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I can't believe you're serious. I'm a woman who's been programming for years, and I really, really like technology. I'm currently at hackerschool, and nearly h

I can't believe you're serious. I'm a woman who's been programming for years, and I really, really like technology. I'm currently at hackerschool, and nearly half the current batch consists of women who like technology. It's not such a rarity. And no, I don't read "women's mags", and spent my teens reading various Linux and technology magazines.

graycat 13y ago
> I can't believe you're serious. I am "serious". I'm very, very, very serious, fully, 100%, iron clad, totally serious. It's one of the most important lessons I had to learn in life, a lesson I didn't know and had to learn, the hard way, a very, very hard way, and the cost was high, very high, a major fraction of my whole life. What I said about babies is a slight exaggeration of some recent, solid research. It's correct. Nearly every parent with anything like an open mind and both boy and girl children comes to the same conclusion, finds that such differences between boys and girls are so totally obvious that no one should fail to understand them. The girls like dolls, and the boys like fire trucks. And this usually holds even if the boys and girls are treated just the same. Why? Early in the crib, the girls are interested in emotional connections with people, and the boys are interested in things. Tannen describes some more research on the differences already at age 5. I'm correct: What I'm saying about nearly all girls and women is 100% absolutely, positively, totally rock solidly correct. Sorry 'bout that. You are very, very different. I've never seen such a girl. As I indicated, I've seen girls who could do technology very, very well (I was married to one; she was Valedictorian, Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Woodrow Wilson, NSF, and Ph.D.), but she didn't like it. The story did not end well. If I had a daughter, then I'd encourage her to be a very traditional female, including thinking about clothes, hair, and makeup. But I'd also try to get her well informed on people, men, relationships, marriage, family, parenting, emotions, psychology, socialization, and art. And for a career, I'd suggest something involving people, maybe being a bookkeeper, accountant, CPA, nurse, K-12 teacher, etc. No way would I sacrifice her life trying to shovel sand against the tide. There's a big reason I don't have a daughter or any children or now even a wife: I was far too slow to understand the usually rock solid differences between boys and girls. Maybe someday I will write a book covering what I wish I'd known -- Girls 101 for Dummies -- Boys. Could do a lot in 100 pages. If I did have a daughter, then I'd conclude that she needs a good life; for that she needs a good marriage; and a good marriage is based on "offspring, security, and care taking", and extra credit for knowing the source (hint: it was a woman, and past President of the American Psychiatric Association). Knowing and liking Linux won't by itself keep you from having a good life as a woman, even an otherwise quite traditional woman. Still, nearly no girl or woman actually likes technology -- they like people, not things.
- what_the_heck 13y ago
  For what it's worth, the model I find most useful is a bimodal distribution: the average for men and women is indeed fairly different on the parameters you describe, but there is quite a lot of overlap, and individuals who are past the mean of the other gender. There's no need to apologize for acknowledging that the means are different; there probably is cause to apologize if you insist on treating people as if they were in two distinct, narrow columns with a huge gap between them. The results with differences in children are there, but the claims of innateness are overstated (not false, merely overstated) - children are treated differently, in terms of how they're talked to and bounced around, even in their first week of life. I don't believe the social differences in their treatment have absolutely no impact. I hate forcing people into 'traditional' roles - and those roles tend to be an idealized version of how people think their grandparents lived, anyhow. I'm in favour of letting people be people. I think children should be encouraged to follow their interests, and learn how to interact in at least one culture, but not forced into moulds for the sake of ideology. If someone wants to learn about fashion, makeup, or piloting fighter planes, great; if there are statistically significant differences in who is doing what, fine; if you're forcing people into one thing or another based on traits that correlate (such as their gender), stop. Don't force someone to chose a profession based on their gender and opposed to their interests, whether you're shovelling sand with or against your society's tide. Good lives can include good marriages, and probably do for most people, but don't necessarily have to; people are diverse. I'm sorry to hear your marriage ended unhappily, but I would hazard a guess that it wasn't purely due to you not understanding women as a group, and at least partly not understanding the needs of the particular woman you were married to; the two may have been similar, but certainly were not identical. Purely anecdotally, I'm in a happy relationship with a man, like technology far more than even the average male open source programmer, and don't care at all about fashion, makeup, gossip, or hair. I'm not 'traditional', and I have no desire to be; I am happy.
  - graycat 13y ago
    Congratulations on your good understanding of and application of probability densities! That subject is again something many more men understand than women! All or nearly all your arguments are fine. You are the first woman I ever heard of who actually likes technology. I doubt that Marissa Mayer really likes technology; maybe screen layouts, colors, and UI/UX but not actual technology. Congratulations on your liking what you do and doing what you like. My wife was a big challenge. I met her when she was 18, first saw her socially at 20, and married her at 22. At 20, she looked fine, and she had two younger sisters that also looked fine. And her mother looked like Bismarck's church, cooking, children, sewing (in German, all start with 'K' but I don't want to go to the trouble to get the umlauts typed in correctly so give you the English translation). But my evaluation was seriously wrong. It turned out, if knew some of what to look for, her mother had cut off essentially all communications with her husband and with everyone else talked only about trivia such as the weather. So, the parents had no intimacy between their ears. I failed to see that until years later. Otherwise, the family looked terrific. Alas, all three of the girls started to encounter serious problems near age 22. That's just the way some of these things work. See it? Now, sure. Then, no. There was next to nothing I could do. The only option for her and us was that she regard herself as dependent on me, be subordinate to me, look to me for nearly all direction and thinking, for what she was to do, day by day, nearly hour by hour, have me make requests, show her how to accomplish the task of the request if she didn't already know well, let her do what I had asked, and then get praise and approval at the end. This solution did work; I never tried it, but in effect we tried it by accident and it worked well. But, she was very angry about that solution, so angry she just would not accept it. I never tried to get her to follow this solution, and maybe that was a mistake of mine, asking too much of her. When I married her, my view of her capabilities was very high, the polar opposite of the solution I described. But, how she lived before I met her actually was close to that solution: Her parents and school teachers and professors made the assignments, and she did them with high diligence and, then, got her self-image and self- esteem. Her big problem, where she stumbled, dropped the ball, tripped over the ball, fell on the ball, and lost the ball was just when she was given some independence and expected to work out for herself what to do. There was more to the situation, but there was no easy solution except the one that she was so angry about she would not accept it. Technology can be fun, involving, and profitable -- go for it!
hrkristian 13y ago
You should have read more carefully. >starting with no real background at all, totally blowing away some of the brightest people in computing. That's pretty much an acknowledgement of your existence as an exception to the general rule. Did you know there are -despite this (I assume) man's statements- men who are not the least bit interested in technology and "things"? I hardly see them being offended on behalf of their whole gender like yourself.
- what_the_heck 13y ago
  Read more carefully yourself. I didn't reply to the bit about competence, I replied to the bit where he said "But, I've nearly never seen a girl or woman who actually likes something technical." As he's not met a single one, I'm pointing out I exist. I'm not offended (much less 'on behalf of my whole gender'), I'm surprised. Don't bring your own baggage into other discussions randomly.

