6 ms·

The brogrammers and geek feminists won. There's no turning back.

by Yhippa 12y ago

fr0styMatt2 12y ago
How does calling people 'brogrammers' in a derogatory sense make us any different than the supposed 'cool kids' that rejected us? Shouldn't we strive to be better than that? (not saying that you are using the term 'brogrammer' like that, just posing a more general question).
- mistermann 12y ago
  Brogrammer is perhaps used for efficiency, so you don't have to write a 10 page screed as we just read (which was excellent by the way). I don't think there's any way to say it in a non-derogatory way if the central message is derogatory. The article seemed to be saying, we have a culture, and if you people infiltrate it, there is a good chance you will ruin it. I happen to agree with him.
  - djcapelis 12y ago
    > I happen to agree with him. Her, for whatever it's worth.
    - Kalium 12y ago
      For an interesting experiment, show this article to the sort of people it's about. Don't tell them the author is an autistic woman. Observe their reactions. Then provide them that background and repeat observations.
      - Buge 12y ago
        I realized she was a woman from this line: >There are progressive, libertarian, anarchist, moderate, communist, conservative, liberal, and reactionary hackers, just the same as can be said for women, bisexuals, Texans, or engineers who aren’t hackers. The sentence only really makes sense if the final 4 traits are describing the author.
        djcapelis 12y ago
        Meredith is a hacker under any definition. So that trait definitely is not descriptive of her.
        Buge 12y ago
        I meant the 4 in the list (women, bisexuals, Texans, engineers).
        Kalium 12y ago
        The last item is "engineers who aren't hackers". I have no idea if Meredith is bisexual or Texan.
        maradydd 12y ago
        It's probably most accurate to say that gender isn't a significant factor in my calculus of attraction. I was born in Houston, though, and lived there for 23 years. For what it's worth, I don't recall intending anything in particular with that list of adjectives, but you never really know about authorial intent.
        Buge 12y ago
        Here's what the sentence is saying: There are people who aren't like me who are hackers. Also there are people who are like me who aren't hackers. The list of people who aren't like her is: progressive, libertarian, anarchist, moderate, communist, conservative, liberal, and reactionary. The list of people who are like her is: women, bisexuals, Texans, or engineers. Why else would she come up with 4 random traits? They obviously have something in common: they describe her. The "who aren't hackers" part doesn't apply directly to engineers. It applies to the entire list. So if you were to parenthesize it to show precedence it would be "(women, bisexuals, Texans, or engineers) who aren’t hackers." Not "women, bisexuals, Texans, or (engineers who aren’t hackers)."
        djcapelis 12y ago
      - lucio 12y ago
        That's a GREAT experiment. A hacker will not change his opinions on the article, either good or bad. He might even ask "so?". A non-hacker hating the article will mutate opinion, and now regard the piece as an inspiring essay from a challenged minority.
        Kalium 12y ago
        Exactly. I've conducted this experiment myself. One self-proclaimed geek feminist went from a very hostile reaction to what was perceived as something aimed at economic exclusion to a sympathetic reaction to a woman bemoaning assaults on the culture she values.
    - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
      I had to do a double-take when the author was referred to as 'her' in the comments thread to be honest. I'm just used to articles like this, describing nerd culture and whatnot, to be written by men - the traditional nerd. That's probably part of the problem, really, expectations and stereotyping about gender (and race, and sexual orientation, and gender, and personality, etc etc etc)
    - mistermann 12y ago
      Well that's a nice surprise.
  - gohrt 12y ago
    It's not efficient. The word "Brogrammer" means "something something men I don't like for reasons I believe are their fault". It doesn't communicate anything, it just invites the reader to invent their own meaning, which has little to do with what the write was thinking. The actual word was invented as a joke in a parody video, as a portmonteau of "bro" and "programmer". It then got picked up as an slur for "disliked man in the tech world".
    - seba_dos1 12y ago
      I don't really use this word or feel the need to participate in discussions about people it represent, but for me, when I see it somewhere, "brogrammer" means an equivalent of "cool people" from high school. Existence of them became possible due to programming becoming lucrative, with plenty of easy learning material, and therefore, beneficial for people you wouldn't at all consider a nerd to learn. It's a programmer who comes from outside of nerd culture, who looks at it like a cool kid from high school looks at school nerds. It has also a bit "hipsterish" connotation - brogrammer is someone who's "not really into it". "The true nerds" were programmers before it was cool. At least that's how I understand this term. "disliked man in the tech world" is much too broad, as so called "brogrammers" are supposed to dislike "true nerds".
