6 ms·

What creates a hostile environment for woman is where a sector, made of predominately men is scrutinized with a hysterical "boy who cried wolf" mentality. It's

by rds2000 13y ago

What creates a hostile environment for woman is where a sector, made of predominately men is scrutinized with a hysterical "boy who cried wolf" mentality. It's a vicious cycle. 1. First there is a tiny group of feminists, mostly consisting of marketers, call themselves coders, but if you were look them up, they're twittering and having fun more than building. They seem very happy to stir indignation. 2. Then, people in positions of power bend toward the illegitimate trolls who cried wolf. I'm talking, the word "meritocracy" being offensive by github CEO [1], python board members referring to geekfeminism.org as a charter [2] for pycon conferences. Pack up and go home, these are the leaders, the chiefs, the alphas of engineers - and they are cowing down to politically correct trolls on twitter, who aren't even participants to the causes. Twitter and blogs allow anyone to claim to be anything. You used to need a degree to Marketer! Now any girl with an iPhone can be one! Twitter lets anyone call themselves a programmer. However, Github holds people accountable for actually having to program - funny how meritocracy came up as a bad word to these people! What is really creating a hostile work environment for woman? I can tell you, men who stay silent watching this bogus stuff happen, woman with legitimate skill and talent may be cast off as a liability. Consider this: if you are a woman, and you would let a bad joke ruin someone's life, or abuse politically correct sympathy as a female to get benefits - is that going to help your cause? If you are a leader or boss, and you let these trolls shape you - You lack backbone. I feel this is a lack of integrity, and they're not fit to lead. I hope leaders set an example and not feed these attention trolls and call their crap out. These are woman creating a hostile environment for woman who would otherwise feel grateful to earn their way and belong. [1]: https://twitter.com/defunkt/statuses/426104782894284800 https://twitter.com/defunkt/statuses/426104782894284800 [2]: http://jessenoller.com/blog/2012/12/7/the-code-of-conduct http://jessenoller.com/blog/2012/12/7/the-code-of-conduct

