10 ms·

I usually don't bother with links to things that are phrased in such a way as to suggest support of segregationist policies. I don't care about women in tech. I

by Crake 13y ago

I usually don't bother with links to things that are phrased in such a way as to suggest support of segregationist policies. I don't care about women in tech. I care about people in tech.

nilved 13y ago
Awesome! That's why you support women in tech and the female founder thought, right? Because that's how _people_ get in to tech?
- Dewie 13y ago
  Have you stopped beating your wife?
  - JensenDied 13y ago
    Mu.
dandrews 13y ago
Problem is, Crake, we're doing something wrong. Three years I went to Conj, and the first year there were -zero- women attendees out of 300. Second year it was -three- attendees out of 300. Third year it was eight or nine. I don't know what Lynn and company managed to attract last year. The people attending Conj are bright, well-spoken, polite. I didn't meet a jerk in three years, a crowd I was proud to be seen with. But WHERE WERE THE WOMEN? What is going on here? We must do something. I don't know what. I'll agree with you that exclusionary events are counterproductive, but I can't see the harm in recognizing successful women who can show us how it's done.
- baddox 13y ago
  > Problem is, Crake, we're doing something wrong. And perhaps the support of segregationist policies is the thing we're doing wrong.
  - danilocampos 13y ago
    Okay. Let's hear your proposal for addressing the already segregationist technology industry. Let's hear your proposal for elevating female/non-white founder percentages out of the single digits. What've you got?
    - GhotiFish 13y ago
      something needs doing I'm doing something something has been done. full disclosure: I have no skin in this game, nor opinions. Just making an observation.
    - baddox 13y ago
      > Let's hear your proposal for addressing the already segregationist technology industry. Stop supporting segregationist policies.
      - mbesto 13y ago
        Isn't a conference for just Pythonistas considered segregation? Definition of segregation for your convenience: the action or state of setting someone or something apart from other people or things or being set apart
        baddox 13y ago
        Indeed, a broad definition of the word would include this. I meant to imply that I was talking about segregation of groups which are often considered in genuine social conflict with one another, like gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, rich/poor, etc. Sure, there are "holy wars" between groups like Pythonistas and Rubyists, but I think most people agree that this doesn't reflect genuine social struggle.
    - enlightenedfool 13y ago
      what do you mean already segregationalist? People were hired for their skills. Now they want to hire for gender. We got segregationalist now.
- facepalm 13y ago
  Women have more attractive career alternatives. That's why they don't choose CS. I love CS, but it involves sitting in front of a computer a lot. That isn't healthy. Doing something with more people interaction is way healthier - and those are the jobs women tend to choose. My take has always been that women are simply too smart to enter IT.
danilocampos 13y ago
> I don't care about women in tech. I've noticed. When you collect a few more life experiences, perhaps get a decade of career under your belt, you'll learn how toxic it is when monocultures form. You'll learn about the blind spots. The exclusion. The lack of productive conflict from varying ideas. And perhaps at that point you'll learn why "caring about people in tech" means caring that no people feel actively excluded from its prosperity. Until then, your callousness makes you emphatically the sort of dime-a-dozen, utterly common, entirely unoriginal personalities that make me want to walk out of this industry and lock the door behind me forever. Good luck on your journey.
- GhotiFish 13y ago
  That's perhaps too harsh. You hear from people who are physically handicapped that the thing they hate most is the contrast in treatment. They want to be treated normally. A different person in a different perspective gets treated differently because they are viewed as different. A common complaint. Is he being empathetic or indifferent? I dunno, but it's hard not to say to yourself "Women are being treated differently, that is what is keeping them out, so I will endeavour not to treat them differently." Is that misguided?
  - danilocampos 13y ago
    You're sure busy on this thread for someone who claims not to have opinions or skin in the game. > Is that misguided? Completely. Being a woman isn't having a handicap. Being brown isn't having a handicap. At least it isn't to my mind. Is it to yours? When you go and talk to people who are women or brown or some intersection of these, one thing that's clear is that they feel much more comfortable when interacting with other folks whose lives and paths look like theirs. Their life stories are different from those most commonly represented, so increasing representation means finding people who can speak from a common perspective. And that's before I even get into the patterns of harassment and aggression that are reported to me consistently from every. single. female colleague I know. That's before getting into the challenges female founders face in presenting their companies to a VC industry that's overwhelmingly male and therefore under-equipped to evaluate a huge swath of verticals and opportunities. None of this is abstract. All it requires is knowing people who aren't young, white males.
GhotiFish 13y ago
Really? Personally It just sounded like I wasn't invited. though... that was because I did not read the title clearly.
_pius 13y ago
I usually don't bother with links to things that are phrased in such a way as to suggest support of segregationist policies. I don't care about women in tech. I care about people in tech. So douchey.
serf 13y ago
I feel exactly the same way, and i'm glad i'm not the only one. If you want to fix scenarios that look segregationist, fix the root cause. Reinforcing one segregation that appears to be a polar opposite of what you have too much of is just as damaging. it's not a tipping scale scenario.
- lkbm 13y ago
