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Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- empressplay 11y agoneeds (2013) added to the title
- geon 11y agoDoes it, though?
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- traverseda 11y agoNot a moderator, no. Figured more data wouldn't hurt, even if it likely means it won't get voted as high.
- hoopd 11y agoYes, it helps demonstrate our current inability to have important conversations is nothing new. edit: Downvotes again. I'm tired of trying to bring different viewpoints to these conversations. When you look around and find that everybody agrees with you don't assume it's because you've found the truth, it's simply because you've driven away everybody who disagrees with you.
- marijn 11y agoThe complicated thing about an article like this is that her experiences are definitely valid, it isn't hard to see where she is coming from, and I'm actually glad to read a piece from this perspective. Yet I can't help but already hear the ugly gloating and coopting of the MRAs before I even got to the predictable comments at the bottom. Can we separate intent from effect, of should we expect every blogger to be politically savvy enough to preempt such coopting by explicitly distancing herself from the MRA/gamergate toads?
- traverseda 11y agoFrom another article of hers, [when nerds collide](https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c) >[ ... ] much of the backlash from weird nerds against “brogrammers” and “geek feminists” alike. (If you thought the conflict was only between those two groups, or that someone who criticises one group must necessarily be a member of the other, then you haven’t been paying close enough attention.) Both groups are latecomers barging in on a cultural space that was once a respite for us, and we don’t appreciate either group bringing its cultural conflicts into our space in a way that demands we choose one side or the other. That’s a false dichotomy, and false dichotomies make us want to tear our hair out. Also, I'm not sure I'm seeing the "predictable comments" that you are.
- ehvatum 11y ago> Also, I'm not sure I'm seeing the "predictable comments" that you are. I caught that as well. The ritualized combat the GP assumed was there actually isn't. GP basically burst into the AV club and shouted a rejoinder to an insult that wasn't given. Debate club is just down the hall. Go bother those people, GP.
- marijn 11y agoThe single comment below is exactly the self-indulgent whining against feminism in general I was expecting (as are some of the comments on here on HN)
- dvdcxn 11y agoTo be fair, your posts read like self indulgent whining about those who you profess to self indulgently whine.
- emodendroket 11y agoI don't know how much sense it makes to argue with "feminism" since it's an umbrella that covers a bunch of different schools of thought that have pretty serious disagreements among each other.
- myderpyaccount 11y agoYea, but then it doesn't really make sense to argue about anything, because everything can be statically defined in terms of the environment it exists in. The part can be described in terms of the the discrete whole of which it belongs to, minus the part. I like to complain a lot, about many things, for like an hour, and then I get frustrated without observable resolution. It's all thinking noise, patterns, I prefer to stay at home, I like sleeping, so tired of arguing on the internet.
- detcader 11y agoYou can talk about different groups of actual physical women who have different types of thought about sex, sexuality, and men, because waves and groups of feminisms actually do exist. I recommend "Gender Inequality" by Judith Lorber as a starting point
- emodendroket 11y agoRight, this is what I meant to say. Arguing with "feminism" is a bit like arguing with "politics" or "ethics" or "philosophy" given how disparate the different strains of it really are. I suppose most people who are arguing against feminism have a specific kind in mind but it doesn't do any good to the reader if you don't explain.
- lucasnemeth 11y agoYes. she just disagrees with a specific article of Shanley and calls it "feminism".
- lectrick 11y ago
- kohanz 11y ago> There had been interest, but one of the committers had dismissed the idea out of hand because a woman had proposed it. It blows my mind that this stuff still happens. In the OSS world of all places. I can't even compute how someone can apply such "logic".
- logfromblammo 11y agoIt requires one to abandon certain assumptions about human behavior. When you have discarded enough, many possible hypotheses that could explain the behavior appear: 1. The person was misogynist, and actually believed that women are less capable than men, and their ideas less valuable. 2. The person was insecure about their own position of power, and would seize upon any convenient excuse to undermine potential future challengers to his authority. 3. The person minimized effort, and shot down the idea using arbitrary reasoning only as the means to avoid having to implement any part of it himself. 4. The person was inexperienced and ignorant about socially acceptable behaviors, and was merely copying previously observed behaviors. 5. The person was a troll, and chose that reason as the one which would be most inflammatory to the target. ... I could continue, but it suffices to show that if something that actually happened cannot be explained while preserving your current set of assumptions, one or more of them must be flawed. In most cases, the easiest to strike down is the assumption that individual humans cannot hold logically incompatible beliefs, or cannot act rationally at some times and irrationally at others. Smart people can do some incredibly stupid things. Another one that seems common is the assumption that all members of a synthetic tribe will tend to hold similar values and beliefs, and conduct themselves in a similar manner. People assume that members of a religion will behave in a particular way. People assume that members of a profession will act in a certain way.