Crake 13y ago
>These are woman creating a hostile environment for woman who would otherwise feel grateful to earn their way and belong. EXACTLY THIS. Listen up, white knights, and please--knock it off.
- KuraFire 13y ago
  You are such an embarrassing cliché, I don't even know where you would have to begin to gain some perspective. Primary and secondary school history lessons, probably.
  - Crake 13y ago
    "How dare you disagree with me!"
ceol 13y ago
> but if you were look them up, they're twittering and having fun more than building. The irony of this comment being in a long-winded post on Hacker News is lost, perhaps? You do realize the vast majority of "programmers" aren't building 100% of the time. Judging by that and the fact you throw out "feminist" like it's an insult, I'm going to say you've got some pretty heavy bias.
- rds2000 13y ago
  I don't want to make personal examples, if you compare the look at the replies to @defunkt's twitter post, the females cheering - who even go so far as to overly call themselves feminists - have basically no engineer cred to speak for. Not on github, not on LinkedIn. Judging by that and the fact you throw out "feminist" like it's an insult, I'm going to say you've got some pretty heavy bias. Bias? Feminists on twitter? Hypersensitivity and hysteria about sexual harassment at conferences? Spooking male engineers into special consideration just because they're girls? Geekfeminism.org being mentioned by the pycon organizer? Merit being a taboo word? In engineering culture, we consider this disruptive behavior disruptive and call it trolling. Our consumer culture makes everything so easy and convenient. Our compassion to woman and how nice we are to them allows some of them to take advantage. This is a case of it. In any case, removing merit from the dictionary won't get you into an engineer position. These tricks and trolls may have worked for special treatment before, but programming will take honest, hard-work and effort.
  - KuraFire 13y ago
    Have you ever considered the idea that your apparent dislike towards all things and people described as "feminist" suggests that you have, over the course of your seemingly-angry life, adopted a huge amount of misogynistic perspectives on things? Because, hate to break it to you, but you were born a feminist. Everyone is. Every person that has ever lived on planet Earth was born a feminist. Because the idea that women are somehow in any way inferior to men is a completely fabricated notion by a sexist society that instills these views onto people (meaning all of us), and feminism at its most fundamental is simply the premise that women and men are not different (in terms of hierarchical notions, like one being better than the other, or more "valuable", …etc.), which is the default view of any newborn mind. You are born a feminist; if you don't die a feminist, you lost a bit of your humanity during your life.
KuraFire 13y ago
Hey dude, here's a hint: perhaps these women are arguing on social media because guys like you fail to give them the basic modicum of respect as a human being, and they have to spend time fighting to be respected, which takes away from their time to build stuff. Whereas, unlike your privileged life wherein people don't fundamentally deny you basic human respect, you have plenty of time to spend on doing things you enjoy, rather than getting people to treat you like an equal human being. Beyond that, the entire rest of your comment reeks of sexist views (prejudiced biases against women), so I’m probably already wasting my time trying to get you to open your mind slightly to the possibility that perhaps nobody here is "cowing" to anyone, that being "politically correct" is actually the admirable and proper way of being a decent human being (aka "not being an asshole"), that people favor those leaders who listen to complaints from within their communities rather than those who behave like dicks and tell huge numbers of people to go away, like you're suggesting. But if you entertain these ideas for some time and express a genuine desire to learn, rather than find support for your skewed and misinformed perspectives on how the industry (and society) works in the dark recesses of a community that was once full of people sharing your harmful worldview, then I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.
- Crake 13y ago
  >Whereas, unlike your privileged life wherein people don't fundamentally deny you basic human respect, you have plenty of time to spend on doing things you enjoy, rather than getting people to treat you like an equal human being. Making a lot of assumptions there about someone you know nothing about. How the hell do you feel you have any right to say these things? You are the one very clearly failing to give basic human respect here.
- girvo 13y ago
  Interestingly, you both are right. That's the thing about human behaviour. It's very complex.
- prodigal_erik 13y ago
  > unlike your privileged life wherein people don't fundamentally deny you basic human respect Nerds are not afforded basic human respect unless their rare obsession happens to become valuable to somebody. We're merely being tolerated for the time being. And I don't believe anyone has ever gained a shred of respect by complaining about the lack of it. That just reinforces one's image as weak and unpleasant to interact with. > I’m probably already wasting my time trying to get you to open your mind slightly Rather than wasting time casting aspersions on one commenter (which just looks petty), I suggest supporting your arguments for the many other readers will have greater overall effect.
JoergR 13y ago
There's male feminists, by the way. I know, mind-boggling for you, absolutely clear to anyone with the empathy of at least a stone.
eevee 13y ago
I can't imagine why this sector predominately consists of men.
velis_vel 13y ago
> However, Github holds people accountable for actually having to program - funny how meritocracy came up as a bad word to these people! Uh, no it doesn't? There are plenty of reasons someone might be a programmer that doesn't have work on github. Maybe their employer has a really restrictive invention assignment agreement and they don't feel like giving them free code. Maybe it's their day job and they do other things with their free time, like paint. Maybe they don't have any free time because they're a single parent or whatever.
vectorjohn 13y ago
One of the good things about discussions like this, is that it brings out the real dregs of the community. If not for posts like these, I might be naive enough to think the community really is a welcoming place for all people. But then I see things like "group of feminists, mostly consisting of marketers" and "now any girl with an iPhone can be one!"
- Crake 13y ago
  You haven't noticed the horrible abuse of the word "hacking" lately? I'm surprised. Once something's mainstream, everyone tries to jump on it if they think it's considered cool. It's not really a women specific phenomenon.
xamebax 13y ago
I'd like to see you question street cred of all brogrammers with such scrutiny. Like, you know, grant them rights in a community according to quality of their code and what they post on Twitter. Just let me get my popcorn.

by rds2000 13y ago

Crake 13y ago

>These are woman creating a hostile environment for woman who would otherwise feel grateful to earn their way and belong. EXACTLY THIS. Listen up, white knights, and please--knock it off.

KuraFire 13y ago
You are such an embarrassing cliché, I don't even know where you would have to begin to gain some perspective. Primary and secondary school history lessons, probably.
- Crake 13y ago
  "How dare you disagree with me!"

ceol 13y ago

> but if you were look them up, they're twittering and having fun more than building. The irony of this comment being in a long-winded post on Hacker News is lost, perhaps? You do realize the vast majority of "programmers" aren't building 100% of the time. Judging by that and the fact you throw out "feminist" like it's an insult, I'm going to say you've got some pretty heavy bias.

