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Sometimes I get a little happy - maybe even proud - when I read about the achievements of women who pioneered this field (especially the awesome Admiral Hopper.

Sometimes I get a little happy - maybe even proud - when I read about the achievements of women who pioneered this field (especially the awesome Admiral Hopper.) Then I stop smiling and remind myself that, even in praise, it's not relevant.

minikites 12y ago
Why isn't it relevant?
- lorddoig 12y ago
  Because any other approach, even those with the best of intentions, eventually boils down to the supposition that what you've got between your legs is somehow relevant. And you know what - on an aggregate, societal level - it might actually be: men and women are not the same, and that's OK. But this is a statistical observation that only applies to the population as a whole and is completely invalid at the individual level. If you feel yourself reaching for this knowledge at that level then evidently you don't have enough good information about the individual in front of you - that is the problem you need to fix. If we took away all the contextual stuff we know about our founding mothers and fathers and referred to them only with asexual codenames like 'Person X', absolutely nothing would change. If one's aim is achieving equality, the only way to truly do that is to strip away all the bullshit: gender - just like hair colour, accent, and anything else you care to name - shouldn't even register. It's a non-thought. If that's what feminism is about then I'm a feminist; but I'd never actually call myself that because 90% of the feminism I see today is most definitely not like this, it seems instead to be about making gender register in a very big way - and that's just as misguided and self-destructive as misogyny.
  - minikites 12y ago
    It's extremely relevant for women. Women are harassed more online and the harassment is more personal for women than men. Men get their work attacked, women get their identity attacked: http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome-internet-72170 http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome... > According to a 2005 report by the Pew Research Center, which has been tracking the online lives of Americans for more than a decade, women and men have been logging on in equal numbers since 2000, but the vilest communications are still disproportionately lobbed at women. We are more likely to report being stalked and harassed on the Internet—of the 3,787 people who reported harassing incidents from 2000 to 2012 to the volunteer organization Working to Halt Online Abuse, 72.5 percent were female. Sometimes, the abuse can get physical: A Pew survey reported that five percent of women who used the Internet said “something happened online” that led them into “physical danger.” And it starts young: Teenage girls are significantly more likely to be cyberbullied than boys. Just appearing as a woman online, it seems, can be enough to inspire abuse. In 2006, researchers from the University of Maryland set up a bunch of fake online accounts and then dispatched them into chat rooms. > Accounts with feminine usernames incurred an average of 100 sexually explicit or threatening messages a day. Masculine names received 3.7. http://time.com/3305466/male-female-harassment-online/ http://time.com/3305466/male-female-harassment-online/ > [W]omen’s harassment is more likely to be gender-based and that has specific, discriminatory harms rooted in our history. The study pointed out that the harassment targeted at men is not because they are men, as is clearly more frequently the case with women. It’s defining because a lot of harassment is an effort to put women, because they are women, back in their “place.”
rmc 12y ago
Sometimes people claim that women are biologically, statistically, just not as good/interested as men at programming/technology, and point to current gender balance in tech as evidence of this ("There's a reason there's lots of male programmers, men must be just better!") Remembering some of these women, and the early history like this, is very relevant today to show that that's nonsense.
- ajuc 12y ago
  It's not nonsense. Modern women are statisticaly less interested in programming. That's because boys 20 years ago got c-64 or PC because they wanted to play games, and girls 20 years ago got barbies. Turns out barbie doesn't have the same side effects.
  - mrits 12y ago
    I got basketballs and golf clubs. I had to beg my dad to get me my first amiga 500. He agreed only because he thought I'd might get rich from it one day. So my interest, to the best that I can tell, was self originated.
    - thirdtruck 12y ago
      One crucial difference is that your father did buy you that Amiga. A lot of girls couldn't get one at all.
    - rmc 12y ago
      Exactly. Geeks used to be picked on, and bullied. Maths and science wasn't cool.
      - ibebrett 12y ago
        there is a difference between it being cool and being acceptable. you had an identity as a nerd. you were accepted as a nerd, and cool people were probably happy that you were because it put you lower on the totem pole.
  - 12y ago
Lawtonfogle 12y ago
Sometimes it is relevant because they had more issues to overcome to achieve their accomplishment.

