognitive biases are very strong, and they are deep and hard to fight against. The other one is a bit glib, but: That's great, until you're the one who will not get employed because there are many jerks in charge of hiring; or you're the one getting beaten up by jerks because you're gay; or having crosses burnt on your lawn by jerks because you're black; or getting a high-school principal talking to your prospective college and having your scholarship funding pulled because you spoke out about a religious speaker attending a public school assembly.

mnicole 14y ago
Thanks Dan, I always enjoy your posts in these threads. Your second paragraph is exactly why this is a big deal and why I always grit my teeth when someone says women don't work in tech because they aren't interested in tech, just as some of the commenters on that article do. My problem with this blog entry -- besides the fact that posts like these garner all sorts of self-pats-on-the-back from men who already outnumber women exponentially, thus making those dealing with these issues feel even smaller than they already do -- is that no one is asking for special treatment. They are just asking for the situations in your post to be out of the picture. I don't know where these phantom extremist tech feminists are that are going around telling people that we need to separate to coexist that people keep complaining about. What I know is that many women seek solace in private mailing lists and women-only coding clubs is because they've experienced enough frustration that they need an outlet to scream and a place to make sure that they're not being irrational or interpreting a situation wrong. The author may be comfortable in her own skin, and she may be able to shake off any ill-will towards her, but not wanting to be treated like an idiot at your job is hardly gender-specific. Men are just as likely to be in that position, but their validation-over-time happens more quickly. They are able to bounce back. They are seen as confident and worthy when they ask for their raises and promotions, as opposed to how women are seen in the same situation. At the end of the day, I think posts like these are just as destructive as ones like Shanley's (https://medium.com/women-and-work/405b2d12d213 https://medium.com/women-and-work/405b2d12d213). Both speak to two sides of the same coin, but unfortunately they take the attitude that their experiences are the only experiences, and thus, here is a guilt-tripping one-size-fits-all solution. A great post on the issue of trying to deal with not talking about gender inequality while dealing with gender inequality is by comedian Sara Schaefer, titled "Taco at the sausage party": https://medium.com/gender-justice-feminism/66fa6d700af2 https://medium.com/gender-justice-feminism/66fa6d700af2 Even if you attempt to ignore everything going on around you, it doesn't change what people are saying and doing about you. At some point, you crack, no matter how much you have been trying to avoid doing so. The attitude shift needs to happen across the board.