7 ms·

Female Engineers: Too Fit For The Role

45 points by maxjaderberg 13y ago

antihero 13y ago
Sounds like a company of bellends.
angersock 13y ago
Yep. Sounds like shop talk--amazing how things at machine shops, oil rigs, and construction sites can be very similar at times. The women I know that work in any of those fields tend to either ignore it or join in--depending on their mood. One wonders how things would be different were roles reversed--indeed, what sort of talk was common on factory floors during the world wars?
- scott_w 13y ago
  I imagine it was pretty bad. I recall my grandma telling me that the talk on the shop floor during the war was... not polite.
- Swizec 13y ago
  When a man walks into a predominantly female group, the behaviour is exactly the same, just the words are different. At least in my experience.
  - tome 13y ago
    I would be interested in hearing about your experience.
    - Swizec 13y ago
      Well there are two. 1. I was out with a group of female friends. Them being 3 to 4 females who have known each other for ages, me being the newcomer. I got the distinct feeling that men are walking penises. (granted they were all in their early twenties) 2. Living with my mum and sister (and female cat). Every day I am reminded that a man is incapable of tying his own shoes without a woman's help. We are these helpless sort of creatures you know, women only put up with us out of the kindness of their hearts and because we're good for a lay now and then.
      - IsaacL 13y ago
        You seem to be all over this thread saying "oh well this is bad but men also have it equally bad sexism is exaggerated etc etc". I agree that women can be shitty to men. But men, in general, can be far shittier to women. Being patronised by your female relatives is a completely different league to having sexual abuse shouted at you by strangers (strangers who should be subordinate to your professional expertise). And yes, I've worked in blue collar jobs (factories, as a cleaner, as a binman), and I too found it hard to fit in with that culture. But I had it nowhere near as bad as this woman did.
        Swizec 13y ago
        I'm saying this isn't a gender issue. This is a basic human psychology issue. This is the way humans behave, regardless of gender. Gender doesn't even have anything to do with it, gender just defines the specific words used in the overall pattern. In the article men are making fun of a woman. Here on HN startups are making fun of lifestyle businesses. On r/programming Scala developers are making fun of Java developers. On imgur people are making fun of 9gag. The internet is making fun of Bieber fans. Bieber fans are making fun of old people. Old people make fun of young people. Young people make fun of old people. People poke fun at each other. It's how we establish groups. It's how we operate. We pick a trait and converge around it, as soon as we see a member of the species who does not have that trait, we make fun of them and maybe, just maybe, we eventually let them join the group. If you want to fight sexism, go to a country that hasn't given women the vote, or women are still treated as property. that's sexism.
        IsaacL 13y ago
        "People poke fun at each other. It's how we establish groups. It's how we operate. We pick a trait and converge around it, as soon as we see a member of the species who does not have that trait, we make fun of them and maybe, just maybe, we eventually let them join the group." That's true. But the traits chosen are not arbitrary. There are some traits which are consistently used to exclude people from certain groups. As a lifestyle entrepreneur, people on HN look down on me. 99% of the population don't care. Whereas if I was female, or black, or whatever, suddenly I find myself excluded from a lot more groups. Yes, there is much worse sexism in the world, but I can't think of many people who would think shouting sexual abuse at your manager as anything other than sexism. You seem like an intelligent guy, but you seem to have already reached the conclusion that this isn't sexism and are now trying to justify that conclusion.
    - JanezStupar 13y ago
      When in my early 20's I once walked into a factory floor full of women in their 30's and 40's Boy did their looks and remarks make me feel uncomfortable. I also got groped and really unpleasantly advanced by a drunk older woman once. Shit like this really does happen, and women are no better than men.
- walshemj 13y ago
  yes I recall a case in the uk where a young lad was bullied by the mostly female workforce on the shop floor of a factory.
  - smoyer 13y ago
    In the mid-eighties I was a process engineer for a printed-circuit-board company whose production staff was predominantly female and with an education level of 10th to 12th grade. I decided I'd be part of the company if I ate my lunch with the rest of the crew, and on the second or third day, one of the "ladies" asked if I was going to eat my banana. When I responded with "I don't have a banana", she said that sounded like a personal problem and I was asked if I had one every day for months. What I can tell you from that experience is that women can be far raunchier than men - and in this case, I think they had a contest running to see who could make me blush or fluster me the most. I've been part of the minority in other cases (race, country of origin, gender) and I think that much of this behavior is really related to crowd dynamics. Would the men described in the article behave that way if their SO was present? In any case, this female engineer shouldn't be hazed in this way and while it probably doesn't count for much, I'll still say "I'm sorry" for the behavior of my fellow men. Let's all try to be a bit more civilized ... and especially here on the Internet!
- cafard 13y ago
