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Before I compose this reply I want to mention that I'm a woman of color in case anybody needs to do a privilege check to see if it's okay for me to speak on thi

Before I compose this reply I want to mention that I'm a woman of color in case anybody needs to do a privilege check to see if it's okay for me to speak on this issue or whether it's acceptable to silence me because I'm "obviously" a white cis het male. >The gender inequality is already staggering in favour of boys. Serious question: Do you think this is a conscious choice made by those in the tech field? I ask because my lived experience is different than that, and yes, it's a serious question even though my response may have been flippant above. >Having a tiny programme with 40 students allowed instead of the hundreds (thousands?) of GSoC does not mean that the horrible women are out to destroy all manhood. That's not what I said at all. I'm asking why champions of gender equality seem to favor the tactic of exclusion.

dethstar 12y ago
>I'm asking why champions of gender equality seem to favor the tactic of exclusion. The link the person you replied to posted seems to explain just that.
- patzerhacker 12y ago
  The position taken in that link is completely and utterly sexist, and here's why. There are many in the hacker community with varying forms of social anxiety who are not comfortable around anybody of the opposite sex. Does that mean that segregation for the comfort of everybody is the solution, or the "hack" to get us to a better place? We'll never get to a better place if we exclude those things that make us uncomfortable. I dare you suggest a men-only hacker convention because women make some men feel uncomfortable. Let me know how that goes. Before it's brought up, yes, we should exclude from our lives things that are dangerous, but just discomfort is a terrible reason to exclude something from your life.
jordigh 12y ago
> I'm asking why champions of gender equality seem to favor the tactic of exclusion. b0rk addresses this in the post above. In the case of GSoC, I expect it's not so much about harrassment but intimidation. When there's nothing but boys doing something, many girls think to themselves, "this is not something a girl like me should be doing." Btw, why do you consider yourself such a patzer? I do hope it has nothing to do with your gender or skin tone, and that it's just a harmless joke.
- patzerhacker 12y ago
  >b0rk addresses this in the post above. And makes a completely sexist hash of it. Just suggest that because there are some male hackers that are uncomfortable around women that there should be man-only events. Let me know how that goes for you. >When there's nothing but boys doing something, many girls think to themselves, "this is not something a girl like me should be doing." It's not just boys and men in the tech community, as anybody who would expend five seconds looking at the subject would see. We champion people like Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper. >Btw, why do you consider yourself such a patzer? I do hope it has nothing to do with your gender or skin tone, and that it's just a harmless joke. Do me a favor next time you want to make a comment like this - Google the term you're referring to. A patzer is somebody who lacks skill at chess. It's not a racist or sexist term. I just happen to be awful at chess (and much better at Go).
  - jordigh 12y ago
    > A patzer is somebody who lacks skill at chess. It's not a racist or sexist term. My apologies, I didn't express myself correctly. I know what the term means. It's the self-deprecating nature of it that got me curious. Have you ever felt unsuitable as a chess player because of your sex or skin tone? I didn't really expect you to say so, but I thought the possibility might exist; that you have somehow been excluded from chess by those factors, which could have made you internalise the term "patzer". Of course, my armchair internet psychonanalysis was completely wrong, which makes me glad, and I feel humbled by you. :-)
    - patzerhacker 12y ago
      >Have you ever felt unsuitable as a chess player because of your sex or skin tone? No. I've never felt unsuitable as a chess player for any reason. I'm just not good at chess, but that's probably a function of not spending more of my time on it. I have never seen myself as 'unsuitable' for any task due to who I am. Why would I? It's part of what makes exclusionary outreach programs infuriating to me. Yes, have a fund that tries to encourage engagement of an underrepresented crowd, but don't make it exclusionary to all others. Else the appearance (to me) is that you're saying that the only reason that the underrepresented group could ever make it is at the exclusion of all others.
n72 12y ago
> Serious question: Do you think this is a conscious choice made by those in the tech field? Why does the fact of it being a conscious choice matter? Institutional discrimination is in fact a thing.
- patzerhacker 12y ago
  Institutional discrimination is a thing, but segregation (either voluntarily or by force) only makes that problem worse, not better.
  - n72 12y ago
    At the risk of going all hn on you — citation?
  - theseoafs 12y ago
    In what way does a program for women to get involved in open-source software even slightly resemble "segregation"?
    - deleted 12y ago
      [deleted]
    - patzerhacker 12y ago
      In these comments I'm specifically addressing the currently "in" movement of having gender segregated events (but apparently only no-men events) as a way to paradoxically increase diversity, not of segregation as a systematic policy of dividing groups as a form of control as in the Jim Crow regime in the American South from Reconstruction through the Civil Rights era. Sorry if that was not clear.
