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This is extremely sexist and needlessly hostile. It's like being male and interested in coding is somehow associated with all the stereotypical male attributes

This is extremely sexist and needlessly hostile. It's like being male and interested in coding is somehow associated with all the stereotypical male attributes which turns off women from coding. Ah, so we need to have boys acting less like boys because it's clearly why we don't have more women in tech. So we all need to teach teen boys to become meterosexual so it can be more inviting and suitable for females? I think if you want more women to be coding, you have failed definitely. Why not show that women can be as strong as the boys, can rub shoulders and brain and still come out on top? By segregating based on gender, you only support that women have stereotypical attributes which prevent them from being as good as men, and men are good because of their stereotypical attributes. Your genitals do not make you a coder, it's really down to the culture and societal expectations of both genders.

wetmore 13y ago
Yes explain to me how keeping things the way they are will fix the situation.
- flebron 13y ago
  I will do that as soon as you explain how treating female coders as if they were freaks, segregating them in their own class, decreases the problem of integration of more female coders in tech. Perhaps the issue of "feeling alien to the community" would be improved by, you know, not alienating females from the community, with sexist behavior such as this.
  - primitivesuave 13y ago
    I would never consider a female coder to be any different from a male one. I am merely giving anecdotal evidence that female students of the 11 - 17 age group learn significantly better when they are amongst their peers. My decision to make a few of our classes into girls-only ones was to allow the girls who felt uncomfortable in a male-dominated setting to still have an opportunity to learn in a setting they found comfortable. My underlying motivation was not to segregate them, but to give them another option - we still have girls attending our regular classes, and this is hardly the issue that some of the commenters here are making it out to be.
    - obstacle1 13y ago
      >I would never consider a female coder to be any different from a male one You literally segregated males from females in your coding class. That is considering them to be different. >female students of the 11 - 17 age group learn significantly better when they are amongst their peers. So male students aren't peers of female students? Really? I'm pretty sure you're not being purposefully malicious, but jeeze... Your philosophy is kinda broken, you don't really seem to realize the (incredibly sexist) assumptions you're making, and that's going to lead to reinforcing a gender divide, not solving any problems.
      - DanBC 13y ago
        You are ignoring all the evidence that young females learn better in single sex classes. By keeping mixed sex classes you are already putting females at a disadvantage.
      - primitivesuave 13y ago
        I understand that from an idealistic perspective what I'm doing can be regarded as malicious or sexist, but I'd like to point out two very important things: 1. there is no requirement for girls to only attend the all-girls classes. 2. this is not my philosophy, this is a data-driven decision that has nothing to do with my perception of the abilities of males or females. The all-girls classes were a result of us seeing a significant drop in the percentage of girls enrolled in a programming class. It was a management decision that many of the parents in our community appreciated, and quite frankly I'm a bit shocked by how quickly people on HN jump to the conclusion that I'm some kind of misogynist.
      - watwut 13y ago
        @DanBC There is not that much evidence and I do not see best education system in the world moving to gender educated classes. There is one experiment on few kids with all kinds of special conditions. Plus, there are some proves that girls perform worst when reminded of all "incapable woman" stereotypes.
      - detcader 13y ago
        You're obviously a man, but you seem to think yourself the arbiter of what is or is not sexist against women. Why is this?
  - vacri 13y ago
    "Hey, female coder, you can choose to be in a co-ed class or a female-only one, your choice" is hardly treating them as freaks. You're completely misrepresenting the original commentor.
- shangxiao 13y ago
  imho, I think we should target less popular and possibly more important situations (all relative, I know) such as helping people in 3rd world nations to get better access to IT & education.
primitivesuave 13y ago
I respect your idealism and definitely did not want to sound sexist or hostile with my comment. I completely agree that segregating by gender doesn't do much good when it comes to lifelong skills of working with the opposite gender, but at the age group levels that we deal with, it becomes incredibly difficult to handle the disparity in average maturity levels between genders. I merely wanted to point out a practical experience and was not trying to advocate gender segregation.
detcader 13y ago
primitivesuave was literally recounting their own experience with young children; are they "sexist", or is describing reality just not to your liking? What does "acting like boys" even mean, may I ask? primitivesuave was taking about the toxic masculinity that involves macho superiority and violence, sorry if it upsets you that that's what masculinity involves. primitivesuave wasn't talking about genitals, they were talking about gender, and you know this -- "acting like boys" has nothing to do with genitals -- but seem profoundly confused and angry about it.
- obstacle1 13y ago
  primitivesuave's post is fraught with unconscious sexism. That is the problem. First he generalizes that all adolescent males put on "pseudo-masculine efforts". No they don't. That's just as much a stereotype as "all girls suck at coding" or whatever stereotype-du-jour militant feminists are raging about this week. Maybe a few of the students put on "displays" that he considers to be "pseudo-masculine efforts". That is a reflection of his own judgment of stereotypes though, not something innate to adolescent boys. Then his proposed solution is to segregate males and females to facilitate learning. Think about that. Rather than discipline the kids who are acting out, teaching them to act in ways appropriate to civil society, he thinks that segregating boys and girls is the correct play. Even by his own logic, he's perpetuating the gender divide. Rather than stop the "pseudo-masculine efforts", he removes the women from the situation so that said "pseudo-masculine efforts" can continue. It's a really, really bizarre 'solution' when smoothing the gender divide is a stated goal. It's akin to a company's HR getting complaints from female staff that the male executives are swearing too much or making sexual jokes or _insert_stereotypical_sexist_male_exec_behavior_here_. Rather than addressing the offending behavior, HR chooses to give females the "opportunity" to go have their own meetings down the hall on different days. No sane person thinks that will make strides towards gender equality. It will end in females being relegated to admin/secretary land while the executive boys club carries on.
  - detcader 13y ago
    "ostracized by pseudo-masculine efforts undertaken by adolescent males" - I don't see the word "all" in there "militant feminists"? Really? Masculinity is a socially constructed, we can identify [1] masculinity as a phenomenon, that's what the field of sociology is for. I do agree that segregation is not a solution, but you're assuming bad faith on primitivesuave's part, who apparently was is trying to give kids the best environment to learn in. One has to wonder why you do this. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exzMPT4nGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exzMPT4nGI

