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: 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?