Written in a New York Times article and summarily paraphrased here,
Elissa Shevinsky can pinpoint the moment when she felt that she no longer belonged. She was at a friend's house watching the live stream of the TechCrunch Disrupt hackathon, when she saw that it opened with two men who developed an app called Titstare. After some banter, one of Titstare's developers proudly proclaimed, "This is the breast hack ever."
Ms. Shevinsky felt pushed to the edge. Women who enter fields dominated by men often feel this way. "It's a thousand tiny paper cuts," is how Ashe Dryden, a programmer who now consults on increasing diversity in technology, described working in tech. Women in tech like Shevinsky and Dryden advocate working to change the tech culture from inside-out, but other women like Lea Verou write that,
' women-only conferences and hackathons cultivate the notion that women are these weak beings who find their male colleagues too intimidating...As a woman, I find it insulting and patronizing to be viewed that way.'
This all being hot on the heels of engineer Julie Ann Horvath's departure from Github as a result of similar concern.
Any of you care to address your own personal experiences or opinions regarding the subject matter; as well as the accuracy of the articles' stories compared to the industry-at-large?
Related Stories
Margaret C. Hardy reports that the life sciences have recently come under fire with a study that investigated the level of sexual harassment and sexual assault of trainees in academic fieldwork environments and found that 71% of women and 41% of men respondents experienced sexual harassment, while 26% of women and 6% of men reported experiencing sexual assault. The research team also found that within the hierarchy of academic field sites surveyed, the majority of incidents were perpetrated by peers and supervisors. "More often it is the men of one’s own field team, one’s co-workers, who violate their female colleagues," writes A. Hope Jahren:
There is a fundamental and culturally learned power imbalance between men and women, and it follows us into the workplace. The violence born of this imbalance follows us also. We would like to believe that it stops short of following us into the laboratory and into the field — but it does not. I listen to my colleagues talk endlessly about recruiting more women into STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines, and postulate what the barriers might be. Sexual assault is a pernicious and formidable barrier to women in science, partly because we have consistently gifted to it our silence. I have given it 18 years of my silence and I will not give it one day more.
Many of us work in fields related to this study - what are your experiences?
(Score: 5, Funny) by clone141166 on Monday April 07 2014, @09:23AM
When I read the title I thought this article was going to about the lack of [quality] documentation in software projects!
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Grishnakh on Monday April 07 2014, @01:49PM
I thought it was going to be either another article about how all our jobs are going to be automated away soon, or another article about how there's a supposed STEM shortage.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @09:24AM
Why is it that being overtly a overtly sexual heterosexual male is considered a problem? We are supposed to tolerate overt gay men without being uncomfortable and also women wether straight or gay, but straight men should never display any signs of sexuality? This oppression of the straight males must end.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @09:48AM
The problem isn't being an overtly sexual male. The problem is expressing that sexuality with the grace and mentality of a fourteen year old boy. It's creepy.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @09:56AM
It sounds like you're just throwing out insults here.
So, basically, the gist of this crusade is that a large amount of men "express their sexuality with the grace and mentality of fourteen-year-olds" and that "it's creepy"?
Maybe you haven't been exposed to the world enough to see that it's actually not the case, nor is it actually the problem that's being discussed here.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @10:43AM
I'm sorry if you feel offended by my words.
I sense from your style of commenting that you feel put upon and weak. There is no need for you to feel threatened by women or by gay men.
Realize that adapting your behavior and maybe even taking small losses to make others feel more welcome is the mark of a great man. This is your chance to be that great man.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @10:58AM
I'm sorry that you feel that I'm offended. Apology accepted, but a bit unnecessary.
I don't actually feel put upon and weak, either. What's with the insults? A bit emotional about this, aren't you?
I'll try to decipher your last statement later. Can you give some tips on what you're talking about?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @07:05PM
you don't know a thing about men because the most important thing to know about men is that we are all 14 year old boys on the inside. on the opposite side of that, all women are 14 year old drama queens on the inside.
(Score: 1) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @11:51PM
i don't want to rant, but there's this argument which always annoys me...
and when women (feminists) and lgbt extremists do exactly the same thing, then its okay? look around you, its a rare case where you see men be overtly vocal about sexuality issues while the "minority" is so adamant about it they forcefully shove it down your throat.
weren't we all supposed to be equal?
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @10:36AM
Different contexts. In a professional/workplace setting, one should not be overtly sexual, regardless of your own gender or orientation. Seriously: it's as tacky for a woman to wear a blouse open to her xiphiod as it is for a heterosexual man to oogle her cleavage, or a homosexual man to decorate his cubicle with ass-pictures.
Outside of work, if two humans want to hold hands in public or dress up like cowboys in assless chaps, then yeah, you should be tolerant of that, regardless of their genders.
This failure to recognize context seems to be the root of gender/orientation discrimination. The workplace is not supposed to be a meat market. Go to work, do your job, have non-controversial smalltalk. If you want to get laid, go to Joe's Bar.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @12:11PM
I start to regret all this time wasted on so many pr0n sites... how can they stay in business without showing that tacky xiphiod? Never seen it once.
(Score: 2) by The Mighty Buzzard on Monday April 07 2014, @12:12PM
My rights don't end where your fear begins.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @12:15PM
And yet Brendan Eich had to step down as CEO, great doublethink there.
Either the rules are the same for everyone at all times or they are just as unjust as sexism, racism or whatever else.
(Score: 2) by naubol on Tuesday April 08 2014, @03:22AM
The rules are the same for everyone, don't be an intolerant bigot about other people's lives. Let them live as they want, accord them the same rights, and don't promote suffering. Unfortunately, Eich didn't want to follow these rules.
This is sort of like saying that we're against freedom because we make laws against murder. Tolerance is not tolerant of bigotry, it is intolerant of bigotry.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @04:34PM
You do of course realize that the idea of putting a label on someone to justify your injustice is not a valid concept, just like labeling someone a witch, traitor, terrorist, whore, nonbeliever or whatever else is in fashion at the moment doesn't automatically mean that you are right and they are wrong.
In this case you are wrong, Brendan did not mistreat people at work, he left his personal opinion at home.
This article is once again the same story, this woman watched something on her free time, nothing to do with anything that happened at work.
Leave your personal opinion at home and respect others that do the same, wether they happen to share your beliefs or not.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Thexalon on Monday April 07 2014, @12:35PM
The defining characteristic of a context in which hitting on women is fine is that the woman you're hitting on doesn't have to be there, and can leave whenever she chooses without repercussions. Among other things, that means other patrons of Joe's Bar are probably OK, but the barmaid is not unless she's clearly inviting that kind of behavior. Bonus points if she has friends in the vicinity who will help protect her if she decides you're a creep but you refuse to back off when told to do so (which happens frequently).
A lot of guys don't realize why, so let me spell it out for you: 1 in 4 women in the United States will be sexually assaulted or raped and roughly 1200 women are killed each year in the US by a current or former intimate partner. That means that smart straight women who are talking to a man they just met are in part deciding whether he's a danger to her. To get an idea of what the world feels like to women, especially physically smaller women, imagine that every single female person over age 13 or so has the ability to beat or kill you - suddenly going out or even going to the bathroom without some friends for backup seems like a really stupid idea.
A woman who is at work probably has to be there to earn the money she needs to do whatever it is her non-work life entails. Just like you. Hitting on her at work is out of line, because she can't choose to not be there and often can't just tell you to go away and leave her alone. If you do like somebody at work, there are ways of handling it politely, but start out by getting lunch, not telling her how hot she is.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @12:51PM
Continuing to harrass a woman that makes it clear that the attention is unwanted is clearly not ok and not what this discussion is about. It's the "thousand cuts" whiners that complain about things that are not directed at them personally, making problems where there are none and in the process devaluing words such as sexual harrassment and sexist.
As far as rapists are concerned I have no sympathy for them and would have no problems with implementing death penalties for rape.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Vanderhoth on Monday April 07 2014, @01:18PM
It politically correct to say such things, but there are a lot of cases of false accusations and often very little evidence. Evidence is one of the main reasons more women don't come forward when they've been raped. If there's solid proof and the rapist is a repeat offender I might side with you on that, but I'm definitely not ok with being put to death if some girl from my past claimed I raped her, Julian Assange anyone?
Up until I was in my twenties I had no idea how screwed I could have been if one of the girls I'd slept with in my teens got pregnant and decided to claim I'd raped her as a way of redirecting mommy and daddy's rage.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @01:41PM
Of course it's not ok to judge someone unless there is solid evidence regardless of the crime, this is hardly unique to rape, merely accusing someone doesn't make them guilty.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @05:32PM
Mere rape accusations have ruined many mens' lives. Oftentimes those accusations are found to be lacking for evidence, and sometimes they are found to be baseless or even fabricated, sometimes maliciously. In the cases where a rape accusation is made up, the lying female almost always gets off scot-free, usually she isn't even named and shamed.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @01:06PM
As long as we're being statistically hysterical, let's imagine we live in the real world, under the laws of physics, where we don't have to imagine that every single female person over the age of 13 has the ability to kill you.
Because they do.
Welcome to real life. It's dangerous to go alone. Take this kitten.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @07:50PM
Now explain how watching something on tv with friends and getting outraged is a workplace situation you can't walk away from, as that was what the article was about.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by naubol on Monday April 07 2014, @02:36PM
// warning, playing fast and loose with stereotypes I don't really believe, to make a point. Please accord me some latitude!
Tolerating gay men is not analogous. But, it is instructive to explore this analogy. It would be like 99% of the advertising, movies, billboards, television socials, and socially acceptable workplace discussions would revolve around gay men and their relationships. Not only that, but you as a het male would have to put up with serious sexual aggression by your bosses that ranges from the subtle but pressing to the less subtle and more arm-twisting kind.
If you can imagine this, but it will be hard for you, you are basically told, over and over again, that you are more valuable as the object of a gay male's desire than you are as a worker. Here the analogy sort of fails, because gay men in charge could still refrain from being sexist or treating you as just an object. But, if it holds, you will be expected to wear sexy clothing even though you don't care to wear that, you will be expected to shut it in any meeting, to be unassuming, to be polite, etc. If, on the off chance you insist on speaking your mind in any business discussion, you run the risk of being labelled a "bitch".
You might be less likely to be hired because you might ask for family leave for when your wife has a baby, or you might be perceived as less focused on the job in general due to family. And, the stigma will be intense. Sense you don't wear gingham shirts and tailored pants to work, speak in a gender fluid way, or don't keep up with the latest fantasy drag race contest, they will /look/ at you as a bit of an interloper, and there will be awkward moments of silence as you try to disengage from what the culture is doing. Or, you could choose to suppress your "hetness" and participate in things you don't particularly care for in order to be perceived as "one of the gayth".
If you tried to bring up your family life, people around you might very well get uncomfortable. Knowing this, you would be less reticent to speak about it. One of my favorite complaints from het people about gay people is that gay people talk about their private lives entirely too much. Het people are talking about who they banged, who they want to bang, and their families all the time. They think it is perfectly acceptable. This complaint is really about, "why do I have to sit and listen to this when it makes me uncomfortable? It should be unacceptable, dammit!" Women, similarly, are expected not to talk about feminine issues or concerns, and if they choose to do so are labelled in ways that are shockingly rude.
There is an air of oppression in any office in which many men are just oblivious, but which women feel all too keenly, I assure you. This air mixes in with general society, and it wraps into it all sorts of other cultures, like minorities and "urban" culture. Obliviousness to the fact that it is often harder to get hired, harder to speak your mind, harder to be listened to, harder to get paid equally well, harder to be promoted, harder to be accepted and liked for the things that make you you, etc, makes such ignorance that people whine about how the world is equal and why do we have to be so sensitive? The truth is, if you're saying that, you're not sensitive to much of anything.
If you think this is too off the mark, hard to believe, etc... Consider that there are empirical studies, reams of literature, people speaking about it to you, this article, a whole movement, etc. People aren't crying wolf, this is an issue.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Grishnakh on Monday April 07 2014, @03:24PM
One of my favorite complaints from het people about gay people is that gay people talk about their private lives entirely too much. Het people are talking about who they banged, who they want to bang, and their families all the time. They think it is perfectly acceptable. This complaint is really about, "why do I have to sit and listen to this when it makes me uncomfortable? It should be unacceptable, dammit!" Women, similarly, are expected not to talk about feminine issues or concerns, and if they choose to do so are labelled in ways that are shockingly rude.