      - theseoafs 12y ago
        Obviously, if women-only events encourage women to get into the larger tech scene as a whole, then that increases diversity. There's nothing "paradoxical" about it. It's very straightforward. The idea isn't that we create a bunch of events so that women can program/hack without ever interacting with men. That should be obvious.
eropple 12y ago
> Serious question: Do you think this is a conscious choice made by those in the tech field? I don't think it's conscious, but I do think it's something that can be consciously averted and I don't think it's okay in 2015 to be ignorant of how aggressively people want to hire people like them. It's not just male/female, it's white/nonwhite, American/non-American. If you have a shop of white American dudes, then virtually everybody, under what I would call "pretty average" management, will be within one step of that.
- wpietri 12y ago
  I don't get why this is being downvoted. There's substantial research to indicate the strong hiring biases at play in standard American hiring practices. Study after study after study. I get why we would all like to think ourselves virtuous. But the problem here isn't a lack of virtue, it's the zillion cognitive biases that creep in unless we take active countermeasures.
saraid216 12y ago
> Serious question: Do you think this is a conscious choice made by those in the tech field? Every time I see people on HN discussing feminism, my answer leans more and more towards, "Yes." Without HN, I would never have realized the sheer depths of the deliberate sexism in tech on top of the unintentional and unconscious bits. Really, I mostly hope that HN is non-representative.
- codygman 12y ago
  > Every time I see people on HN discussing feminism, my answer leans more and more towards, "Yes." Anecdotally speaking I've found HN to be much better than say Reddit or other popular tech communities.
- birdsareweird 12y ago
  Ah yes, the evil evil HN and its sexism. Or maybe this is just one of the few places where women aren't automatically given special treatment, because it's inhabited by people with autistic tendencies who place a strong importance on fairness by principle, instead of catering to individual feelings. This is a fact that is uncomfortable for many women and men, because face it, women are privileged to be seen as victims in need of protection, and feminists keep on dismissing every single study and statistic that proves this, because no matter how many steps are taken, they will never be happy, by design. Acknowledging this is seen as sexist by many, even though you will find endless articles, shows and panels by women, for women, talking about women, while the gender reverse is derided as both dangerously extremist and hilariously pathetic. That sort of contradiction is generally a sign of frantic rationalization against an obvious truth. That truth is, of course, that men are invisible by default, unless they distinguish themselves by doing. By only paying attention to the men who pass this threshold, it is then easy to believe that all men are doing well, while ignoring the equally sizeable portion of janitors, garbage collectors, construction workers, coal miners, etc. on the lower rungs of society, who are overwhelmingly male as well. In tech specifically, it's all the people busting their balls with 80 hour work weeks in order to keep the servers running, fix all the bugs despite unreasonable deadlines and generally do the thankless job of solving problems you didn't know you had in a way you don't need to care about. You don't get a cookie for showing up, funny how that sentiment is considered perfectly valid against "Nice Guys", but unfair against entitled women. Actual equality scares the shit out of feminists.
codygman 12y ago
> Serious question: Do you think this is a conscious choice made by those in the tech field? I personally find it to be similar to racism: - Some are willfully ignorant - Some don't care and want to keep the status quo - Some don't care but try to appear to care for social reasons - Some care, but are quiet for social reasons - Some would care if they understood - plus many others, but I think the above are most popular.
ohjesusthatguy 12y ago
>Serious question: Do you think this is a conscious choice made by those in the tech field? >I ask because my lived experience is different than that, and yes, it's a serious question even though my response may have been flippant above. Your anecdote is not data.
username223 12y ago
(Completely stereotypical middle-aged white dude speaking here; consider my privilege checked.) > Serious question: Do you think this is a conscious choice made by those in the tech field? I've always been more inclined to believe what Philip Greenspun wrote a long time ago: http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science He's talking about professors, but his point that 'men tend to lack perspective and are unable to step back and ask the question "is this peer group worth impressing?"' still applies. Women are a majority of undergrads now; they're more socially and emotionally mature in the critical late teenage years, and it's starting to show as discrimination fades. In any case, complaining about a lack of women in tech is an easy way to appear to care about women's pay now, during the "dot-io bubble." Much harder would be looking at actually important fields that are majority-female, e.g. "Healthcare practitioner and technical occupations," "Education, training, and library occupations," and trying to get them to pay better: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat09.htm http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat09.htm

dethstar 12y ago

>I'm asking why champions of gender equality seem to favor the tactic of exclusion. The link the person you replied to posted seems to explain just that.

