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Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

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Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#101

Post by ecmascript »

fhood wrote: post #53
ecmascript wrote: post #4

Cry me a river, the overwhelming majority of sexism in the IT-industry is towards men and white men in particular. Men also don't get the privilege of getting any media outcry or changes for the sexism against them. Just to give a few examples on top of my head: There has been no conferences that has been [1] shut down or postponed [2] because of the skin color or sex of the speakers. It has definately been so for me…

I'm not here to pile on, I just want to understand why this point of view is so common. I have always felt incredibly blessed by my circumstances (straight white male). Would you really rather be some other gender and/or race? Do you truly believe it would make life easier?

> Would you really rather be some other gender and/or race? Do you truly believe it would make life easier?

Yes, I do believe so. I've had jobs where women earned more just because of their gender. They were inexperienced as fuck, needed help with basic tasks and still got paid more.

Women can get an IT-job because they are women, men can't.

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#102

Post by ecmascript »

dangus wrote: post #12
ecmascript wrote: post #4

Cry me a river, the overwhelming majority of sexism in the IT-industry is towards men and white men in particular. Men also don't get the privilege of getting any media outcry or changes for the sexism against them. Just to give a few examples on top of my head: There has been no conferences that has been [1] shut down or postponed [2] because of the skin color or sex of the speakers. It has definately been so for me…

This reminds me of an incident on a bus recently. This one white guy told a black guy trying to get on that there was no more room on the bus, which was generally true, but it could have definitely looked like (from the tone and wording) that the white guy was talking down to him. The black guy got very upset and claimed that the white man wouldn’t have said this to a white guy, and wouldn’t have said this if the bus…

I am not saying there is more sexism towards men forever, but right now in the IT-industry.

I don't care about what happened 200-300 years ago, I care about what happens today. I have stopped listen to women complain in media about sexism because people never seem to give a shit when sexism strikes men. Just as people don't care about racism against whites. It's the same kind of shit ideology and I want to escalate that. Just read the responses to my post, many are claiming that there can't be any sexism against men or racism against white people. It's so unbelievably stupid it's hard to actually comprehend that these people actually are capable of being programmers. Most of them are probably white and men as well. Such self-hatred is just incredible to watch.

As you can see from the sources I pointed out, some of them even thinks it's a good thing. This disgusts me and makes me not care about sexism against women.

In your example, I think that the white is 100% right and he is correct in saying he's not racist. He isn't guilty of what other white people do. I completely disagree with your kind of thinking in other words.

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#103

Post by guitarbill »

wpietri wrote: post #69
ecmascript wrote: post #4

Cry me a river, the overwhelming majority of sexism in the IT-industry is towards men and white men in particular. Men also don't get the privilege of getting any media outcry or changes for the sexism against them. Just to give a few examples on top of my head: There has been no conferences that has been [1] shut down or postponed [2] because of the skin color or sex of the speakers. It has definately been so for me…

Sorry, but you don't quite understand what sexism is. A quick review is in order. For hundreds of years, women were in effect property of men. They would go from being controlled by their fathers to their husbands. Their legal rights were narrowly circumscribed, and their practical rights were even smaller. This is on the decline, but the changes are quite recent. Women couldn't vote until 1920. It wasn't until 1974…

With you for most of this. But saying

> So no, there's no such thing as "sexism against men" because even if non-men had sufficient bias, they don't have the power.

is obviously a horrendous over-generalisation, based on otherwise rational argument you laid out. It's just that it's much, much rarer (especially when we're talking about IT). But the pendulum swinging too far the other way isn't going to help society, either.

The reason why I'm even bothering to call this out is that this attitude does everybody a disservice. By all means, fight sexism when you see it, in any form. Treat all people as equal. Avoid lumping them into groups and labelling them. Maintaining that one group deserves special treatment seems equally patronising and misguided, whether that's in a negative or positive way.

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#105

Post by UncleMeat »

charliesharding wrote: post #88
akuchling wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point of "privilege" is not that all white men have lives of luxury and pleasure, but that society is arranged so that people of type X get cut a certain amount of slack that non-X people don't get. Disabled white men certainly have their own struggles; disabled black men would have even more struggles.

> Disabled white men certainly have their own struggles; disabled black men would have even more struggles. This is a bizarre take. It sounds like you're saying that no matter what the individual circumstances are, race is the ultimate decider of one's struggle. It could be argued that this is the exact line of thinking that leads to "systemic racism". It's surprising how prevalent this view is, on HN especially. Not…

That's not the conclusion here. The conclusion is that there are many axes of oppression and one does not invalidate the other. The kind of thinking you describe was more common in the 60s and 70s but has fallen out of favor after the rise of black feminism and intersectional analysis.

Race does not bind more tightly than other aspects. Ableism exists. But the existence of white people who suffer in a myriad of ways does not negate the existence of white privilege in places like the US.

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#106

Post by throwanem »

dudul wrote: post #42
komali2 wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Turn on the ability to view flagged comments and scroll down.

