5 ms·

Heh, Louden's book? Still got it here somewhere. For an hour of nostalgic fun and an excuse to burn a Bass Ale while your wife watches DWTS, take a look at th

Heh, Louden's book? Still got it here somewhere. For an hour of nostalgic fun and an excuse to burn a Bass Ale while your wife watches DWTS, take a look at the 1130 emulator at http://ibm1130.org/sim http://ibm1130.org/sim

Nate75Sanders 13y ago
Wow, you really managed to do that in a thread pertaining to sexism in tech.
- VLM 13y ago
  I thought the most hilarious thing about the HN comments was the 100% sexism oriented response WRT general HN culture, and nothing about hetronormativity or whatever its called, I currently work with a great tech, who happens to be female, and she also happens to have a wife, and I've worked with other women with the same family life as that in the past, so I was LOL the whole way about the HN "belief system" that apparently in 1950's HN world, only men can have wives. Another epic HN failure was confusing an obviously single word substitution issue like using the word wife instead of spouse as if it changes anything in the discussion other than the political correctness level, with actual intentional hate speech. You have to prioritize your problems and this is like "cut yourself shaving and also have a broken leg" one should be prioritized above the other. Something never discussed about sexism in tech, at least on HN, is its an almost purely coastie "brogrammer" phenomena. I am not part of the apparently locally dominant dirtbag coastie culture, so I literally do not understand how it perpetuates itself. To explain myself, locally, behavior that is rewarded tends to be repeated and behavior that is punished tends to be suppressed, and simultaneously a highly effective way for a guy to make sure all females will never be in contact with any of his precious bodily fluids is to go all "make me a sandwich" on any other female. Even a false accusation is fairly effective at enforcing celibacy. So I'm fairly mystified why this problem perpetuates. Like are all men on the coasts 40 year old virgins or gay, so they don't care about lack of "fun time" with women, or perhaps the women on the coasts refuse to stand up for each other and this is the inevitable result, or maybe secretly most women really love that kind of treatment and its only a small vocal minority who complain (although I find this last theory unlikely) The only real problem seems to be the lack of tech jobs in the midwest. Tech women, if you want to be treated with respect as human beings by professional gentlemen, move to where the gentlemen are if you want things to change. I'm off the market, but speaking for the local single gentlemen, I'm sure they'd greatly enjoy your presence here, unless you really secretly like how the brogrammers are treating you...
  - hga 13y ago
    Wow, you could be very right. I grew up and retired to SW Missouri (Joplin), which is actually part of the cultural South, although with plenty of Midwestern and Western influences since they're so very close. At least in my time way back when such degradation of women (not at all to be confused with the "mating game" or whatever you want to call it) was just not tolerated, including by the sub-group social leaders I was around (which included me in some groups). We were a little past the era of standing up when a woman enter a room (never taught to me by my parents), but e.g. holding the door open for a women was expected (or anyone with their hands full), and getting castigated for that unthinkable. And, yeah, the concept of a gentleman was, and I think still is, very much in play. However much feminists complain about it, it sure seems to result in women getting treated a whole lot better. And at least where I came from, there was enough Midwestern and Western pragmatism that female ability in things you might typically think as male was not such a big thing, or threatening. E.g by some distance the best shot on my high school rifle team was a girl, an old friend from kindergarten. The rest of us were boys, and her example (not to mention help) pushed us to strive harder vs. tear her down. Maybe it was in part the genre (yeah, right, harasses the school's best shot???), but I read all this high school harassment stuff of the demean the woman type and wonder if it swept the nation later, or is in part a regional phenomena.
    - VLM 13y ago
      Your comment about threatening was interesting, and I had not considered it. For example, some guys are pretty tough on tall women although most don't care, and from a lifetime of locker room observation, those with the worst attitude toward the tall ladies statistically tend to be correspondingly unusually short in one particular physical attribute. Given that, I would not be entirely surprised if the root cause of some anti-woman brogrammer behavior could be statistically highly correlated with one anatomical part being unusually small. Aka if the girls are going to laugh at him anyway, may as well pre-emptively strike against them first, not much to lose. Although why this behavior is seen more on the coasts than the midwest and the other civilized areas, is still unclear under this theory. We may simply grow 'em larger here thus less root cause for the anti-social behavior. I do not have enough observational data, and frankly I've gathered it all inadvertently rather than intentionally. A suitably geo-located chatroulette image analysis program might help. Although a theory that seems to "explain it all" is highly appealing, it none the less may or may not be proven out by actual statistical research. I would assume some sociologist with a ruler could probably figure it out for us, along with a questionnaire about brogrammers opinions about their physical self image (in other words they may not actually be shrunken mutants, but inaccurately think they are...). I don't think population migration necessarily disproves this theory; consider if hormone contamination in the water causes shrinkage or perhaps some other environmental toxins; the coasts certainly have plenty of environmental toxins compared to other areas.