- Puts 11y agoI think we need to start recognizing that this is just the sign of low intelligence. You can not argue with people who are judgmental. It's just like arguing with a drunk. Whatever you say is just waste of time and energy and by even going in to the discussion you let them drag you down to their level.
- geofft 11y agoThis is from 2013. It seems like a response to something, possibly one of Shanley's essays that's now no longer on Medium; I can't help but feel that I'm missing context as I get towards the end. This also seems like a straightforward example of how mainstream feminism is bad at intersectionality. Arguably both sides in this discussion are not great at it: I feel like there's probably a good answer that involves neither belittling people for having different reads of social interactions nor asserting that everyone else should read social interactions the way you do. I wonder what the people in this disagreement would say today. I think tech feminism has been getting more aware of intersectionality of late, so I'm curious if the problems the author identified about have gotten better.
- psycr 11y agoI don't know what this means: > This also seems like a straightforward example of how mainstream feminism is bad at intersectionality. Can you explain? What are they bad at?
- geofft 11y agoI'm not sure I'll do it justice, but briefly, intersectionality is the viewpoint that systems of oppression affect people qualitatively differently when they're on the wrong side of two systems instead of one. From Wikipedia's lede: "An example is black feminism, which argues that the experience of being a black woman cannot be understood in terms of being black, and of being a woman, considered independently, but must include the interactions, which frequently reinforce each other." In particular, it seems to me like the author is part of a group of people for whom certain social cues fall on dry ground, and her critics are part of a group of people for whom those social cues take root and flower like a weed. By themselves, there are advantages and disadvantages to participating in tech communities as a member of either of these communities. But they also influence how the experience of other systems of oppression affect them -- like the sexist reviewer mentioned in the article -- and it's not very helpful to think of a one-size-fits-all "feminism". For instance, I don't think it's the author's intention and certainly not her fault if she reinforces a belief that certain behaviors are okay, simply because those behaviors don't register to her. But yet people use her as evidence that the behaviors are fine, and there ought to be room for identifying that as a problem -- not as criticism of her, but as awareness of a problem with a system. At the same time, any solution to that problem must not shut people like her out by weaving subtle social cues into the fabric of the system, or else one system of oppression is just replaced with another one.
- geon 11y agoInteresting that she is autistic. Autism is apparently more common among boys than girls. Could this be one reason why tech attracts more men than women? Arguably, a slightly autistic personality is helpful for a programmer. Possibly it could also be a big reason for many future programmers to turn to tech in the first place, where you deal with strict, deterministic rules instead of emotions. This would obviously not excuse misogyny in tech, but could help explain the gender imbalance.
- ceejayoz 11y ago> Arguably, a slightly autistic personality is helpful for a programmer. This sounds a bit like people who go "haha, I'm so OCD, I like my pencils all pointing the wrong way" - incorrect self-diagnosis. "Slightly autistic personality" unfortunately seems to be fairly frequently used as an excuse to be an asshole.
- hodwik 11y agoAsperger's is a real diagnosis.
- ceejayoz 11y agoCertainly, when diagnosed by a doctor. I'm talking about the "I've never been formally diagnosed but..." and "I think I'm a little on the spectrum" sort of comments that often wind up in threads about programmers being socially awkward. Side note: having Aspergers doesn't make you an asshole.
- hodwik 11y ago> " having Aspergers doesn't make you an asshole." My experience of people (medically diagnosed) with Asperger's does not support that statement.
- ceejayoz 11y agoHaving difficulty with social interaction due to a medical condition, IMO, doesn't make one an "asshole", any more than a cancer patient who lies in bed all day is "lazy". It's the people who are aware of and excuse being an asshole by a self-diagnosed "oh I'm probably on the spectrum" statement I've issues with.
- justuk 11y agoTo work in technology, especially programming, you have to put a heck of a lot of effort into the subject. If it's not some legacy technology then that also means learning constantly (on your own initiative). That's what I like about programming, it rewards knowledge and ability - whereas other careers reward other attributes. I look at the Twttier-style feminists (I don't mean the traditional equality types, but the extremists) and can only think that they are doing it for their own gain. If they really wanted to participate in their targets of anger, they could just do what everyone else does: work hard at a hobby for years, even decades, and maybe, just maybe they too could dominate the field.
