Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment • Hacker News Board

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#121

Post by aphistic » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 3:57 PM UTC

This reminds me of back in University ~10 years ago. In one of my Java courses we had a female professor and one female student. The female student ended up dropping the course within the first month not from harassment by her fellow male students but because the professor was embarrassing/harassing her in almost every lecture by bringing up the fact that there was a female student in the course.

As a side note, that same professor said at one point during the course that males were keeping females out of tech by using terms and ideas such as Queues and Sockets. It was an interesting year...

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#122

Post by propater » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 3:59 PM UTC

burgerbrain wrote: post #104

rickmb wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Harassment goes well beyond trolling, and so does the specific targeting of women.

Whether or not it compares to standard trolling, it still is trolling. You're not going to fix it by complaining.

We can fix it to some extent through public condemnation, raised awareness and demonstration of support to the victims of this kind of behaviour.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#123

Post by div » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 4:01 PM UTC

Aloisius wrote: post #117

Can someone please tell me why quitting the tech community would stop someone from harassing you because you are a woman? If anything, you'd think bringing it up to the community and get help tracking down the person would work better. That or public ridicule/shaming. Something proactive. I mean, isn't feminism about fighting back against these degenerates?

Not everyone wants to go through this kind of battle against an anonymous adversary.

I think she has the right not to have her decision to quit questioned. Just because she was the one being harassed does not mean she is suddenly responsible for bettering women's situation in tech.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#124

Post by floatboth » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 4:02 PM UTC

Aloisius wrote: post #117

Can someone please tell me why quitting the tech community would stop someone from harassing you because you are a woman? If anything, you'd think bringing it up to the community and get help tracking down the person would work better. That or public ridicule/shaming. Something proactive. I mean, isn't feminism about fighting back against these degenerates?

She quit a tech job, not the geek femininsm community.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#125

Post by yummyfajitas » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 4:02 PM UTC

floatboth wrote: post #120

yummyfajitas wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Would you be OK if people often called you an abuser of women? MikeeUSA is not (as far as we know) an abuser of women. He is a person who sends unpleasant nonthreatening emails while peacefully sitting in his home. Your attempt to conflate people who initiate violence and people who express unpleasant opinions is dishonest. Further, you don't have any "right to be happy". No one does. You have the right to pursue hap…

Are you really sure they're not threatening? Also, harassment goes far beyond trolling.

If threats were included, I'm assuming that Bayley would have mentioned it and the police would not have dismissed it as nonthreatening.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#126

Post by div » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 4:04 PM UTC

maximusprime wrote: post #55

bigB wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If that person kept coming back again and again with the same or similar comments, would you see the threat, this is what is happening here if you care to actually read the articles

I do have sympathy, but I think it's pretty sad to call the 'sexist' card when it's clearly just a case of a troll. If you ignore him, he'll move on to someone else soon enough. It looks from the article that he wasn't being ignored at all.

It's so easy these days to be a raging sexist and play the 'troll' card.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#127

Post by floatboth » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 4:06 PM UTC

maximusprime wrote: post #74

matt_yoho wrote: post #39

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"I am honestly surprised that she let her real email address be publicly available anyway" This is called "blaming the victim". It is bad, and you should consider researching it.

The point is, if your email address is public, expect copious amounts of spam, abuse, scams, and so on. If you get offended by random emails, don't have a public email address.

My email address is public and I don't get any of these. Maybe just because I'm male?

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#128

Post by ck2 » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 4:09 PM UTC

Having been stalked, I can assure you there are plenty of borderline mentally ill out there.

I would never put even my first name or my city online anymore, anywhere.

Never underestimate the stupidity of people out there with nothing better to do.

I'm sorry to see the brave ones out there are still going through this these days.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#129

Post by prakashk » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 4:09 PM UTC

maximusprime wrote: post #70

scott_s wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Excuse me? At what point do you stop calling someone a "troll" and start calling them a "stalker"? Perhaps the harassment she received was so much that changing her whole life greatly improves her quality of life. Is she still "just supporting negative stereotypes" then?

I think the point is that men have to put up with such shit all the time online.

As CJefferson sain in another comment on this post (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=3163613):

The harassment women get is much, much worse than men.

Me and my wife are both computer scientists, and have both given talks at many conferences. My wife and our female friends consistently get much more, and much worse, harassment than me and our male friends. There is no comparison, and over time I've seen it grind several women down to the point where they just give up (fortunately not my wife yet).

I think everyone should help to reduce the often hostile attitude in IT and FOSS in particular, and a fairly obvious part of that is to stop treating women so badly. Just treating them like everyone else would be a fine start.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#130

Post by propater » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 4:09 PM UTC

maximusprime wrote: post #26

DiabloD3 wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

MikeeUSA frequently states dumb shit like "oh, women deserve to be raped since the day they first bleed because this is what God created women for" and other shit. He does it purely for the sake of trolling, and people periodically bite the trollbait. Is this illegal? No. Should he be beaten with in an inch of his life? Yes. Is that going to happen outside of a prison? Probably not, no one is quite sure of his exact…

He's not the problem though. The problem is people being offended by it or taking the bait. Ban, ignore, report, shun etc... Setting up a geek feminist movement is pretty much the worst thing you could do if you wanted the abuse to stop.

If you want to change the statu quo, you have to speak up. Saying the solution to sexism is to shut up is not helping to solve the problem (and there is a problem, I witnessed it several times in real life, it is not just a "troll problem".)