Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Edit: and lets not forget that it was lame European pacifist politicians that let Hitler get so far. Actually Hitler was much beloved in the United States, right until quite close to the start of the war. Seen as a champion against communism -- like other murderers were later, e.g. Pinochet.
That sounds ugly, do you happen to have good sources?
My positive experience as a woman in tech
211–220 of 403 posts
Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech
#212Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Edit: and lets not forget that it was lame European pacifist politicians that let Hitler get so far. Actually Hitler was much beloved in the United States, right until quite close to the start of the war. Seen as a champion against communism -- like other murderers were later, e.g. Pinochet.
That sounds ugly, do you happen to have good sources?
If Hitler didn't have such a hangup on Jews and facilitated monsters like Heydrich and Eichmann and Himmler, he'd be remembered much the same way we remember Napoleon - as someone who united the bulk of Europe for a time, but made the mistake of thinking invading Russia was a good idea.
I can rationalize why somebody struggling in the great depression would look up to the apparent prosperity that Hitler seemed to be bringing to Germany prior to the war.
Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech
#213Earlier quoted context omitted.
What you say about 'if the female is attracted' is incredibly wrong, and I can speak from personal experience (as a guy). It's NOT about attraction, its about being, well, creepy. I didn't find this out till I started hitting the gym more and gay men started hitting on me more often (I'm straight and happily married for the record, so it's not about me being attracted or not). Here's what I learned: If the guy is dir…
You didn't actually cubano's point. You're straight so you weren't attracted to any of the guys who approached you. cubano was saying it would be different if you were approached by a woman you were interested in. Perhaps the indirectness would seem coy instead of creepy. Then again, maybe not, but I'm not sure how to objectively measure this phenomenon. People are fickle and attractiveness is sort of a squishy conce…
You've got a point. I'm sure being physically attracted to someone enhances or diminishes the effect of their actual approach. Additionally, attractive people are more confident, and confident people tend to not behave in as many creepy behaviors.
That being said, the underlying theme of cubano's comment was blaming women for (shockingly) responding positively to flirty men who they find attractive, and responding negatively to flirty men who don't stop even after it's clear that the women just aren't into them. The subtext of cubano's comment was that it wasn't the guy's fault for being creepy, after all that was only because the woman wasn't attracted to him! He acted just the same! These guys think that you can evaluate the behavior independent of the context, which is of course ludicrous.
Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech
#214Earlier quoted context omitted.
Did you mean to imply that people who like to keep their sexuality personal are not sex positive? I'm pretty open about things, but I'm also open to the idea that people don't always appreciate sharing.
I concede I didn't really make my point clear due to poor wording. What I mean is: I don't think dick-jokes are inherently wrong for the workplace. I think context is the key. I worked at a Fortune-500 where they were absolutely not acceptable, but I tend towards places where they are acceptable. > Did you mean to imply that people who like to keep their sexuality personal are not sex positive? Heh, not at all. I'm a…
Fair enough.
> I don't think dick-jokes are inherently wrong for the workplace.
It's probably about as appropriate as discussing religion or politics. It's certainly possible, but there is a lot of risk that toes will get stepped on eventually, even if nobody says they were offended.
Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech
#215Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why is it generally okay to swear in front of men but generally not okay to swear in front of women? That's a pretty sexist, and condescending, point of view. Sure, there are gender differences. But I don't think "genetic vulnerability to profanity" is one of them.
> That's a pretty sexist, and condescending, point of view. Have you lived in the South before? Men are raised that it's a sign of respect to be on their best behaviors around ladies. Shouldn't this count as cultural diversity and be respected?
No, because it is cis-gendered, heteronormative white culture. They don't get a seat at the table to discuss grievances and microaggressions. They're all descendants of brutish, evil plantation slave-owners who should pay for the crimes of people gone to worm-food before they were so much as a twinkle in their father's eye.
:-)
Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech
#216Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
Is it sexism to make assumptions that are probabilistically correct? Consider the following procedure: 1) For a woman I don't know, I buy her frozen yogurt. 2) For a man I don't know, I buy him pizza. Now suppose my stereotypes are actually accurate - i.e., P(likes froyo > pizza|woman) > 0.5 and P(likes pizza > froyo | man) > 0.5. This procedure, based purely on stereotypes, will make everyone happier than flipping a…
I know you're just doing your normal schtick of incorrectly assuming that everyone else is stupid (obviously no one, including blowski, thinks "to not be sexist, you need to ignore information and make worse decisions"), but this time you have accidentally stumbled on an interesting point. I know you don't care one way or another, but for the sake of other readers, I'd like to point it out(and BTW, your specific example (taken from blowski) isn't really sexist as I don't quite see how it keeps women away from power, but that's beside the point):
> I need to ignore information and make worse decisions?