- ceejayoz 11y ago> That's what I like about programming, it rewards knowledge and ability - whereas other careers reward other attributes. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
- roflc0ptic 11y agoI think this is a cheap argument. I work with business analysts. At first, I didn't think well of them - their job is to turn business rules into software requirements. They kind of understand the business, and kind of understand software. My feeling, which I was embarrassed by, is that I could do their jobs better than they can. After having been here a while, I still feel the same way, but I'm not embarrassed by it. I have to understand everything that a business analyst does, and also how software works. Our company tells us we should spend 30% (!!) of our time on professional development. I think that's totally awesome. A business analyst recently made the comment "I don't even know what I'd spend 30% of my time learning about." Most jobs really are about getting along with people. Even engineering jobs. But engineering requires paying substantial intellectual costs up front, and then paying on a continual basis, in a way that most other professions simply do not.
- ceejayoz 11y ago> I think this is a cheap argument. I think "other careers don't require knowledge and ability like mine does" is the perfect example of illusory superiority. In my experience, competent people are pretty good at making their jobs look pretty easy, but actually trying to do it without their built-up knowledge and ability is another story. The feeling that you can do their job better than they can might fade if you had to do it for a couple months. There are a lot of edge cases and unexpected complexities you don't get properly exposed to just looking over someone's shoulder sometimes.
- et1337 11y agoThe only problem I have with feminism is that it's often a movement against men, and not for women. I think they would be a lot more successful doing things to encourage women rather than disparage men. Meredith would not have had to write this article. Of course, it's a lot harder to be positive rather than negative.
- dmansen 11y agoyou should try reading about feminism sometime
- nailer 11y agoMaybe they just read, say, Dworkin, on how all heterosexual sex is rape? Pretending people who disagree with political movements just need to understand those movements more is presumptuous.
- Gracana 11y agoDworkin rejects that interpretation of her writing. "What I think is that sex must not put women in a subordinate position. It must be reciprocal and not an act of aggression from a man looking only to satisfy himself. That's my point."
- lsy 11y agoMichael Moorcock: Several reviewers accused you of saying that all intercourse was rape. I haven't found a hint of that anywhere in the book. Is that what you are saying? Dworkin: No, I wasn't saying that and I didn't say that, then or ever.… My point was that as long as the law allows statutory exemption for a husband from rape charges, no married woman has legal protection from rape. I also argued, based on a reading of our laws, that marriage mandated intercourse — it was compulsory, part of the marriage contract. Under the circumstances, I said, it was impossible to view sexual intercourse in marriage as the free act of a free woman.
- nailer 11y ago
- vonklaus 11y agoThis was awesome. Not because it dispels a meme that is negative in the industry, not because it is some sort of proof a woman can succeed in tech, or any other of this tropic nonsense. It was such an amazing message that was totally gender neutral: "I like building things because I am curious and I pursue knowledge for its own sake" With all the confirmation bias and name calling (which I am certainly guilty of from time to time) it is refreshing to hear someone talking about how they just want[0] to focus on building something exciting and not focusing on politics. [0]this originally said "both sides to shut up to they can get back to building and hacking.", which was not meant literally, but to convey the sentiment the edited section now reflects. edit: If you strongly disagree with me, and I am being sincere here, I can promise your energy will be much better spent building/doing/creating/enjoying something than engaging in a debate with me. If you are up to the challenge, go out and do. If you take some time to go out and do something awesome and you still feel like you would like to converse, I would like to talk about your projects/etc and my email is listed. Cheers. [final edit:] I have been doing a lot of thinking about cultural problems. I have began a change in perspective that has lead to personal growth, asking not why something matters but when/contextually something matters. Maybe whatever is being argued down thread is the single biggest issue you find fault with in our society or maybe it is the 5th, 10th issue, etc. I can only reiterate that "creating" will better your cause but this is not the context or the "when". Go start a scholarship, teach people to code, work on a product, call your senator, etc. Doing something is much better than talking about something and if there was a place to reasonably have meaningful discourse, I assure you this is not that place.
- lsy 11y agoI understand the author has strong feelings about her innate tactics for avoiding misery, but the ultimate thrust of her "amelioration patterns" are variants on "toughen up" or "don't feed the trolls", both of which assign responsibility for the problem to victims of misogyny, not perpetrators. The author got lucky and doesn't, or can't, feel bad about misogyny. This isn't true for everyone, nor should it be. I agree with the "feminists" that it's counterproductive to say that if more women were like you, misogyny wouldn't matter so much. Talking about "good" experiences as models is only productive when the difference between your experience and others' is the behavior of potential perpetrators, not the behavior of potential victims.