minikites 12y ago

Why isn't it relevant?

lorddoig 12y ago
Because any other approach, even those with the best of intentions, eventually boils down to the supposition that what you've got between your legs is somehow relevant. And you know what - on an aggregate, societal level - it might actually be: men and women are not the same, and that's OK. But this is a statistical observation that only applies to the population as a whole and is completely invalid at the individual level. If you feel yourself reaching for this knowledge at that level then evidently you don't have enough good information about the individual in front of you - that is the problem you need to fix. If we took away all the contextual stuff we know about our founding mothers and fathers and referred to them only with asexual codenames like 'Person X', absolutely nothing would change. If one's aim is achieving equality, the only way to truly do that is to strip away all the bullshit: gender - just like hair colour, accent, and anything else you care to name - shouldn't even register. It's a non-thought. If that's what feminism is about then I'm a feminist; but I'd never actually call myself that because 90% of the feminism I see today is most definitely not like this, it seems instead to be about making gender register in a very big way - and that's just as misguided and self-destructive as misogyny.
- minikites 12y ago
  It's extremely relevant for women. Women are harassed more online and the harassment is more personal for women than men. Men get their work attacked, women get their identity attacked: http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome-internet-72170 http://www.psmag.com/health-and-behavior/women-arent-welcome... > According to a 2005 report by the Pew Research Center, which has been tracking the online lives of Americans for more than a decade, women and men have been logging on in equal numbers since 2000, but the vilest communications are still disproportionately lobbed at women. We are more likely to report being stalked and harassed on the Internet—of the 3,787 people who reported harassing incidents from 2000 to 2012 to the volunteer organization Working to Halt Online Abuse, 72.5 percent were female. Sometimes, the abuse can get physical: A Pew survey reported that five percent of women who used the Internet said “something happened online” that led them into “physical danger.” And it starts young: Teenage girls are significantly more likely to be cyberbullied than boys. Just appearing as a woman online, it seems, can be enough to inspire abuse. In 2006, researchers from the University of Maryland set up a bunch of fake online accounts and then dispatched them into chat rooms. > Accounts with feminine usernames incurred an average of 100 sexually explicit or threatening messages a day. Masculine names received 3.7. http://time.com/3305466/male-female-harassment-online/ http://time.com/3305466/male-female-harassment-online/ > [W]omen’s harassment is more likely to be gender-based and that has specific, discriminatory harms rooted in our history. The study pointed out that the harassment targeted at men is not because they are men, as is clearly more frequently the case with women. It’s defining because a lot of harassment is an effort to put women, because they are women, back in their “place.”

rmc 12y ago

Sometimes people claim that women are biologically, statistically, just not as good/interested as men at programming/technology, and point to current gender balance in tech as evidence of this ("There's a reason there's lots of male programmers, men must be just better!") Remembering some of these women, and the early history like this, is very relevant today to show that that's nonsense.

ajuc 12y ago
It's not nonsense. Modern women are statisticaly less interested in programming. That's because boys 20 years ago got c-64 or PC because they wanted to play games, and girls 20 years ago got barbies. Turns out barbie doesn't have the same side effects.
- mrits 12y ago
  I got basketballs and golf clubs. I had to beg my dad to get me my first amiga 500. He agreed only because he thought I'd might get rich from it one day. So my interest, to the best that I can tell, was self originated.
  - thirdtruck 12y ago
    One crucial difference is that your father did buy you that Amiga. A lot of girls couldn't get one at all.
  - rmc 12y ago
    Exactly. Geeks used to be picked on, and bullied. Maths and science wasn't cool.
    - ibebrett 12y ago
      there is a difference between it being cool and being acceptable. you had an identity as a nerd. you were accepted as a nerd, and cool people were probably happy that you were because it put you lower on the totem pole.
- 12y ago

Lawtonfogle 12y ago

Sometimes it is relevant because they had more issues to overcome to achieve their accomplishment.