- pekk 12y ago
  If we are interested in certain things that are not mainstream, and then other people who aren't really interested in those things come in and screw things up for interested people by acting in a selfish and conceited and exclusionary way, and we call those people jackasses or brogrammers or whatever, that doesn't make us the same as them. It's just an observation. And any culture worth its salt rejects forces actively trying to tear it down.
  - nailer 12y ago
    Really? I thought brogrammers were programmers that exercise and aren't introverted. Never really considered brogrammers to be a 'force trying to tear down programming'. At least that describes everyone I've ever met described that way, including some very talented, welcoming people. Likewise, some of the most technically talented people in node identify as feminists. Thinking about it (which I'm forced to because my Twitter timeline is full of this), I don't think anyone really is trying to tear down programming. I think the problem is the false narratives we tell ourselves about the other side.
    - pekk 12y ago
      "I thought brogrammers were programmers that exercise and aren't introverted." I don't know how on earth you reached that bizarre conclusion. For starters, if that's what it means, then how would it be derogatory and then why would people be complaining about the word?
shortoncash 12y ago
Respectfully disagree. There are other places to seek refuge, even if it has to be done on the down low and within the same industry. Also, great article.
- dropit_sphere 12y ago
  Indeed. The safe space may be intruded upon, but it was never the space that was important. A culture of makers can always make more.
pseudoplatypus 12y ago
... and with that victory, they have given rise to generations of new weird-nerds that no longer feel as much as outsiders. Ok, I went there for the sake of the quote, but as someone who spent most of high-school maintaining an online forum about nerd topics on a Hardened Gentoo[1] Pentium III[2] server in the floor of his own bedroom; I still find I cannot quite empathize with the fear of "insiders"/"normals" that the OP talks about and which other comments seem to echo. Not saying I can't imagine it, or that it's not real, but it wasn't like that for me. In my experience: video-games were utterly mainstream, MTG/D&D where "a bit weird, but hey, to each their own", computer programming was cool (not a super popular hobby to pursue, but people seemed either neutral or genuinely impressed if you did). Many of those cherished "hacker values"? They are now mainstream ideals: Net neutrality! Wikileaks! "I prefer texting than talking on the phone"! ;) Everyone I know is now in an online forum or another (Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/Reddit). Not saying all of the values have been popularized, but many have. Our pop culture now a days makes more fun of jocks than of nerds. It has more nerd heroes (specially for middle-school/high-school aged kids) than "popular" heroes. Freaking LoTR is one of the biggest movie franchises of all times! Besides, it's not like the groups have no intersection. Geek feminists often are or were at some point "weird-nerd" girls or "weird-nerd" guys that agreed that the world was, among all of its unfairnesses, biased to take male as the default. So we are not excluding just those "not from our tribe" (whatever that means), we are excluding "those from our tribe happen to be different from what we picture our tribe to look like". Even for those genuinely not part of the culture you might naturally want to associate with? Well, we still need to interact with and do business with them in a civilized manner. That's all any diversity advocacy I have ever read demands: not that you be friends with anybody, but that you be willing to interact respectfully with everybody. "Brogrammer" is less well defined. But the most gym-going and adventurous friend I have is also among the most nerdy, smartest and occasionally painfully awkward people I know. Also, the most social person in my circle is a gregarious, party going, business savvy, MIT engineering trained woman that in the right crowd can make jokes consisting entirely of function plots. There are no three cliques against other! There are many ideas, associated with different stereotypes, let's try not to pit armies of stereotypes against each other, and be open to the ideas! If that's not a hacker value, then I don't what is. [1] Why Hardened Gentoo just to host a small PHP forum? Because it was there... [2] Gives the age away fairly precisely, doesn't it?
spiritplumber 12y ago
No, they just moved in.
pjc50 12y ago
Given that those factions are mortal enemies, I don't think you can say they both won.

