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My positive experience as a woman in tech

lea.verou.me

141–150 of 403 posts

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#141
post #115

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you want to talk about the type of sexism also often refereed to as "institutional sexism" But I was not talking about institutional sexism. Sexism can be individual (and often is), but unlike misogyny it does not imply disdain towards women; simply behavior (that can feel neutral or even positive) that results in increasing the imbalance of power. > But "sexism" is an overloaded term whether you want it to be o…

You can't claim that physicists' definition of energy is unclear merely because it is also used colloquially to mean other things No, but I also don't see lab scientists bustle when they're in a conversation where it's used colloquially.

I didn't bustle. A commenter expressed confusion about the meaning of the term, and I provided the common academic definition. Others are welcome to list the full range of colloquial uses.

I would, however, note that a physicist would bustle if someone tried to use the word energy with a different meaning when trying to understand a physical process. In this case, the only way to understand what it is that feminists want when it comes to sexism, is to understand what we mean when we use the word, which is also its academic meaning. For example, if you think feminists are against sexism (which we are), but also understand sexism to mean "treating men and women differently", then you'd be completely confused as to our goals. Perhaps you'd think that our goal is to erase the differences between the sexes. That would indeed be a silly goal, and you may be right in getting angry that intelligent people think such rubbish. While in fact, our goal is very clear: correct the gross imbalance of power between the sexes. To achieve that, we seek to uncover the mechanism which perpetuates it, which we call sexism. Thankfully, the academic community has been studying sexism for a few decades, and we now know a thing or two about it.

No reason to be angry. In fact, if you understood what feminists mean when we say sexism (which hopefully you now do), I think you'd be far less angry.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#142
Some people command respect, others get respect without asking because they deserve it, some are ignored one way or the other, being kind of neutral persons, and some get disrespect for a lot of little things they are not aware of, and some get outright scorn because they deserve it and know it. This has nothing to with gender.

As a male, I've always tried to be someone who deserved respect. My first impression of Lea Verou is that she deserves respect and possibly something in her bearing gives off the impression that she commands it (that last part is pure speculation to make my point.)

I've noticed a lot of complainers of either gender aren't getting respect for the little things they are not very conscious of (and this is another reason for the disrespect - little self-awareness,) things like being late, doing sloppy work, gossiping, being greedy or careless with common resources, making inappropriate comments, and so on. I'm not saying there isn't gender discrimination, but I feel there are other factors that should be considered as well.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#143
post #96
post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That's the general theme of public discourse... Americans killing Muslims in Iraq are "soldiers", wherears Muslims killing Americans in the US are "terrorists". Americans aren't killing Muslims in Iraq just because they are muslims. That's a straw-man. > wherears Muslims killing Americans in the US are "terrorists" (Some) Muslim extremists certainly are killing americans because of what they are and what they belie…

> Americans aren't killing Muslims in Iraq just because they are muslims. Then s/Muslims/Iraqis/. But then, what about Palestine, Syria, Lybia, ...? On the other hand, I'm sure they aren't killing Americans because they're Americans either... but because they the agressors. > They go kill random civilians in the streets. What would you do, if a technologically-superior country was killing your friends, family, childr…

> Wait, more than 150k civilians were killed in Iraq. I don't recall seeing that many war-crime trials.

By who? The vast majority were killed by various insurgent and terrorist groups, and those groups are still killing thousands of people a year.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#144
post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Didn't downvote but... > Edit: Looks like I've hit a very sore point... What you said is wrong because you use wrong words. Try changing soldier to hero and we almost agree although I would still hold that attacking random civilians is bad anyway.

> you use wrong words Intentionally, that's the point! It's absurd that some words are "right" and some are "wrong", when they essentially mean the same thing - a murderer killing others , for some definition of others .

Absolutely not absurd. First lets agree that bot all soldiers are good and just and that you can fight for a good cause without using a uniform.

That said :

> essentially mean the same thing - a murderer killing others, for some definition of others.

