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The entitled and largely unconscious male privilege in most of these HN comments is pretty hard to stomach against the large and steadily-accumulating picture o

The entitled and largely unconscious male privilege in most of these HN comments is pretty hard to stomach against the large and steadily-accumulating picture of just how very different this industry presents itself to men and to women. Just because you don't directly experience or see it doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Just because you haven't been (consciously) chauvinistic to a woman doesn't mean women don't experience deep and pervasive chauvinism. It's not a fucking "free choice" that women are making when they steer away from programming in the face of the grotesque pastiche of misogyny and bullying that underlies our vocation, in which most of the people who aren't actually bullying women are falling over themselves to deny its existence or make excuses for it. Male programmers need to stop congratulating ourselves on how "libertarian" and "meritocratic" we are and start taking responsibility for how profoundly hostile and off-putting we have allowed this field to remain for most women.

mathattack 13y ago
The danger of some meritocratic systems is that weak leadership will put up with bad behavior just because someone is clearly a star. "Yes, he's hard to work with, but the code would fall apart without him." This is even worse in finance. "We can buy off any kind of lawsuit, after all, he made us $50 million last year!" The problem is that this causes a moral decay. Once a firm accepts that this behavior is acceptable, the slippery slope starts. Well, a couple fudged expense reports isn't bad. Oh, what the client doesn't know won't hurt them. No need to be entirely up front with government. Management doesn't get it, don't share anything with them. Criminal complaints from the government, we're just the victim!
astrogirl 13y ago
So, you're saying that women need special treatment as the more delicately nurtured sex? I completely disagree. The tech environment is what it is, and I don't want to be treated differently than my male co-workers. Also, I've never seen anything resembling a "grotesque pastiche of misogyny and bullying" in my 17 years of working as a programmer or systems analyst.
- deleted 13y ago
  [deleted]
- npsimons 13y ago
  Have your male coworkers ever been threatened with rape? Have they ever been told to get back in the kitchen and make a sandwich?
  - derleth 13y ago
    > Have your male coworkers ever been threatened with rape? Do you actually think they'd report it if they were?
    - mkr-hn 13y ago
      I've always assumed rape in general is severely under reported. People are rarely treated in a sensible way when they make an accusation that could end a person's ability to lead a normal life even if they're found innocent.
- usingpond 13y ago
  Close the thread everybody, a token woman just invalidated the whole thing. No misogyny in tech. Also one time a black dude said "what racism? lol" so there's no racism.
  - codygman 13y ago
    Racism? What's that? Isn't that what Morgan Freeman said we need to ignore?
- nollidge 13y ago
  So, you're saying that women need special treatment as the more delicately nurtured sex? Uh, no, he's not saying that. The issue is that women, generally, are already treated differently than their male co-workers, and they shouldn't be. It's about not treating them differently.
hacker789 13y ago
We must protect the fairer sex at all costs. This use of "privilege" as a targeted weapon to silence specific demographics has to stop. Women in the western world have always been among the safest, most privileged people on Earth. This entire thread, in fact, has been a shining example of female privilege. No one cares that women soundly outnumber men in university admission, and university graduation, and even high school graduation. No one cares that young women without children (i.e. the majority) earn more money their male counterparts. Heck, no one cares that it is men who overwhelmingly make up the bottom of society. Instead, we're having a collective anxiety attack because a hyper-privileged white woman is upset that her hyper-privileged white daughter might have had her feelings hurt in high school. This is surreal.
- lr 13y ago
  At what point does it become ok to harass and threaten this "privileged" group of people?
  - etherael 13y ago
    Never, but seriously as soon as I hear typical combinations of the words white male cis privilege I instantly write off the person using it as hopelessly deluded. These are dog whistles for social justice warrior ideologies and everything they imply. Use "different perspective" if that's what you're trying to put across, and if it's not and you really believe the whole privilege meme as something more than that, that's exactly why I write you off. Either way it means either you couldn't be bothered to figure out an effective way to convey a simple core idea without being horrendously offensive, or you actually don't have a clue what you are talking about. This article was mostly excellent because it primarily avoided the classic persecution complexes that are almost par for the course in such things, to have the top comment here raving about privilege does the article an enormous disservice.
