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posted by LaminatorX on Monday April 07 2014, @08:51AM   Printer-friendly
from the Don't-be-a-jerk! dept.

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?

 
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  • (Score: 5, Insightful) by Angry Jesus on Monday April 07 2014, @09:30AM

    by Angry Jesus (182) on Monday April 07 2014, @09:30AM (#27347)

    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.

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  • (Score: 2) by wonkey_monkey on Monday April 07 2014, @09:50AM

    by wonkey_monkey (279) on Monday April 07 2014, @09:50AM (#27354) Homepage

    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

      by wonkey_monkey (279) on Monday April 07 2014, @10:01AM (#27360) Homepage

      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

        by Grishnakh (2831) on Monday April 07 2014, @01:46PM (#27467)

        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

          by rochrist (3737) on Monday April 07 2014, @06:24PM (#27653)

          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

        by LaminatorX (14) <laminatorxNO@SPAMgmail.com> on Monday April 07 2014, @02:52PM (#27529)

        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

      by FatPhil (863) <pc-soylentNO@SPAMasdf.fi> on Monday April 07 2014, @12:43PM (#27426) Homepage
      Well, here's some of the context:
      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

    by Anonymous Coward on Monday April 07 2014, @12:41PM (#27424)

    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.