3 ms·

You can't just bag all reasonable behaviour and call it feminism. Feminism might be a broad church due to there being many historical revisions of it, but if yo

You can't just bag all reasonable behaviour and call it feminism. Feminism might be a broad church due to there being many historical revisions of it, but if you make it so wide as to just basically mean people being nice, then it loses all meaning. Also, if you make the argument that a feminist environment was in some way necessary rather than merely conducive to the development of this particular solution, then were the experiences gained in a hyper-masculine and highly misogynistic organization based on the needs of state violence required for Grace Hopper to invent compilers, given that she was a Rear Admiral in the US Navy? edit - I fully support the creation of comfortable safe spaces and organisations that bring more people into programming as society in general seems far too accepting of abusive bigots, so these places and organisations serve a good and useful purpose. I also think that the creation of spaces like this will in time help raise the quality of software by having a wider range of perspectives looking at the problems, so it isn't just a good idea because it is being nice. I just think that the author here is putting an undue amount of weight on feminism as a major cause of this particular solution to the atime problem. I can't see anything about it as a solution that couldn't have been worked out by, say for instance, a hermit who hates everyone.

frandroid 12y ago
The reason it seems to you that broadly defined reasonable behaviour gets all thrown in the feminism bag is because feminism just asks people to act reasonably with women; it does encompass a broad set of reasonable behaviour. As the quote goes, "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people." Yet this is so hard to achieve.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  The idea that women are people is not confined to feminism. You could of course argue that all outlooks that regard women as people are de-facto feminist, however this would still not make them feminism. A good example would be ancient Sparta. Their society definitely regarded women as people, however Spartan society is not feminism.
  - frandroid 12y ago
    The fact that Sparta treated women better than the average Mediterranean city-state makes it ipso facto feminist.
knowtheory 12y ago
Er, why not? Are reasonable behaviors a scarce commodity? If the argument is that 1) Feminism is a tradition of empathy and humanism 2) the application of OP's feminist ethos led OP to prioritize the needs of users in a particular way then isn't this particular manner of operating, by OP's definition, feminist? You can argue that Feminism is indistinguishable from other sorts of ethos, but it'd be hard to argue that it's not an ethos at all.
- lotsofmangos 12y ago
  Ok, you can, but I just like well defined terms as it makes it easier to know what you are discussing. Feminism is very broad already, a good example being the conflict between those who advocate for equality in political representation and those who advocate for working towards a utopian matriarchy. I just think it is confusing and weakens the argument being made by overstating it, to make the definition broader still.

frandroid 12y ago

The reason it seems to you that broadly defined reasonable behaviour gets all thrown in the feminism bag is because feminism just asks people to act reasonably with women; it does encompass a broad set of reasonable behaviour. As the quote goes, "Feminism is the radical notion that women are people." Yet this is so hard to achieve.

lotsofmangos 12y ago
The idea that women are people is not confined to feminism. You could of course argue that all outlooks that regard women as people are de-facto feminist, however this would still not make them feminism. A good example would be ancient Sparta. Their society definitely regarded women as people, however Spartan society is not feminism.
- frandroid 12y ago
  The fact that Sparta treated women better than the average Mediterranean city-state makes it ipso facto feminist.

knowtheory 12y ago

Er, why not? Are reasonable behaviors a scarce commodity? If the argument is that 1) Feminism is a tradition of empathy and humanism 2) the application of OP's feminist ethos led OP to prioritize the needs of users in a particular way then isn't this particular manner of operating, by OP's definition, feminist? You can argue that Feminism is indistinguishable from other sorts of ethos, but it'd be hard to argue that it's not an ethos at all.

lotsofmangos 12y ago
Ok, you can, but I just like well defined terms as it makes it easier to know what you are discussing. Feminism is very broad already, a good example being the conflict between those who advocate for equality in political representation and those who advocate for working towards a utopian matriarchy. I just think it is confusing and weakens the argument being made by overstating it, to make the definition broader still.