wetmore 13y ago

Yes explain to me how keeping things the way they are will fix the situation.

flebron 13y ago
I will do that as soon as you explain how treating female coders as if they were freaks, segregating them in their own class, decreases the problem of integration of more female coders in tech. Perhaps the issue of "feeling alien to the community" would be improved by, you know, not alienating females from the community, with sexist behavior such as this.
- primitivesuave 13y ago
  I would never consider a female coder to be any different from a male one. I am merely giving anecdotal evidence that female students of the 11 - 17 age group learn significantly better when they are amongst their peers. My decision to make a few of our classes into girls-only ones was to allow the girls who felt uncomfortable in a male-dominated setting to still have an opportunity to learn in a setting they found comfortable. My underlying motivation was not to segregate them, but to give them another option - we still have girls attending our regular classes, and this is hardly the issue that some of the commenters here are making it out to be.
  - obstacle1 13y ago
    >I would never consider a female coder to be any different from a male one You literally segregated males from females in your coding class. That is considering them to be different. >female students of the 11 - 17 age group learn significantly better when they are amongst their peers. So male students aren't peers of female students? Really? I'm pretty sure you're not being purposefully malicious, but jeeze... Your philosophy is kinda broken, you don't really seem to realize the (incredibly sexist) assumptions you're making, and that's going to lead to reinforcing a gender divide, not solving any problems.
    - DanBC 13y ago
      You are ignoring all the evidence that young females learn better in single sex classes. By keeping mixed sex classes you are already putting females at a disadvantage.
    - primitivesuave 13y ago
      I understand that from an idealistic perspective what I'm doing can be regarded as malicious or sexist, but I'd like to point out two very important things: 1. there is no requirement for girls to only attend the all-girls classes. 2. this is not my philosophy, this is a data-driven decision that has nothing to do with my perception of the abilities of males or females. The all-girls classes were a result of us seeing a significant drop in the percentage of girls enrolled in a programming class. It was a management decision that many of the parents in our community appreciated, and quite frankly I'm a bit shocked by how quickly people on HN jump to the conclusion that I'm some kind of misogynist.
    - watwut 13y ago
      @DanBC There is not that much evidence and I do not see best education system in the world moving to gender educated classes. There is one experiment on few kids with all kinds of special conditions. Plus, there are some proves that girls perform worst when reminded of all "incapable woman" stereotypes.
    - detcader 13y ago
      You're obviously a man, but you seem to think yourself the arbiter of what is or is not sexist against women. Why is this?
- vacri 13y ago
  "Hey, female coder, you can choose to be in a co-ed class or a female-only one, your choice" is hardly treating them as freaks. You're completely misrepresenting the original commentor.
shangxiao 13y ago
imho, I think we should target less popular and possibly more important situations (all relative, I know) such as helping people in 3rd world nations to get better access to IT & education.