patzerhacker 12y ago
The position taken in that link is completely and utterly sexist, and here's why. There are many in the hacker community with varying forms of social anxiety who are not comfortable around anybody of the opposite sex. Does that mean that segregation for the comfort of everybody is the solution, or the "hack" to get us to a better place? We'll never get to a better place if we exclude those things that make us uncomfortable. I dare you suggest a men-only hacker convention because women make some men feel uncomfortable. Let me know how that goes. Before it's brought up, yes, we should exclude from our lives things that are dangerous, but just discomfort is a terrible reason to exclude something from your life.

jordigh 12y ago

> I'm asking why champions of gender equality seem to favor the tactic of exclusion. b0rk addresses this in the post above. In the case of GSoC, I expect it's not so much about harrassment but intimidation. When there's nothing but boys doing something, many girls think to themselves, "this is not something a girl like me should be doing." Btw, why do you consider yourself such a patzer? I do hope it has nothing to do with your gender or skin tone, and that it's just a harmless joke.

patzerhacker 12y ago
>b0rk addresses this in the post above. And makes a completely sexist hash of it. Just suggest that because there are some male hackers that are uncomfortable around women that there should be man-only events. Let me know how that goes for you. >When there's nothing but boys doing something, many girls think to themselves, "this is not something a girl like me should be doing." It's not just boys and men in the tech community, as anybody who would expend five seconds looking at the subject would see. We champion people like Ada Lovelace and Grace Hopper. >Btw, why do you consider yourself such a patzer? I do hope it has nothing to do with your gender or skin tone, and that it's just a harmless joke. Do me a favor next time you want to make a comment like this - Google the term you're referring to. A patzer is somebody who lacks skill at chess. It's not a racist or sexist term. I just happen to be awful at chess (and much better at Go).
- jordigh 12y ago
  > A patzer is somebody who lacks skill at chess. It's not a racist or sexist term. My apologies, I didn't express myself correctly. I know what the term means. It's the self-deprecating nature of it that got me curious. Have you ever felt unsuitable as a chess player because of your sex or skin tone? I didn't really expect you to say so, but I thought the possibility might exist; that you have somehow been excluded from chess by those factors, which could have made you internalise the term "patzer". Of course, my armchair internet psychonanalysis was completely wrong, which makes me glad, and I feel humbled by you. :-)
  - patzerhacker 12y ago
    >Have you ever felt unsuitable as a chess player because of your sex or skin tone? No. I've never felt unsuitable as a chess player for any reason. I'm just not good at chess, but that's probably a function of not spending more of my time on it. I have never seen myself as 'unsuitable' for any task due to who I am. Why would I? It's part of what makes exclusionary outreach programs infuriating to me. Yes, have a fund that tries to encourage engagement of an underrepresented crowd, but don't make it exclusionary to all others. Else the appearance (to me) is that you're saying that the only reason that the underrepresented group could ever make it is at the exclusion of all others.

n72 12y ago

> Serious question: Do you think this is a conscious choice made by those in the tech field? Why does the fact of it being a conscious choice matter? Institutional discrimination is in fact a thing.

patzerhacker 12y ago
Institutional discrimination is a thing, but segregation (either voluntarily or by force) only makes that problem worse, not better.
- n72 12y ago
  At the risk of going all hn on you — citation?
- theseoafs 12y ago
  In what way does a program for women to get involved in open-source software even slightly resemble "segregation"?
  - deleted 12y ago
    [deleted]
  - patzerhacker 12y ago
    In these comments I'm specifically addressing the currently "in" movement of having gender segregated events (but apparently only no-men events) as a way to paradoxically increase diversity, not of segregation as a systematic policy of dividing groups as a form of control as in the Jim Crow regime in the American South from Reconstruction through the Civil Rights era. Sorry if that was not clear.
    - theseoafs 12y ago
      Obviously, if women-only events encourage women to get into the larger tech scene as a whole, then that increases diversity. There's nothing "paradoxical" about it. It's very straightforward. The idea isn't that we create a bunch of events so that women can program/hack without ever interacting with men. That should be obvious.