    - nollidge 13y ago
      What the fuck is so "horrendously offensive" about the obvious truth that some classes of people have advantages that others don't?
orclev 13y ago
This is a high school class, not the tech industry. You can't blame the tech industry when a bunch of highschoolers act like idiots just because the class they did it in happened to be a programming class. If they had done the same thing in a Algebra class would you be writing a rant about how we need to fix the rampant misogyny in math?
- CurtMonash 13y ago
  If it happened frequently enough, sure. I went to a high school where the two calculus teachers were both female. I also went to a math PhD program where a professor -- specifically George Mackey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mackey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mackey -- wondered openly as to whether women could do top-level mathematics. In fairness to him, the women in that era were still few and below average, and one even had the temerity to whine about discrimination when the real problem was that she wasn't particularly smart or hardworking. Moral: Even if you don't see bigotry in YOUR part of a group, don't assume it isn't common elsewhere.
  - orclev 13y ago
    But that's the thing, every time someone does something misogynistic that's even remotely connected to tech in any way we get a storm of "stop the rampant misogyny in tech" rants and comments, never a "stop the rampant misogyny in the USA/UK/Western World/Whatever". I don't see this as a tech problem, and blaming the tech sector for it is a cop-out. If there genuinely is a larger problem with society as a whole, that's where it needs to be addressed, picking on one subset of the larger group because you can't constructively offer any suggestions for how to fix the larger problem isn't useful. At the end of the day, this was a highschool class with comments being made by highschool kids. The one comment specifically detailed in the article is an old internet meme that was largely popular in gaming circles. The teacher, the only one in this entire story that might have some small connection with the tech industry, never made any inappropriate comments or behaved in any way misogynistic at least so far as the details in the article. To call this story an example of misogyny in the tech industry is pure BS, it had absolutely nothing to do with the tech industry in any way. Edit: More context on the comment the article mentioned: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/get-back-to-the-kitchen http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/get-back-to-the-kitchen
acjohnson55 13y ago
Well said. Who here has never been someplace and felt like they didn't belong? Maybe you were the only person of your ethnicity at some event and you stuck out like a sore thumb. Maybe everyone had their inside jokes and familiarities you didn't know about. Maybe occasionally, people made in unambiguously clear that you weren't welcome, by being cold or outright hostile. This is what it feels like for many women in the tech world. I really feel like this comes down not so much to an inability to comprehend and empathize, but more so to a vested interest of deniers in the status quo. More outsiders means people on the inside have to let go of their insularity, and moreover, compete with an influx of people who bring in diverse skillsets and viewpoints. Our supposedly meritocratic software world is actually anything but. I believe Chris Hayes nails it with his Iron Law of Meritocracy, summarized here [1]. [1] http://letstalkbooksandpolitics.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-iron-law-of-meritocracy-and-its.html http://letstalkbooksandpolitics.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-iro...
ForrestN 13y ago
I can only really think of two ways of understanding the extreme gender imbalance in these jobs. Either there are systemic discriminatory forces at work, or women are somehow inherently ill-suited for programming jobs (ie. because of cognitive deficiency). I worry, but of course couldn't prove, that the sort of responses you get to proposing the former betray that many people subconsciously believe the latter. To those of you who don't believe that widespread discrimination in whatever form exists, how do you explain the fact that, from school classes to upper management, there just aren't nearly as many women in the technical sphere?
- Dewie 13y ago
  > I can only really think of two ways of understanding the extreme gender imbalance in these jobs. Either there are systemic discriminatory forces at work, or women are somehow inherently ill-suited for programming jobs (ie. because of cognitive deficiency). A third alternative is that they are not on average as interested in this kind of profession as the average man. That is a perfectly reasonable theory. But of course that doesn't put you between a rock and a hard place by having to choose between a society-is-sexist or a women-are-inferior theory, so I guess it's not a very fun theory if you want to stirr up a lot of emotions...
