SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
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?
(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??