  > fix the root cause How? Just tell women to stop feeling marginalized? There are countless subtle ways a all-male (or all-female or all-Christian or all-straight or all-gay or all-white or all-black or all-[insert demographic here) subculture will do things unwittingly that make people not in that demographic uncomfortable. As a member of the majority in almost every respect, I've rarely experienced that, but I'm not so self-absorbed to insist it's not a real, legitimate thing that happens. Identifying each and every one of these things is nigh impossible. Convincing everyone to STOP doing these things IS impossible. So what do we do? We attack it the only way we can: identify and point out what issues we can (the happy majority will inform us that they're silly, over-sensitive complaints) and do everything we can to bring in people who can change that culture simply by being there, being someone who is NOT part of the problem culture. But we're too damn busy being offended by this conference and threatened by the idea that there's subtle sexism in the tech industry (or the world) to even try listening to any sort of feminist theories about privilege and power and marginalization. I know, modern feminist theories about oppressive patriarchal culture sound really, really outlandish at first, and my first instinct was to reject them and just say "everyone's equal; let's treat them equally". Many are stated really inflammatory and surely some are way off-base. But shit. The world's a fucked up place. And if you start looking at what earns people respect and power and what invites derision, you begin to recognize that maybe this overly-sensitive complaint about subtle sexism, and that gripe about feeling uncomfortable as a minority in a group, and it all starts to reveal itself as, well, reality. It's hurting us as a group, and it's oppressive each one of us as individuals. (Unless you're a handsome, masculine, white, Protestant, alpha male, football-playing frat bro, in which case maybe you're 100% on the privileged side--congratulations!) (Sorry, this rambling rant isn't really directed at you. It's directed at most every comment here, and the tech industry, and the world.)
zem 13y ago
this is a good read on the topic: https://medium.com/thoughts-on-society/a1345b36b91b https://medium.com/thoughts-on-society/a1345b36b91b
- wildpeaks 13y ago
  Good metaphor indeed, thanks for the share
- rgoberstein 13y ago
  Great post that explains the issue at hand. Thank you for sharing.
argumentum 13y ago
Let me flip your argument around. If you truly care about people in tech, you should applaud any well-meaning effort to get more people excited about tech, such as this, irrespective of how the event is phrased. That this particular event is geared towards women doesn't prevent other events targeted to other groups: a conference for older founders, for example. Moreover events geared towards underrepresented groups have a greater practical effect for getting people into tech, because people from these groups sometimes feel like they don't belong and avoid events like Startup School or PyCon. I doubt, for instance, holding a "male founders conference" would have much of an effect: it's not like anyone from that demographic, like myself and probably yourself, feels alienated at tech events. But no one is stopping you from trying to organize such an event. It's just unlikely anyone will attend, since they'd have nothing to gain. In the 90s, there was a networking group called The Indus Entrepreneurs, which aimed to help Indian immigrants start companies, get funding etc. Nowadays, the idea of having an tech group for Indian people seems ridiculous: because there are so many successful Indians in tech. In 10 years, here's hoping that these efforts will make having a female founders conference seem just as ridiculous. But right now, caring about people in tech includes caring about getting more women into tech.
- paulhauggis 13y ago
  "If you truly care about people in tech, you should applaud any well-meaning effort to get more people excited about tech, such as this, irrespective of how the event is phrased." What if it was phrased "whites in tech". Would you be okay with it?
  - enneff 13y ago
    I would wonder why the hell it's necessary, considering the technology industry is dominated by white people. http://www.lpfi.org/sites/default/files/tilted_playing_field_lpfi_9_29_11.pdf http://www.lpfi.org/sites/default/files/tilted_playing_field...
    - deleted 13y ago
      [deleted]
MartinCron 13y ago
..phrased in such a way as to suggest support of segregationist policies If that's what you think, then you have a pretty shallow understanding of the issue. That's OK. People have shallow understanding of all sorts of things. Maybe you should keep quiet about it instead of embarrassing yourself, though?
- spaceborn 13y ago
  Perhaps you should elaborate on your own deep understanding of the subject rather than simply alluding to it. Why is it that SJW types are so quick to insult and demean anyone who disagrees with them? It's very unpleasant. Your beliefs are not the forgone conclusion you treat them as.
  - MartinCron 13y ago
    Why is it that SJW types are so quick to insult and demean anyone who disagrees with them? It's very unpleasant Is this the angle that you're coming from now? I thought that it was liberals and white knights and feminists that were so thin-skinned and sensitive?
    - spaceborn 13y ago
      It's not really an angle, but mostly a response to the content of your comment and certain other comments to be found in this thread, and my own general observations (which are hardly scientific of course). At any rate, you've not really addressed my comment (the one you're replying to) - but I do feel as though your reply is meant to mock me, which, to my thinking, reinforces said observations. Excuse me if mockery wasn't your intention. If Crake has such as a shallow understanding of the subject, as you say, perhaps you could enlighten all of us with your deep understanding of the subject? Merely asserting that someone's incorrect doesn't carry much weight by itself. This might lead one to think that you're unable to demonstrate the validity of your assertion by argument - i.e., that your statement is invalid.
      - MartinCron 13y ago