  - ForrestN 13y ago
    That's not really a theory, you're just deferring the question. Why wouldn't women be interested in this kind of profession? Do women not like comfortable, creative, high-paying jobs with lots of perks?
    - Dewie 13y ago
      > That's not really a theory, you're just deferring the question. No, it's still a theory. It might naturally lead to the next question, "why don't they wanna?", but so does a lot of theories/explanations (just ask Socrates). > Why wouldn't women be interested in this kind of profession? Do women not like comfortable, creative, high-paying jobs with lots of perks? I don't know, but there could be a lots of reasons, since there are a lot of things other than comfort and money that people consider when they choose a career. Indeed, money is probably relatively unimportant in a more egalitarian, developed society than a society which is less developed and more (gender) unequal: nations with a higher degree of gender equality tend to have a more gender-segregated labour market. Why don't you explain that 'paradox' (it's not really a paradox), with your initial, limited dichotomy?
xenophonf 13y ago
I manage a team that includes several women. Not saying completely ignorant stuff like "shut up and make me a sammich" is easy. It's my potential for unconscious chauvinism that worries me a great deal.
weland 13y ago
I tend to agree with the points you are making -- I certainly don't mean to derail this by a straw man argument, like it already happened above. But I think the importance of this particular incident is... well, somewhat overstated. Because: > So, you see, I was all too familiar with what my daughter was going through, but I was unprepared for the harassment to start in high school, in her programming class. Really? High school? I went to high school, too. I distinctly remember how everyone was calling everyone else whatever they could. I've been called a faggot, a lunatic, a drug-addict, a bitch, a teacher's pet, a limp dick and a long list of other things, and I've been the target of a whole bunch of male stereotypes. Like, you know, every fucking teenager on the planet. I cracked sexist jokes with other dudes -- hell, I cracked sexist jokes with girls -- and I've been the target of sexist jokes, too. Some of them were mean, some of them were in good spirit. Hell, at one point I was the only dude in a Latin class. Few things are more awesome than having the openly lesbian, short-haired colleague asking you whether you'd like to shine her boots and fetch her paper later (particularly after addressing you with "hey sissy" rather than your name). But what the hell, that's what you do when you're a teenagers. We were a bunch of stupid fucks whose most important achievement in life was learning how to play the intro to Stairway to Heaven or trying to fuck while dead drunk. We insulted each other with no reason. Our behaviour was definitely unprofessional, because we went to school, not to work. Seriously, if we're going to get upset and bring out the discrimination pitchforks every time a teenager says something mean to another teenager, we're going to be really busy. People are going to be mean to each other, particularly those who don't have this privilege of sheltered education. I honestly sympathize with this young girl. Humour and sexist jokes apart, I had my share of insults and bullying because of a somewhat visible physical defect (one of my eyes isn't exactly agile). But being a good parent is not a good way to deal with this, no matter how much we'd like that, because it depends on other people being good parents, too. My folks were awesome. Both were cultivated fellows, and my father was in the army and taught me how to punch. I got through school without traumas related to these experience using nothing but wits and kickboxing.
- IanDrake 13y ago
  Thanks for writing this. I was thinking the same thing. Most everyone has had this problem at one point in time. It seems to me that mom needs to teach her daughter to have a thicker skin...which is the EXACT same lesson I got from my parents.
unlogic 13y ago
I asked my absolutely brilliant coed what does she thinks about the whole "sexism in tech" thing. She told me to read less Hacker News and work on my thesis. So I'll just leave this bingo in case you got bored in this thread: http://bit.ly/16i7WAm http://bit.ly/16i7WAm
mcgwiz 13y ago
Agreed. But why are things the way they are and how do we progress from there? In my experience, a lot of the difficulty in comprehending/accepting that women experience the industry so differently than men is that many men either A) over-generalize from an exceptional interaction, or B) follow those that have over-generalized. By "A" I mean that men can rely on confirmation bias to cement their impression of the female experience based on a few choice interactions. For example, confirmation bias can allow a random chat with a well-adjusted, confident woman who appears impervious to tech sexism can dispel for many years any notion in that man's mind that sexism exists in the industry. Thereafter, contradictory signals of other women can themselves be dismissed as exceptions, and because of cognitive dissonance, can actually reinforce his