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> But I was part of a culture – a feminist culture – in which I respected people like my friend and programmers that attempted to use fully defined, useful feat

> But I was part of a culture – a feminist culture – in which I respected people like my friend and programmers that attempted to use fully defined, useful features of UNIX in order to implement features efficiently. That is one hell of a stretch of the definition of feminism. This article seems like some weird interweaving of two unrelated stories about sexism in tech and relative atime. The stories independently seem reasonable, but this weird fusion does not really make sense to me other than as a promotional advantage.

fizwhiz 12y ago
OP seems to have conflated taking a "human-centered" approach with a "feminist" approach. This constant reinforcement in the article about taking the "human" point of view leads me to believe that OP's perception of non-feminists is that they're in the camp of people more likely to take a "non-human-centered" approach. How bizarre.
- richmarr 12y ago
  It's not conflation, she used approaches developed in another context. Jumping from feminist to human-centred doesn't seem like a bizarre stretch to me at all. Both (from the perspective of the status quo) involve letting go of "I know best" and attempting to empathise with others, understand their problems, and often try to drive change.
  - dwild 12y ago
    Am I the only one that feel like this article is a whole "I know best" than non-feminist group?
    - richmarr 12y ago
      No, I don't think you are the only one. My personal take is that the OP meant no such thing. I think she's just saying that women bring different approaches, and those different approaches can be useful.
      - Dylan16807 12y ago
        Interesting that you use the word 'just' there. I think it's a much stronger statement to say that women bring different useful approaches than to say that feminism does so. It's an assertion of differences at a significantly deeper level.
    - gaandmaraa 12y ago
      Agreed. It's one thing to say that taking the human-centered approach (making discussions more open and inclusive to all people with a varying depth in knowledge/experience) is what we should ultimately converge to because the entire community benefits from people being more civil and understanding; it's a whole other thing to say feminism is really THE way to converge to this. By virtue of saying this on 4 different occasions in the article, OP's regard of feminist approaches to problem solving comes across as more supercilious than she may have intended. Here's my simple takeaway. The article could have been a reasonable read if the war story was painted with the context of "oh hey, this is how more discussion and safe spaces helped fix this bug and here's why all of us should do it". What I got instead was "Wow, things/ideas/methods in the community are so broken. Feminism is obviously the only contender to fix this properly, and people who aren't in the feminist camp can't be as effective in reaching these goals. Btw, did I mention that I got groped? And also, everybody who disagreed with me is so clearly anti-feminist"
- hypatiadotca 12y ago
  It'll seem much less bizarre if you spend a week or two reading LKML :/

fizwhiz 12y ago

OP seems to have conflated taking a "human-centered" approach with a "feminist" approach. This constant reinforcement in the article about taking the "human" point of view leads me to believe that OP's perception of non-feminists is that they're in the camp of people more likely to take a "non-human-centered" approach. How bizarre.

richmarr 12y ago
It's not conflation, she used approaches developed in another context. Jumping from feminist to human-centred doesn't seem like a bizarre stretch to me at all. Both (from the perspective of the status quo) involve letting go of "I know best" and attempting to empathise with others, understand their problems, and often try to drive change.
- dwild 12y ago
  Am I the only one that feel like this article is a whole "I know best" than non-feminist group?
  - richmarr 12y ago
    No, I don't think you are the only one. My personal take is that the OP meant no such thing. I think she's just saying that women bring different approaches, and those different approaches can be useful.
    - Dylan16807 12y ago
      Interesting that you use the word 'just' there. I think it's a much stronger statement to say that women bring different useful approaches than to say that feminism does so. It's an assertion of differences at a significantly deeper level.
  - gaandmaraa 12y ago
    Agreed. It's one thing to say that taking the human-centered approach (making discussions more open and inclusive to all people with a varying depth in knowledge/experience) is what we should ultimately converge to because the entire community benefits from people being more civil and understanding; it's a whole other thing to say feminism is really THE way to converge to this. By virtue of saying this on 4 different occasions in the article, OP's regard of feminist approaches to problem solving comes across as more supercilious than she may have intended. Here's my simple takeaway. The article could have been a reasonable read if the war story was painted with the context of "oh hey, this is how more discussion and safe spaces helped fix this bug and here's why all of us should do it". What I got instead was "Wow, things/ideas/methods in the community are so broken. Feminism is obviously the only contender to fix this properly, and people who aren't in the feminist camp can't be as effective in reaching these goals. Btw, did I mention that I got groped? And also, everybody who disagreed with me is so clearly anti-feminist"
hypatiadotca 12y ago
It'll seem much less bizarre if you spend a week or two reading LKML :/