There is a again a massive difference between a good cop ending a life to save others and a brutal robber ending a life to bet away after a robbery.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#145
post #121
post #27

Here is my personal experience with the fringes of this issue over a lifetime of watching it play out before my eyes... If a female is attracted to the guy, things he says or does are considered "cute", "flirtatious", and/or "interesting". If not, the same actions are often considered "creepy", "jerkish", and yes even "sexist". I think its just human nature to perceive things in this way, and since women grow up in s…

My experience is different. This meme gets repeated a lot on the internet, but it jars with the stories I hear from my friends. Yes, someone not attractive is more likely to be considered creepy - but that's correlation, not causation. Being creepy is extremely unattractive! An example, which is by no means an outlier: A friend of mine met a man. The man is very attractive, in the particular way that the woman in thi…

It's not a rule, just a general guideline. I don't think people are arguing that nothing an attractive person does can be construed as creepy; rather, some things that would be unacceptable as an unattractive person can be acceptable as an attractive one.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#146
post #22
post #3

Am I the only one who thinks "sexism" is overrated? It's misinterpreted by so many and I'm not sure I understand what it means most of the time. I think humans are prejudice about so many things that it's hard to keep track and "give a name" to every single prejudice. Obviously "sex" does set us apart much more strongly than, say, race, or probably any other thing, so I really find it normal that there are stereotype…

Exactly. Sexism is not identical to misogynism. Where the latter is about being nasty, sexism is believing something about somebody solely based on their gender. So if I assume you don't like pizza and football because you're female, so instead buy you frozen yoghurt, I'm being sexist even if it's with the nicest of intentions. We're all human and we all make mistakes, but sometimes people blow those mistakes out of…

> So if I assume you don't like pizza and football because you're female, so instead buy you frozen yoghurt, I'm being sexist

I don't think so (if anyone thinks I'm wrong, I'd like to hear your thoughts).

I think to be sexist, it must be (1) based on gender and (2) assume something _disparaging_ about the individual.

Getting them yoghurt might get you laughed at for being silly, but it doesn't seem sexist to me. Assuming they might need some additional explanation of the algorithm you're discussing because they are female (or male) is sexist.

Thoughts?

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#147
>I would rather not call out sexist behavior ten times, than wrongly accuse someone of it once.

Story time!

An admin at work complimented me for having a cute girlfriend. Two of the younger women claimed that objectified women. On the other extreme, the CEO made jokes in the hallway about having sex with other people's wives, but no one ever complained.

Sexism from management is too often ignored. I suspect people rather nitpick minor issues with peers and subordinates then tackle real problems against people in power.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#148
post #27

Here is my personal experience with the fringes of this issue over a lifetime of watching it play out before my eyes... If a female is attracted to the guy, things he says or does are considered "cute", "flirtatious", and/or "interesting". If not, the same actions are often considered "creepy", "jerkish", and yes even "sexist". I think its just human nature to perceive things in this way, and since women grow up in s…

> If a female is attracted to the guy, things he says or does are considered "cute", "flirtatious", and/or "interesting".

This is NOT a female thing but a human thing where the perceptions of your interlocutor affect or cloud considerably your interpretation of his/her talk. So, when a word is said that under normal circumstances would be interpreted as neutral or good, the other party of the conversation could interpret it based on a lot of factors such as mood, feelings, prejudices, subconscious content etc and all of this complicates the communication process.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#149
post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Those are not mutually exclusive things though, presumably they want to be approached by non-creepy guys (ie ones they happen to like, by whatever measure). I guess this is just how the human mating game goes. We try to make some things make sense intellectually even though there's probably deeper subconscious and chemical messaging going on.

It would be nice if they were a bit more honest and switched creepy/non-creepy with unattractive/attractive.

Humanity would be more nice if everyone would be more honest :)

Everyone has a bunch of biases they're more or (mostly) less aware of, thus https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predictably_Irrational

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#150
post #27

Here is my personal experience with the fringes of this issue over a lifetime of watching it play out before my eyes... If a female is attracted to the guy, things he says or does are considered "cute", "flirtatious", and/or "interesting". If not, the same actions are often considered "creepy", "jerkish", and yes even "sexist". I think its just human nature to perceive things in this way, and since women grow up in s…

In other words, the difference between "creepy" and "adorable" exists entirely within the mind of the person receiving the attention.
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