  I did once in my youth avoid one end of the office were I briefly worked, for there was a mouthy, and by her own account sexually adventurous young woman--who was free in voicing her opinion of my looks. I used to run home from that office a couple of days a week, but made damn sure never to exit past her work area. That was a third of a century ago, and stands out in my mind, so the reverse case is apparently not that common. Do women freely express their opinions of men among themselves? Certainly. But it is my desire and care to avoid overhearing them.
- treerock 13y ago
  Here is one example. "A female council boss has been suspended for biting a 24-year-old junior employee so hard that she drew blood through his underwear. "The worker was taken to hospital, after the incident, for a tetanus injection. "A colleague called the bite a horseplay that got out of hand." http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/boss-bites-bum-of-junior-worker-113051400526_1.html http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/boss-bites...
Swizec 13y ago
I will probably get shunned to death for asking this, but I must ask. The described behaviour of men in the article is pretty damn sexist, true. But how is it any different from how men in groups behave towards one another? Just replace all the sexist jokes with gay jokes or sissy jokes or just about any other type of jokes men direct at one another to establish pecking orders within groups. Reading this, it doesn't feel so much like the terrible sexism it's portrayed as, but more like reading about a clash of cultures. This is how groups of men organise themselves. I understand it's jarring for women and that women do it differently, but still, all I see here are men treating a woman exactly like they treat other men. By the sound of it, she's actually being accepted into the group. Hazing is always the first step.
- JonnieCache 13y ago
  >But how is it any different than how men in groups behave towards one another? Men do not typically fear sexual violence from each other. Not that the men on that site were necessarily going to rape the engineer, but it was certainly orders of magnitude more likely than them raping each other. For the record I understand your point and you might be right, she may well be being accepted, but I don't think it's really reasonable that she should just feel OK with it. EDIT: and tbh in an ideal world men wouldn't have to face "hazing" (bullying) either. It's a pretty poor justification for women having to cope with a worse variant.
  - Swizec 13y ago
    > Men do not typically fear sexual violence from each other. Women do not typically fear sexual violence from men either. Any woman I've ever asked "Do you really live in constant fear from rape as the internet activists suggest" has answered with "Not really, unless I'm going down a dark alley alone at night it doesn't really cross my mind" But y'know, going down a dark alley alone at night, I'm pretty damn on guard myself and I'm a guy. For the record: I have always felt americans (and anglosaxons in general) are orders of magnitude more afraid of the world than any other people I've ever spoken to. Men and women alike. EDIT TO YOUR EDIT: > EDIT: and tbh in an ideal world men wouldn't have to face "hazing" (bullying) either. It's a pretty poor justification for women having to cope with a worse variant. Ideal or not, hazing and bullying has worked for countless millennia to distinguish those you can rely on in a tight spot from those you cannot. The more dangerous the circumstances, the harder becoming accepted by a group seems to be. It's just how humans are.
swombat 13y ago
Kind of puts the "sexism in tech" discussion in perspective. These guys make the Mad Men lot sound respectful. Here's a simple way they could deal with that - create a new company (or even just a new department within the company), hire only civilised people, fire anyone who proves to be an uncivilised jerk, and slowly grow that department/company to take over the company/industry because it's not full of retards...
- sp332 13y ago
  The guys (well, some of them) are discussing her treatment behind her back. One of them even apologizes every time he swears in a meeting. That means even the ones who care honestly don't know how women want to be treated in a workplace. (Of course, part of the problem is that they are constructing some kind of universal ruleset without considering her as an individual.) It seems that no one knew which guys were the jerks before because they acted reasonably when women weren't around. I think the same thing happened in tech circles. There are some major assholes and even creepy stalkers that don't really show themselves until women show up, so they go unnoticed for years by the male majority.
- onemorepassword 13y ago
  These guys are disrespectful, insulting and pathetic, but at least she got the job and none of the anecdotes suggest they assumed she was incapable of doing that job. That's already two steps up from Mad Men territory. And beside the crudeness, which is more a social class difference than anything else, I don't see how this differs from the reports of sexism in tech. At least she's got the (albeit clumsy and inadequate) support of her employer. They weren't advertising job posts for "brogrammers". Being less crude than construction workers is not exactly a high standard for tech.
- mattdeboard 13y ago
  > hire only civilised people, fire anyone who proves to be an uncivilised jerk ... because it's not full of retards... Complaining about sexism then using "retards" as a pejorative is just too ironic.
  - 13y ago
walshemj 13y ago
For non UK readers Fit = "hot" It might not be immediately clear but the article is talking about Civil Engineering which is a little unreconstructed when compared to IT. And to progress to Chartered status for civil engineers you must have experience working on site bossing the navvies around. When I worked for Dar Al Hadnasha (one of the big civil consultacies) we had to send out female engineers to Italy on an exchange as in the middle east it woudl have been impossible for a woman to go on site.