I just had to listen to several of my cow-orkers talk about how the wife of one of them had a baby, how much it weighed, that it was delivered by C-section, etc. etc. Personally, I feel totally excluded since I don't have any children, and these guys are all standing around talking about their kids.
You don't even have to mismatch on gender or sexual orientation to feel alienated; just being single among married people, or being childless among people with children, can be alienating as well.
I don't really have a solution here; it seems odd and oppressive to say that people shouldn't talk about their kids or whatever. What would be better is if we had better work environments where I don't have to overhear everyone's conversations, and where I have privacy and don't have to be part of conversations I don't want to be. In an open-plan work area, I look completely anti-social when I avoid these conversations that take place right next to me.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday April 07 2014, @04:16PM
> It would be like 99% of the advertising, movies, billboards, television socials, and socially acceptable workplace discussions would revolve around gay men and their relationships.
Are you suggesting that women are marginalised because all advertising panders to men? Even if women still aren't earning as much as men, they still do more of the spending. This isn't a lame stereotypical jab about women liking shopping, it's because women are still more likely to be in control of the household budget.
For this reason, advertisers pander to women. Oh sure, for the minority of products that men buy directly and more-or-less exclusively (beer, power tools) you can expect ads full of swimsuits and boobs and macho-geekery. However for everything else, you'll notice that the message is aimed squarely at females.
Switch on your TV and watch 10 minutes of adverts. Count how many times men - and in particular fathers - are portrayed as bumbling, slow-witted, lazy clods, constantly making fools of themselves and causing messes and crises that have to be cleared up by a woman. Now watch a few sitcom episodes and see that the trope has leaped from the ads to the portrayal of men in general.
This stereotype is not just unfair and offensive to men, but damaging to families. It's because of this that many women don't trust their male partners with things like childcare or housework, all the while complaining that the men don't spend enough time with the kids or do enough to help around the home. Dad misses out on time with the kids, while feeling he is being unfairly hen-pecked by the mother. That's not a recipe for a happy family.
Wish I could find the original article that switched me on to this, but here's some further reading I googled up:
http://www.smh.com.au/comment/selling-abbott-lets- bin-the-patronising-doofus-dad-20130830-2swba.html [smh.com.au]
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/06/18/opinion/18tierne y.html?_r=1& [nytimes.com]
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @04:49PM
Your "one of the gayth" comment cracks me up, just thought I would mention that.
I actually worked at a job like the one you described. The manager was gay, he hired mostly gay employees, and hired me and 2 others either because a) we were highly skilled and he had no choice, or b) he found us attractive. To give this context for "why didn't you quit!" this was 2000 and the economy in that area had tanked.
I won't go into the details (you are welcome) but after working there a year and a half my self esteem was shot, they had managed to make me feel worthless, that the only reason I had this shitty job was that my gay boss liked making me uncomfortable. They all got into it, and they all thought it was so fucking funny. When I finally did get a different job, it took a long time before I felt pride in my work again, that I was actually good at this thing I was so passionate about, not just tolerated because someone liked how I looked.
Most of that had to do with the economy, as I mentioned, but being trapped in a job because it's the only thing paying your bills, then having co-workers and worse yet a boss that demean you and make you uncomfortable is just SUCH a shitty experience.
I think that is how some of these women feel, and if you are not supremely self-confident it can leave you in a state of depression. One crude joke? no. Crude-jokes all of the time, always feeling like it's at your expense, always feeling like what you do isn't seen as being good enough, or else they wouldn't treat you so poorly, it's a sucky way to work.
(Score: 1) by dpp on Tuesday April 08 2014, @02:43AM
I'm completely certain that your example is the minority situation.
Considering just the #s - a much larger percentage of gays has to put up with hetero tax, often harassment.
It's sad to hear about your story and situation and very unexpected to hear about such an odd/uncommon reversal of fortune.
(Score: 5, Insightful) by Angry Jesus on Monday April 07 2014, @09:30AM
Titstare was intended as a parody of male sexism. It's easy for a dominant group to be callus in their discussion of their own failures, but as these things go picking an example like that to cite as the most obvious problem is probably counter-productive because a lot of people will get caught up in arguing about whether or not it really was a case of sexism. Kind of like the recent #CancelColbert saga.
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday April 07 2014, @09:50AM
That's the trouble with a really good parody. Only a little of the context has to be lost (and sometimes not even that) for it to be indistinguishable from general moronity.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday April 07 2014, @10:01AM
That said, it's also the problem with bad and ill-considered parody, which this may very well have been, too.
systemd is Roko's Basilisk
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 07 2014, @01:46PM
It's all parody. What to one person is "really good" parody is "bad and ill-considered" to another. Parody relies entirely on context; to the correct audience, a really good parody works out well and is well-received. To a different audience, it either falls flat or isn't even recognized as a parody. It's really like this with any humor; just look at how incomprehensible British humor (sorry, "humour") is to Americans.
(Score: 1) by rochrist on Monday April 07 2014, @06:24PM
Yeah...good parody. This from the folks that brought us the HateYou cards such as 'Thanks for swallowing.' and 'I know you're the one because the smell of your vagina doesn't make me gag.'
They should go back and finish third grade.
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Monday April 07 2014, @02:52PM
Something that we should ask ourselves before attempting to riff on potentially problematic content: "Am I really good enough at this to pull it off without it becoming something ugly and hurtful?" Mel Brooks and Richard Pryor pulled it off writing Blazing Saddles. Ben Stiller & co did it in Tropic Thunder. Am I in their league? Probably not.
Nothing should be inherently off limits, but before stepping into a minefield you'd better be ready to either succeed perfectly or get your leg blown off. If you don't have reason to be confident of achieving the former, it's probably best to avoid the minefield.
(Score: 2) by FatPhil on Monday April 07 2014, @12:43PM
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IFsRccQ3Q7U
That does look like a parody, due to their godawful delivery. However, if these guys actually wrote a real app and had it available for download, then their presentation was not a parody, it was either a front, or they really are that backward.
Great minds discuss ideas; average minds discuss events; small minds discuss people; the smallest discuss themselves
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @12:41PM
This sounds like an supurb example of Poe's Law [startpage.com] at the best.
This kind of ridiculous and unprofessional immaturity posing as wit will come to an end soon enough.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by evilviper on Monday April 07 2014, @09:32AM
Sexist, I admit, but somehow in our culture, it's perfectly okay to beat-up on men. Anti-male sentiments are never subject to criticism, while anything just male-focused is politically incorrect, and always treated as an assault on women.
For instance, this one:
http://www.thepredicktor.com/ [thepredicktor.com]
Where's the story about outraged men over this one? Where's the politicians declaring it immoral, and pandering to men's rights? Shall we declare that IT jobs are hostile to men, now, and women have an unfair advantage?
I'll just refer to this prominent woman's response:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nC-tOzXQOsk [youtube.com]
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Angry Jesus on Monday April 07 2014, @09:50AM
> Sexist, I admit, but somehow in our culture, it's perfectly okay to beat-up on men.
That sort of attitude reflects a poor understanding of power dynamics. When a powerful group is bigoted towards the disempowered, it hurts the disempowered. When the disempowered are bigoted towards the powerful, nobody notices because their lack of power means it has little effect.
It isn't the act of being sexist that is the problem, the problem is the people in power who are sexist. There is an old joke that illustrates the problem. It goes like this: "Where does an 800lb gorilla sit? Anywhere he wants." In a civil society, being 800lbs means he has a responsibility to pick his seat carefully so that he doesn't harm anyone.
As a society we will never eliminate racism, sexism and all the other forms of bigotry. The best we can realistically hope for is that power is more evenly defused so that cases of bigotry aren't magnified by concentrated power.
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 07 2014, @11:39AM
I think you're completely missing the point, for example if you examine the github story its superficially a one sided nearly evidence free hit job against men, etc. If you read the article more closely, the actual story reported, other than some slightly impolite flirtation the men behaved themselves more or less, the problem is a founders wife is claimed to be completely batshit crazy and appears to be spending an enormous amount of work time harassing the woman who quit despite not being an employee. Which is very weird, but having observed company dynamics for a long time, there's nothing worse than women having a catfight, and nothing is as unprofessional as a small company. For better or worse if you want Dilbert, you're not going to find it as employee 20 or whatever she claimed.
So, yeah, if there was massive media coverage as a hit job on the woman who quit github I'd agree with you. Oh wait, the hit job is being carried out on the company. The 800 pound gorilla isn't a guy in this situation, or in any situation I've heard of in the media since... forever.
The crazy part is the Github woman's story is probably mostly true although extremely heavily slanted in directions that don't really matter all (neopuritan fundamentalism about the hula hoop incident, which she wasn't involved in other than as observer, to try and draw sympathy, although rather than sympathy, it was the only thing in the article I laughed about). Her claims belong in a law court, with whatever evidence (if any) she can scare up, not some clickbait hit piece on the internet.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by bucc5062 on Monday April 07 2014, @01:59PM
I do agree with your last statement to a degree. If she was interested in pursuing a civil case agaisnt GitHub then the issues should be heard in acourt of law, not on atach "news" site.
I read through the article on techcrunch and when I got done I still did not see how this was more a case of female suppression in the work place then a daytime soap opera of which she played a leading part. From the story, the "founder's wife" was doing the most intimidating so it was not a male/female issue in that regard, but did she not understand that you don';t fraternize with the boss or the bosses family. Bad Things Happen when you do for they have no real rules to abide by, employee do. This woman was making some uninformed choices along the way to her resignation and may have had her own hubris to deal with...
"Horvath told TechCrunch that she thought she “could fix GitHub.†She now claims that she was wrong."
I doubt she was hired to "fix" github. She was hired to work on their code and within their system. If she tried to "fix" things and got into the wsay of the owners then she is naive and should take this is a learning experience, not something to air to the public.
As to the hoola-hoop moment Even by her own words it was clear the only person offended was her. That is not a sexist moment, it was more a reflection of her own insecurities.
The more things change, the more they look the same
(Score: 3, Insightful) by VLM on Monday April 07 2014, @02:30PM
"I doubt she was hired to "fix" github."
I think its in the sense that I feel I can fix the window shade shining sunlight on to my monitor.
So she figured she could fix nonprofessional behavior in general and bullying in specific in her workplace by ... going out drinking with the bosses wife and then crying in the bathroom. Thats the WTF moment.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday April 08 2014, @12:39PM
did she not understand that you don';t fraternize with the boss or the bosses family
I know my boss' family, we have fraternised at social events. It's a normal thing for most people to do. It was only a problem here because the boss' wife turned out to nuts. You can't blame the victim here.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 3, Insightful) by evilviper on Monday April 07 2014, @11:58AM
It's nonsense to call women powerless, today. Though not the majority, they are very well represented in most corporations.
You don't even have to go far to find cases of female supervisors discriminating against men under them. That's a very big and very real effect to all those involved.
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Angry Jesus on Monday April 07 2014, @04:01PM
> It's nonsense to call women powerless, today. Though not the majority,
> they are very well represented in most corporations.
Women make up only 4% of Fortune 500 CEOs and less than 15% of Fortune 500 executive officers. [catalyst.org]
(Score: 1) by Boronx on Monday April 07 2014, @02:41PM
I agree with you almost 100%, except that I suspect the result will be that the bad effects of bigotry are more evenly distributed, but they'll be just as magnified by power as ever. It's the nature of power that the powerful don't care about the powerless.
(Score: 1) by RobotLove on Monday April 07 2014, @04:44PM
Well said, Angry Jesus.
The fact that the "predicktor" is not hurtful is evidence for the power differential, not against it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @06:15PM
Yea, because no guy has ever been made to feel inadequate about the size of his member. It's not like 99 percent of men in the West (on the planet?) are self-conscious about what we are packin' downstairs, now is it? The difference is that we either get over it and have fun with what God gave us, or we don't. What we don't do is raise a public stink about how prick-size-predicting apps make us FEEL, and expect all the sentient people in the world to accommodate our own insecurities. That would just lend credence to those insecurities being well founded.
The woman in question is reasonably attractive, but she isn't exactly sporting a pair of world class knockers. Somehow, I don't imaging Kate Upton being nearly as offended. Or offended at all, for that matter.