The brogrammers and geek feminists won. There's no turning back.

by Yhippa 12y ago

The brogrammers and geek feminists won. There's no turning back.

How does calling people 'brogrammers' in a derogatory sense make us any different than the supposed 'cool kids' that rejected us? Shouldn't we strive to be better than that? (not saying that you are using the term 'brogrammer' like that, just posing a more general question).

mistermann 12y ago
Brogrammer is perhaps used for efficiency, so you don't have to write a 10 page screed as we just read (which was excellent by the way). I don't think there's any way to say it in a non-derogatory way if the central message is derogatory. The article seemed to be saying, we have a culture, and if you people infiltrate it, there is a good chance you will ruin it. I happen to agree with him.
- djcapelis 12y ago
  > I happen to agree with him. Her, for whatever it's worth.
  - Kalium 12y ago
    For an interesting experiment, show this article to the sort of people it's about. Don't tell them the author is an autistic woman. Observe their reactions. Then provide them that background and repeat observations.
    - Buge 12y ago
      I realized she was a woman from this line: >There are progressive, libertarian, anarchist, moderate, communist, conservative, liberal, and reactionary hackers, just the same as can be said for women, bisexuals, Texans, or engineers who aren’t hackers. The sentence only really makes sense if the final 4 traits are describing the author.
      - djcapelis 12y ago
        Meredith is a hacker under any definition. So that trait definitely is not descriptive of her.
        Buge 12y ago
        I meant the 4 in the list (women, bisexuals, Texans, engineers).
        Kalium 12y ago
        The last item is "engineers who aren't hackers". I have no idea if Meredith is bisexual or Texan.
        maradydd 12y ago
        It's probably most accurate to say that gender isn't a significant factor in my calculus of attraction. I was born in Houston, though, and lived there for 23 years. For what it's worth, I don't recall intending anything in particular with that list of adjectives, but you never really know about authorial intent.
        Buge 12y ago
        Here's what the sentence is saying: There are people who aren't like me who are hackers. Also there are people who are like me who aren't hackers. The list of people who aren't like her is: progressive, libertarian, anarchist, moderate, communist, conservative, liberal, and reactionary. The list of people who are like her is: women, bisexuals, Texans, or engineers. Why else would she come up with 4 random traits? They obviously have something in common: they describe her. The "who aren't hackers" part doesn't apply directly to engineers. It applies to the entire list. So if you were to parenthesize it to show precedence it would be "(women, bisexuals, Texans, or engineers) who aren’t hackers." Not "women, bisexuals, Texans, or (engineers who aren’t hackers)."
        djcapelis 12y ago
    - lucio 12y ago
      That's a GREAT experiment. A hacker will not change his opinions on the article, either good or bad. He might even ask "so?". A non-hacker hating the article will mutate opinion, and now regard the piece as an inspiring essay from a challenged minority.
      - Kalium 12y ago
        Exactly. I've conducted this experiment myself. One self-proclaimed geek feminist went from a very hostile reaction to what was perceived as something aimed at economic exclusion to a sympathetic reaction to a woman bemoaning assaults on the culture she values.
  - Cthulhu_ 12y ago
    I had to do a double-take when the author was referred to as 'her' in the comments thread to be honest. I'm just used to articles like this, describing nerd culture and whatnot, to be written by men - the traditional nerd. That's probably part of the problem, really, expectations and stereotyping about gender (and race, and sexual orientation, and gender, and personality, etc etc etc)
  - mistermann 12y ago
    Well that's a nice surprise.
- gohrt 12y ago
  It's not efficient. The word "Brogrammer" means "something something men I don't like for reasons I believe are their fault". It doesn't communicate anything, it just invites the reader to invent their own meaning, which has little to do with what the write was thinking. The actual word was invented as a joke in a parody video, as a portmonteau of "bro" and "programmer". It then got picked up as an slur for "disliked man in the tech world".
  - seba_dos1 12y ago
    I don't really use this word or feel the need to participate in discussions about people it represent, but for me, when I see it somewhere, "brogrammer" means an equivalent of "cool people" from high school. Existence of them became possible due to programming becoming lucrative, with plenty of easy learning material, and therefore, beneficial for people you wouldn't at all consider a nerd to learn. It's a programmer who comes from outside of nerd culture, who looks at it like a cool kid from high school looks at school nerds. It has also a bit "hipsterish" connotation - brogrammer is someone who's "not really into it". "The true nerds" were programmers before it was cool. At least that's how I understand this term. "disliked man in the tech world" is much too broad, as so called "brogrammers" are supposed to dislike "true nerds".
pekk 12y ago
If we are interested in certain things that are not mainstream, and then other people who aren't really interested in those things come in and screw things up for interested people by acting in a selfish and conceited and exclusionary way, and we call those people jackasses or brogrammers or whatever, that doesn't make us the same as them. It's just an observation. And any culture worth its salt rejects forces actively trying to tear it down.
- nailer 12y ago
  Really? I thought brogrammers were programmers that exercise and aren't introverted. Never really considered brogrammers to be a 'force trying to tear down programming'. At least that describes everyone I've ever met described that way, including some very talented, welcoming people. Likewise, some of the most technically talented people in node identify as feminists. Thinking about it (which I'm forced to because my Twitter timeline is full of this), I don't think anyone really is trying to tear down programming. I think the problem is the false narratives we tell ourselves about the other side.
  - pekk 12y ago
    "I thought brogrammers were programmers that exercise and aren't introverted." I don't know how on earth you reached that bizarre conclusion. For starters, if that's what it means, then how would it be derogatory and then why would people be complaining about the word?