by Crake 13y ago

I usually don't bother with links to things that are phrased in such a way as to suggest support of segregationist policies. I don't care about women in tech. I care about people in tech.

nilved 13y ago

Awesome! That's why you support women in tech and the female founder thought, right? Because that's how _people_ get in to tech?

Dewie 13y ago
Have you stopped beating your wife?
- JensenDied 13y ago
  Mu.

dandrews 13y ago

Problem is, Crake, we're doing something wrong. Three years I went to Conj, and the first year there were -zero- women attendees out of 300. Second year it was -three- attendees out of 300. Third year it was eight or nine. I don't know what Lynn and company managed to attract last year. The people attending Conj are bright, well-spoken, polite. I didn't meet a jerk in three years, a crowd I was proud to be seen with. But WHERE WERE THE WOMEN? What is going on here? We must do something. I don't know what. I'll agree with you that exclusionary events are counterproductive, but I can't see the harm in recognizing successful women who can show us how it's done.

baddox 13y ago
> Problem is, Crake, we're doing something wrong. And perhaps the support of segregationist policies is the thing we're doing wrong.
- danilocampos 13y ago
  Okay. Let's hear your proposal for addressing the already segregationist technology industry. Let's hear your proposal for elevating female/non-white founder percentages out of the single digits. What've you got?
  - GhotiFish 13y ago
    something needs doing I'm doing something something has been done. full disclosure: I have no skin in this game, nor opinions. Just making an observation.
  - baddox 13y ago
    > Let's hear your proposal for addressing the already segregationist technology industry. Stop supporting segregationist policies.
    - mbesto 13y ago
      Isn't a conference for just Pythonistas considered segregation? Definition of segregation for your convenience: the action or state of setting someone or something apart from other people or things or being set apart
      - baddox 13y ago
        Indeed, a broad definition of the word would include this. I meant to imply that I was talking about segregation of groups which are often considered in genuine social conflict with one another, like gender, ethnicity, sexuality, religion, rich/poor, etc. Sure, there are "holy wars" between groups like Pythonistas and Rubyists, but I think most people agree that this doesn't reflect genuine social struggle.
  - enlightenedfool 13y ago
    what do you mean already segregationalist? People were hired for their skills. Now they want to hire for gender. We got segregationalist now.
facepalm 13y ago
Women have more attractive career alternatives. That's why they don't choose CS. I love CS, but it involves sitting in front of a computer a lot. That isn't healthy. Doing something with more people interaction is way healthier - and those are the jobs women tend to choose. My take has always been that women are simply too smart to enter IT.