(Score: 1) by cubancigar11 on Monday April 07 2014, @07:37PM
All well and true, except the fact that most people wouldn't have heard of such a website if not for the original comment. That is what is being referred to as 'power differential'. Same website with women being objectified gave us Mr. Zuckerberg.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @08:40PM
Hi. I'm the AC you responded to. I take your point, but I'd like to point out that I also would have never heard of "Titstare" if not for Soylent linking the NY Times article. Mass media in general is very much playing corner and cutman to these poor oppressed little dearies. If there is a "power differential" it's not nearly as extreme as many would like us to believe.
On a side note, did you mod your own post up? Is that even allowed? I don't have an account and I lurked on /. since the late 90s but never made an account so I don't know how the mod system works. I have no problem with it if you did, I'm just curious.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @12:31AM
That you see a comment on soylent as the equivalent of an article in the NY Times indicates that your perspective on the situation is really biased towards your own artificial victimhood. That is the nature of the loss of unearned privilege, so it isn't a surprise. Disproportionate comparisons are the staple of people in such a situation, guys like Rush Limbaugh do it all the time.
> On a side note, did you mod your own post up? Is that even allowed?
> I have no problem with it if you did, I'm just curious.
Why would you be curious? Is it so hard to believe that other people agree with him?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @04:55AM
What the hell are you talking about? Did you RTFA? Doh, nevermind...
I have my reasons for being curious, but is it that hard to believe somebody might just be curious about how the mod system works? I mean the other highly commented submission of the day is about -wait for it- the mod system.
Why so defensive, or offensive as the case may be?
(Score: 1) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday April 08 2014, @09:28AM
No, of course not. That is not possible. You get +1 karma bonus for logging in. You can turn this off, but that requires logging in :)
(Score: 1) by cubancigar11 on Tuesday April 08 2014, @10:24AM
How extreme is that power differential really depends on your experience. There are societies (and not necessarily islamic) that can be said to be functioning at the extreme, but if you talk to a lot of people from that society they will vehemently deny it.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @01:19PM
I disagree. The degree of the power differential is a matter of objective reality. Experience changes the perception of a power differential, which may be real or imagined. Experience includes social conditioning.
Thanks for the points info. Good looking out. :)
(Score: 1) by cubancigar11 on Wednesday April 09 2014, @08:04AM
Indeed. There is a concept of Ardhanarishvara>/a> (half-man and half-woman) in Hinduism, according to which the universe is a play of constant union of male and female nature, and your perception of what is male and what is female really depends on your bias. In short, it is always a balance between the two because one cannor survive without the other. [wikipedia.org]
But that doesn't mean there is no struggle between the two - one's social conditioning is other's righteousness. We all pick a side because we all have stakes in this world. My personal opinion is that Titstare didn't belong into TechCrunch. We have an imblanace of sexes in this profession, and history tells us that a more equally represented economy results in faster progress. We need more women in our profession.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Wednesday April 09 2014, @08:22PM
I should probably just let this go, but wasting time is one of my favorite pastimes. :p
You claim that we have an imbalance of sexes in tech, that a more equally represented economy results in faster progress, and that we need more women in tech. You make these claims without offering a shred of evidence to support your case.
It's certainly true that more men work in tech than do women. Does that necessarily constitute an imbalance? More men work in mining than do women, or as furniture movers. Is there an imbalance of the sexes in those professions? Or do those professions naturally lend themselves to masculine talents and characteristics? The answer should be obvious!
I posit that this is also the case in tech. It's just less obvious because tech lends itself to masculine cognitive abilities rather than masculine physical abilities, and the difference between masculine and feminine cognitive abilities doesn't jump out at you the way the difference between masculine and feminine physical abilities does. Nevertheless, there is a difference, and that difference is rather pronounced.
Claiming that more equally represented economies progress faster is, frankly speaking, nonsense. Historically speaking, economic progress correlates positively with economic freedom, which in turn correlates positively with economic inequality.
You seem to be claiming that tech would progress faster if the ratio of tech workers were more evenly split between male and female. Would mining progress faster if we had more female miners? How about furniture moving? Again, the answer should be obvious.
Which brings us to, "We need more women in our profession." Why? Do they bring something unique to the table? Are codes written by a female somehow superior to codes written by a male? Are they less buggy, better documented, more efficient, etc.? No, of course not. What you actually mean when you claim we need more women in tech, is that changing tech culture to accommodate female tastes is a righteous endeavor.
Tech is a refuge for over-intelligent socially awkward males. It's a place where they can be accepted despite their social awkwardness, where they can make themselves useful, where they can thrive amongst like minded individuals. You and the rest of the gender warriors are claiming that is unacceptable, because women find that social awkwardness off-putting, while at the same time wanting a piece of the tech sector pie.
Sorry but women don't have any right to a slice of the pie. By right, that pie belongs to the socially awkward boys and men who gathered the ingredients and baked it, while being ostracized and belittled for spending too much time with their toys, instead of engaging in more normal and worthwhile activities like chasing girls and women. Now that the pie is out of the oven and it smells oh so tasty, the same people who engaged in belittling the bakers are demanding a seat at the table... And that the baker be removed from the premises because he's creepy. Can you say entitlement complex? I can!
The irony is that these guys would like nothing more than to share a slice of pie with a pretty girl. Shit, most of them would give her the whole pie for noting more than a smile and a bat of the eyelashes, no matter how feigned. What we won't do is cave to the social demands of the same people who excluded us socially, forcing us to create our own subcultures. Those base our belong to US. If your kind want in then you can either play by our rules, or you can try and conquer us. It's obvious that the latter is the chosen tactic in this struggle (it's a war, complete with dead and injured). I say good luck to you. Your opponent is highly capable. And should you manage to win, I would admonish you to remember that the road to Hell is paved with good intentions.
(Score: 1) by cubancigar11 on Thursday April 10 2014, @07:42AM
Okay, man. IT profession has been thoroughly studied and the management has a clear list of talents and characteristics. The burden of proof lies on YOU if you say that those are masculine and women are incapable of those talents and characteristics.
Let us say, software guys are all about logic - YOU need to PROVE that not being logical is feminine. Because unless you do so, you are just sexist. There has been no proof till now that says women are less logical. In fact, I know a lot of men who are just too stupid and I have happened to be around women who were really really smart, may be smarter than me. Those stupid men get called feminine and those intelligent women get called masculine but that is the problem of caller, who is a sexist.
You have bought into 90's tv tropes [tvtropes.org]. Tech is not a refuge for over-intelligent - physics and maths is. Let me remind you that we haven't yet settled the difference between computer science and computer engineering. Socially awkward males, bullied males - they are the creation of American media - they aren't really common in real life. You should take that as an advice because some asshole manager who is DEFINITELY less competent that you WILL screw you very badly. If I am lenient, I will say it is a problem of American culture. Asian cultures, and to some extent even West European cultures, don't have this problem - topper boys get the topper girls. Intelligence is hot - boys or girls.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11 2014, @03:27AM
Who said anything about "women" being "incapable"? What I said is mining, moving furniture, and tech development lend themselves to masculine traits and characteristics. There are certainly women capable of doing any of those things, I just wouldn't expect anything approaching a 50/50 sex ratio to naturally occur in any of those professions.
The burden of proof is on me huh? Do I have to prove that water is wet too?
http://www.capt.org/mbti-assessment/estimated-freq uencies.htm [capt.org]
(Score: 1) by cubancigar11 on Friday April 11 2014, @04:28AM
One of those things doesn't match the other. Guess which one.
Your citation doesn't say why females are biased against tech development or the 'traits and characteristics' of tech development.
I am assuming what you meant to say was that tech development lends itself to 'socialy awkard' people and men, according to your citation, are more prone to it. But we are back to square one - what proof do you that being socially awkard lends itself to tech development?
Talking to you I feel like I am doing more damage than construction. I will stop this discussion here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Friday April 11 2014, @09:46PM
No, you feel like you are losing the debate. That's because you are.
How on Earth did you come to the conclusion that those figures demonstrate that males are more prone to social awkwardness? It says nothing of the sort, unless you happen to be defining introverted as socially awkward and extroverted as socially normal. Even if that's the case, the difference is a mere 5 percent.
The part of note, which you are conveniently ignoring, is that males fit in the thinking archetype about 2/3 of the time, and females fit in the feeling archetype about (greater than) 2/3 of the time. Those figures alone line up very well with employment figures in the tech sector.
MEN AND WOMEN THINK DIFFERENTLY ON AVERAGE. This is supported by all kinds of evidence, physical, statistical, and anecdotal (everybody knows it's the case from personal experience, some people just can't admit it for silly existential reasons). Either you accept this as fact, in which case the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate that in spite of these cognitive differences women, on average, are just as employable and just as eager to obtain employment in the tech sector as men are, or you reject what is obviously the case, in which case the burden of proof is on you to demonstrate how there aren't significant cognitive differences between men and women despite all the evidence to the contrary.
(Score: 1) by cubancigar11 on Saturday April 12 2014, @06:58AM
No, I feel like I am talking with a sexist who is intent a "winning" what he considers a debate. You win, here is your internet.
Did you read my comment? I will repeat in case you didn't:
"Your citation doesn't say why females are biased against tech development or the 'traits and characteristics' of tech development.
I am assuming what you meant to say was that tech development lends itself to 'socialy awkard' people and men, according to your citation, are more prone to it."
Any literate person IN THE UNIVERSE will know that a URL with some numerical figures does not an argument make. I gave you a benefit of doubt based on your previous reply. You have demostrated your inablity to comprehend before going on offensive. Sexist and Arrogant! YAY! Two internets!
Jumping over conclusions is not very masculine, cognitively speaking, you know!
Are you series? First you use MBTI [wikipedia.org] to draw sweeping conclusions that MBTI itself is not designed to measure (thinking type doesn't mean what you think it means), then you declare 2/3 as some golden female-male sex ratio in tech sector? Let us do some calculations:
1. Maximum % of men in T type = 67%
2. Minimum % of women in T type = 24%
3. Maxium of men / minimum of women = 67/24 = 2.79
4. Acual ratio of men / women in tech sector: > 4 [oycf.org] in domestic industries, ~ 7.11 [qz.com], ~ 10.11 [forbes.com] for CIOs in USA
5. Standard deviation between 2.79 and 4, 2.79 and 7.11, and 2.79 and 10.11 is left as an excercise. Hope you will do it if you are anywhere close to average male cognitive abilities.
Any married person will attest to that, why are you yelling?
You made your point by yelling before, no need for snarky rhetoric about 'some people'.
Even after I have provided you with enough research material that points to me being correct, the burden of proof falls squarely on you because you cannot replace 'MBTI' scores with 'cognitive abilities' in middle of your argument without even declaring which 'cognitive abilities' are the basis of tech industry. Reminder: 'thinking type' doesn't mean someone is a better thinker than the other and you cannot use the words: 'women' and 'illogical' in the same sentence.
A lot of people are not eager to work under a sexist boss whether it is tech industry or not. But just to prove you wrong: "As an example, women's employment ratio in the manufacturing of electronic and communication products is 42% in 2000 in Beijing, which was higher than the average female employment ratio (38%) of that year."
But that is not tech sector!!! That is manufacturing! I hear you.
You win 3 internets and this "debate". Bye bye.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 13 2014, @09:42PM
Dammit, I've got a whole bunch of internets laying around. What I really wanted was a cheeseburger! :p
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @06:55PM
That sort of attitude reflects a poor understanding of power dynamics. When a powerful group is bigoted towards the disempowered, it hurts the disempowered. When the disempowered are bigoted towards the powerful, nobody notices because their lack of power means it has little effect.
tell me now...which sex do you really believe has the most power in this world? which sex gets all the special treatment? which sex has the power to make you stare at their tits? lol
(Score: 1) by cubancigar11 on Monday April 07 2014, @07:33PM
Thanks for saying this. I have seen similar discussions propping up in every site that enables commenting, in the last decade or so that I have browsed to my heart's content, but only on the other site I used to find similar insight. And I am so glad that we (soylentians) have got this talent here.
(Score: 1) by Clev on Tuesday April 08 2014, @05:00AM
Which is why when the 800 lb. gorilla enters a room, people tend to shoot first and ask questions later. See also: affirmative action, alimony and custody unfairness, and fathers being detained [groundspeak.com] for being around their own children without female supervision.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday April 07 2014, @12:00PM
Prominent? Sarah Palin?! Giving lessons to Hillary Clinton no less? I mean...