digitalWestie 13y ago
Damn, I was just wondering about this the other day. I.e., how the software world compares to the engineering world. Seems my guesses were right in this case.
omd 13y ago
Oh god, another article about gender equality on HN. You would have better luck selling Bieber tickets on a death metal forum.
ivanca 13y ago
You are a sexually attractive woman in a place where sexually attractive women are scarce. In almost any other context you would get substancial benefits for that like more promotions, job opportunities and more invitations to events than the average woman. But we will not see you complaining about that when it happens, don't we?
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- adaml_623 13y ago
  You are rude, offensive, and delusional. Please try to sort out these problems before attempting to contribute to HN.
  - ivanca 13y ago
    Perhaps rude and offensive. Delusional never: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201203/the-truth-about-why-beautiful-people-are-more-successful http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/2012... http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/07/19/the-beauty-advantage.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/07/19/the-beauty-... http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0749597885900354 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/07495978859...
waterlion 13y ago
I know this is a little off-topic but I spent a while wondering why the article ("I'm not scared of you any more") bore no resemblance to the title ("Too fit for the role"). Turns out I dismissed the popup window automatically because 100% of popup windows are trying to sell social media experience extravaganzas and must be removed to see the actual content. Turns out this blogging software shows its main content as a superimposed popup/lightbox thing. So, if you end up reading the wrong article, perhaps you clicked close on the popup before it loaded.
locofacetwice 13y ago
You are not special. Want to be treated like a man? Suck it up and do your job. There, here you go.
JamisonM 13y ago
Misogyny is, in my experience, a function of the power dynamic in a situation. As an engineer working on site the author is placed in a position of authority, but one with no direct power over the workers that she is encountering on site. She is at the same time both threatening, due to her high status, and powerless, because her influence over the work is indirect. I find this behavior disgusting but it is, I feel, the answer to the question posed by the author: "But they must leave at some point and see wives/daughters/sisters/mothers/random women in the street.. Is the point less about novelty or even sex, and much more about straightforward intimidation?" It is pretty much about intimidation and resentment by some and a group dynamic that forces others to play along or ignore the situation. I can't speak to the situation in Britain but in my part of the world I can say that things have improved substantially in the last 15 or so years but there is still a long way to go. Contrary to what anyone might tell you though, it is not a case of "boys will be boys" - the fact of the matter is that the management and foremen can change the culture if they want to, I have seen it happen, someone in charge just needs to have the resolve to say it won't be tolerated and actually act on it.
jbcurtin2 13y ago
Anyone else notice that 'The Vagenda' has a lot of articles that are aimed at men being jerks? I think any man reading this site will not have an accurate understanding as to what any writer is trying to convey. - My opinion on this article: If you don't like it leave; there are plenty of establishments that'll treat you the way you want to be treated. You just have to go through all the BS to figure out what you like and it obviously isn't this.
- thezoid 13y ago
  > Anyone else notice that 'The Vagenda' has a lot of articles that are aimed at men being jerks? I knew immediately by reading the domain that it was going to be a feminist leaning blog, and that's totally fine. Perhaps that's what their content is based on. Unfortunately there's lots of examples of men being jerks, so they have a massive grab bag to pull content from. > If you don't like it leave That's always the easy answer, and it's unrealistic and unfair. You don't know the conditions of the author. Maybe they have a boatload of debt or are in a situation where they need stability. Moving jobs is always a risk because there are things like probation periods. Even if you are good at what you do, a probation period is still scary, even more so if you have dependents.
michaelfeathers 13y ago
I'm trying to understand the "anthropomorphic chin" reference.
- cafard 13y ago
  I think she means "shaven" as there is a reference to him having a badger on his chin a few lines up.
smurph 13y ago
"Get your rat out"? Seriously? That's got to be one of the most foul things I've ever heard. Real life is so much more disgusting than fiction.
SZenith 13y ago
Sexism, bad. But let's keep our heads on straight here. Just because someone treats you like shit, and you're a woman, doesn't mean it's sexism. 1. Maybe they treat her like shit because she's new, and the feminine stuff is just one reason to rag on her. If she was a tall guy, they'd probably make fun of that too. 2. Maybe they treat her like shit because, for some reason, despite all this, she hasn't actually asked them to stop -- just complained about it on the Internet A lot of people will get angry at me for this, because sexism is a very real problem. But not everything is fucking sexism.