anigbrowl 13y ago
while your wife watches DWTS You're part of the problem.
- philwelch 13y ago
  I guess it would be politically incorrect to point out the actual ratings demographics of DWTS are about 2/3 women?
  - jholman 13y ago
    So much wrong with this comment. First of all, you need to go do some remedial math. The percentage of DWTS watchers who are women is no predictor of what women do. This fallacy is called confusion of the inverse, and it's a probabilistic variant of the better-known converse error. Second, even if 99% of women were to be DWTS fans, it has no bearing on anigbrowl's comment. The reason that "while your wife watches DWTS" is part of the problem (as anigbrowl identified) is that it implies that (watching DWTS) is to women as (checking out 1130 sims) is to men. It implies that in situations where men do interesting tech things, women watch TV (I assume "DWTS" is some kind of TV?). It's basically a put-down against women collectively. Note that if someone were to be putting down humanity collectively, I wouldn't complain. Third, "politically correct" is a label principally used by reactionary dullards to dismiss arguments or objections that they see as excessively leftist. It's equivalent to calling someone a commie. Mind you, some people are communists, some people are knee-jerk excessive leftists, etc... but if that's true in a particular situation, you can just explain why it's true. Calling it "political correctness" is just a lowbrow dismissal. That's a lot of incorrectness for one 20-word sentence.
    - philwelch 13y ago
      First, Dancing with the Stars is one of the highest rated shows on TV; the fact that it has a 2/3 women audience indicates that very many women will make the time to watch it. Second, setting aside households with two TV's, only one spouse can enjoy passive entertainment at a time. Presumably while we watch football, women can do something fascinating and productive. Third, political correctness is a phenomenon of white liberal prigs who go out of their way to take offense because they have nothing useful or productive to contribute to the public discourse. Of course they would react unkindly to being called out on it but I would advise you not to take their defensive lashing out at face value.
nl 13y ago
hga is female. (Actually I don't know hga's gender, but wow - I have never seen an example of gender stereotyping as explicit as that on HN, and in a discussion about sexism in programming too. I'm really hoping your comment was supposed to be ironic)
- VladRussian2 13y ago
  >I have never seen an example of gender stereotyping as explicit as that on HN does gender stereotyping manifests an intellectual failure on the part of the one expressing the stereotypes? If yes, does such intellectual failure is localized, say to the area of percepting and understanding gender relations in the industry, or is it a system-wide failure of the intellect of the stereotyping (i.e. something like a habit/instinct of using stereotypes)?
  - vdaniuk 13y ago
    These are actually good questions.
- hga 13y ago
  Harold Gerard Ancell is very much male, thank you. I can't remember if there were any women in that high school class, but there were in the summer programs I took after it, and as far as I can remember they didn't get treated any differently than the men. Of course, back then, computers, especially serious ones, were scarce and getting lots of time on them wasn't trivial. I also wasn't the sort of person who would put up with harassment or bullying in my presence, nor were the instructors, but as I recall it was never a problem (all the local stuff was in the cultural South...). Long before the zero-tolerance bullshit, so my entirely serious threats of disproportionate including sometimes lethal force were taken as "don't do that crazy thing" vs. I was the problem for objecting. E.g. after the incident that went the furthest, to my drawing live steel in college, a counselor did pull me aside to make sure I wasn't the type to do that except when needed to prevent a felony. I gather a very different time, no cell phones and therefore no helicopter parenting, unsupervised play outdoors with a very few rules, the high school rifle teams used .22LR firearms instead of air guns, etc. etc. etc. This was all new, neat stuff and perhaps we were having too much fun exploring and learning it, and helping each other (I did a lot of the latter, including joining the college computer "club" for which that was our mission). There was no doubt serious self-selection, including it being long before to the "do this for lots of money" concept and the pathologies that brings. And it sure sounds like my college bound peers and I were a lot more polite that the sort of things I'm hearing from more recently (I don't think "make me a sandwich" was even in the lexicon, one source I just found dates it from nearly two decades later). It was certainly a while before serious pushback to feminism inevitably developed in the communities I was in, the ethos was "women are good", not yet "and men are bad".