primitivesuave 13y ago

I respect your idealism and definitely did not want to sound sexist or hostile with my comment. I completely agree that segregating by gender doesn't do much good when it comes to lifelong skills of working with the opposite gender, but at the age group levels that we deal with, it becomes incredibly difficult to handle the disparity in average maturity levels between genders. I merely wanted to point out a practical experience and was not trying to advocate gender segregation.

detcader 13y ago

primitivesuave was literally recounting their own experience with young children; are they "sexist", or is describing reality just not to your liking? What does "acting like boys" even mean, may I ask? primitivesuave was taking about the toxic masculinity that involves macho superiority and violence, sorry if it upsets you that that's what masculinity involves. primitivesuave wasn't talking about genitals, they were talking about gender, and you know this -- "acting like boys" has nothing to do with genitals -- but seem profoundly confused and angry about it.

obstacle1 13y ago
primitivesuave's post is fraught with unconscious sexism. That is the problem. First he generalizes that all adolescent males put on "pseudo-masculine efforts". No they don't. That's just as much a stereotype as "all girls suck at coding" or whatever stereotype-du-jour militant feminists are raging about this week. Maybe a few of the students put on "displays" that he considers to be "pseudo-masculine efforts". That is a reflection of his own judgment of stereotypes though, not something innate to adolescent boys. Then his proposed solution is to segregate males and females to facilitate learning. Think about that. Rather than discipline the kids who are acting out, teaching them to act in ways appropriate to civil society, he thinks that segregating boys and girls is the correct play. Even by his own logic, he's perpetuating the gender divide. Rather than stop the "pseudo-masculine efforts", he removes the women from the situation so that said "pseudo-masculine efforts" can continue. It's a really, really bizarre 'solution' when smoothing the gender divide is a stated goal. It's akin to a company's HR getting complaints from female staff that the male executives are swearing too much or making sexual jokes or _insert_stereotypical_sexist_male_exec_behavior_here_. Rather than addressing the offending behavior, HR chooses to give females the "opportunity" to go have their own meetings down the hall on different days. No sane person thinks that will make strides towards gender equality. It will end in females being relegated to admin/secretary land while the executive boys club carries on.
- detcader 13y ago
  "ostracized by pseudo-masculine efforts undertaken by adolescent males" - I don't see the word "all" in there "militant feminists"? Really? Masculinity is a socially constructed, we can identify [1] masculinity as a phenomenon, that's what the field of sociology is for. I do agree that segregation is not a solution, but you're assuming bad faith on primitivesuave's part, who apparently was is trying to give kids the best environment to learn in. One has to wonder why you do this. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exzMPT4nGI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3exzMPT4nGI