45 points by maxjaderberg 13y ago

Sounds like a company of bellends.

Yep. Sounds like shop talk--amazing how things at machine shops, oil rigs, and construction sites can be very similar at times. The women I know that work in any of those fields tend to either ignore it or join in--depending on their mood. One wonders how things would be different were roles reversed--indeed, what sort of talk was common on factory floors during the world wars?

scott_w 13y ago
I imagine it was pretty bad. I recall my grandma telling me that the talk on the shop floor during the war was... not polite.
Swizec 13y ago
When a man walks into a predominantly female group, the behaviour is exactly the same, just the words are different. At least in my experience.
- tome 13y ago
  I would be interested in hearing about your experience.
  - Swizec 13y ago
    Well there are two. 1. I was out with a group of female friends. Them being 3 to 4 females who have known each other for ages, me being the newcomer. I got the distinct feeling that men are walking penises. (granted they were all in their early twenties) 2. Living with my mum and sister (and female cat). Every day I am reminded that a man is incapable of tying his own shoes without a woman's help. We are these helpless sort of creatures you know, women only put up with us out of the kindness of their hearts and because we're good for a lay now and then.
    - IsaacL 13y ago
      You seem to be all over this thread saying "oh well this is bad but men also have it equally bad sexism is exaggerated etc etc". I agree that women can be shitty to men. But men, in general, can be far shittier to women. Being patronised by your female relatives is a completely different league to having sexual abuse shouted at you by strangers (strangers who should be subordinate to your professional expertise). And yes, I've worked in blue collar jobs (factories, as a cleaner, as a binman), and I too found it hard to fit in with that culture. But I had it nowhere near as bad as this woman did.
      - Swizec 13y ago
        I'm saying this isn't a gender issue. This is a basic human psychology issue. This is the way humans behave, regardless of gender. Gender doesn't even have anything to do with it, gender just defines the specific words used in the overall pattern. In the article men are making fun of a woman. Here on HN startups are making fun of lifestyle businesses. On r/programming Scala developers are making fun of Java developers. On imgur people are making fun of 9gag. The internet is making fun of Bieber fans. Bieber fans are making fun of old people. Old people make fun of young people. Young people make fun of old people. People poke fun at each other. It's how we establish groups. It's how we operate. We pick a trait and converge around it, as soon as we see a member of the species who does not have that trait, we make fun of them and maybe, just maybe, we eventually let them join the group. If you want to fight sexism, go to a country that hasn't given women the vote, or women are still treated as property. that's sexism.
        IsaacL 13y ago
        "People poke fun at each other. It's how we establish groups. It's how we operate. We pick a trait and converge around it, as soon as we see a member of the species who does not have that trait, we make fun of them and maybe, just maybe, we eventually let them join the group." That's true. But the traits chosen are not arbitrary. There are some traits which are consistently used to exclude people from certain groups. As a lifestyle entrepreneur, people on HN look down on me. 99% of the population don't care. Whereas if I was female, or black, or whatever, suddenly I find myself excluded from a lot more groups. Yes, there is much worse sexism in the world, but I can't think of many people who would think shouting sexual abuse at your manager as anything other than sexism. You seem like an intelligent guy, but you seem to have already reached the conclusion that this isn't sexism and are now trying to justify that conclusion.