Nate75Sanders 13y ago

Wow, you really managed to do that in a thread pertaining to sexism in tech.

VLM 13y ago
I thought the most hilarious thing about the HN comments was the 100% sexism oriented response WRT general HN culture, and nothing about hetronormativity or whatever its called, I currently work with a great tech, who happens to be female, and she also happens to have a wife, and I've worked with other women with the same family life as that in the past, so I was LOL the whole way about the HN "belief system" that apparently in 1950's HN world, only men can have wives. Another epic HN failure was confusing an obviously single word substitution issue like using the word wife instead of spouse as if it changes anything in the discussion other than the political correctness level, with actual intentional hate speech. You have to prioritize your problems and this is like "cut yourself shaving and also have a broken leg" one should be prioritized above the other. Something never discussed about sexism in tech, at least on HN, is its an almost purely coastie "brogrammer" phenomena. I am not part of the apparently locally dominant dirtbag coastie culture, so I literally do not understand how it perpetuates itself. To explain myself, locally, behavior that is rewarded tends to be repeated and behavior that is punished tends to be suppressed, and simultaneously a highly effective way for a guy to make sure all females will never be in contact with any of his precious bodily fluids is to go all "make me a sandwich" on any other female. Even a false accusation is fairly effective at enforcing celibacy. So I'm fairly mystified why this problem perpetuates. Like are all men on the coasts 40 year old virgins or gay, so they don't care about lack of "fun time" with women, or perhaps the women on the coasts refuse to stand up for each other and this is the inevitable result, or maybe secretly most women really love that kind of treatment and its only a small vocal minority who complain (although I find this last theory unlikely) The only real problem seems to be the lack of tech jobs in the midwest. Tech women, if you want to be treated with respect as human beings by professional gentlemen, move to where the gentlemen are if you want things to change. I'm off the market, but speaking for the local single gentlemen, I'm sure they'd greatly enjoy your presence here, unless you really secretly like how the brogrammers are treating you...
- hga 13y ago
  Wow, you could be very right. I grew up and retired to SW Missouri (Joplin), which is actually part of the cultural South, although with plenty of Midwestern and Western influences since they're so very close. At least in my time way back when such degradation of women (not at all to be confused with the "mating game" or whatever you want to call it) was just not tolerated, including by the sub-group social leaders I was around (which included me in some groups). We were a little past the era of standing up when a woman enter a room (never taught to me by my parents), but e.g. holding the door open for a women was expected (or anyone with their hands full), and getting castigated for that unthinkable. And, yeah, the concept of a gentleman was, and I think still is, very much in play. However much feminists complain about it, it sure seems to result in women getting treated a whole lot better. And at least where I came from, there was enough Midwestern and Western pragmatism that female ability in things you might typically think as male was not such a big thing, or threatening. E.g by some distance the best shot on my high school rifle team was a girl, an old friend from kindergarten. The rest of us were boys, and her example (not to mention help) pushed us to strive harder vs. tear her down. Maybe it was in part the genre (yeah, right, harasses the school's best shot???), but I read all this high school harassment stuff of the demean the woman type and wonder if it swept the nation later, or is in part a regional phenomena.
  - VLM 13y ago
    Your comment about threatening was interesting, and I had not considered it. For example, some guys are pretty tough on tall women although most don't care, and from a lifetime of locker room observation, those with the worst attitude toward the tall ladies statistically tend to be correspondingly unusually short in one particular physical attribute. Given that, I would not be entirely surprised if the root cause of some anti-woman brogrammer behavior could be statistically highly correlated with one anatomical part being unusually small. Aka if the girls are going to laugh at him anyway, may as well pre-emptively strike against them first, not much to lose. Although why this behavior is seen more on the coasts than the midwest and the other civilized areas, is still unclear under this theory. We may simply grow 'em larger here thus less root cause for the anti-social behavior. I do not have enough observational data, and frankly I've gathered it all inadvertently rather than intentionally. A suitably geo-located chatroulette image analysis program might help. Although a theory that seems to "explain it all" is highly appealing, it none the less may or may not be proven out by actual statistical research. I would assume some sociologist with a ruler could probably figure it out for us, along with a questionnaire about brogrammers opinions about their physical self image (in other words they may not actually be shrunken mutants, but inaccurately think they are...). I don't think population migration necessarily disproves this theory; consider if hormone contamination in the water causes shrinkage or perhaps some other environmental toxins; the coasts certainly have plenty of environmental toxins compared to other areas.

