4 ms·

I stopped hanging around on IRC because of people always being weird to women, it's just depressing to watch. Maybe I should have stayed and made a stand...

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
I was aware of sexism in tech but it had never caused me problems. And then one day I enter some Hackintosh IRC channel and I get mad at them calling me 'he', and then they figure out I'm trans... And I eventually leave, because now they're being really sexual and creepy. It's really horrible. You start to rationalise it or try to ignore it. You become insensitive to it. You don't want to leave because they're helpful and talk about interesting stuff and all, but they're also nasty to you.
- Svenstaro 12y ago
  This is more or less a practical thing. I think you would agree that there are more males in IRC than females. Which personal pronoun would you choose by default to address someone without explicitly knowing their gender? Would you always ask them beforehand? That might get weird. Would you use some weird Internet pronoun like "xe"? Statistically speaking, going "he" is not a bad first guess. I'm not saying it's helping, though.
  - TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
    Um, I'd just use singular they (which has been in use in English for literally centuries), or rework the sentence to avoid the pronoun.
  - bkirwi 12y ago
    The 'he' seems not to be the most important part here. (Though, as the GP points out in another comment, the singular 'they' is useful.) The particularly nasty part is this: > And I eventually leave, because now they're being really sexual and creepy. Mistaking someone's gender is a relatively small lapse (though I understand it gets painfully annoying when it happens all the time) but the subsequent creepiness is just actively toxic.
  - wpietri 12y ago
    The pronoun I use to address people is "you", which is conveniently ungendered. If I need to refer to somebody whose gender I don't know, I'll generally just say their name. If I really need to use a pronoun for a person of undetermined gender, I say "they". Shakespeare used singular they, so I think it should be good enough for me. This is just as practical as saying "he". We say "he" for reasons entirely different than practicality. We do it because dominant groups tend to treat dominant characteristics as "normal", as the default. Indeed, it's practicality that drives me to use the singular they, especially when I'm talking about tech. Right now there's an enormous deficit of people with technical knowledge and experience. To fix that, I want to get everybody possible involved. If I were to help drive half of humanity away over such a small thing as me wanting to be disrespectfully lazy about pronouns, I'd feel I was being very unpractical.
  - S4M 12y ago
    I think it's fine to mention as "he" by mistake, but if she says "Don't mention me as 'he', I'm a 'she'.", people should say "oh sorry" and not "Are you a fucking trans?".
FoeNyx 12y ago
I rarely see people being weird to women on IRC, but I guess it's as IRL: there are good places and bad places.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  It may depend a lot on the IRC network and channel. IRC these days seems to be confined to open-source software discussion, so the communities are more helpful.
  - JonnieCache 12y ago
    This was on freenode, on the channel for a development tool. I'm not going to name names because the people involved weren't actually members of the project IIRC, just regulars on the channel. It wasn't nasty or anything, just... weird. It gave me an overpowering urge to uninstall irssi and go outside.
- radicalbyte 12y ago
  Just go on there with a female name. It's horrible. A significant minority are manchildren, they turn into apes at the slightest hint of femaleness.

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago

I was aware of sexism in tech but it had never caused me problems. And then one day I enter some Hackintosh IRC channel and I get mad at them calling me 'he', and then they figure out I'm trans... And I eventually leave, because now they're being really sexual and creepy. It's really horrible. You start to rationalise it or try to ignore it. You become insensitive to it. You don't want to leave because they're helpful and talk about interesting stuff and all, but they're also nasty to you.

Svenstaro 12y ago
This is more or less a practical thing. I think you would agree that there are more males in IRC than females. Which personal pronoun would you choose by default to address someone without explicitly knowing their gender? Would you always ask them beforehand? That might get weird. Would you use some weird Internet pronoun like "xe"? Statistically speaking, going "he" is not a bad first guess. I'm not saying it's helping, though.
- TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
  Um, I'd just use singular they (which has been in use in English for literally centuries), or rework the sentence to avoid the pronoun.
- bkirwi 12y ago
  The 'he' seems not to be the most important part here. (Though, as the GP points out in another comment, the singular 'they' is useful.) The particularly nasty part is this: > And I eventually leave, because now they're being really sexual and creepy. Mistaking someone's gender is a relatively small lapse (though I understand it gets painfully annoying when it happens all the time) but the subsequent creepiness is just actively toxic.
- wpietri 12y ago
  The pronoun I use to address people is "you", which is conveniently ungendered. If I need to refer to somebody whose gender I don't know, I'll generally just say their name. If I really need to use a pronoun for a person of undetermined gender, I say "they". Shakespeare used singular they, so I think it should be good enough for me. This is just as practical as saying "he". We say "he" for reasons entirely different than practicality. We do it because dominant groups tend to treat dominant characteristics as "normal", as the default. Indeed, it's practicality that drives me to use the singular they, especially when I'm talking about tech. Right now there's an enormous deficit of people with technical knowledge and experience. To fix that, I want to get everybody possible involved. If I were to help drive half of humanity away over such a small thing as me wanting to be disrespectfully lazy about pronouns, I'd feel I was being very unpractical.
- S4M 12y ago
  I think it's fine to mention as "he" by mistake, but if she says "Don't mention me as 'he', I'm a 'she'.", people should say "oh sorry" and not "Are you a fucking trans?".

FoeNyx 12y ago

I rarely see people being weird to women on IRC, but I guess it's as IRL: there are good places and bad places.

TazeTSchnitzel 12y ago
It may depend a lot on the IRC network and channel. IRC these days seems to be confined to open-source software discussion, so the communities are more helpful.
- JonnieCache 12y ago
  This was on freenode, on the channel for a development tool. I'm not going to name names because the people involved weren't actually members of the project IIRC, just regulars on the channel. It wasn't nasty or anything, just... weird. It gave me an overpowering urge to uninstall irssi and go outside.
radicalbyte 12y ago
Just go on there with a female name. It's horrible. A significant minority are manchildren, they turn into apes at the slightest hint of femaleness.