- chazu 11y agoThe thrust of the article seemed to me to be that the author feels her experiences are being erased by prominent views on women in tech - that folks like Kane are labelling her experiences as invalid.
- lsy 11y agoI agree that's how she feels. What I'm trying to say is that the problem isn't with her experiences, which are totally valid, but the extrapolation of those experiences into suggestions that place responsibility with victims rather than perpetrators.
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- skrebbel 11y agoThe issue is that she feels that people get mad at her for being pretty happy about how things are for her. That has very little to do with victims and all that. It's really weird when you're not allowed to feel what you feel just because people who share some trait with you have different experiences.
- astazangasta 11y ago
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- astazangasta 11y agoI like how you put 'evolutionary psychology' and 'scientific' in the same sentence as if they are at all related. Few modern fields are more full of baseless speculation and supposition, lack falsifiability, etc.
- convexfunction 11y agoLayfolk coming up with just-so stories to justify what they want to be true are very, very different from actual scientists doing actual research on actual falsifiable hypotheses in actual evolutionary psychology. Don't let the former fool you into thinking the latter doesn't exist.
- astazangasta 11y agoNot very different, from my perspective as a biologist. Evolutionary psychology is largely about assuming adaptive causes for things you don't bother to do any genetics to confirm. Why are other people killing themselves to prove genetic associations when you can apparently do "science" just by assuming there must be a genetic underpinning to any phenomenon you fancy?
- dataker 11y agoFirst, it's irrelevant to my point whether evolutionary psychology is not a hard science. When someone ignores, prohibits or shame a field using name-calling and fallacious axioms, arguments/debates are irrelevant and you have to run. Secondly, what you've described is a problem in the social sciences not exclusive to evolutionary psychology. Some economic theories, for example, are largely debatable and, for some scholars, full of baseless speculation.
- Kenji 11y agoThere had been interest, but one of the committers had dismissed the idea out of hand because a woman had proposed it. It was the funniest thing I’d heard in months — I literally doubled over laughing at how nonplussed he must have been to see it not only implemented, but implemented to rousing success. Now that's a woman I respect. Instead of whining around, she just implements it. Suckerpunched the misogynist. You will see how much easier your life becomes if you stop complaining and start doing. That's also how you earn respect.
- detcader 11y agoEveryone can see the purpose of this comment. Telling women to quit whining and shut up is not novel.
- huu 11y agoAnd if she complains about being treated this way for being a woman, she wouldn't have your respect?
- Kenji 11y agoNo, people who complain don't have my respect (at least not more than the baseline respect I have for every human). Unless she does really awesome stuff despite complaining.
- debacle 11y agoThe point is that complaining did nothing. Just doing it, taking control, and more importantly proving the misogynists wrong, had a much better impact.
- detcader 11y agoOnce again we see demonstrated the simple dynamics of economics in that the stories that are on the HN front page is a function of demand from an overwhelmingly male base of regular users.
- xtx23 11y agothe author is just too sensitive in online discussions. One could simply dismiss your idea for being a nerd, gay, or sounds like a woman even if you are a guy. There is nothing that excludes a guy from the same snub behavior thrown by trolls. It is a community issue, not a man vs. woman issue. In fact, on the internet, you can't even be sure that it is a guy trolling a girl, but thinking makes it so. Empathy is about seeing it both sides. It's not about everyone else making you feel welcome and comfortable.
- yenda 11y agoYou always know it's a guy, because of Rule 16
- fndrplayer13 11y agoHer experience is certainly very interesting and unique. There's a bit of intersectionalism going on here, though. The experiences of a non-autistic woman in technology, I would imagine, are dramatically different from an autistic woman. Just by the very nature of social intelligence.
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- icanhackit 11y agoMeredith makes some interesting points. What I think is missing on both sides of the conversation is that guys will attack whoever they can - male or female - and the things they'll do or say tend to be what will make you feel the smallest. People are hierarchical and like to probe where they sit on the imaginary ladder of life by having a dig at those in their proximity. Meredith alluded to an interesting point towards the end of the post - not to confuse the motivations behind sexual assault/rape with the culture of insulting people for the purpose of securing a place on the social ladder. When a guy makes fun of another's dick-length or orders a female to get back in the kitchen the same thing is happening: making them feel small or ineffectual so that they'll consensually walk down a few rungs of that horseshit ladder.
- toolz 11y agoIt's interesting to me that you only point out males that do that as if it's a gender specific quality. Where do you live that you haven't noticed women's infatuation with social pecking order?