So 1 comment with 17 negative responses in a full thread of 36 comments is "the majority of the community? That's kind of the part that really surprised me. That it exists, OK, but "the majority" in this thread? I feel like on the contrary, in the scope of this thread, it is a tiny minority. Edit: Since I can't reply to the comment below. By "17 negative responses" I meant negative to the one "bad" comment.

17 out of 53 is just a hair shy of 33%. That's not "tiny".

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#107

Post by mathattack »

devchix wrote: post #24
Traster wrote: post #6

>“I felt a wave of relief wash over me when I remembered that I worked at a large company, one with a sizable human resources department,” I feel like someone needs to run an education campaign on what HR is and who it works for. HR is there to protect the business. They aren't there as some moral arbiter. If you reported sexual harassment to HR you are going to be part of an equation - is it better for the business…

This aphorism that HR is there to protect the company -- I hear it all the time and it's terribly cynical, while also probably true. Why must it be this way; asked another way, why do we accept that it must be this way, that every time we engage HR it must be with the understanding that they are the adversary. Why go to HR at all, why even have HR, why not fold it all in the legal counsel's office? Why can't HR be wh…

In many cases they do roll up to legal. HR folks who think they are there for the junior employees get burned out when they get overruled by the senior ones. Perhaps it shouldn’t be, but that’s why it is this way and whistleblowers are so rare. Perhaps also a competitive advantage for an employer that does protect the individuals.

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#108

Post by Papirola »

komali2 wrote: post #41
wavepruner wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"the status quo is still in 2020 that a baby born in America white and male is among the luckiest babies in history." Millions of these "luckiest" babies are suffering from crippling illnesses, yet they are treated like they are awash with privilege solely because they are white and male. This is racism and sexism. Disabled white men are not privileged.

They're certainly more privileged than disabled black babies. Take any example you like. Poor. Genetic disease. Whatever. Stick black on that baby and you've just made their lives another degree harder.

non-American here: how would that extra hardship manifest? and wouldn't that be illegal?

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#109

Post by wpietri »

guitarbill wrote: post #103
wpietri wrote: post #69

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sorry, but you don't quite understand what sexism is. A quick review is in order. For hundreds of years, women were in effect property of men. They would go from being controlled by their fathers to their husbands. Their legal rights were narrowly circumscribed, and their practical rights were even smaller. This is on the decline, but the changes are quite recent. Women couldn't vote until 1920. It wasn't until 1974…

With you for most of this. But saying > So no, there's no such thing as "sexism against men" because even if non-men had sufficient bias, they don't have the power. is obviously a horrendous over-generalisation, based on otherwise rational argument you laid out. It's just that it's much, much rarer (especially when we're talking about IT). But the pendulum swinging too far the other way isn't going to help society, e…

No, it's not an overgeneralization. Sexism is a societal system of power, like capitalism or communism or racism.

It's possible to have anti-male bias, of course. It's also possible to have biased anti-male action in limited circumstances. E.g., it could be that a woman might buy a gun go on a calculated anti-male killing spree, the way that men so often do to women.

But it's not possible to have anti-male sexism in our society because men are a dominant group here. Being anti-sexist in a society dominated by men means dismantling the system that gives men unequal power.

(As a side note, I understand that sometimes men use "sexism" to mean anti-male bias, the same way white people use "racism" to mean anti-white bias. I'm using them here in a technical sense, the one used by most people who study this professionally. Common terms are often wrong in a technical sense. E.g., the way people talk about how much "memory" their computer has, or the many things people mean by "energy". That can be fine when speaking casually, but it also can obscure what's really going on.)

Re: Why Susan Fowler blew the whistle on sexism at Uber

#110

Post by charliesharding »

UncleMeat wrote: post #105
charliesharding wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Disabled white men certainly have their own struggles; disabled black men would have even more struggles. This is a bizarre take. It sounds like you're saying that no matter what the individual circumstances are, race is the ultimate decider of one's struggle. It could be argued that this is the exact line of thinking that leads to "systemic racism". It's surprising how prevalent this view is, on HN especially. Not…

That's not the conclusion here. The conclusion is that there are many axes of oppression and one does not invalidate the other. The kind of thinking you describe was more common in the 60s and 70s but has fallen out of favor after the rise of black feminism and intersectional analysis. Race does not bind more tightly than other aspects. Ableism exists. But the existence of white people who suffer in a myriad of ways…

> The conclusion is that there are many axes of oppression and one does not invalidate the other

Yet this is the inevitable consequence of intersectional analysis.. It describes a way to calculate value discrepancy of opinions based off group membership of the opinion holder. This is just an attempt to overcorrect the "axes of oppression" from sins of the past. The solution moving forward should not be to sin in the opposite direction - this will just create backlash (re: Charlottesville). It should be centered around empowering individuals and telling people that they can achieve anything because they can. Telling people that they are victims is a great way to ruin them. Everyone is a victim to one thing or another. The answer isn't to dwell and blame your victimhood or oppressors, the answer is to go out there and achieve.

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