misconception. By "B" I mean that many men have no relevant direct interactions with women (given their low numbers) and may follow the lead of the people with whom they associate, who are by definition men. Any confirmation bias of those men then spreads to them. In addressing this, what is not often recognized is that individual women do have unique experiences. They are affected to varying degrees and in various ways by prejudism and ostracization. As a male, rather than tip-toe around or ignore the issue with a female colleague, I've found the best hueristic for recognizing your potential participation in a prejudicial environment is to earnestly sense/inquire the nature of her past experience. (You may also share your own experiences of prejudism, if any.) By opening such a dialogue, you establish a common foundation and framework for maximizing the team and progressing the industry. IMHO, focusing on the direct, open, and individual treatment of interpersonal relationships (and moving away from the one-experience-fits-all mentality, which lacks common sense and is susceptible to confirmation bias) is an important next step for evolving relations between social groups in general.
asdasf 13y ago
No, I am not taking responsibility for an imaginary problem. You don't get to tell the world they have to cater to your delusions. Do you know what I hear about this issue from my wife? Variations on "What alternate reality are these people living in?". The only sexism she has experienced is the sort you are displaying: the "lets fall all over ourselves protecting the delicate ladies from the horrors of nothing" sort. She doesn't want to be a female programmer, she wants to be a programmer. Constantly making a fuss about an irrelevant detail like her gender is alienating, not helpful. You are making the field off-putting to her, not the evil chauvinist boogeymen she has never seen.
- lambda 13y ago
  > No, I am not taking responsibility for an imaginary problem. Are you claiming that the original authors daughter was imagining her classmates bullying her? Are you saying that I'm imagining the fact that there are far more men than women in the programming profession? These aren't "imaginary problems". These are very real problems. Now, there may be some debate about exactly which behavior is problematic; some people have different standards. But you're not going to tell me that bullying someone and telling them to get into the kitchen is not a problem. > You are making the field off-putting to her, not the evil chauvinist boogeymen she has never seen. I'm sorry, are you saying that someone who's saying it's bad to push women out of the profession is more off-putting than someone in her class telling her to get into the kitchen and make them a sandwich? These are not "evil chauvinish boogeymen she has never seen", they are actual bullies in her actual class.
  - asdasf 13y ago
    >Are you claiming that the original authors daughter was imagining her classmates bullying her? No, I am claiming that the problems the post I replied to was putting forth are imaginary. I am quite aware that bullying is a real problem. >Are you saying that I'm imagining the fact that there are far more men than women in the programming profession? No, I am saying that is not an indication of a problem, much less systemic oppression. There is a strong correlation between increased freedom to choose "non-traditional" professions and fewer people choosing them. More women worked "men's jobs" when they were told they were men's jobs than they do now that they are encouraged to seek those jobs. >But you're not going to tell me that bullying someone and telling them to get into the kitchen is not a problem. Stop presenting such a ridiculous strawman. You can read the post I replied to. You can see that it is clearly not the article. Your entire response is predicated on ignoring the context of the conversation and repositioning my post as being a response to something completely different.
greyfade 13y ago
How "offputting" the field is to women is not, IMO, as problematic as the fact that many girls are discouraged in school, by their teachers from pursuing math or science fields, simply because they're girls. This is an endemic social problem that prevents girls from even considering sciences. That, of course, leads to these fields being mostly misogynistic sausage fests, which is also a big problem, but that's one of the symptoms of the culture of education. ... IMO.
derleth 13y ago
On the flip side, the people on your side need to stop thinking privilege is absolute instead of relative to context, and stop imagining that individuals can be judged based on what group they've placed them into. Yes, even if those things are true statistically, that doesn't make them true for every individual. Also, feminists need to stop being so fucking transphobic. It's a major issue and it is not being addressed.
ShirtlessRod 13y ago
> Just because you haven't been (consciously) chauvinistic to a woman... The implication of your parenthetical being that all men have been unconsciously chauvinistic at some point?
lsiebert 13y ago
WeWe need to fix it, and congratulate only after we fix it. But it's far from a fixed problem currently.