- icanhackit 11y agoI agree it applies both ways. My point was male-centric to align with the argument being made in the article. Probing the local social order applies to both genders and how they go about it can be slightly different but no less vicious.
- krstck 11y agoI'm a big fan of Meredith. She's one of the few "women in tech" (yuck) that I feel like actually speaks my point of view and articulates how I feel about all of this. My impression is that most of the people that spend their time pontificating about women's issues in this industry are doing so from the outside, and I kinda resent that. This article by Susan Sons is also good: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/girls-and-software http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/girls-and-software
- hellodevnull 11y agoThat article by Susan kept coming to mind while reading this one. I think that most women that actually work in technology have feelings closer to the ones expressed here than the stuff that a vocal minority spreads all over the internet.
- cpncrunch 11y agoIs this just an issue in the USA, or perhaps just radical San Francisco? In other countries men and women tend to work together quite happily in SW development jobs without all of this nonsense.
- debacle 11y agoIt's really just an issue on sites that monetize through ad revenue, because it generates a ton of traffic.
- ajdlinux 11y agoObviously it's going to be different in different places, but gender issues definitely come up here in Australia.
- Khaine 11y agoBut that is usually driven through it being brought up in the US. Sort of like it culturally seeps through
- stcredzero 11y agoThe author is a friend of mine. What I say below is something I've discussed with her. I think the last great frontier for humanity's "waking up from history" is awareness of group psychology, particularly the psychology of the "other." Ironically, as noted by GCP Grey, widespread access to the Internet has actually made such group psychology worse. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc One of the big problems with an awareness of what Noam Chomsky called "irrational jingoism," is that currently society is made out of it. Our organizations and social norms and structures actually use the natural jingoism built into Homo sapiens in order to increase group solidarity. The cognitive distortions that come out of such group psychology are a big problem online. It's been noted that if you go far enough in either direction of the political spectrum, things start to look the same. Historically, both extremes become militaristic and convinced of a duty to righteous aggression. I would invite hardy and curious souls to plumb both more militant feminist and more militant Men's Rights groups online, and witness firsthand the degree to which both sides can be eerily reminiscent of each other in tone and self-righteous attitude. (For example: Intolerant "you're with us or against us" attitudes.) As 21st century citizens, we should already be aware of "bait and switch" tactics. We should also be savvy about the psychology of online groups, and be able to read when a group has started to cross a threshold and becomes driven by positive feedback cycles of outrage to garner more attention. We should recognize when the ideology of whatever movement has been thus hijacked to become hateivism. (EDIT: To clarify, what I refer to as "groups" are small-granularity, as in a few person's social networks, not everyone who identifies with a particular label!) To clarify: my issue is not with either side of any debate. There are a few ideas on both sides of the issue I would agree with. My chief concern is whether the groups in question are self-aware concerning their own group dynamics. Such an organizational awareness was perhaps the chief accomplishment of Martin Luther King Jr. and his compatriots, though there seems to be no awareness of this particular accomplishment in the culture at large. EDIT: I should clarify what I meant by saying "made such group psychology worse." Creating virtual meeting spaces and virtual online groups is far easier and far cheaper than organizing face to face groups, and the same communication resources also make it easier to facilitate such meetings in person. Much good has come of this. However, it has also created far more opportunities for the incubation of distorted mob psychologies. Often these take the name of some cause or ideology but are distorted in a jingoistic direction. As 21st century online citizens, we should be as aware of such "bait and switch" with the labels of ideologies as we are aware of the same tactics with regards to name brands. We should be as savvy about the intellectual provenance of an online group's teachings and its actual practices as we are savvy about online shopping or choosing which Kickstarter campaigns to support. If just about anyone can set up shop online as an "activist," doesn't this create the same situation that arises when just about anyone can set up a web store? (Isn't this the same economic situation as with travelling medicine shows?) From what I have seen online, people are often remarkably unsophisticated about evaluating distortions in their particular group's interpretation of ideologies or activist programs, and largely blind to their own group dynamics. This is especially true when "othering," stereotyping, and group hatreds have taken hold. Most importantly: It is just as true online as it is in-person.
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- debacle 11y agoThe victim mentality is the basis of all of the problems in modern -isms. People who (perhaps rightly) feel maligned by the world congregate, become an echo chamber, and then build in intensity. In effect, their altered perception of reality becomes their coping mechanism for something painful or traumatic that may have happened in their lives. Throw in a few drama addicts or discordians, and you have a recipe for zero discussion, and zero progress. Is there sexism in tech? Yes. Is it condoned by the majority? No. Is it generally called out when it happens? Yes. These people don't need to be derided, ignored, or educated. It wont work. They need healing.