graycat 13y ago

> I can't believe you're serious. I am "serious". I'm very, very, very serious, fully, 100%, iron clad, totally serious. It's one of the most important lessons I had to learn in life, a lesson I didn't know and had to learn, the hard way, a very, very hard way, and the cost was high, very high, a major fraction of my whole life. What I said about babies is a slight exaggeration of some recent, solid research. It's correct. Nearly every parent with anything like an open mind and both boy and girl children comes to the same conclusion, finds that such differences between boys and girls are so totally obvious that no one should fail to understand them. The girls like dolls, and the boys like fire trucks. And this usually holds even if the boys and girls are treated just the same. Why? Early in the crib, the girls are interested in emotional connections with people, and the boys are interested in things. Tannen describes some more research on the differences already at age 5. I'm correct: What I'm saying about nearly all girls and women is 100% absolutely, positively, totally rock solidly correct. Sorry 'bout that. You are very, very different. I've never seen such a girl. As I indicated, I've seen girls who could do technology very, very well (I was married to one; she was Valedictorian, Summa Cum Laude, Phi Beta Kappa, Woodrow Wilson, NSF, and Ph.D.), but she didn't like it. The story did not end well. If I had a daughter, then I'd encourage her to be a very traditional female, including thinking about clothes, hair, and makeup. But I'd also try to get her well informed on people, men, relationships, marriage, family, parenting, emotions, psychology, socialization, and art. And for a career, I'd suggest something involving people, maybe being a bookkeeper, accountant, CPA, nurse, K-12 teacher, etc. No way would I sacrifice her life trying to shovel sand against the tide. There's a big reason I don't have a daughter or any children or now even a wife: I was far too slow to understand the usually rock solid differences between boys and girls. Maybe someday I will write a book covering what I wish I'd known -- Girls 101 for Dummies -- Boys. Could do a lot in 100 pages. If I did have a daughter, then I'd conclude that she needs a good life; for that she needs a good marriage; and a good marriage is based on "offspring, security, and care taking", and extra credit for knowing the source (hint: it was a woman, and past President of the American Psychiatric Association). Knowing and liking Linux won't by itself keep you from having a good life as a woman, even an otherwise quite traditional woman. Still, nearly no girl or woman actually likes technology -- they like people, not things.