shortoncash 12y ago

Respectfully disagree. There are other places to seek refuge, even if it has to be done on the down low and within the same industry. Also, great article.

dropit_sphere 12y ago
Indeed. The safe space may be intruded upon, but it was never the space that was important. A culture of makers can always make more.

pseudoplatypus 12y ago

... and with that victory, they have given rise to generations of new weird-nerds that no longer feel as much as outsiders. Ok, I went there for the sake of the quote, but as someone who spent most of high-school maintaining an online forum about nerd topics on a Hardened Gentoo[1] Pentium III[2] server in the floor of his own bedroom; I still find I cannot quite empathize with the fear of "insiders"/"normals" that the OP talks about and which other comments seem to echo. Not saying I can't imagine it, or that it's not real, but it wasn't like that for me. In my experience: video-games were utterly mainstream, MTG/D&D where "a bit weird, but hey, to each their own", computer programming was cool (not a super popular hobby to pursue, but people seemed either neutral or genuinely impressed if you did). Many of those cherished "hacker values"? They are now mainstream ideals: Net neutrality! Wikileaks! "I prefer texting than talking on the phone"! ;) Everyone I know is now in an online forum or another (Facebook/Twitter/Tumblr/Reddit). Not saying all of the values have been popularized, but many have. Our pop culture now a days makes more fun of jocks than of nerds. It has more nerd heroes (specially for middle-school/high-school aged kids) than "popular" heroes. Freaking LoTR is one of the biggest movie franchises of all times! Besides, it's not like the groups have no intersection. Geek feminists often are or were at some point "weird-nerd" girls or "weird-nerd" guys that agreed that the world was, among all of its unfairnesses, biased to take male as the default. So we are not excluding just those "not from our tribe" (whatever that means), we are excluding "those from our tribe happen to be different from what we picture our tribe to look like". Even for those genuinely not part of the culture you might naturally want to associate with? Well, we still need to interact with and do business with them in a civilized manner. That's all any diversity advocacy I have ever read demands: not that you be friends with anybody, but that you be willing to interact respectfully with everybody. "Brogrammer" is less well defined. But the most gym-going and adventurous friend I have is also among the most nerdy, smartest and occasionally painfully awkward people I know. Also, the most social person in my circle is a gregarious, party going, business savvy, MIT engineering trained woman that in the right crowd can make jokes consisting entirely of function plots. There are no three cliques against other! There are many ideas, associated with different stereotypes, let's try not to pit armies of stereotypes against each other, and be open to the ideas! If that's not a hacker value, then I don't what is. [1] Why Hardened Gentoo just to host a small PHP forum? Because it was there... [2] Gives the age away fairly precisely, doesn't it?

spiritplumber 12y ago

No, they just moved in.

pjc50 12y ago

Given that those factions are mortal enemies, I don't think you can say they both won.