- phinkle 11y agoI agree that overwhelmingly the experience for most "women in tech" is positive because we also love technology and building things, but its the small things that really make a difference. I think (although I can't speak for her) the author also experiences these small differences, like when her idea wasn't taken seriously because of her gender. Sometimes these things are easy to miss, but once you are on the lookout its a slippery slope to thinking that almost everything happening to you is because of your gender and its good to call people out on that. I have certainly misjudged actions, but there have also been times when people were discriminating against me because of my gender and those are the thing that we really need to have a conversation about. Sometimes these ideas or comments are minor and we can get past them like the in the author's case, but sometimes they have an impact. For example when I was taking APCS in high school, my programming partner (Asian male) was asked to join the UIL team and I was not, even though we were at the same skill level. There could have been other reasons that I wasn't asked, but since we both turned in the same assignments and had similar interactions with our old, southern teacher, I doubt it.
- throwaway999666 11y ago> Sometimes these things are easy to miss, but once you are on the lookout its a slippery slope to thinking that almost everything happening to you is because of your gender and its good to call people out on that. Yes, probably. Both if you're a man or a woman.
- michaelochurch 11y agoIf we want to have a meaningful discussion about sexism in tech, it's time to talk about what we're up against, and it involves all of us: not just women and minorities. If it doesn't involve us now, it will in 20 years when we're two decades older, because ageism is just as much of a problem in the tech industry as the other "isms". There isn't an above-baseline sexism among long-term professional programmers. Sure, there are bad apples, but the culture that you'll find at a gray-haired research lab or even a more traditional, supposedly conservative, enterprise shop is not nearly as exclusionary as the supposedly progressive and new Silicon Valley culture. By stereotype, you'd expect 60-year-old men writing elevator controllers in Indiana to be far more sexist and exclusionary than 25-year-olds in California. It ain't true. First of all, someone who's 60 now was born in 1955 and has no meaningful memories of the bad old days; by the time he or she was starting a career, women were already in the workforce and it was accepted by many as a good thing. Second, if you control for education, the age vs. exclusionary behavior correlation goes away. Third, most people actually get more mature with age, and while there are some who mature at a lesser rate than society advances and become the "racist grandparent" trope, I don't think that it's the norm. (Also, American society's rate of advancement has slowed in the past 30 years compared to the 30 before that, but that's another topic.) Fourth, anyone who thinks the dominant Silicon Valley culture is still liberal has been asleep for 20 years. That's not to say that private sector tech doesn't have a sexist, exclusionary culture. It does. It doesn't come from the programmers (although there are individual programmers who are assholes and keep it going). Rather, it comes from the mainstream business culture (MBA culture) that colonized us. In fact, the sexism of the Damasos (see: https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/vc-istan-8-the-damaso-effect/ https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/vc-istan-8-t... ) who are sent West to boss nerds around is a lot more severe than that of the mainstream MBA culture. Banks might make it harder for women to advance; venture capitalists, on the other hand, will outright hit on them and threaten to "pick up a phone" and make them unfundable if they don't acquiesce. You know how when a criminal gang kicks out some of its underperforming members and they form a new gang, the upstart young gang is typically more violent than the one it splintered off from? The sexism of the VC bros and the Spiegel types they fund is analogous. The demigods of the Valley are people who got kicked out of mainstream business culture because they weren't smart enough to do statistical arbitrage at hedge funds, so they were sent West to man this colonial outpost (from the MBA-culture perspective) called Silicon Valley. As MBA-culture failures, it's not surprising that they amplify some of that culture's worst traits, and that they've created a dominant culture in Silicon Valley that is (a) very negative and (b) far worse than the more superficially conservative (no sandals at work) but generally professional culture you see in more traditional companies, including the ones doing (say) hardware work and low-level programming, the latter of which seems to be the OP's interest. She had a positive experience because she was hanging around Real Technologists, who aren't nearly as sexist as the Silicon Valley wunderkinder. The Shanleys of the world aren't complaining about 55-year-old men who still say "Oriental" (meaning no harm, and not holding racist views) but are generally professional and not very sexist (many are married and have daughters). They're complaining about 22-year-olds who get funded to the gills because they were in the same rape frat as a leading VC, and who go on to create horrible work cultures.