anigbrowl 13y ago

while your wife watches DWTS You're part of the problem.

philwelch 13y ago
I guess it would be politically incorrect to point out the actual ratings demographics of DWTS are about 2/3 women?
- jholman 13y ago
  So much wrong with this comment. First of all, you need to go do some remedial math. The percentage of DWTS watchers who are women is no predictor of what women do. This fallacy is called confusion of the inverse, and it's a probabilistic variant of the better-known converse error. Second, even if 99% of women were to be DWTS fans, it has no bearing on anigbrowl's comment. The reason that "while your wife watches DWTS" is part of the problem (as anigbrowl identified) is that it implies that (watching DWTS) is to women as (checking out 1130 sims) is to men. It implies that in situations where men do interesting tech things, women watch TV (I assume "DWTS" is some kind of TV?). It's basically a put-down against women collectively. Note that if someone were to be putting down humanity collectively, I wouldn't complain. Third, "politically correct" is a label principally used by reactionary dullards to dismiss arguments or objections that they see as excessively leftist. It's equivalent to calling someone a commie. Mind you, some people are communists, some people are knee-jerk excessive leftists, etc... but if that's true in a particular situation, you can just explain why it's true. Calling it "political correctness" is just a lowbrow dismissal. That's a lot of incorrectness for one 20-word sentence.
  - philwelch 13y ago
    First, Dancing with the Stars is one of the highest rated shows on TV; the fact that it has a 2/3 women audience indicates that very many women will make the time to watch it. Second, setting aside households with two TV's, only one spouse can enjoy passive entertainment at a time. Presumably while we watch football, women can do something fascinating and productive. Third, political correctness is a phenomenon of white liberal prigs who go out of their way to take offense because they have nothing useful or productive to contribute to the public discourse. Of course they would react unkindly to being called out on it but I would advise you not to take their defensive lashing out at face value.

nl 13y ago

hga is female. (Actually I don't know hga's gender, but wow - I have never seen an example of gender stereotyping as explicit as that on HN, and in a discussion about sexism in programming too. I'm really hoping your comment was supposed to be ironic)

VladRussian2 13y ago
>I have never seen an example of gender stereotyping as explicit as that on HN does gender stereotyping manifests an intellectual failure on the part of the one expressing the stereotypes? If yes, does such intellectual failure is localized, say to the area of percepting and understanding gender relations in the industry, or is it a system-wide failure of the intellect of the stereotyping (i.e. something like a habit/instinct of using stereotypes)?
- vdaniuk 13y ago
  These are actually good questions.
hga 13y ago
Harold Gerard Ancell is very much male, thank you. I can't remember if there were any women in that high school class, but there were in the summer programs I took after it, and as far as I can remember they didn't get treated any differently than the men. Of course, back then, computers, especially serious ones, were scarce and getting lots of time on them wasn't trivial. I also wasn't the sort of person who would put up with harassment or bullying in my presence, nor were the instructors, but as I recall it was never a problem (all the local stuff was in the cultural South...). Long before the zero-tolerance bullshit, so my entirely serious threats of disproportionate including sometimes lethal force were taken as "don't do that crazy thing" vs. I was the problem for objecting. E.g. after the incident that went the furthest, to my drawing live steel in college, a counselor did pull me aside to make sure I wasn't the type to do that except when needed to prevent a felony. I gather a very different time, no cell phones and therefore no helicopter parenting, unsupervised play outdoors with a very few rules, the high school rifle teams used .22LR firearms instead of air guns, etc. etc. etc. This was all new, neat stuff and perhaps we were having too much fun exploring and learning it, and helping each other (I did a lot of the latter, including joining the college computer "club" for which that was our mission). There was no doubt serious self-selection, including it being long before to the "do this for lots of money" concept and the pathologies that brings. And it sure sounds like my college bound peers and I were a lot more polite that the sort of things I'm hearing from more recently (I don't think "make me a sandwich" was even in the lexicon, one source I just found dates it from nearly two decades later). It was certainly a while before serious pushback to feminism inevitably developed in the communities I was in, the ethos was "women are good", not yet "and men are bad".