Yeah... OK, I guess you may be right... after all even a beer belly can be called prominent.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 2) by evilviper on Monday April 07 2014, @12:17PM
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/prominen t [merriam-webster.com]
Hydrogen cyanide is a delicious and necessary part of the human diet.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday April 07 2014, @12:31PM
From the cited reference:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by rochrist on Monday April 07 2014, @06:27PM
Won't someone thing of the poor oppressed whit men??
(Score: 2, Insightful) by SGT CAPSLOCK on Monday April 07 2014, @09:34AM
Seriously, just face it. These women feeling "thousands of tiny paper cuts," by their very admission, feel detached from their male peers. Could it perhaps be because--bear with me here--could it possibly be because they are _different from men_?
Honestly. The first part of the solution is to stop making a problem. Remember that phrase "boys will be boys" and understand that yes, indeed, men are NOT women. The minds of men can not function as the minds of women do; the minds of men have certain primal things innately ingrained within them that separate them from women, and women have their own ingrained, primal essences that further separate them from men.
We've already seen what happens when people repress their human nature by looking at some of the passive-aggressive, backstabbing, double-talking, manipulative monsters in the corporate world.
Rather than to crusade against your peers, wouldn't it be better to just "be yourself" like they do?
(Score: 3, Interesting) by clone141166 on Monday April 07 2014, @10:08AM
The problem with these arguments is that it's almost impossible to draw a single conclusion; *each* case of sexism is *extremely* dependent on context and they can't all be judged as a single issue like this in any meaningful way.
That said, I think what magnifies the incidents in IT is the ratio of men:women. If you are the only woman in a team full of men I would guess that it would, at times, be difficult to relate to other members of the team. So comments that *may* be tolerated by a group of women as "oh that's just men being men", would come across as a lot more hurtful when you are the *only* person that the comment targets. If you are the "odd one out" for any reason it can be more difficult when working in a team - and gender is such an obvious and unchangeable difference. When more women are present I think men are more likely to behave and less likely to make potentially sexist remarks as well.
I am NOT advocating sexism, there are definite lines that just shouldn't be crossed ever in a workplace by either sex. But I think maybe both genders need to be more considerate of each other.
On a related note, I have recently transitioned from IT (a predominately ~75% male dominated field) to Medical Ultrasonography (a predominately ~70% female dominated field) - unfortunately it is still very early days for me so I can't offer any real incites into the differences in work-culture. But I am fascinated to find out if there really are any noticeable or meaningful differences between the two.
(Score: 4, Informative) by lx on Monday April 07 2014, @10:08AM
Boys will be boys, but a grown man should strive to be better than that.
The first step is taking responsibility for your own words and actions and don't hide behind biology whenever it is convenient for you.
(Score: 2) by SGT CAPSLOCK on Monday April 07 2014, @10:36AM
I have to agree that it's important that people take responsibility for their actions, but I just don't think that's the issue here to begin with, nor is it a step toward fixing anything.
That you think grown men "should" strive toward anything is a pretty inconvenient statement, though. Maybe grown men should do what suits their personality, interests, experience, biology, etc. Maybe that involves conforming with your personal ideal image of what they "should" behave like. Maybe it's the opposite.
And I haven't seen anyone hiding behind anything; just open discussion so far.
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @10:54AM
That's fine, if you live alone in the woods. For those of us who live in the society of other people "Me first" has proven to be a poor social structure. Instead, humans have generally recognized that stable societies are built on some degree of empathy and compromising one's own desires against the rights of others. For the past few thousand years, the voices in that negotiation have been by-and-large male, so it has been difficult for social rules to properly incorporate the actual desires and rights of women. It's time we listen to them, rather than put them on a pedestal and "protect" them.
(Score: 2) by SGT CAPSLOCK on Monday April 07 2014, @11:25AM
I think I understand what you're getting at, but I think I should say that you might have misunderstood something...
I'm not advocating anything, especially not a "me first" mentality. Personally, my view is that people would be best served by simply living, loving, and experiencing life in whichever way they think is best.
Other than that, the rest of your argument seems a bit off-topic to me. I'll bite, but I'm confused.
> For the past few thousand years, the voices in that negotiation have been by-and-large male ...
I'm not sure what you're getting at. A couple quick searches on DuckDuckGo show me that there are a grand amount of women in powerful positions who currently do and certainly can influence society right now, right this very minute.
> It's time we listen to them, rather than put them on a pedestal and 'protect' them.
Lots of women love to be "put on pedestals" as you say. Lots of women love to be protected. There have already been many who hate both of those things and who indeed have been listened to already.
(Score: 2) by lx on Monday April 07 2014, @11:22AM
I notice that taking care of the interests of others doesn't figure at all in your list of possibilities. Those are the pursuits of a little boy not those of a grown man.
Which takes us back to the topic at hand. Women in tech feel excluded and few of us even consider that it might be up to us to make them feel welcome. Not because of human rights or equality laws, but because it is the right thing to do.
(Score: 2) by SGT CAPSLOCK on Monday April 07 2014, @11:36AM
> I notice that taking care of the interests of others doesn't figure at all in your list of possibilities.
How did you come to such an opposite conclusion?
> Those are the pursuits of a little boy not those of a grown man.
You're wrong. "personality, interests, experience, biology, etc," to quote myself, are odd activities for the, ahh... insult(?) that you're trying to shame them with.
> Which takes us back to the topic at hand.
At last!
> Women in tech feel excluded and few of us even consider that it might be up to us to make them feel welcome.
Please do!
> Not because of human rights or equality laws, but because it is the right thing to do.
Doing the right thing always feels good.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @11:43AM
Why the hell should it? The only person interested in your interests is you. You take care of them. I'm not interested, and that you think anyone else should be is what is so laughable.
And nice attempt at shaming language: "the pursuits of a little boy". I'm surprised you didn't include the classic "Man up!".
If you feel excluded, perhaps it's because you're going around telling coworkers that you think they're acting like children and that their primary purpose in life should be to work tirelessly for whatever YOU are interested in. I'd exclude anyone trying to get me to be their slave, too.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday April 07 2014, @12:22PM
Making special allowances for women is sexist, professional women want to be treated like employees and trying exceptionally hard to make them feel welcome is singling them out, breeding disdain from employees who don't receive the same treatment and the opposite of what this article is about and how professionals expect to be treated. It's completely undermining.
Stop and ask yourself, do we do that for <inverse of group x>? If you aren't then you're singling out group x, which isn't doing any favors for anyone.
I'm pretty sure the answer here is no, we expect men to get in and do the job they're hired to do without hand holding. Men or women, they're employees, their gender shouldn't factor into it. Gender shouldn't even be a factor with sexual harassment. Men can sexually harass other men, and women other women. If an employee is bringing inappropriate private behavior to the work place then that needs to stop, but this isn't an "us vs. them" situation. Some groups try to make it a men vs. women situation because it's beneficial to them.
Some of the *WORST* sexual harassment behavior I've seen in my life was when I was visiting my wife at her office, a mostly female work environment, where the mail boy, and he was a boy, was being extremely mistreated by women, most several decades older. I almost called out my wife's manager who was actively participating by smacking the mail boy on the ass. Had this situation been reversed, there would have been a sexual harassment suit and, given the boy's age, probably a lot worse.
This behavior isn't exclusive to the tech industry and we're all capable of it. We need to stop acting like it's exclusively men and exclusively in IT. I'm not misdirecting, but there's a bigger problem here, some of which is people being too sensitive, some of which is people being overly offensive.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 07 2014, @12:08PM
"The first step is taking responsibility for your own words and actions and don't hide behind biology whenever it is convenient for you."
Note that this applies to women, not just men.
I don't live on the coast, but everyone around here sees coastie women as total doormats compared to the locals. Women around here stick together, and guys who behave like jackasses toward them don't get to have "fun", at least not with ANY of the women. Like there is a female union or something. And they make it very clear to us men that mistreating one woman is the same as mistreating them all. And when enough are "forced" to not behave as jackasses, it becomes culturally unacceptable in general to behave as jackasses, so its just not as much of an issue in a civilized locale or civilized culture.
Didn't any of you coasties ever observe some social interactions, perhaps in high school, where a dude dumps a girl, and there's lots of girl talk, and then the poor guy, allegations true or not, may as well become a celibate monk? Or a guy is talking to a new girl at the bar, things are looking good, all the girls go to the bathroom together and they come back and the new girl is now the ice queen toward the guy because of something she was told about him? Not saying you have to be a participant, just have some minimal powers of observation and hear guys complaining about it? Seriously, compared to the locals, coastie girls are total doormats when they're mistreated. As if they like it or something. Don't want to live in some backwards cultural backwater, stop complaining and move somewhere more civilized. Don't like dirtbags? Hmm I've got a crazy idea... stop hanging out with dirtbags! The world has plenty of civilized men in it, just because you live in an area full of the extreme left tail of the bell curve doesn't imply a whole lot about the rest of them.
The other part is employees occasionally treat other employees very poorly. And if they're two guys thats just fine, some dysfunctional workplaces even encourage it, but if a victim happens to be a woman then its all boo hoo all biology oh my privilege that you bully all men but I'm a defenseless girl so NOW its suddenly wrong to bully. Oh spare me. If a woman works in a bullying oriented workplace and gets bullied, it has nothing to do with her genitals other than a very much side issue (like if the bullies know they can mess with her by discussing her womanliness rather than making fun of her source code or whatever traditional bullying topics). Guarantee if github is a workplace where bullying is tolerated, which sounds vaguely likely, they're treating "someone" like shit right now, and it isn't her because she left, and it doesn't much matter which set of genitals is involved. They are statistically likely to be bullying a guy right now, and its not because he's a guy, its because they're bullies. I could repeat my dirtbag line above. Sounds like its a shitty place to work, which may or may not be actually true, and supposedly there's a massive labor shortage on the coasts (maybe because the coasts have too many dirtbags, repelling good people away?) so she's better off having left. Some workplaces just happen to suck, and hiding behind biology, although convenient, doesn't help. If you're too cowardly to report bullying and want to hide behind sexism you have to accept that some people are not going to be very impressed.
(Score: 2) by c0lo on Monday April 07 2014, @12:16PM
Nostalgically recalling those times... no matter how much you strive, there's nothing better than being a boy: everything is fresh and seems easy.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aoFiw2jMy-0 https://soylentnews.org/~MichaelDavidCrawford
(Score: 1) by SuggestiveLanguage on Monday April 07 2014, @12:49PM
Software developers, SAs and EEs want to be considered a mature, respected profession alongside accountants, doctors, structural engineers etc., yet indulge and excuse behavior and gross ethical violations worthy of a board review and a suspension of license or immediate dismissal. Are we professionals or are we not?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @04:03PM
Note that you didn't include "App Developers" in your list of professions.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 07 2014, @05:36PM
Hey, don't lump the EEs in with the app developers and IT people.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Monday April 07 2014, @05:55PM
Also, electrical engineering has been a mature, respected profession for over 100 years now. Did you think that the power distribution network which supplies power to your PC to write that message was invented within the last few years?
(Score: 1) by SuggestiveLanguage on Monday April 07 2014, @08:10PM
You are indeed correct. Unlike far too many app cobblers and hackers, EEs have at least a minimal exposure professional ethics. Please accept my apologies.
(Score: 4, Insightful) by Geezer on Monday April 07 2014, @10:29AM
The corollary to this is that the evolution of social norms relating to inter-gender interaction is incomplete. Whether it's in tech or on a construction site, we still have the problem of slut-shaming every woman outside of show business who honestly expresses her independence and sexuality. Men are almost universally guilty of this hypocrisy, and Victorian-minded women are too.
Yeah, men and women are wired differently. So we string men with bare copper, and it's OK, but we expect 100 Megohm insulation resistance from women. That's just not right.
I served with a bunch of women in the Navy back in the 1970's who were tough enough mentally and emotionally to overcome the bullshit and actually thrive on being assertive, self-secure, individuals. This despite the military boys-club culture. They earned the respect of their male peers and never stopped being women for a second. And FWIW, the sexiest woman I ever dated was a line handler on a tug boat. You'd think by 2014 we'd have come further in terms of wide (see, I didn't say "broad"!) acceptance.
We need to foster that cultural evolution everywhere.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @10:51AM
Male or female has nothing to do with it, I would not treat people like that.
Based on the article, it sounds like immature personalities and a generally ill corporate culture.