mathattack 13y ago

The danger of some meritocratic systems is that weak leadership will put up with bad behavior just because someone is clearly a star. "Yes, he's hard to work with, but the code would fall apart without him." This is even worse in finance. "We can buy off any kind of lawsuit, after all, he made us $50 million last year!" The problem is that this causes a moral decay. Once a firm accepts that this behavior is acceptable, the slippery slope starts. Well, a couple fudged expense reports isn't bad. Oh, what the client doesn't know won't hurt them. No need to be entirely up front with government. Management doesn't get it, don't share anything with them. Criminal complaints from the government, we're just the victim!

astrogirl 13y ago

So, you're saying that women need special treatment as the more delicately nurtured sex? I completely disagree. The tech environment is what it is, and I don't want to be treated differently than my male co-workers. Also, I've never seen anything resembling a "grotesque pastiche of misogyny and bullying" in my 17 years of working as a programmer or systems analyst.

deleted 13y ago
[deleted]
npsimons 13y ago
Have your male coworkers ever been threatened with rape? Have they ever been told to get back in the kitchen and make a sandwich?
- derleth 13y ago
  > Have your male coworkers ever been threatened with rape? Do you actually think they'd report it if they were?
  - mkr-hn 13y ago
    I've always assumed rape in general is severely under reported. People are rarely treated in a sensible way when they make an accusation that could end a person's ability to lead a normal life even if they're found innocent.
usingpond 13y ago
Close the thread everybody, a token woman just invalidated the whole thing. No misogyny in tech. Also one time a black dude said "what racism? lol" so there's no racism.
- codygman 13y ago
  Racism? What's that? Isn't that what Morgan Freeman said we need to ignore?
nollidge 13y ago
So, you're saying that women need special treatment as the more delicately nurtured sex? Uh, no, he's not saying that. The issue is that women, generally, are already treated differently than their male co-workers, and they shouldn't be. It's about not treating them differently.

hacker789 13y ago

We must protect the fairer sex at all costs. This use of "privilege" as a targeted weapon to silence specific demographics has to stop. Women in the western world have always been among the safest, most privileged people on Earth. This entire thread, in fact, has been a shining example of female privilege. No one cares that women soundly outnumber men in university admission, and university graduation, and even high school graduation. No one cares that young women without children (i.e. the majority) earn more money their male counterparts. Heck, no one cares that it is men who overwhelmingly make up the bottom of society. Instead, we're having a collective anxiety attack because a hyper-privileged white woman is upset that her hyper-privileged white daughter might have had her feelings hurt in high school. This is surreal.

lr 13y ago
At what point does it become ok to harass and threaten this "privileged" group of people?
- etherael 13y ago
  Never, but seriously as soon as I hear typical combinations of the words white male cis privilege I instantly write off the person using it as hopelessly deluded. These are dog whistles for social justice warrior ideologies and everything they imply. Use "different perspective" if that's what you're trying to put across, and if it's not and you really believe the whole privilege meme as something more than that, that's exactly why I write you off. Either way it means either you couldn't be bothered to figure out an effective way to convey a simple core idea without being horrendously offensive, or you actually don't have a clue what you are talking about. This article was mostly excellent because it primarily avoided the classic persecution complexes that are almost par for the course in such things, to have the top comment here raving about privilege does the article an enormous disservice.
  - nollidge 13y ago
    What the fuck is so "horrendously offensive" about the obvious truth that some classes of people have advantages that others don't?

orclev 13y ago

This is a high school class, not the tech industry. You can't blame the tech industry when a bunch of highschoolers act like idiots just because the class they did it in happened to be a programming class. If they had done the same thing in a Algebra class would you be writing a rant about how we need to fix the rampant misogyny in math?