  - JanezStupar 13y ago
    When in my early 20's I once walked into a factory floor full of women in their 30's and 40's Boy did their looks and remarks make me feel uncomfortable. I also got groped and really unpleasantly advanced by a drunk older woman once. Shit like this really does happen, and women are no better than men.
walshemj 13y ago
yes I recall a case in the uk where a young lad was bullied by the mostly female workforce on the shop floor of a factory.
- smoyer 13y ago
  In the mid-eighties I was a process engineer for a printed-circuit-board company whose production staff was predominantly female and with an education level of 10th to 12th grade. I decided I'd be part of the company if I ate my lunch with the rest of the crew, and on the second or third day, one of the "ladies" asked if I was going to eat my banana. When I responded with "I don't have a banana", she said that sounded like a personal problem and I was asked if I had one every day for months. What I can tell you from that experience is that women can be far raunchier than men - and in this case, I think they had a contest running to see who could make me blush or fluster me the most. I've been part of the minority in other cases (race, country of origin, gender) and I think that much of this behavior is really related to crowd dynamics. Would the men described in the article behave that way if their SO was present? In any case, this female engineer shouldn't be hazed in this way and while it probably doesn't count for much, I'll still say "I'm sorry" for the behavior of my fellow men. Let's all try to be a bit more civilized ... and especially here on the Internet!
cafard 13y ago
I did once in my youth avoid one end of the office were I briefly worked, for there was a mouthy, and by her own account sexually adventurous young woman--who was free in voicing her opinion of my looks. I used to run home from that office a couple of days a week, but made damn sure never to exit past her work area. That was a third of a century ago, and stands out in my mind, so the reverse case is apparently not that common. Do women freely express their opinions of men among themselves? Certainly. But it is my desire and care to avoid overhearing them.
treerock 13y ago
Here is one example. "A female council boss has been suspended for biting a 24-year-old junior employee so hard that she drew blood through his underwear. "The worker was taken to hospital, after the incident, for a tetanus injection. "A colleague called the bite a horseplay that got out of hand." http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/boss-bites-bum-of-junior-worker-113051400526_1.html http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/boss-bites...

Swizec 13y ago

I will probably get shunned to death for asking this, but I must ask. The described behaviour of men in the article is pretty damn sexist, true. But how is it any different from how men in groups behave towards one another? Just replace all the sexist jokes with gay jokes or sissy jokes or just about any other type of jokes men direct at one another to establish pecking orders within groups. Reading this, it doesn't feel so much like the terrible sexism it's portrayed as, but more like reading about a clash of cultures. This is how groups of men organise themselves. I understand it's jarring for women and that women do it differently, but still, all I see here are men treating a woman exactly like they treat other men. By the sound of it, she's actually being accepted into the group. Hazing is always the first step.