- unoti 11y agoGroundless discrimination based on race, gender, religion, age, and all kinds of other factors happens all the time, and it's a real bummer. The simple fact is that people take all kinds of shortcuts in making decisions, and very little of the workplace is an actual meritocracy. When I first entered the workplace as a programmer, I was not taken as seriously as I might have been because I was so young. I got my first programming job at 16, and even when I started doing major consulting gigs across the country at 19, I looked really young for my age. One client remarked, upon meeting me, "You don't look old enough to operate a car, much less our computer." It was always a challenge for me to get people to evaluate my ideas based on their merit rather than their source, and to evaluate me based on my work product, rather than where they were at in their career when they were my age. I have worked for myself for many years now, but if I sought employment elsewhere, I'd probably face some difficulties because I'm much older than the average developer, and people would assume that I'm stuck in old technologies as many professional developers my age are. But the truth is that unfounded discrimination happens all the time in the workplace, for all kinds of reasons. Almost nowhere is a true meritocracy. At one place I worked, even when I was at the perfect average age for software developers, and white, and male, even then I was cut out of the circle of the key developers. It was because the developers, owner, and key management liked to stop working many days around 10:30am and start drinking heavily, maybe stopping back by the office briefly some time in the afternoon, then go back to drinking steadily the rest of the day until 6 or 7 pm. I didn't really do that with the same kind of endless enthusiasm that they did. I didn't fit in very well. If you find a group of people that accept you the way you are, and evaluate you based on the work you do, you've found gold. If mere excellence is the currency of the realm, and all they want from you is to be the best you can be, then that's a glorious place to be. But finding such a place is very rare. It's hard to find that in a workplace, a church, a group of friends, or anywhere. And if you're struggling to find that, it's not entirely because of race, gender, age, or sexual orientation-- it's mostly because of people's basic nature.
- nofeels 11y ago230 points in 2 hours and it's just about to fall off the front page. I guess this is a good example of people claiming they want something but refuse to listen to anyone else's opinion on the matter.
- CoreSet 11y agoIt seems like she's trying to gain credibility as someone who's been "exposed" to the travails of most women in tech, but then her solution isn't to fight the physical violence, intellectual marginalization, or boys-club dynamic in the c-suite - all of which she alludes to and confirms with her personal experiences - it's to just bury yourself in work to the point that non of that (your career, professional life, emotional health, your entire life) matters. What a fucked up apology for the even more fucked up status quo.
- gmarx 11y agoIf you want to join an existing group with an existing culture, you don't get to say "here I am; now change your culture to suit me". As an older gentleman(?) it's bizarre to see how traditional nerd hideaways such as programming and comic books have evolved into cool things that the cool people now feel entitled to participate in...you know, if we could just get these spergy nerds to act like cool, or at least normal people.
- forgottenpass 11y agoIf you look at this author's medium page, she has another post on exactly that. https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c My favorite bit: The mainstream tech industry offers us money, status, and a stable (if weak) position in its idealised social hierarchy. The voices clamouring for change offer us no money, a social role reversal back to “disempowered outsider,” and a status demotion to “likely sexual predator.” (The polite euphemism for this is “creepy,” a pejorative applied indiscriminately both to those who actively transgress other people’s boundaries and to those with the unmitigated gall to be attracted to someone else while being funny-looking.) Given a choice between these two, which would you side with? It’s true that the one is confining, essentialist, and a far cry from the best of all possible worlds, but the other is all these things and a step backward for people who finally got to take a step forward for once when the internet took off.