CurtMonash 13y ago
If it happened frequently enough, sure. I went to a high school where the two calculus teachers were both female. I also went to a math PhD program where a professor -- specifically George Mackey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mackey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mackey -- wondered openly as to whether women could do top-level mathematics. In fairness to him, the women in that era were still few and below average, and one even had the temerity to whine about discrimination when the real problem was that she wasn't particularly smart or hardworking. Moral: Even if you don't see bigotry in YOUR part of a group, don't assume it isn't common elsewhere.
- orclev 13y ago
  But that's the thing, every time someone does something misogynistic that's even remotely connected to tech in any way we get a storm of "stop the rampant misogyny in tech" rants and comments, never a "stop the rampant misogyny in the USA/UK/Western World/Whatever". I don't see this as a tech problem, and blaming the tech sector for it is a cop-out. If there genuinely is a larger problem with society as a whole, that's where it needs to be addressed, picking on one subset of the larger group because you can't constructively offer any suggestions for how to fix the larger problem isn't useful. At the end of the day, this was a highschool class with comments being made by highschool kids. The one comment specifically detailed in the article is an old internet meme that was largely popular in gaming circles. The teacher, the only one in this entire story that might have some small connection with the tech industry, never made any inappropriate comments or behaved in any way misogynistic at least so far as the details in the article. To call this story an example of misogyny in the tech industry is pure BS, it had absolutely nothing to do with the tech industry in any way. Edit: More context on the comment the article mentioned: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/get-back-to-the-kitchen http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/get-back-to-the-kitchen

acjohnson55 13y ago

Well said. Who here has never been someplace and felt like they didn't belong? Maybe you were the only person of your ethnicity at some event and you stuck out like a sore thumb. Maybe everyone had their inside jokes and familiarities you didn't know about. Maybe occasionally, people made in unambiguously clear that you weren't welcome, by being cold or outright hostile. This is what it feels like for many women in the tech world. I really feel like this comes down not so much to an inability to comprehend and empathize, but more so to a vested interest of deniers in the status quo. More outsiders means people on the inside have to let go of their insularity, and moreover, compete with an influx of people who bring in diverse skillsets and viewpoints. Our supposedly meritocratic software world is actually anything but. I believe Chris Hayes nails it with his Iron Law of Meritocracy, summarized here [1]. [1] http://letstalkbooksandpolitics.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-iron-law-of-meritocracy-and-its.html http://letstalkbooksandpolitics.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-iro...

ForrestN 13y ago

I can only really think of two ways of understanding the extreme gender imbalance in these jobs. Either there are systemic discriminatory forces at work, or women are somehow inherently ill-suited for programming jobs (ie. because of cognitive deficiency). I worry, but of course couldn't prove, that the sort of responses you get to proposing the former betray that many people subconsciously believe the latter. To those of you who don't believe that widespread discrimination in whatever form exists, how do you explain the fact that, from school classes to upper management, there just aren't nearly as many women in the technical sphere?

Dewie 13y ago
> I can only really think of two ways of understanding the extreme gender imbalance in these jobs. Either there are systemic discriminatory forces at work, or women are somehow inherently ill-suited for programming jobs (ie. because of cognitive deficiency). A third alternative is that they are not on average as interested in this kind of profession as the average man. That is a perfectly reasonable theory. But of course that doesn't put you between a rock and a hard place by having to choose between a society-is-sexist or a women-are-inferior theory, so I guess it's not a very fun theory if you want to stirr up a lot of emotions...
- ForrestN 13y ago
  That's not really a theory, you're just deferring the question. Why wouldn't women be interested in this kind of profession? Do women not like comfortable, creative, high-paying jobs with lots of perks?
  - Dewie 13y ago
    > That's not really a theory, you're just deferring the question. No, it's still a theory. It might naturally lead to the next question, "why don't they wanna?", but so does a lot of theories/explanations (just ask Socrates). > Why wouldn't women be interested in this kind of profession? Do women not like comfortable, creative, high-paying jobs with lots of perks? I don't know, but there could be a lots of reasons, since there are a lot of things other than comfort and money that people consider when they choose a career. Indeed, money is probably relatively unimportant in a more egalitarian, developed society than a society which is less developed and more (gender) unequal: nations with a higher degree of gender equality tend to have a more gender-segregated labour market. Why don't you explain that 'paradox' (it's not really a paradox), with your initial, limited dichotomy?