JonnieCache 13y ago
>But how is it any different than how men in groups behave towards one another? Men do not typically fear sexual violence from each other. Not that the men on that site were necessarily going to rape the engineer, but it was certainly orders of magnitude more likely than them raping each other. For the record I understand your point and you might be right, she may well be being accepted, but I don't think it's really reasonable that she should just feel OK with it. EDIT: and tbh in an ideal world men wouldn't have to face "hazing" (bullying) either. It's a pretty poor justification for women having to cope with a worse variant.
- Swizec 13y ago
  > Men do not typically fear sexual violence from each other. Women do not typically fear sexual violence from men either. Any woman I've ever asked "Do you really live in constant fear from rape as the internet activists suggest" has answered with "Not really, unless I'm going down a dark alley alone at night it doesn't really cross my mind" But y'know, going down a dark alley alone at night, I'm pretty damn on guard myself and I'm a guy. For the record: I have always felt americans (and anglosaxons in general) are orders of magnitude more afraid of the world than any other people I've ever spoken to. Men and women alike. EDIT TO YOUR EDIT: > EDIT: and tbh in an ideal world men wouldn't have to face "hazing" (bullying) either. It's a pretty poor justification for women having to cope with a worse variant. Ideal or not, hazing and bullying has worked for countless millennia to distinguish those you can rely on in a tight spot from those you cannot. The more dangerous the circumstances, the harder becoming accepted by a group seems to be. It's just how humans are.

swombat 13y ago

Kind of puts the "sexism in tech" discussion in perspective. These guys make the Mad Men lot sound respectful. Here's a simple way they could deal with that - create a new company (or even just a new department within the company), hire only civilised people, fire anyone who proves to be an uncivilised jerk, and slowly grow that department/company to take over the company/industry because it's not full of retards...

sp332 13y ago
The guys (well, some of them) are discussing her treatment behind her back. One of them even apologizes every time he swears in a meeting. That means even the ones who care honestly don't know how women want to be treated in a workplace. (Of course, part of the problem is that they are constructing some kind of universal ruleset without considering her as an individual.) It seems that no one knew which guys were the jerks before because they acted reasonably when women weren't around. I think the same thing happened in tech circles. There are some major assholes and even creepy stalkers that don't really show themselves until women show up, so they go unnoticed for years by the male majority.
onemorepassword 13y ago
These guys are disrespectful, insulting and pathetic, but at least she got the job and none of the anecdotes suggest they assumed she was incapable of doing that job. That's already two steps up from Mad Men territory. And beside the crudeness, which is more a social class difference than anything else, I don't see how this differs from the reports of sexism in tech. At least she's got the (albeit clumsy and inadequate) support of her employer. They weren't advertising job posts for "brogrammers". Being less crude than construction workers is not exactly a high standard for tech.
mattdeboard 13y ago
> hire only civilised people, fire anyone who proves to be an uncivilised jerk ... because it's not full of retards... Complaining about sexism then using "retards" as a pejorative is just too ironic.
- 13y ago

walshemj 13y ago

For non UK readers Fit = "hot" It might not be immediately clear but the article is talking about Civil Engineering which is a little unreconstructed when compared to IT. And to progress to Chartered status for civil engineers you must have experience working on site bossing the navvies around. When I worked for Dar Al Hadnasha (one of the big civil consultacies) we had to send out female engineers to Italy on an exchange as in the middle east it woudl have been impossible for a woman to go on site.

digitalWestie 13y ago

Damn, I was just wondering about this the other day. I.e., how the software world compares to the engineering world. Seems my guesses were right in this case.

omd 13y ago

Oh god, another article about gender equality on HN. You would have better luck selling Bieber tickets on a death metal forum.

ivanca 13y ago

You are a sexually attractive woman in a place where sexually attractive women are scarce. In almost any other context you would get substancial benefits for that like more promotions, job opportunities and more invitations to events than the average woman. But we will not see you complaining about that when it happens, don't we?