Obviously this story is one-sided so far.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Thexalon on Monday April 07 2014, @02:47PM
I'm a guy who's different from many of my male coworkers in a lot of important ways. I prefer Mozart to Metallica, don't like getting drunk, I do my best work from 9-11 AM, and in some workplaces I've been the only white guy. None of that ever caused a major problem for me or made me feel isolated from my coworkers.
My impression from my female colleagues is that the reason they often feel detached is that too many men in IT don't get laid enough or deal with women in a non-sexual way enough to view women as anything other than sex objects, and that often comes through in their behavior. Popular culture, such as every teen comedy movie on the planet, actively teaches men that the way they're supposed to relate to women is solely to try to get them into bed.
The countervailing force for this, according to the psych stuff I've read on the subject, is a sister. If a guy has a sister, then he's used to relating to female-type people as peers without any kind of sexual interest (because eww). If he doesn't have a sister, then it's quite possible that for him women will seem strange and confusing and the only reason to deal with one would be for sex.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by rochrist on Monday April 07 2014, @06:29PM
Here's a thought. How about the 'men' grow up and start acting like adults instead of little boys who've never seen a pair of tits before.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @08:42PM
Well, we are talking about a bunch of IT guys. My guess is that most of them have never seen a pair of tits unless they go looking at pr0n sites.
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @10:07AM
I'm glad the lady found out her (a)sexual preference but why are we reading an article about it?
(Score: 1) by Bartman12345 on Monday April 07 2014, @10:51AM
I would like to hear a woman's point of view about this story.
Hello...
Hello...?
*crickets chirping*
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday April 07 2014, @11:21AM
Nerd #1: Hello? Are there any girls in this room at all?
Nerd #2: Yeah, bring on the hot chicks 'cause I'm a hot stud.
Nerd #3: Yeah! So are we!
[Leela pushes her way to the centre of the crowd.]
Leela: I'm a woman, if that's what you mean. [The nerds gasp.] I don't like to play games, so I'll just say I'm a cyclops, I'm a spaceship captain, I'm the only one of my species and I'm interested in meeting a man.
Nerd #4: A woman! I'm scared.
A Bicyclops Built for Two [theinfosphere.org]
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 4, Insightful) by NaN on Monday April 07 2014, @11:37AM
You could start by not calling adults "girls". ;-)
If you really want to know, I generally avoid commenting at all in these threads because I don't particularly care for the flaming that it's so easy to anticipate following... But hey, this is a new site, and despite the comments so far suggesting otherwise, maybe there's reason to hope things might be different here.
I've personally rarely encountered a situation where gender was a source of discomfort, but that could be because I've had the good fortune to run my own businesses for a while, and to choose partners and employees who act with professionalism and treat me with respect. I've never been on the wrong side of that power imbalance. But yes, I'm constantly aware that I've had to break gender stereotypes to get to where I am.
Reading these stories, and even more so, reading the now-predictable knee-jerk backlash in the comments, all the evidence is on the side of the tech world at large being hostile to women. Or at the very least, the vocal minority. Why would I want to put up with that if any alternatives existed where I wouldn't have to fight against a tsunami of resentment just to be treated with a bit or respect and occasionally be given the benefit of the doubt?
Where did all this defensiveness come from? Why such a need to defend unprofessional behavior that would be totally unacceptable in nearly any other field? I read men accusing any woman who's been subjected to this inappropriate hostility, stereotyping, and "humor" of being "thin-skinned". Maybe they should consider growing a thicker skin about the fact that our industry is imperfect and has room for improvement. And that that's something we *all* need to take responsibility for. Why is that so hard to admit?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 07 2014, @01:17PM
Thanks for the input and stories.
"I read men accusing any woman who's been subjected to this inappropriate hostility, stereotyping, and "humor" of being "thin-skinned"."
Its complicated, and individually each reason is pretty stupid in isolation from the whole. I'll present it math proof style with one concept per numbered paragraph.
1) We shame people who report being an individual victim of bullying way more than we shame people who report being a victim of generic society wide sexism. Probably related to the personal failing of lack of assertiveness or lack of personal courage. But I'll claim it as fact. Also letting the bastards win means the bullies are going to make it even worse for everyone else remaining.
2) Some workplaces not only tolerate bullying but encourage it. Why? Maybe the mgmt is stupid or damaged goods or bullies themselves, donno for certain. Very weak / incompetent / inexperienced managers like to hire non-assertive people to make their job much easier, which become food for the bullies, making them worse than normal and worse over time.
3) Any new person to the old group is likely to be hazed / harassed, at least a bit. Also cultural impedance mismatch means the odd man out (ha ha bad pun) is likely to be a victim of bullying, in this case a rare woman dev. So its extremely likely the local bully will bully a new woman. Aside from pure evil I know from personal experience that some folks like to "test" new people to see how strong or weak they are, maybe in coding, maybe in "social warfare that could be considered bullying" and once the pecking order is defined, they become friends, crazy as it might sound. I had a friend in high school who said something along the lines of someone is not worth having as a friend unless he would tell him to F off if he was doing something wrong. I passed by telling him to F off when he was harassing me and he was a truly great guy once I passed his test. A glance at physique can determine the pecking order at a construction job; how does that work in IT other than what boils down to hazing/bullying? Very few guys test new people for their "ability to run off to HR and tattle" or "ability to cry in the bathroom" although "brave enough to tell me to F off" comes up surprisingly often when defining pecking orders. This long paragraph boils down to "women employees can be victims of bullying" which isn't exactly Nobel prize winning observation, but...
So combining it all, #2 is the reason some workplace cultures are toxic, unprofessional, and childish, #3 is why this one individual woman was bullied as per #2 above, and #1 is why she gets virtually no respect WRT #3 above. In combination it kind of makes sense although individual each reason is fairly stupid in isolation.
So this is why some guys give bullying victims (who sometimes happen to be of a female persuasion), a hard time. You knew you volunteered to enter a vipers nest, you knew you volunteered to be in the first wave on D-Day, now stop crying in the bathroom and get out there and (hopefully non-violently) fight, or someone else (maybe one of us?) is going to have to fight even harder in even worse conditions because someone chickened out. I don't want to get stuck with her crappy coworkers and crappy boss because she's a chicken. They made fun of her because of her genitals and they'll make fun of me because of my pathfinder RPG books. Maybe fighting is wrong. Probably it is. But if you must fight, fight to win, or we all go to our doom.
There is a side issue of making fun of how she fights. Hmm. Lets think of a strategy that's been tried a million times before against bullies and failed every time, and try it again? Hmm how about tattling and crying. Maybe it'll work this time, for the first time ever. Oh, it didn't? Well, it can't be that insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result, it must just be because "men suck" or some generic whine about culture. Hmm. Let's just try it again, surely next time it'll work.
Side issue 2 is seriously, if you have no idea how to fight, you ask someone friendly to train you up. That's the plot of about eight billion teen movies from karate kid to star wars and beyond. Unless you feel too superior to lower yourself to asking for advice from a mere plebe. Eh, forget her, she could have been a mighty warrior, maybe better than her trainer, but she's too snooty to ask, so let her suffer until she learns humility. You need a coach but don't want one, well, good luck with that.
(Score: 1) by NaN on Monday April 07 2014, @01:37PM
I'm not sure I understand -- are you presenting this as descriptive or normative?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 07 2014, @02:23PM
Those are loaded terms.
In the sociology sense, normative as in cultural norms, yeah thats kind of the point of #2 the management thinks their toxic workplace is supposed to be exactly how it is, those crazy guys, and the bullies obviously like having free reign, so, yeah, exactly, its an impact of their weird norms vs some random womans pop culture norms, and different strategies for handling that impact have widely varying levels of success, some almost comically bad.
In the standards doc sense where normative is like a command and descriptive is why the normative stuff exists, then its descriptive because its at least a pitiful attempt at explaining the "logic" behind it. May not like it, or determine it to be logical, but its descriptive in the attempt at explaining, rather than commanding how it shall be which would be normative.
In the "reddit" / pop culture sense where normative means its normal and therefore by definition good (LOL) because we're all conformists here, and descriptive means I don't like it but thats how it is, then I guess its descriptive to me although I hope it stands on its own as a set of observations without relevance to personal feelings or showing the need to appear politically correct in public.
So at least one answer is probably what you were looking for.
(And keep being a good role model... serious no sarcasm intended based solely on your self description of achievements above)
(Score: 1) by NaN on Monday April 07 2014, @02:56PM
Haha. Thanks for the clarification. It wasn't clear to me whether you were saying simply that this is the way things are, or whether you were also saying you agreed that it's how they should be.
I think there's a lot of value simply to understanding why the situation is the way it is -- but mostly in the hope that understanding will give us better insight into how to change it. I'd be interested if you see any way forward: since women who complain about the dysfunction are so often dismissed as "shrill" or "whiny", how do we build recognition of the problem and momentum for change among the men who make up the majority?
(Score: 2) by VLM on Monday April 07 2014, @04:00PM
The way forward is
CALM ASSERTIVE PERSISTENT POLITE PROFESSIONAL DOCUMENT.
Sorry for the all caps shouting. Not 1 of 6, not 5 of 6, all 6. Its what I'd tell my own daughter. Or my son, for that matter. Also I say don't take it personally. My experience is women don't much like being told they're shrill, take a wild guess what adjective a bully might attack a woman with... If its weaponized it'll be used as a weapon, accurate or not, so don't sweat it, don't mean nothin anymore once its been weaponized.
If you're familiar with bad "soft" sci fi, a complaint about it is its just another genre of story after a bad search and replace job. In a similar search and replace manner, you can take stories about women being bullied in the workplace and create the exact same story, often in the same workplace, with religion, orientation, ethnicity, nationality... the bad behavior will read exactly the same. Just need bullying prevention training, not special training for gender vs special training for race vs special training for orientation. Bully's gotta bully, this week it was the one woman on the team, next week it'll be the one gay guy on the team, or the one jew. Its just a bad scene all around and band aid-ing the symptom won't cure the cause.
As far as recognition, look at the level of diversity in historical (recent?) war time atrocities. There won't be much. Just saying. You can't have 19 identical young white boy clones gang up on the one woman on a 20 person team if you don't have 19 identical young white boy clones on the same team. If you hire to mold what amounts to a gang, and they start acting like gang members, don't act surprised. Groupthink doesn't apply just to bad business decisions, but also to bad interpersonal behaviors. So business that encourage groupthink turn into failed ratholes. There's a financial metric benefit to avoiding that outcome, aside from the obvious lawsuits, so it should be an easy sell?
In many years of reading stories about anti-female workplace "sexism", if you cross out all the bullying, there usually isn't anything left. In the linked story of the github woman, cross out all her claims of bullying, and all that's left is one dude asked her out on a date, she goes drinking with her bosses wife, and she's in a neopuritan rage she observed her coworkers goofing off consensually, perhaps stupidly, but consensually, with some hula hoops. Suddenly the story does not sound all that bad.
TLDR is the first six all caps words, plus some anti-workplace bullying training will take care of the cause of a whole slew of of problems.
(Score: 4, Interesting) by Sir Garlon on Monday April 07 2014, @01:19PM
I am frequently taken aback by the defensiveness of my male colleagues when gender equity issues are raised. Men I respect and admire can sound quite bitter.
After thinking about it for years, I have come to believe the problem is really lack of understanding of the issue. There are at least three factors at play in gender equity:
In my experience, the males I talk to get defensive because they aren't misogynist, don't see themselves as misogynist, and don't perceive other males to be misogynist. This is all true. Score victory for first-wave feminism here. The idea that women are inferior to men is marginalized to the point where decent people won't accept it being mentioned in public. Sometimes men still feel they are being accused of it, or that it's still the emphasis of the dialogue on gender equity. So it takes some effort to move past the objections, "I'm not part of that problem" or "why are we still talking about this?"
Which brings us to the uncomfortable territory of item #2, unconscious bias. Everybody has this and no one wants to admit it. It doesn't help matters when people throw around words like "bigot." The sense of outrage over overt misogyny has quite a chilling effect on confronting unconscious bias, because no one wants to consider the label "sexist" as potentially applying to himself. Yet one can point to studies (I am not a scholar in these matters so I don't have references ready to hand) showing how gender-blind interviewing practices result in hiring more women, etc. So I think to address this problem, we need to get past accusations and *the perception of accusations* and get men and women to examine their biases. I happen to have received training in what I'll call bias awareness when I was in college and it was great, world-changing stuff. Yet most companies don't have any workplace equity training at all, and those that do seem to focus on legal compliance, which is more in the territory of item #1. I have searched the Web on several occasions, not a quick Google query but an hour-long, methodical search, and not even found anything that counts as a decent article or PowerPoint presentation that addresses unconscious biases. Maybe some of the fine folks at Soylent will have more success than I have. I think it is critical to drive the point home with men that unconscious biases are pervasive but can be corrected with effort, because once you have done that you recruit legions of allies in the cause of gender equity.