eropple 12y ago

> Serious question: Do you think this is a conscious choice made by those in the tech field? I don't think it's conscious, but I do think it's something that can be consciously averted and I don't think it's okay in 2015 to be ignorant of how aggressively people want to hire people like them. It's not just male/female, it's white/nonwhite, American/non-American. If you have a shop of white American dudes, then virtually everybody, under what I would call "pretty average" management, will be within one step of that.

wpietri 12y ago
I don't get why this is being downvoted. There's substantial research to indicate the strong hiring biases at play in standard American hiring practices. Study after study after study. I get why we would all like to think ourselves virtuous. But the problem here isn't a lack of virtue, it's the zillion cognitive biases that creep in unless we take active countermeasures.

saraid216 12y ago

> Serious question: Do you think this is a conscious choice made by those in the tech field? Every time I see people on HN discussing feminism, my answer leans more and more towards, "Yes." Without HN, I would never have realized the sheer depths of the deliberate sexism in tech on top of the unintentional and unconscious bits. Really, I mostly hope that HN is non-representative.

codygman 12y ago
> Every time I see people on HN discussing feminism, my answer leans more and more towards, "Yes." Anecdotally speaking I've found HN to be much better than say Reddit or other popular tech communities.
birdsareweird 12y ago
Ah yes, the evil evil HN and its sexism. Or maybe this is just one of the few places where women aren't automatically given special treatment, because it's inhabited by people with autistic tendencies who place a strong importance on fairness by principle, instead of catering to individual feelings. This is a fact that is uncomfortable for many women and men, because face it, women are privileged to be seen as victims in need of protection, and feminists keep on dismissing every single study and statistic that proves this, because no matter how many steps are taken, they will never be happy, by design. Acknowledging this is seen as sexist by many, even though you will find endless articles, shows and panels by women, for women, talking about women, while the gender reverse is derided as both dangerously extremist and hilariously pathetic. That sort of contradiction is generally a sign of frantic rationalization against an obvious truth. That truth is, of course, that men are invisible by default, unless they distinguish themselves by doing. By only paying attention to the men who pass this threshold, it is then easy to believe that all men are doing well, while ignoring the equally sizeable portion of janitors, garbage collectors, construction workers, coal miners, etc. on the lower rungs of society, who are overwhelmingly male as well. In tech specifically, it's all the people busting their balls with 80 hour work weeks in order to keep the servers running, fix all the bugs despite unreasonable deadlines and generally do the thankless job of solving problems you didn't know you had in a way you don't need to care about. You don't get a cookie for showing up, funny how that sentiment is considered perfectly valid against "Nice Guys", but unfair against entitled women. Actual equality scares the shit out of feminists.

codygman 12y ago

> Serious question: Do you think this is a conscious choice made by those in the tech field? I personally find it to be similar to racism: - Some are willfully ignorant - Some don't care and want to keep the status quo - Some don't care but try to appear to care for social reasons - Some care, but are quiet for social reasons - Some would care if they understood - plus many others, but I think the above are most popular.

ohjesusthatguy 12y ago

>Serious question: Do you think this is a conscious choice made by those in the tech field? >I ask because my lived experience is different than that, and yes, it's a serious question even though my response may have been flippant above. Your anecdote is not data.

username223 12y ago

(Completely stereotypical middle-aged white dude speaking here; consider my privilege checked.) > Serious question: Do you think this is a conscious choice made by those in the tech field? I've always been more inclined to believe what Philip Greenspun wrote a long time ago: http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science http://philip.greenspun.com/careers/women-in-science He's talking about professors, but his point that 'men tend to lack perspective and are unable to step back and ask the question "is this peer group worth impressing?"' still applies. Women are a majority of undergrads now; they're more socially and emotionally mature in the critical late teenage years, and it's starting to show as discrimination fades. In any case, complaining about a lack of women in tech is an easy way to appear to care about women's pay now, during the "dot-io bubble." Much harder would be looking at actually important fields that are majority-female, e.g. "Healthcare practitioner and technical occupations," "Education, training, and library occupations," and trying to get them to pay better: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat09.htm http://www.bls.gov/cps/cpsaat09.htm