xenophonf 13y ago

I manage a team that includes several women. Not saying completely ignorant stuff like "shut up and make me a sammich" is easy. It's my potential for unconscious chauvinism that worries me a great deal.

weland 13y ago

I tend to agree with the points you are making -- I certainly don't mean to derail this by a straw man argument, like it already happened above. But I think the importance of this particular incident is... well, somewhat overstated. Because: > So, you see, I was all too familiar with what my daughter was going through, but I was unprepared for the harassment to start in high school, in her programming class. Really? High school? I went to high school, too. I distinctly remember how everyone was calling everyone else whatever they could. I've been called a faggot, a lunatic, a drug-addict, a bitch, a teacher's pet, a limp dick and a long list of other things, and I've been the target of a whole bunch of male stereotypes. Like, you know, every fucking teenager on the planet. I cracked sexist jokes with other dudes -- hell, I cracked sexist jokes with girls -- and I've been the target of sexist jokes, too. Some of them were mean, some of them were in good spirit. Hell, at one point I was the only dude in a Latin class. Few things are more awesome than having the openly lesbian, short-haired colleague asking you whether you'd like to shine her boots and fetch her paper later (particularly after addressing you with "hey sissy" rather than your name). But what the hell, that's what you do when you're a teenagers. We were a bunch of stupid fucks whose most important achievement in life was learning how to play the intro to Stairway to Heaven or trying to fuck while dead drunk. We insulted each other with no reason. Our behaviour was definitely unprofessional, because we went to school, not to work. Seriously, if we're going to get upset and bring out the discrimination pitchforks every time a teenager says something mean to another teenager, we're going to be really busy. People are going to be mean to each other, particularly those who don't have this privilege of sheltered education. I honestly sympathize with this young girl. Humour and sexist jokes apart, I had my share of insults and bullying because of a somewhat visible physical defect (one of my eyes isn't exactly agile). But being a good parent is not a good way to deal with this, no matter how much we'd like that, because it depends on other people being good parents, too. My folks were awesome. Both were cultivated fellows, and my father was in the army and taught me how to punch. I got through school without traumas related to these experience using nothing but wits and kickboxing.

IanDrake 13y ago
Thanks for writing this. I was thinking the same thing. Most everyone has had this problem at one point in time. It seems to me that mom needs to teach her daughter to have a thicker skin...which is the EXACT same lesson I got from my parents.

unlogic 13y ago

I asked my absolutely brilliant coed what does she thinks about the whole "sexism in tech" thing. She told me to read less Hacker News and work on my thesis. So I'll just leave this bingo in case you got bored in this thread: http://bit.ly/16i7WAm http://bit.ly/16i7WAm