rds2000 13y ago
I don't want to make personal examples, if you compare the look at the replies to @defunkt's twitter post, the females cheering - who even go so far as to overly call themselves feminists - have basically no engineer cred to speak for. Not on github, not on LinkedIn. Judging by that and the fact you throw out "feminist" like it's an insult, I'm going to say you've got some pretty heavy bias. Bias? Feminists on twitter? Hypersensitivity and hysteria about sexual harassment at conferences? Spooking male engineers into special consideration just because they're girls? Geekfeminism.org being mentioned by the pycon organizer? Merit being a taboo word? In engineering culture, we consider this disruptive behavior disruptive and call it trolling. Our consumer culture makes everything so easy and convenient. Our compassion to woman and how nice we are to them allows some of them to take advantage. This is a case of it. In any case, removing merit from the dictionary won't get you into an engineer position. These tricks and trolls may have worked for special treatment before, but programming will take honest, hard-work and effort.
- KuraFire 13y ago
  Have you ever considered the idea that your apparent dislike towards all things and people described as "feminist" suggests that you have, over the course of your seemingly-angry life, adopted a huge amount of misogynistic perspectives on things? Because, hate to break it to you, but you were born a feminist. Everyone is. Every person that has ever lived on planet Earth was born a feminist. Because the idea that women are somehow in any way inferior to men is a completely fabricated notion by a sexist society that instills these views onto people (meaning all of us), and feminism at its most fundamental is simply the premise that women and men are not different (in terms of hierarchical notions, like one being better than the other, or more "valuable", …etc.), which is the default view of any newborn mind. You are born a feminist; if you don't die a feminist, you lost a bit of your humanity during your life.

KuraFire 13y ago

Hey dude, here's a hint: perhaps these women are arguing on social media because guys like you fail to give them the basic modicum of respect as a human being, and they have to spend time fighting to be respected, which takes away from their time to build stuff. Whereas, unlike your privileged life wherein people don't fundamentally deny you basic human respect, you have plenty of time to spend on doing things you enjoy, rather than getting people to treat you like an equal human being. Beyond that, the entire rest of your comment reeks of sexist views (prejudiced biases against women), so I’m probably already wasting my time trying to get you to open your mind slightly to the possibility that perhaps nobody here is "cowing" to anyone, that being "politically correct" is actually the admirable and proper way of being a decent human being (aka "not being an asshole"), that people favor those leaders who listen to complaints from within their communities rather than those who behave like dicks and tell huge numbers of people to go away, like you're suggesting. But if you entertain these ideas for some time and express a genuine desire to learn, rather than find support for your skewed and misinformed perspectives on how the industry (and society) works in the dark recesses of a community that was once full of people sharing your harmful worldview, then I'm happy to answer any questions you might have.

Crake 13y ago
>Whereas, unlike your privileged life wherein people don't fundamentally deny you basic human respect, you have plenty of time to spend on doing things you enjoy, rather than getting people to treat you like an equal human being. Making a lot of assumptions there about someone you know nothing about. How the hell do you feel you have any right to say these things? You are the one very clearly failing to give basic human respect here.
girvo 13y ago
Interestingly, you both are right. That's the thing about human behaviour. It's very complex.
prodigal_erik 13y ago
> unlike your privileged life wherein people don't fundamentally deny you basic human respect Nerds are not afforded basic human respect unless their rare obsession happens to become valuable to somebody. We're merely being tolerated for the time being. And I don't believe anyone has ever gained a shred of respect by complaining about the lack of it. That just reinforces one's image as weak and unpleasant to interact with. > I’m probably already wasting my time trying to get you to open your mind slightly Rather than wasting time casting aspersions on one commenter (which just looks petty), I suggest supporting your arguments for the many other readers will have greater overall effect.

JoergR 13y ago

There's male feminists, by the way. I know, mind-boggling for you, absolutely clear to anyone with the empathy of at least a stone.

eevee 13y ago

I can't imagine why this sector predominately consists of men.

velis_vel 13y ago

> However, Github holds people accountable for actually having to program - funny how meritocracy came up as a bad word to these people! Uh, no it doesn't? There are plenty of reasons someone might be a programmer that doesn't have work on github. Maybe their employer has a really restrictive invention assignment agreement and they don't feel like giving them free code. Maybe it's their day job and they do other things with their free time, like paint. Maybe they don't have any free time because they're a single parent or whatever.

vectorjohn 13y ago

One of the good things about discussions like this, is that it brings out the real dregs of the community. If not for posts like these, I might be naive enough to think the community really is a welcoming place for all people. But then I see things like "group of feminists, mostly consisting of marketers" and "now any girl with an iPhone can be one!"

Crake 13y ago
You haven't noticed the horrible abuse of the word "hacking" lately? I'm surprised. Once something's mainstream, everyone tries to jump on it if they think it's considered cool. It's not really a women specific phenomenon.

xamebax 13y ago

I'd like to see you question street cred of all brogrammers with such scrutiny. Like, you know, grant them rights in a community according to quality of their code and what they post on Twitter. Just let me get my popcorn.