Then there is the point that men and women are different. The differences are mostly the result of socialization and societal expectations in my humble opinion, but they are real and they are not going away in one generation or maybe not in ten generations. In fact, I reject the very idea that men and women should ever be the same or *want* to be the same. I am happy to accept my hetero-normative gender role and I think women should be free to enjoy the lifestyle they want. One of the last women I dated before I met my wife described herself as a "girly girl." What I think is demanded of us here is to create conditions where people can fit into traditional gender stereotype if they want, or slip out of them if they don't. That means being able to work effectively and productively with people who fit either stereotype, or neither. Right now, in male-dominated fields, men can get by only knowing how to communicate with other men. Communicating across that stereotype gap takes effort, as any married heterosexual can tell you, and a lot of men don't want to be bothered. I think it is possible to change their minds, but it is a hard sell partly because it seems like women are demanding "special treatment." Well, it's only special because they're so excluded from the current workplace. If half my peers were women then being able to form strong professional relationships with them would be an enabler of success. Since it's not the case, men don't feel the need to learn anything or change their communication styles in the slightest. That leaves us with a bootstrapping problem. I think it is possible to overcome that by appealing to a sense of fairness, but it takes a lot of tact and a sensitivity to males' sense of vulnerability, not wanting to be portrayed as the bad guys.
I have come to regard the "women in engineering" sorts of groups as a necessary work-around to the real problem. They enable women to succeed in spite of the climate by networking with other women. That helps the ones who are in the workplace now but does little to affect the underlying problems.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @02:13PM
If it is like you say a matter of one sex learning how to interact with the other, why is it more reasonable to demand that men should "learn how to talk to women" than the opposite, that women should learn how to talk to men and be accepting of them and their ways?
This is something I'd genuinely like a good answer to.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday April 07 2014, @02:31PM
According to my wife, "Men need to lean how to talk to women, because women are already adapt at put up with men on a daily basis. Unfortunately it'll never happen; the telepathy gene is in the other X chromosomes you didn't get."
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @02:54PM
Women can be very dismissive of male interests and passions, labeling them childish, immature and subjecting them to all sorts of ridicule, but the moment a woman has a feeling about something it's to be taken serious.
If we are to move forward to true equality being especially accomodating to the rabid feminists foaming at the mouth while spewing their hatred of the male gender, while the men have to walk on eggshells around them to not offend them or be percieved as insensitive is not a way forward.
If we take a hypothetical example, one that will for sure get me rated as a troll, if there were only two different opinions in the world, one being the nazis and the other being that all white people should die and I happened to be a caucasian I'd sure as hell side with the nazis.
The only way forward is compromise, as long as feminists demand special consideration there will be a huge opposition. Come back with reasonable suggestions for compromise and we can finally move past the sexist mindsets on both sides of the argument.
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Monday April 07 2014, @02:36PM
Everyone should learn to communicate with one another. Women in man-dominated fields are forced to accommodate mens's ways as a matter of survival. Men need to accommodate women better in order to be part of the solution rather than part of the problem. The gender that is (mostly inadvertently) enforcing a glass ceiling (less impermeable than it once was, but very much still there) and pay and hiring disparities bears the weight of needing to be more accommodating. Business as usual will only perpetuate the inequality.
(Score: 3, Informative) by Sir Garlon on Monday April 07 2014, @02:42PM
You raise a good point. I don't think all the responsibility should fall on either side of the fence.
Generally, males are in the critical path to women's career success. The converse is more rarely true. At my company, managers (male and female) get a "bonus round" of diversity training and I support that as a cost-effective approach. What I really advocate is the more power an employee has over others, the more diversity training he or she receive. The fact the most managers are male is incidental to that priority, but it remains true.
Males right now set the climate of the workplace and if you want to make that climate more inclusive, males are in a position to effect the change.
Really, everyone needs diversity training. Saying that "men need to do X" should not imply that women need to do nothing, or vice versa. Insofar as the training needs of men and women are different, I think you can make a bigger impact by starting with men.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by NaN on Monday April 07 2014, @02:54PM
Perhaps part of the trouble is that the overt misogyny is unfortunately still often on display in the tech world -- whether it's a high-profile startup personality like Pax Dickinson making over-the-top remarks or /. trolls exhorting women to go back to the kitchen. They may be more vocal than their actual representation in the population, and the media may enjoy blowing up the situation in exchange for clicks, but that's no excuse for the people who go on to defend these assholes.
So let's assume that the majority of the trouble is with people who do suffer from unconscious bias -- and furthermore that both men and women are subject to those biases. (Possibly relevant: http://www.catalyst.org/system/files/The_Double_Bi nd_Dilemma_for_Women_in_Leadership_Damned_if_You_D o_Doomed_if_You_Dont.pdf [catalyst.org] ) The trouble with the defensiveness around the unconscious bias is that the defensive reactions are easy to interpret as hostile. Less hostile than the overt misogyny, but the fact that at least half of the commenters on a typical post about women-in-tech defend the existence of the boys' club and the "right" to act unprofessionally (and with hostility) suggests to both the women and the men reading along at home that this is the norm in technology and women aren't fully welcome.
Yes, in general, to some degree, men and women act and react in different manners (not the qualifiers). I, too, happen to believe that this is primarily a result of social/cultural pressures, but whether it's learned or innate is largely irrelevant in the end -- particularly given that it's not likely to change any time soon. (On the flip side, my co-founder wanted at least one woman on the founding team to ensure that we take into account the perspective of the female half of our audience -- only to discover that, ironically, our other male co-founder is far more likely than me to take a stereotypically female perspective on any given issue. There's a huge overlap between the gaussian distributions for males and females.)
The important thing is that neither way of dealing with the world (cooperative vs. assertive) is inherently better than the other. Having both modes of interaction makes for a stronger organization (as thought diversity generally does), and -- regardless -- an adult needs to learn to get along with more than just the half of the population that shares the same genital structure.
In most fields, this has largely been accomplished by accepting that *in a professional setting* there are certain types of interactions, certain types of jokes, that are considered disrespectful and thus inappropriate.
How is it less reasonable to ask men to self-censor in the workplace the things they wouldn't say to their proverbial grandmother or 14y/o sister, than to expect all women to be sufficiently thick-skinned to not be made at all uncomfortable by objectifying "humor" and other subtle "you're not welcome" cues? Isn't the goal of the workplace to *get work done*? Do you really expect people to do their best work in an environment with an undercurrent of hostility? Shouldn't we be creating an environment where all members of the workforce have a chance to feel welcome and respected?
These not-particularly-onerous behavioral standards have largely been accepted in most other professions. Why do so many people in the computing world continue to defend the notion that it's OK -- or even "right" -- for our field to have an immature "boys' club" culture that marginalizes women?
This is not a demand for "special treatment". It's a request for 1) a minimum level of professionalism; 2) restraint from pre-judging people based on their external attributes; and 3) a culture of consideration and respect for *all* team members.
(Score: 2) by Sir Garlon on Monday April 07 2014, @03:59PM
It also requires at least as much effort as lifting a finger, and when it comes right down to it, a lot of people are not willing to do that. Far easier to deny there's a problem than to become part of the solution.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 1) by Jiro on Monday April 07 2014, @04:25PM
Here, I'll toss in another word for you.
Unfalsifiability.
Accusing people of unconscious bias is a handy way to make an accusation that they can't possibly rebut because regardless of whether it's true, you've defined away everything that might disprove it.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by Sir Garlon on Monday April 07 2014, @05:04PM
Such a claim is only unfalsifiable on an individual level. Actually, even there is it testable but I would advocate against trying. You can absolutely conduct experiments to determine whether institutional bias exists. The one that comes to mind is the study on blind orchestra auditions [theguardian.com]. Orchestras who tried gender-blind auditions, where the application plays music behind a screen so the hiring panel did not know the applicant's gender (or age or race, presumably) saw a statistically significant increase in the number of women who passed the first round of auditions.
I have seen a handful of studies like this, sufficient to convince me the *possibility* of gender bias is widespread.
I do take exception to your adversarial language. I am not advocating "accusing" anybody of anything. You can no more condemn someone for unconscious bias than you can condemn him for spelling mistakes. OK, some people still do it but they're jerks. :-) A better approach is to try to identify where it exists and introduce mechanisms to remove it. One of those mechanisms, in my opinion, is just to prove it exists so people are aware and make an effort to minimize it in themselves.
Part of the problem is that the word "bias" has been used as a gentler euphemism for bigotry. This is what you often see in the press. That's not what I mean when I use the word; what I mean is cognitive bias [wikipedia.org] in the technical sense. It's no wonder people get defensive as soon as some uses the word, though.
Cognitive bias is scientifically detectable, measurable, and falsifiable.
[Sir Garlon] is the marvellest knight that is now living, for he destroyeth many good knights, for he goeth invisible.
(Score: 1) by AdamHaun on Tuesday April 08 2014, @05:09AM
I have a hypothesis that a lot of the dysfunction in (computer) geek culture is a leftover reaction to the bullying that many older geeks experienced when they were kids. There's a sort of cultural superiority complex that developed around being better and smarter than "normal" people as a defense mechanism. This was really obvious back in the 90s in the early days of Slashdot et al. The stuff about Morlocks and Eloi in "In the Beginning Was the Command Line" was a great example, along with smaller things like talk about computer geeks "hacking politics". A couple years ago Slashdotters were saying that exposure to the Pirate Bay would be a key factor in bringing down dictatorships. And of course there's the ever-present crowd of libertarian ideologues, convinced that the rest of humanity just can't wait to steal everything they have.
Basically, a lot of geeks think of themselves as put-upon Atlases, heroically defending against the stupidity and shallowness of the common masses. Then someone suggests that they might be contributing to sexism or racism or some other social problem, and they just can't handle it. It's sad.
Adam Haun
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @03:48PM
Or it could be as simple as reading the article, you know...
This is an article about a woman who watched a live stream which featured a pardody of an app regarding boobs, this parody makes this woman fly into an uncontrollable rage on twitter claiming that these guys must hate women. Her businesspartner is then like "uh, I don't think these guys hate women", also on twitter, this makes her so hateful and mad towards him, despite the fact that he has never mistreated her or any other woman at work, that she ragequits the company. This simple disagreement also makes this poor dude lose his other job - something that is completely glossed over in the article, indicating that this was normal or good. He then tries to reason with her to get her to come back to work, but this is a no go... finally she bullies him into making an apology for having the nerve to disagree with her that these guys must really be women haters and forces him into an agreement that in the future she gets to censor his tweets.
Now, this is somehow supposed to be an article about how women are mistreated in IT?
WTF?
(Score: 5, Informative) by bradley13 on Monday April 07 2014, @11:02AM
First and foremost, be sure to read what Susan Sons has to say on this subject [linuxjournal.com]. She puts a lot of things into perspective.
I also have a minor irritation with the recent cases that have hits the Interwebs in a big way. Generally speaking, we are not talking about female techies. Just to name three examples:
- Adria Richards is a publicity flack
- Julie Ann Horvath is not a engineer, but a marketing type
- And now, Elissa Shevinsky, who holds a bachelor's in political theory and a master's in entrepreneurship
Note how it's not the hard-core technie girls who seem to have trouble. It's always the women on the fringes. Perhaps this is more of a geek-culture problem than anything to do with sexism?
Everyone is somebody else's weirdo.
(Score: 1) by Virindi on Monday April 07 2014, @02:51PM
This. Like any new developer, you have to prove your worth. Once people respect your abilities, things generally work out.
Except the occaisional odd duck character who simply can't talk to a female, but that is much rarer than people make it out to be in this sort of story.
It seems to me that in today's society, people are always looking for some kind of excuse for why they failed. For a lot of people, software is hard; it helps them if they can tell themselves they can't do it because there is some grand conspiracy or something. This is just one example of that.
When you prove your skills, you get respect. It is as simple as that, and it doesn't matter what gender you happen to be.