what_the_heck 13y ago
For what it's worth, the model I find most useful is a bimodal distribution: the average for men and women is indeed fairly different on the parameters you describe, but there is quite a lot of overlap, and individuals who are past the mean of the other gender. There's no need to apologize for acknowledging that the means are different; there probably is cause to apologize if you insist on treating people as if they were in two distinct, narrow columns with a huge gap between them. The results with differences in children are there, but the claims of innateness are overstated (not false, merely overstated) - children are treated differently, in terms of how they're talked to and bounced around, even in their first week of life. I don't believe the social differences in their treatment have absolutely no impact. I hate forcing people into 'traditional' roles - and those roles tend to be an idealized version of how people think their grandparents lived, anyhow. I'm in favour of letting people be people. I think children should be encouraged to follow their interests, and learn how to interact in at least one culture, but not forced into moulds for the sake of ideology. If someone wants to learn about fashion, makeup, or piloting fighter planes, great; if there are statistically significant differences in who is doing what, fine; if you're forcing people into one thing or another based on traits that correlate (such as their gender), stop. Don't force someone to chose a profession based on their gender and opposed to their interests, whether you're shovelling sand with or against your society's tide. Good lives can include good marriages, and probably do for most people, but don't necessarily have to; people are diverse. I'm sorry to hear your marriage ended unhappily, but I would hazard a guess that it wasn't purely due to you not understanding women as a group, and at least partly not understanding the needs of the particular woman you were married to; the two may have been similar, but certainly were not identical. Purely anecdotally, I'm in a happy relationship with a man, like technology far more than even the average male open source programmer, and don't care at all about fashion, makeup, gossip, or hair. I'm not 'traditional', and I have no desire to be; I am happy.
- graycat 13y ago
  Congratulations on your good understanding of and application of probability densities! That subject is again something many more men understand than women! All or nearly all your arguments are fine. You are the first woman I ever heard of who actually likes technology. I doubt that Marissa Mayer really likes technology; maybe screen layouts, colors, and UI/UX but not actual technology. Congratulations on your liking what you do and doing what you like. My wife was a big challenge. I met her when she was 18, first saw her socially at 20, and married her at 22. At 20, she looked fine, and she had two younger sisters that also looked fine. And her mother looked like Bismarck's church, cooking, children, sewing (in German, all start with 'K' but I don't want to go to the trouble to get the umlauts typed in correctly so give you the English translation). But my evaluation was seriously wrong. It turned out, if knew some of what to look for, her mother had cut off essentially all communications with her husband and with everyone else talked only about trivia such as the weather. So, the parents had no intimacy between their ears. I failed to see that until years later. Otherwise, the family looked terrific. Alas, all three of the girls started to encounter serious problems near age 22. That's just the way some of these things work. See it? Now, sure. Then, no. There was next to nothing I could do. The only option for her and us was that she regard herself as dependent on me, be subordinate to me, look to me for nearly all direction and thinking, for what she was to do, day by day, nearly hour by hour, have me make requests, show her how to accomplish the task of the request if she didn't already know well, let her do what I had asked, and then get praise and approval at the end. This solution did work; I never tried it, but in effect we tried it by accident and it worked well. But, she was very angry about that solution, so angry she just would not accept it. I never tried to get her to follow this solution, and maybe that was a mistake of mine, asking too much of her. When I married her, my view of her capabilities was very high, the polar opposite of the solution I described. But, how she lived before I met her actually was close to that solution: Her parents and school teachers and professors made the assignments, and she did them with high diligence and, then, got her self-image and self- esteem. Her big problem, where she stumbled, dropped the ball, tripped over the ball, fell on the ball, and lost the ball was just when she was given some independence and expected to work out for herself what to do. There was more to the situation, but there was no easy solution except the one that she was so angry about she would not accept it. Technology can be fun, involving, and profitable -- go for it!

hrkristian 13y ago

You should have read more carefully. >starting with no real background at all, totally blowing away some of the brightest people in computing. That's pretty much an acknowledgement of your existence as an exception to the general rule. Did you know there are -despite this (I assume) man's statements- men who are not the least bit interested in technology and "things"? I hardly see them being offended on behalf of their whole gender like yourself.

what_the_heck 13y ago
Read more carefully yourself. I didn't reply to the bit about competence, I replied to the bit where he said "But, I've nearly never seen a girl or woman who actually likes something technical." As he's not met a single one, I'm pointing out I exist. I'm not offended (much less 'on behalf of my whole gender'), I'm surprised. Don't bring your own baggage into other discussions randomly.