mcgwiz 13y ago

Agreed. But why are things the way they are and how do we progress from there? In my experience, a lot of the difficulty in comprehending/accepting that women experience the industry so differently than men is that many men either A) over-generalize from an exceptional interaction, or B) follow those that have over-generalized. By "A" I mean that men can rely on confirmation bias to cement their impression of the female experience based on a few choice interactions. For example, confirmation bias can allow a random chat with a well-adjusted, confident woman who appears impervious to tech sexism can dispel for many years any notion in that man's mind that sexism exists in the industry. Thereafter, contradictory signals of other women can themselves be dismissed as exceptions, and because of cognitive dissonance, can actually reinforce his misconception. By "B" I mean that many men have no relevant direct interactions with women (given their low numbers) and may follow the lead of the people with whom they associate, who are by definition men. Any confirmation bias of those men then spreads to them. In addressing this, what is not often recognized is that individual women do have unique experiences. They are affected to varying degrees and in various ways by prejudism and ostracization. As a male, rather than tip-toe around or ignore the issue with a female colleague, I've found the best hueristic for recognizing your potential participation in a prejudicial environment is to earnestly sense/inquire the nature of her past experience. (You may also share your own experiences of prejudism, if any.) By opening such a dialogue, you establish a common foundation and framework for maximizing the team and progressing the industry. IMHO, focusing on the direct, open, and individual treatment of interpersonal relationships (and moving away from the one-experience-fits-all mentality, which lacks common sense and is susceptible to confirmation bias) is an important next step for evolving relations between social groups in general.

asdasf 13y ago

No, I am not taking responsibility for an imaginary problem. You don't get to tell the world they have to cater to your delusions. Do you know what I hear about this issue from my wife? Variations on "What alternate reality are these people living in?". The only sexism she has experienced is the sort you are displaying: the "lets fall all over ourselves protecting the delicate ladies from the horrors of nothing" sort. She doesn't want to be a female programmer, she wants to be a programmer. Constantly making a fuss about an irrelevant detail like her gender is alienating, not helpful. You are making the field off-putting to her, not the evil chauvinist boogeymen she has never seen.

lambda 13y ago
> No, I am not taking responsibility for an imaginary problem. Are you claiming that the original authors daughter was imagining her classmates bullying her? Are you saying that I'm imagining the fact that there are far more men than women in the programming profession? These aren't "imaginary problems". These are very real problems. Now, there may be some debate about exactly which behavior is problematic; some people have different standards. But you're not going to tell me that bullying someone and telling them to get into the kitchen is not a problem. > You are making the field off-putting to her, not the evil chauvinist boogeymen she has never seen. I'm sorry, are you saying that someone who's saying it's bad to push women out of the profession is more off-putting than someone in her class telling her to get into the kitchen and make them a sandwich? These are not "evil chauvinish boogeymen she has never seen", they are actual bullies in her actual class.
- asdasf 13y ago
  >Are you claiming that the original authors daughter was imagining her classmates bullying her? No, I am claiming that the problems the post I replied to was putting forth are imaginary. I am quite aware that bullying is a real problem. >Are you saying that I'm imagining the fact that there are far more men than women in the programming profession? No, I am saying that is not an indication of a problem, much less systemic oppression. There is a strong correlation between increased freedom to choose "non-traditional" professions and fewer people choosing them. More women worked "men's jobs" when they were told they were men's jobs than they do now that they are encouraged to seek those jobs. >But you're not going to tell me that bullying someone and telling them to get into the kitchen is not a problem. Stop presenting such a ridiculous strawman. You can read the post I replied to. You can see that it is clearly not the article. Your entire response is predicated on ignoring the context of the conversation and repositioning my post as being a response to something completely different.

greyfade 13y ago

How "offputting" the field is to women is not, IMO, as problematic as the fact that many girls are discouraged in school, by their teachers from pursuing math or science fields, simply because they're girls. This is an endemic social problem that prevents girls from even considering sciences. That, of course, leads to these fields being mostly misogynistic sausage fests, which is also a big problem, but that's one of the symptoms of the culture of education. ... IMO.

derleth 13y ago

On the flip side, the people on your side need to stop thinking privilege is absolute instead of relative to context, and stop imagining that individuals can be judged based on what group they've placed them into. Yes, even if those things are true statistically, that doesn't make them true for every individual. Also, feminists need to stop being so fucking transphobic. It's a major issue and it is not being addressed.

ShirtlessRod 13y ago

> Just because you haven't been (consciously) chauvinistic to a woman... The implication of your parenthetical being that all men have been unconsciously chauvinistic at some point?

lsiebert 13y ago

WeWe need to fix it, and congratulate only after we fix it. But it's far from a fixed problem currently.