(Score: 2) by useless on Monday April 07 2014, @03:20PM
Valid point, but this has nothing to do with developers. It's a group of people who think because they use their iPhone to post on Twitter and Facebook that they are "geeks".
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @06:33AM
Indeed. I've worked with a woman for the last six years who is at least as smart as I am, can routinely understand and even fix my code, and I can hold technical conversations with her as a peer.
The only thing holding her back is self-confidence. My sample size is shit, but I believe that's likely a more widespread issue that her alone.
(Score: 2) by useless on Monday April 07 2014, @03:22PM
I somehow missed that article, thanks for the link. Good read.
(Score: 2) by mojo chan on Tuesday April 08 2014, @08:13AM
Or perhaps those women are just better equipped to bring the issues to the fore, compared to some anonymous cubicle dweller.
const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
(Score: 2, Informative) by kevinl on Monday April 07 2014, @11:42AM
I'm assuming "technology" here is referring to IT, not just any STEM field. And yes, in my experience it has an overtly worse (always more sexist, sometimes more racist) culture than physical engineering. I've done a degree and 5+ years in each field (BS in Comp Sci, MS in ChemE).
It's easier to see when you have experienced outside-IT cultures than it is to explain. Much like James Baldwin's depiction in "The Fire Next Time" about why the black person can see the white person's point of view, but not the other way around: the privileged are actively insulated from perceiving the negative consequences of acting upon their privilege, while the unprivileged directly experience those effects.
Rather than scold the IT folks, let me instead highlight a few ways the the ChemE schools and employers have actively worked to make the field more egalitarian:
* The gender ratio in my classes was about 50/50 (at two different schools - I transferred) for ChemE. I'm not sure exactly HOW they accomplished this -- scholarships, women engineering societies, admissions, or what -- but it's working.
* There are several "expectant mothers" parking slots as close to the turnstiles as possible at the manufacturing plant.
* There is a nursing room right outside the control room.
* At a different manufacturing facility, HR became aware of employees trading pornographic images and raunchy jokes through the corporate email system. Besides violating the company policy, this was also part of a much larger incident which included safety violations. All employees who were found to have forwarded the emails were summarily terminated. (Contrast this response to a gig I had in IT less than a year ago where employees and their first-line manager were "joking" about downloading porn on their work computers.)
* Corporate benefits include adoption assistance, extra paid time off provided to BOTH parents, even more extra paid time off provided for the primary caregiver, and assistance for IVF treatments.
All is not honey-and-roses in ChemE-land of course. There is still a bit of patronizing and unofficial babying going on, where some (young and pretty) women operators and engineers aren't held to as high a technical standard. And it used to be quite worse: there were official assumptions that women would leave after pregnancy, that married men could not use their sick time for their kids (since that was the wife's job), and unofficially there were trips to the nudie bars and even an established tryst room. At the university level, married PHD's (both men and women) are finding it even harder to have families due to their workloads.
Yet the general point stands: the momentum in ChemE is driving towards less sexism and more inclusion. I have not seen much trajectory like that in IT between the late 1990's and last year.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @11:52AM
Where are the "expectant fathers" parking spots?
Are men allowed in the "nursing room"? If not, where is the room that men can go to that women can't? (besides the men's bathroom)
(Score: 2, Insightful) by kevinl on Monday April 07 2014, @01:17PM
In the same universe that the pregnant fathers exist.
I wasn't specific enough about the purpose of this room. It isn't for feeding an infant, because infants aren't allowed in the manufacturing area, only qualified and trained operations people are. It's for pumping breast milk. I haven't heard of any men at our facility using a breast pump for their children, but I'm pretty sure if they did there would be no problems with them using the room.
(Score: 3, Interesting) by Vanderhoth on Monday April 07 2014, @02:18PM
Not that I don't agree with you that the AC was being intentionally moronic, but "nursing room" implies feeding. I'd frame the AC's post as saying
As you said, I'm sure a man would be allowed in the nursing room under the expressed intent it was to nurse his child, from his own breast or otherwise.
On a side note, I wish nursing rooms were more readily available in public spaces. I know it's not a very PC thing to say, but I do wish some women were a little more discrete/considerate about feeding in public. I'm all for breast feeding and don't think it's something a women should be ashamed of, but I was once accused of ogling when a women whipped her breast out at a table sitting behind my wife at a restaurant. The action caught my eye and I quickly looked away, but I guess turning my head out of respect for her privacy was the wrong thing to do. After feeding her kid she came over and told my wife she should be ashamed of me as her husband because I don't support breast feeding, which isn't the case at all. My wife used a privacy blanket when feeding in public and was very good at covering up while feeding. When done right it's very discrete and you don't have to worry about Johnny rubber necks gocking at you, intentionally or otherwise.
It's actually a little funny to me because my wife, along with many other women I know, spends more time looking at and being critical of other women breast and what they do with them than I have for my entire life, including my awkward teen years. It's clear to me women can be their own worst enemies and are often more critical of other women than men are.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 1, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @02:27PM
I would have to agree with you on this and while I fully expect to be flamed for this comment in my mind a woman whipping out her breast to breastfeed in public is no different to a man whipping out his penis and publicly urinating. There are some people that will be offended by their actions and consideration for those people should be shown.
There are established social and legal rules that say that public nudity is not ok and if breastfeeding in public is to be considered ok we should revise the rules for all kinds of nudity.
(Score: 2) by Vanderhoth on Monday April 07 2014, @02:58PM
The worst part here was I wasn't offended by her actions, she was offended by me trying to respect her privacy and not stare at her while she sitting directly behind my wife facing me.
I don't equate whipping out a breast to publicly feed a child to whipping out a penis to publicly urinate. It's a little disconcerting to think the only appropriate place to feed a child in public is while sitting on a toilet in a public restroom. Women should be allowed to nurse in public, but I agree there has to be some compromise here. Either you do it openly and accept some people are going to see and maybe even stare or use a privacy blanket and accept it's your responsibility to protect your own privacy.
Maybe marriage has jaded me, but I don't even know why breasts are still considered something that need to be covered up. I'm certainly not opposed to women going topless on a hot day (or otherwise), I see men all the time with larger breasts than most of the women I know who go topless and with the internet these days it's not like women's breast aren't already plastered all over the place. Breast just aren't that special, especially when you consider their just sacks of fatty tissue hanging off someones chest. The biggest reason I can see that we, as males, desire to look at them is because we're told we're not suppose to look at them.
"Now we know", "And knowing is half the battle". -G.I. Joooooe
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday April 07 2014, @03:19PM
> in my mind a woman whipping out her breast to breastfeed in public is no different to a man whipping out his penis and publicly urinating.
I don't want to be the flame you anticipated but what you wrote is just... wierd.
Urination is, by it's nature, offensive. Urine is a waste product, it smells bad, it is unsanitary if not disposed of properly. That's why we have discrete little rooms where people can do it and (hopefully) wash their hands afterwards.
Breastfeeding is none of those things. It's not stinky or icky or dirty or gross. It's just a baby drinking milk.
I really don't see any equivalence between the two, except that in both cases a body part which western society normally insists on covering up gets exposed. BFD. The sight of a boob (or a penis, for that matter) is not going to hurt me or anybody else.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @03:32PM
Blah, as long as we have a society where both dogs and cats urinate publicly I find your arguments about the ick factor of urine to be largely irrelevant, there are plenty of places where the urine would cause no issues that are considered public, I'm not suggesting that you take a piss indoors or on the street right where people are walking. And what if you really, really, really have to pee and can't find a bathroom.
If you take a piss in an alley behind a dumpster you will still be marked a sex offender for life if the cops catch you in some states.
(Score: 2) by GreatAuntAnesthesia on Monday April 07 2014, @03:43PM
Sooooo... what you're saying is that whipping it out and pissing in public is not offensive.
Are you the same AC that just now equated pissing and breastfeeding? If so I'm really not sure where your argument is going.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @04:17PM
Exactly the same place where I was going with my original post, either we change the rules for what is acceptable in terms of nudity or we refrain from offending other people that find it disturbing, wether it's public urinating or public breastfeeding.
The reason I went with whipping out the dong to urinate was for two reasons, first, like breastfeeding both acts are driven by biological functions, second, I vaguely remember reading some article with women calling out for more peni in movies and tv to make things equal with all the boobs that are shown and from that, like any good random internet weirdo I jumped to the totally reasonable conclusion that women equate showing penis to showing breasts. Personally I'm not offended by nudity at all and would prefer that laws that prohibit nudity be removed and if it became legal, the social norm would also change over time. But things being as they are, I respect that some people are offended by public urination and refrain from doing so, likewise I think that breastfeeding women should be sensitive to the fact that public breastfeeding makes some people uncomfortable. If we all go off and do whatever we personally think is reasonable, regardless of other peoples opinions we can't have a civilized society.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @02:40PM
Okay, I'll spell it out in small words.
First, I assume that the "expectant mothers" parking spots are separate from and in addition to the usual handicapped parking spots.
If there are specific parking spots set aside for women with a transient physical condition that makes parking close to the building a bit easier for them, are there also spots set aside for men with transient physical conditions -- say, a broken leg -- where parking there would help a man out?
Can a guy with a broken leg park in the "expectant mothers" spots if there don't happen to be any expectant mothers to use them (and the usual handicapped spots are full, or if he doesn't have a handicap plate/placard yet)?
The point is, since you seem to require it to be spelled out very concretely -- why is it okay to set a resource aside for use by women only, and it's seen as fine and normal to do so, while if a resource is set aside for use by men only, it's the end of damn world and evidence of the evil patriarchy?
(Score: 1) by kevinl on Monday April 07 2014, @04:33PM
For these particular slots, no. Because someone with a broken leg would not be allowed in the manufacturing area anyway without authorization from a doctor, which would also give them time for a temporary handicap placard. They would also likely be temporarily reassigned to a non-production area until they were deemed fit for their old role again. Depending on how the injury occured, they might instead be placed on short-term disability, or an incident investigation might be undertaken that would lead to other changes.
This isn't a shopping mall, it's a manufacturing site where trespassing is an automatic felony.
Perhaps you could agitate for your employer to provide resources for relief to a biological issue that a large fraction of men of professional working age (and only men) will experience. I have no idea what that could be, but maybe you can think of something.
Or you could just give up this tired "what about the menz" argument. Seriously, somewhere in the USA an employer is providing courtesy parking spots to pregnant employees, and you have a problem with it? What are you, a ghost writer for Fox and Friends?
(Score: 1) by urza9814 on Monday April 07 2014, @05:36PM
If there are specific parking spots set aside for women with a transient physical condition that makes parking close to the building a bit easier for them, are there also spots set aside for men with transient physical conditions -- say, a broken leg -- where parking there would help a man out?
The concept of needing closer parking for expectant mothers is fairly new, as in the past the assumption was that they would just stay home, and that they therefore didn't have a right to be able to access workplaces and certain public buildings.
This culture is starting to change, but the laws haven't caught up yet. I'm sure the companies would much prefer to have a combined handicapped/expectant mother/whatever parking spots. But the law says they must have a certain number of handicapped spots reserved only for people with one of a certain specified set of disabilities. Expectant mothers aren't on that list, so the companies choose to add those spots separately. Perhaps in a few years that will get included in the legal requirements instead.
I mean it's just like writing software. If you've got two massive software systems being upgraded at a different rate, every once in a while you're gonna need some crappy dirty hacks to hold things together temporarily!
(Score: 1) by rochrist on Monday April 07 2014, @08:04PM
Suprise. Internet troll is anonymous coward.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @01:16PM
Perhaps because chemistry and biology are two fields that attract more female students, and not the sausage fest that is ME/EE. IT maybe whole another level - see all them "macho" sysadmin clowns.
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Monday April 07 2014, @02:13PM
(Score: 1) by kevinl on Monday April 07 2014, @02:52PM
I think that's the biggest part of it. My manufacturing job would definitely be perceived as boring, stodgy, and stifling compared to any of my programming jobs. But now that I'm used to it, I find old-school professionalism much more liberating. It's nice being able to walk through the cafeteria at lunchtime with a mix of operators in overalls, engineers in business casual, administrative staff in more business formal attire, and interns/co-ops in dresses and not have either extreme of open ogling or what-are-YOU-doing-here hostility. I don't even mind the Internet proxy filters anymore: they provide a reasonable barrier to the accidental porn advertisement and malware, and I can always turn to my personal device or wait until I'm home for those things I really need that were erroneously blocked.