- gmarx 11y agoShe's a good writer
- deleted 11y ago[deleted]
- mcguire 11y agoSo, let's see here; Meredith Patterson has: * "...posted an idea for a new feature to the developers’ mailing list for an open-source project...[but on list she had no access to, it was] dismissed the idea out of hand because a woman had proposed it." The feature only became available because she had the opportunity to implement it in such a way that it became a "rousing success". (I should stop right here because that's about as damning an incident as I can come up with.) * "...called the police in a foreign country to report an attempted rape at a conference, and argued with them when they told my friend that nobody would consider it assault since they’d both been drinking." * "...thwarted a wannabe PUA at a conference completely by accident" by "a blazingly single-minded focus on whatever topic I happen to be perseverating on at the moment". Now, I don't want to seem to be saying that she's wrong to feel as she does, or that her experiences are somehow invalid, or that she's in "denial" as some idiot put it. I'm not. Really. It works for her and others, and I think she would admit it doesn't work for everyone. On the other hand, I don't think her suggestion of, "What I’ve got, and what I wish the rest of the 'women in tech' community who rage against the misogyny they see everywhere they look could also have, is a blazingly single-minded focus on whatever topic I happen to be perseverating on at the moment," is a workable approach. Most of the people I know can't ignore those sorts of things and can't be satisfied "...literally [doubling] over laughing at how nonplussed he must have been to see it not only implemented, but implemented to rousing success." Most of the people I know don't want to. (Ok, here's an internet-reasoning hypothetical for you: I know a lot of geeks who use the term "sportsball"; I believe many of them have this sort of antipathy because they faced some kind of abuse from the sportsball players of the world. Would you, assuming you're one of such, be willing to ignore that abuse because you were passionately interested in baseball or (American) football---both of which have fascinating statistical stories to tell, by the way?) Now, me, I'm a right cranky, misanthropic rat-bastard and I can certainly single-mindedly focus on whatever interests me at the moment (early Mesopotamian and Near Eastern history, abstract algebra and programming languages, and natural language processing at the moment, fwiw), but I don't want to hang around a community that is casually abusive to anyone, even if it isn't me. And, damn it, maybe I want the goddamn feature that didn't get implemented because the idea was dismissed because of who suggested it. I notice from some of the other comments that there are those who believe that the single-minded focus is the royal road to success in tech. It's not. How many people do you know who have the focus but aren't successful? (This isn't really an example because he is successful enough that you know his name, but has anyone read Chuck Moore's blog lately?) And how many people do you know who are successful but aren't especially focused---maybe because they didn't have to swim upstream against incidents like Patterson's? (Anyone remember the old Ruby community?) Further, by the way for those of you in the startup community, you probably don't want total focus on tech to be the ultimate. People like that are very easy to take advantage of.
- daveloyall 11y agoNB I haven't read all the comments on this page and I apologize if somebody already said this... NB I don't have the correct language to express this idea. I'm even concerned that I might be flat out misunderstood. Consult my own comment history to know where I stand. NB I haven't heard of the author before nor read the apparent criticism. --- The author is a hardcore coder on the autism spectrum and thus fits in well with the "nobody cares about your gender, race, nor creed--show me the code!" meme. The author asks her critics to cease putting her down to push their own agendas. Okay. But uh... Back to that meme. Is there any chance that the author is perhaps... A coder first and a person with a gender second? That's what the meme is about, right? In text mode, we're all just text generating entities, idea makers. (It really is beautiful--I grew up on IRC myself.) But look, the internet isn't just textmode anymore, and it doesn't exist just in cyberspace anymore. Decisions coders make affect the--blah blah you all know this, software is eating. So, maybe, just maybe, the hardcore-on-the-spectrum-practically-deterministic-themselves folks shouldn't be the only ones with commit-bits, hm? I'm tired of writing this. To sum up: I'm glad for the author's successful life as a coder and yes folks should stop attacking her, but no, the existence of the author nor a hundred thousand more of her does not solve the "tech needs women" problem. Because--back to the meme--it's not really women we need. It's heart. Because software is eating the world, "Made with love" needs to more than a marketing slogan. We need more coders that are emotionally brilliant! There is a large technical debt around "how software will alter the course of human history" and frankly it terrifies me that so many emotionally stunted devs are the primary authors. Annnnnd there go my points. ;P
- yummyfajitas 11y agoWhat does "emotionally brilliant" mean, and how would it benefit users? The best interpretation I can think of is building software which exploits user's emotional responses in order to gain acceptance and widespread usage (e.g. Zynga), but I'm not sure why this is something the world needs more of.
- daveloyall 11y agoWell, no, not that. I'm not sure. I myself see the emotional landscape only dimly. My life got a lot better when two things changed for me. One: I accepted that some people around me ("that happened to be" female) were remarkably better than I am at understanding my motivations and predicting my behavior than I am. Same for third parties. A fascinating aside: People (including me) are motivated more powerfully by emotions (like fear) when they aren't aware of them--and many people who don't think they don't experience strong emotions are really quite wrong. And two: that the goals emotionally intelligent people set are worthwhile, even thought they might sound like complete nonsense at first. By allowing women into my life (not just the technically apt ones) my life was improved. Note that I don't ask "how should I achieve X", I ask "what should my goal be in situation Z".
- killface 11y agoThe old rule is still in effect: Nobody hates women more than other women. Her and I could be friends.
- osahal 11y agoAt the risk of over simplifying matters, what do you expect from people who see the world in black and white. Many of the feminists who say this (the third generation feminists with a cacophony of radical ideologies) read very specific material, mostly of the blogs variety, and live in their own bubble where their own reading material and friends reflect only their views. Add to this that difference of opinion and reflection are not entertained, this would imply that you have less than total belief in articles of faith and leaves you open to labels that are often applied to heathens. All that can be done with these people is to not get offended by them and let them work out for them selves why things are not always so black and white.