danilocampos 13y ago

> I don't care about women in tech. I've noticed. When you collect a few more life experiences, perhaps get a decade of career under your belt, you'll learn how toxic it is when monocultures form. You'll learn about the blind spots. The exclusion. The lack of productive conflict from varying ideas. And perhaps at that point you'll learn why "caring about people in tech" means caring that no people feel actively excluded from its prosperity. Until then, your callousness makes you emphatically the sort of dime-a-dozen, utterly common, entirely unoriginal personalities that make me want to walk out of this industry and lock the door behind me forever. Good luck on your journey.

GhotiFish 13y ago
That's perhaps too harsh. You hear from people who are physically handicapped that the thing they hate most is the contrast in treatment. They want to be treated normally. A different person in a different perspective gets treated differently because they are viewed as different. A common complaint. Is he being empathetic or indifferent? I dunno, but it's hard not to say to yourself "Women are being treated differently, that is what is keeping them out, so I will endeavour not to treat them differently." Is that misguided?
- danilocampos 13y ago
  You're sure busy on this thread for someone who claims not to have opinions or skin in the game. > Is that misguided? Completely. Being a woman isn't having a handicap. Being brown isn't having a handicap. At least it isn't to my mind. Is it to yours? When you go and talk to people who are women or brown or some intersection of these, one thing that's clear is that they feel much more comfortable when interacting with other folks whose lives and paths look like theirs. Their life stories are different from those most commonly represented, so increasing representation means finding people who can speak from a common perspective. And that's before I even get into the patterns of harassment and aggression that are reported to me consistently from every. single. female colleague I know. That's before getting into the challenges female founders face in presenting their companies to a VC industry that's overwhelmingly male and therefore under-equipped to evaluate a huge swath of verticals and opportunities. None of this is abstract. All it requires is knowing people who aren't young, white males.

GhotiFish 13y ago

Really? Personally It just sounded like I wasn't invited. though... that was because I did not read the title clearly.

_pius 13y ago

I usually don't bother with links to things that are phrased in such a way as to suggest support of segregationist policies. I don't care about women in tech. I care about people in tech. So douchey.

serf 13y ago

I feel exactly the same way, and i'm glad i'm not the only one. If you want to fix scenarios that look segregationist, fix the root cause. Reinforcing one segregation that appears to be a polar opposite of what you have too much of is just as damaging. it's not a tipping scale scenario.

lkbm 13y ago
> fix the root cause How? Just tell women to stop feeling marginalized? There are countless subtle ways a all-male (or all-female or all-Christian or all-straight or all-gay or all-white or all-black or all-[insert demographic here) subculture will do things unwittingly that make people not in that demographic uncomfortable. As a member of the majority in almost every respect, I've rarely experienced that, but I'm not so self-absorbed to insist it's not a real, legitimate thing that happens. Identifying each and every one of these things is nigh impossible. Convincing everyone to STOP doing these things IS impossible. So what do we do? We attack it the only way we can: identify and point out what issues we can (the happy majority will inform us that they're silly, over-sensitive complaints) and do everything we can to bring in people who can change that culture simply by being there, being someone who is NOT part of the problem culture. But we're too damn busy being offended by this conference and threatened by the idea that there's subtle sexism in the tech industry (or the world) to even try listening to any sort of feminist theories about privilege and power and marginalization. I know, modern feminist theories about oppressive patriarchal culture sound really, really outlandish at first, and my first instinct was to reject them and just say "everyone's equal; let's treat them equally". Many are stated really inflammatory and surely some are way off-base. But shit. The world's a fucked up place. And if you start looking at what earns people respect and power and what invites derision, you begin to recognize that maybe this overly-sensitive complaint about subtle sexism, and that gripe about feeling uncomfortable as a minority in a group, and it all starts to reveal itself as, well, reality. It's hurting us as a group, and it's oppressive each one of us as individuals. (Unless you're a handsome, masculine, white, Protestant, alpha male, football-playing frat bro, in which case maybe you're 100% on the privileged side--congratulations!) (Sorry, this rambling rant isn't really directed at you. It's directed at most every comment here, and the tech industry, and the world.)