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
adaml_623 13y ago
You are rude, offensive, and delusional. Please try to sort out these problems before attempting to contribute to HN.
- ivanca 13y ago
  Perhaps rude and offensive. Delusional never: http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/201203/the-truth-about-why-beautiful-people-are-more-successful http://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/games-primates-play/2012... http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/07/19/the-beauty-advantage.html http://www.thedailybeast.com/newsweek/2010/07/19/the-beauty-... http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/0749597885900354 http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/07495978859...

waterlion 13y ago

I know this is a little off-topic but I spent a while wondering why the article ("I'm not scared of you any more") bore no resemblance to the title ("Too fit for the role"). Turns out I dismissed the popup window automatically because 100% of popup windows are trying to sell social media experience extravaganzas and must be removed to see the actual content. Turns out this blogging software shows its main content as a superimposed popup/lightbox thing. So, if you end up reading the wrong article, perhaps you clicked close on the popup before it loaded.

locofacetwice 13y ago

You are not special. Want to be treated like a man? Suck it up and do your job. There, here you go.

JamisonM 13y ago

Misogyny is, in my experience, a function of the power dynamic in a situation. As an engineer working on site the author is placed in a position of authority, but one with no direct power over the workers that she is encountering on site. She is at the same time both threatening, due to her high status, and powerless, because her influence over the work is indirect. I find this behavior disgusting but it is, I feel, the answer to the question posed by the author: "But they must leave at some point and see wives/daughters/sisters/mothers/random women in the street.. Is the point less about novelty or even sex, and much more about straightforward intimidation?" It is pretty much about intimidation and resentment by some and a group dynamic that forces others to play along or ignore the situation. I can't speak to the situation in Britain but in my part of the world I can say that things have improved substantially in the last 15 or so years but there is still a long way to go. Contrary to what anyone might tell you though, it is not a case of "boys will be boys" - the fact of the matter is that the management and foremen can change the culture if they want to, I have seen it happen, someone in charge just needs to have the resolve to say it won't be tolerated and actually act on it.

jbcurtin2 13y ago

Anyone else notice that 'The Vagenda' has a lot of articles that are aimed at men being jerks? I think any man reading this site will not have an accurate understanding as to what any writer is trying to convey. - My opinion on this article: If you don't like it leave; there are plenty of establishments that'll treat you the way you want to be treated. You just have to go through all the BS to figure out what you like and it obviously isn't this.

thezoid 13y ago
> Anyone else notice that 'The Vagenda' has a lot of articles that are aimed at men being jerks? I knew immediately by reading the domain that it was going to be a feminist leaning blog, and that's totally fine. Perhaps that's what their content is based on. Unfortunately there's lots of examples of men being jerks, so they have a massive grab bag to pull content from. > If you don't like it leave That's always the easy answer, and it's unrealistic and unfair. You don't know the conditions of the author. Maybe they have a boatload of debt or are in a situation where they need stability. Moving jobs is always a risk because there are things like probation periods. Even if you are good at what you do, a probation period is still scary, even more so if you have dependents.

michaelfeathers 13y ago

I'm trying to understand the "anthropomorphic chin" reference.

cafard 13y ago
I think she means "shaven" as there is a reference to him having a badger on his chin a few lines up.

smurph 13y ago

"Get your rat out"? Seriously? That's got to be one of the most foul things I've ever heard. Real life is so much more disgusting than fiction.

SZenith 13y ago

Sexism, bad. But let's keep our heads on straight here. Just because someone treats you like shit, and you're a woman, doesn't mean it's sexism. 1. Maybe they treat her like shit because she's new, and the feminine stuff is just one reason to rag on her. If she was a tall guy, they'd probably make fun of that too. 2. Maybe they treat her like shit because, for some reason, despite all this, she hasn't actually asked them to stop -- just complained about it on the Internet A lot of people will get angry at me for this, because sexism is a very real problem. But not everything is fucking sexism.