Even though HR can often go bad, good HR (which I am blessed with at my current employer) can make everything so much better. Though not required, the use of things like MBTI, DiSC, 7 Habits, Emotional Intelligence, etc., really help grease the wheels. You figure out that you don't WANT everyone to be just like you, it's a huge relief that some people out there are motivated by the stuff you find boring and vice versa.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @11:53AM
A couple young men programmed a tit centric app, presented that app at the DISRUPT hackathon, and made a boob pun. Then the audience, composed primarily of other young men, laughed. And I'm supposed to feel some sort of shame and/or outrage about this? Why?
I suppose the same people that think I should feel ashamed of liking tits and laughing at boob jokes probably think I'm a horrible person worthy of being burned at the stake because I don't support Pussy Riot's "right" to invade a church and engage in blasphemy and debauchery at the alter?
It's nice to know you ladies and gents have your heads screwed on straight.
(Score: 2) by khallow on Monday April 07 2014, @02:49PM
Even worse, the "Titstare" presentation was a parody. It became the problem it was trying to fight.
(Score: 1) by velex on Monday April 07 2014, @12:48PM
So, since we're holding all assigned males collectively responsible for the actions of others, when do I get to hold cis women collectively accountable for all the times I've been a rapist or "all men," etc?
(Score: 2) by tibman on Monday April 07 2014, @01:55PM
Unfortunately, this is how stereotyping works : /
SN won't survive on lurkers alone. Write comments.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @02:17PM
(Score: 2) by LaminatorX on Monday April 07 2014, @03:02PM
When there's no more widespread inequality. Until then we should man-up and work on policing our own rather than fixating on the rare occasions when we get a little taste of being on the receiving end.
(Score: 1) by HiThere on Monday April 07 2014, @07:40PM
That will *require* unequal policies, because:
1) Men are typically more aggressive than are women.
2) Men are more strongly attracted to women without considering other factors than their degree of sexual display than are women attracted to men on the same basis.[*]
3) Men currently occupy most of the positions of power, and tend to foster compatriots into other positions of power as they become available.
etc. I could continue at length, but the first two are currently the most important, with 3 acting to perpetuate the current situation (beyond that inherent in the first two).
* This is because men are genetically programmed to desire sex with many partners, while women prefer to only have one partner. And I hold this to be true despite the clear evidence that a woman unsatisfied with her current partner will try for an improved replacement.
P.S.: Please note that these are only statistical generalizations, and counter examples can be found to every one of the points. I also left out the degree of pleasure that men get when describing women's sexual characteristics, and the discomfort that this causes typical women (who don't like seeing themselves so depicted). One could consider this a corollary of point 2.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 1) by velex on Thursday April 10 2014, @12:49PM
This thread is stale, but there's something that's been bothering me for some time now.
A programming position opened up a while back. I'm the only person who knows how to work with a proprietary system at my company, and the company has been wanting somebody else to be my "backup" for some time.
Two people were interested in the position. One person had experience tinkering with assembler and had written some games for a TI-83, and the other person had taken classes in C/C++ and had experience with HTML/CSS. Then something problematic happened.
My boss determined that one of those people was a bullshitter who actually had no skill and that the other was a good match for the position. My boss does not have any technical skill, so I'm not certain how that determination was made. The person who was the bullshitter was a cis woman, and the person who was supposedly qualified was a cis man.
Now, pause for a second. What gender do you think my boss is? Was that determination, made by somebody completely unable to evaluate technical skill, motivated by sexism?
Well, my boss is a cis woman.
Yet, somehow, TFA and other individuals I work with want to hold me accountable for her sexism.
How does that help?
(Score: 1) by Serial_Priest on Monday April 07 2014, @12:50PM
I see articles and complaints like these as a symptom of the larger Western pro-victimhood orientation. In my experience, students today are trained to search for grievances against some aspect of their identity. Such grievance is empowering, and to be "oppressed" gives a certain type of person a special pleasure and status.
The metaphor about "a thousand tiny paper cuts" was especially suggestive in this regard. A tiny paper cut is insignificant, unless you are (as noted above) looking for publicity or ways to not get along with your colleagues. It's more a personality issue than a gender issue, and you can usually recognize these "lawsuits waiting to happen" before they're hired.
Moreover, as noted by others, men and women will always have different psychological approaches to group dynamics. The preferred solution in the West - to force men to adopt feminine traits - may work from a corporate PR perspective, but it only masks the differences. The "tech world" (and world in general) would be a better place if jokes about "dongles" weren't viewed on par with actual sexual harassment and meaningful gender prejudice (assuming female incompetence, unwanted sexual advances, etc., the real wounds compared to the "paper cuts" mentioned elsewhere.)
(Score: 1) by SuggestiveLanguage on Monday April 07 2014, @08:19PM
And yet there are legions of female IT graduates with advanced degrees streaming out of Asian schools and straight into industry. Does that mean the majority of the world's population has a completely different biology than ours? The claim you advance begs skepticism.
(Score: 1) by Serial_Priest on Tuesday April 08 2014, @09:33PM
My point was that being quick to take offense is a personal problem, not a gender problem, and that everyone should avoid it. That men and women *in general* have different psychological tendencies rooted in biology doesn't mean they can't work together or to excel individually in a given field. Neither does it mean that we ought to pretend that everyone is the same (sense of humor, personality, etc.) or that different people ought not to show some tolerance for each others' (possibly irritating) differences, within reason. As to your specific example, I would speculate that the "searching for victimhood" mindset in American higher education doesn't have as much traction in, say, Chinese schools (which have their own pathologies - normalized academic dishonesty comes to mind - but that's another discussion.)
(Score: 1) by SuggestiveLanguage on Thursday April 10 2014, @01:09PM
The current science says your point is moot [sciencedaily.com].
(Score: 1) by Serial_Priest on Thursday April 10 2014, @08:54PM
Missing the point. The "problem" that the article suggested and that I was responding to isn't individual talent at mathematics or hard sciences, but rather individual hyper-sensitivity and social inflexibility. The broader conclusion I am drawing is that interpersonal flexibility is important for heterogenous groups. And I think it's fairly uncontroversial to observe that a group of men and women is not homogenous, and that, in general, there are gender-associated interpersonal styles.
(Score: 1) by SuggestiveLanguage on Friday April 11 2014, @12:55PM
That claim amounts to hand waiving away the central point: There is no correlative, cross-cultural relationship between the intellectual performance of men and women in STEM fields. Now you've shifted the argument to murky goal-post shifting to difficult to pin-down social constructs (which I have to read as difficult of falsify assertions) I will have to bow out of this discussion. Good day sir.
(Score: 1) by Serial_Priest on Friday April 11 2014, @07:27PM
I don't think we actually disagree. (Reread my comments re: intellectual performance; there is no "waiving" going on.) And yes, "social constructs" like the "sense of belonging" or "comfort" identified in TFA are hard to "falsify" or quantify. That's exactly my point. The article depicts efforts to reconstruct corporate policy on the basis of emotion and psychology. Such efforts are arguably problematic for a variety of reasons. Your comments on graduation statistics, STEM performance, etc. are interesting but have only a tangential relationship to the central problem, which, as I initially noted, are grievance-prone personalities and intolerance of group heterogeneity.
(Score: 3, Funny) by Dunbal on Monday April 07 2014, @12:59PM
These complaining women. They can a) walk away and bitch about it, which is what most of them do, or b) actually try to do things to fix it, which might improve things for future women. If you are in category "a" then you are part of the problem not the solution. The world is the way it is and bitching about it is not constructive. But hey, with time and effort all sorts of attitudes can be changed. If you don't care enough to put in the time and effort, then don't expect the world to change just because you want it to.
(Score: 1) by Whiteludafan on Monday April 07 2014, @03:03PM
I completely disagree. The problem isn't with women, its with men who don't act appropriately. Putting the onus on women is the wrong thing to do -- some men need to change their behavior.
(Score: 2) by Dunbal on Monday April 07 2014, @03:47PM
What I am saying is sitting around expecting men to change their behavior isn't going to do anything. Neither is complaining about it. Pro-active is the way to go.
(Score: 1) by rochrist on Tuesday April 08 2014, @01:09AM
What on earth is proactive in this context if complaining about it is out of bounds? Are they supposed to bring guns to work and open fire?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @01:51PM
LOL!
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @02:42PM
I have only known one female "Nerd", but she was a gamer and did nothing in the industry. I have only ever seen one female Systems Administrator, but I was only reporting an issue to her company (I did not work for them, their corporate wireless was secured with WEP). The few times I have encountered a female in my field, it freaks me out, I have no idea how to behave, or what to say around them. I am so used to all females I know having absolutely no technological knowledge, that when one comes around, I am just left dumbfounded and moronic.
Come to think of it, this happens with all areas where I am knowledgeable. I rarely run into someone with astronomy knowledge, but when I do, I find it hard to believe that they actually know any information. Soooo, apparently I am just screwed up. I blame the internet/my parents/Obama.
-Woods
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Monday April 07 2014, @07:09PM
their corporate wireless was secured with WEP
No, it wasn't.
(Score: 2) by zim on Monday April 07 2014, @03:12PM
For men it means treating the women like one of the men.
For women it means getting all the good perks men have. While still keeping all the perks of being female.
I want equal pay. But you still hold the door open for me or give up your seat on the bus. I want equal rights. But you still bow down to the power that is my sex.
And that right there is the problem. You wanted to be equal.
We gave you exactly that. But no. That's sexist because men are pigs and you don't like it.
It's simply an unwinable thing.
Men and women will always be seperate and different things. They dont think the same. Act the same. Work the same. Or behave the same. And trying to make them exactly equal at all times. Is only going to cause stupid problems. Like this article right here.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @04:27PM
I only give up my seat for my wife or the elderly, usually only hold the door open for my wife or again, elderly, and ONLY bow down to the power that is my wifes sex. She gets special treatment because she is special to me. I don't see the issue here, all I have to do for all other women in the world is not make crude jokes about their bodies in front of them. When I'm with my close friends if someone makes that sort of joke it's because we all know how everyone around us will take it. "Sharing" that kind of thing too loudly is crude and shows no class. So these two idiots got up on stage and did it, and you guys are defending them... why? What if they'd created a where's waldo-types app with a single black person and called it "Where's Blackie?", hey.. just free speech, nothing wrong with it, southern-boys will be southern-boys... uhh, right? No, didn't think so.
Women want to be treated equally, and you say well by making jokes about your tits I'm treating you equally, but that implies that the rest of the time you're making comments about what an attractive package your male co-workers have, and I doubt that to be true. If you do, you are either not ALSO making the tit jokes because your interests lie elsewhere, or you are much closer to that male friend than to the woman you upset. You could probably get away with a couple tit jokes with female friends you were close enough with for them to understand that you see more in them than a pair of tits.
(Score: 2) by useless on Monday April 07 2014, @03:51PM
From the article:
“It’s very dangerous for us as a community,†she said, “to say we will only work with people who share our beliefs.â€
From her Twitter feed:
"Mozilla feels like a similar case - CEO's values weren't aligned with the community he was tasked with inspiring."
(Score: 2, Insightful) by VitalMoss on Monday April 07 2014, @06:27PM
A Cigar is just a cigar.
It was a joke-A bad joke admittedly-but a joke nonetheless. To try and cry "A thousand papercuts" on something so blatantly stupid is a fault on the woman's fault, not the men who were trying to make a joke. It obviously wasn't real, and I don't see how this alienates women. If a woman made a joke app called "Whack-a-Man" I'm not going to cry foul, nor am I going to hold it against them. If women want into this workplace, they need to be able to assimilate into the environment. If they join a predominantly male team, expect that they will act like guys, whereas a man joining a predominantly female team will have to work with women who will act like women.
(Score: 1) by HiThere on Monday April 07 2014, @07:48PM
The proper quote is "Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar." (Actually, the proper quote would be in German...or perhaps even Viennese, a distinctly separate dialect.)
But given the context[*] Freud's students properly stared at it, and were properly dubious of his explanation.
So that's an apt example. I'm properly dubious about it just being a joke.
* The context was a lecture on sexual symbolism. Freud had just put down his cigar projecting over the edge of the desk towards the class.
Javascript is what you use to allow unknown third parties to run software you have no idea about on your computer.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 08 2014, @05:59AM
What is it with Jews and Diversity?
Pol is always right.