zem 13y ago

this is a good read on the topic: https://medium.com/thoughts-on-society/a1345b36b91b https://medium.com/thoughts-on-society/a1345b36b91b

wildpeaks 13y ago
Good metaphor indeed, thanks for the share
rgoberstein 13y ago
Great post that explains the issue at hand. Thank you for sharing.

argumentum 13y ago

Let me flip your argument around. If you truly care about people in tech, you should applaud any well-meaning effort to get more people excited about tech, such as this, irrespective of how the event is phrased. That this particular event is geared towards women doesn't prevent other events targeted to other groups: a conference for older founders, for example. Moreover events geared towards underrepresented groups have a greater practical effect for getting people into tech, because people from these groups sometimes feel like they don't belong and avoid events like Startup School or PyCon. I doubt, for instance, holding a "male founders conference" would have much of an effect: it's not like anyone from that demographic, like myself and probably yourself, feels alienated at tech events. But no one is stopping you from trying to organize such an event. It's just unlikely anyone will attend, since they'd have nothing to gain. In the 90s, there was a networking group called The Indus Entrepreneurs, which aimed to help Indian immigrants start companies, get funding etc. Nowadays, the idea of having an tech group for Indian people seems ridiculous: because there are so many successful Indians in tech. In 10 years, here's hoping that these efforts will make having a female founders conference seem just as ridiculous. But right now, caring about people in tech includes caring about getting more women into tech.

paulhauggis 13y ago
"If you truly care about people in tech, you should applaud any well-meaning effort to get more people excited about tech, such as this, irrespective of how the event is phrased." What if it was phrased "whites in tech". Would you be okay with it?
- enneff 13y ago
  I would wonder why the hell it's necessary, considering the technology industry is dominated by white people. http://www.lpfi.org/sites/default/files/tilted_playing_field_lpfi_9_29_11.pdf http://www.lpfi.org/sites/default/files/tilted_playing_field...
  - deleted 13y ago
    [deleted]

MartinCron 13y ago

..phrased in such a way as to suggest support of segregationist policies If that's what you think, then you have a pretty shallow understanding of the issue. That's OK. People have shallow understanding of all sorts of things. Maybe you should keep quiet about it instead of embarrassing yourself, though?

spaceborn 13y ago
Perhaps you should elaborate on your own deep understanding of the subject rather than simply alluding to it. Why is it that SJW types are so quick to insult and demean anyone who disagrees with them? It's very unpleasant. Your beliefs are not the forgone conclusion you treat them as.
- MartinCron 13y ago
  Why is it that SJW types are so quick to insult and demean anyone who disagrees with them? It's very unpleasant Is this the angle that you're coming from now? I thought that it was liberals and white knights and feminists that were so thin-skinned and sensitive?
  - spaceborn 13y ago
    It's not really an angle, but mostly a response to the content of your comment and certain other comments to be found in this thread, and my own general observations (which are hardly scientific of course). At any rate, you've not really addressed my comment (the one you're replying to) - but I do feel as though your reply is meant to mock me, which, to my thinking, reinforces said observations. Excuse me if mockery wasn't your intention. If Crake has such as a shallow understanding of the subject, as you say, perhaps you could enlighten all of us with your deep understanding of the subject? Merely asserting that someone's incorrect doesn't carry much weight by itself. This might lead one to think that you're unable to demonstrate the validity of your assertion by argument - i.e., that your statement is invalid.
    - MartinCron 13y ago