Ignoring information and making worse decisions are two different things. Or, more precisely, by not ignoring some statistical data you are ignoring other pieces of information, such as our understanding of social dynamics. Ignoring yesterday's information about the train's arrival time would only lead to a much better decision making if you want to get to the train on time and you know that the train runs on a different schedule on weekends and yesterday was a Sunday. A piece of data is mostly useless (and even misleading) if you don't know what model it samples. Statistical data on human behavior is usually very bad information because history shows us that preferences change all the time (except for obvious things, like that people want power and are afraid of death). In fact, if women preference for frozen yogurt over pizza stayed constant throughout the ages it would be the exception rather than the rule.
If you base your decision only on statistical information of the kind you describe, you're creating a conservative feedback loop. We now know that people's assumptions about others' behavior may affect the other's behavior, and so behaving in accordance with past behavior (because that's what most of your information is really about) simply perpetuates the current condition.
The information you shouldn't ignore is the deeper information that comes from the actual study of social dynamics. That information tells us that changing your behavior to not conform to past behavior would (and constantly does) change society's future state. This is where social dynamics diverge from physics and the train schedule. We can decide to affect them (not necessarily determine them, because it's very hard to predict the behavior of such a complex system, but our actions definitely change the dynamics; we know this for a fact).
The only question is, which way do you want to direct society: do you want to keep it as it is for as long as possible, or change it according to your values?
Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech
#217Technology itself isn't especially sexist. It's the swarm of VC-backed startups in Silicon Valley that has the sexism problem. The rest of the industry is much less sexist, far less ageist, and less brash in general.
The technology world is much bigger than the toxic unicorns that generate these sexual harassment cultures that make all of us look bad.
Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech
#218Don't see why this was flagged. It us a well known fact that a lot of women thrive in tech. I've said this to many times already but I've been told by women how much they enjoy working with men because we are so straightforward. Edit: that said, didn't vote at all on this one, but flagged to death? No.
>Don't see why this was flagged Because some people would rather silence people who disagree with their opinions rather than debate them or just learn to live ignore them if it's too hard.
It's not about disagreement. The poster put "scare quotes" around sexism, implying that the issue does not even exist or is worth discussing.
That's not an "opinion" it's an implicit way of saying that everyone talking about it is kind of dumb for even bringing it up.
EDIT: OH WOW, I HAVE BEEN DOWNVOTED. Which is not something I normally care about since I post quite controversial things anyway. But downvoted by the same people complaining about being "unfairly downvoted by others"? The hypocrisy of you.
Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech
#219Earlier quoted context omitted.
You didn't actually cubano's point. You're straight so you weren't attracted to any of the guys who approached you. cubano was saying it would be different if you were approached by a woman you were interested in. Perhaps the indirectness would seem coy instead of creepy. Then again, maybe not, but I'm not sure how to objectively measure this phenomenon. People are fickle and attractiveness is sort of a squishy conce…
You've got a point. I'm sure being physically attracted to someone enhances or diminishes the effect of their actual approach. Additionally, attractive people are more confident, and confident people tend to not behave in as many creepy behaviors. That being said, the underlying theme of cubano's comment was blaming women for (shockingly) responding positively to flirty men who they find attractive, and responding ne…
I think you're jumping to some conclusions there.
Most "creepy" men are socially awkward and can't do anything about it, or at least they haven't been able to do anything about it yet. To villainize them out of hand isn't helpful either. Some of them undoubtedly have social disorders, so coming down on them seems unfair as well. Maybe there are some people that are creepy on purpose, but I suspect that is a very small number of incidents.
People have a responsibility to learn how to respectfully approach potential partners, but the rules on that are vague and there's no authoritative resource on what they are. But there's absolutely a bottom line, that we should aspire to make sure everyone feels safe and respected.
But, on the flip side of the coin, people have some responsibility in learning how to learn how to reject someone clearly but respectfully. Walking to the other side of the room and talking to your friends about the creepy guy is literally the stuff of other peoples' nightmares.
Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech
#220Earlier quoted context omitted.
> That's a pretty sexist, and condescending, point of view. Have you lived in the South before? Men are raised that it's a sign of respect to be on their best behaviors around ladies. Shouldn't this count as cultural diversity and be respected?
No, because it is cis-gendered, heteronormative white culture. They don't get a seat at the table to discuss grievances and microaggressions. They're all descendants of brutish, evil plantation slave-owners who should pay for the crimes of people gone to worm-food before they were so much as a twinkle in their father's eye. :-)
I realize I need some neologisms.