171–180 of 345 posts
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She quit a tech job, not the geek femininsm community.
Yes, but why would that stop this person from targeting her? If anything, her geek feministing makes her a much bigger target. I guess I don't follow the logic unless she believes this person is someone she worked with and even then, I don't see someone who is truly obsessed from stopping.
She's not giving up.
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....I don't know how to fix the problem. Will empathizing more fix it? If so, i'll empathize like crazy. But I seriously doubt it will create change. Instead I try to point out what I see as some of the contributing factors to the problem in this particular case. I'm sorry I can't fix sexism, and i'm sorry i'm not being humbling and emotive enough to express that I find sexism wrong. But I don't agree that I am illus…
empathy will fix it. you are illustrative of the problem because you are a) ignorant of what harassment is really like b) apparently unwilling to imagine it and c) BLAMING THE HARASSED
In my first point I note how people who give talks are subject to attack because they draw attention to themselves. I note how there are men (men who I know personally) who have been attacked as a result. I posit that this kind of behavior is not solely due to sexism.
In my second point I equate running a geek feminist website with running any website wherein people who hate the idea of the website will send hate mail. I posit that one should expect that people who hate you will send you hate mail.
In my third point I am noting that you don't have to quit the whole tech industry because giving talks is not the only thing in the tech industry.
My fourth point is the closest to 'blame' that I get. There's no sugar-coating it, i'm being heartless and cold here. But I don't blame her for not wanting to deal with assholes all day. I suggest that she learn to deal with these people rather than run away from them, but I guess that's not something a lot of people will accept.
My fifth point isn't even related to her really. I just find it super annoying when people try to speculate about something based on anecdotal evidence ("Because of the small sample, there is a larger chance that it may be true but unreliable due to cherry-picked or otherwise unrepresentative of typical cases.")
Second, empathy alone will not fix it.
You can not "win" against sexism by simply wishing it would go away or agreeing that it's completely unfair and unwarranted. Racism didn't completely stop in America, ever, and it only got a little better after people fought and bled to be treated as equals. They had to get right in their attackers' faces and say, Fuck You, I'm Not Leaving. Same for women's suffrage. Empathizing alone doesn't fix anything but your own conscience. You want to stop sexism in tech? Make it stop. Also, before you point the finger at me and tell me I should be the first person to fight their battles, keep in mind that nobody ever won freedom from persecution until they themselves stood up to defend themselves.
Also, I don't need to have experienced harassment personally to have an opinion about it. I'm not black but I think it's really fucked up that black people get treated far worse than I do because i'm white. Amazingly enough, even though I find racism absolutely repugnant, I don't believe every black person who gets fucked with is purely because of racism. I also don't believe every single woman who is fucked with is just because of sexism.
I can't believe I just wrote all that because of a troll. I say sexism is fucked up, and this guy blames me for sexism in the tech industry. Oh well. I should have just ignored you from the beginning.
I read a private blog of a lady in the games industry, and the level of ordure and harassment she gets is simply unbelievable. It's well beyond anything in the 'people are jerks, suck it up' level. I can well believe Skud got sick of it and is doing other things with her life. I'm going to come right out and say it - if you, or someone you know - has a penchant for writing these sorts of harassing emails, it needs to…
Am I oblivious, or maybe a different sub-industry?
Another day, another HN thread about misogyny and sexism in STEM, and another sampling of "hackers" who can't seem to agree 100% that sexism, harassment, and stereotyping are categorically wrong. It's not even the overt sexism that is the problem. It's the educated troglodytes making up bullshit like "civilization has always been like this" and "she invited harassment with such bold feminism" and "this just proves wo…
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It's because they don't intend to be offensive. For example: in the US, holding up two fingers is cool. In the UK, it's offensive. So one group of people can have a set of behaviors that another group finds offensive, but the first group has no idea why the second group is offended because they don't intend offense. I know there are a lot of actually misogynistic people in tech. I'm only talking about the guys who "d…
If you hold up two fingers in the UK and someone tells you it is offensive, you stop doing it. Despite the numerous people who try to educate the guys who "don't get it", they continue their immature ways. I'm not going to give them a free pass.
Wouldn't this be more analogous to people from the UK coming into a typically US-centric area and complaining about US people holding up two fingers?
I agree that it's wrong, but change will probably be slow...
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If you hold up two fingers in the UK and someone tells you it is offensive, you stop doing it. Despite the numerous people who try to educate the guys who "don't get it", they continue their immature ways. I'm not going to give them a free pass.
> If you hold up two fingers in the UK and someone tells you it is offensive, you stop doing it. Wouldn't this be more analogous to people from the UK coming into a typically US-centric area and complaining about US people holding up two fingers? I agree that it's wrong, but change will probably be slow...
A couple of points if I may: 1. If you speak at conferences, especially about a non-technical subject like "women in FOSS projects" (which is more likely to get sexists riled up), you are going to get unwanted attention. Pretty much every speaker who speaks on a controversial, or non-technical, or just media-glamorized topic is going to get harassed - if not hacked. It happens all the time to men and i'm sure it happ…
If the guy isn't posing a physical threat, suck it up and ignore it Judging by a lot of the comments on here, this seems to be what really makes people here upset. That she didn't just 'suck it up.' That she's complaining. A cardinal sin for men, since we get much more pressure to show that we can 'suck it up', are tough enough not to let things like this get to us, etc. The thing is, women are probably going to feel…
Somebody sends her an email that she doesn't like to her publicly available email address and she decides to quit working in the community? I hate to say this, but attitudes like this will only make the situation worse. Anybody, anywhere can write an email. You really shouldn't take them to seriously. I am honestly surprised that she let her real email address be publicly available anyway. It's important for communit…
Martin Luther King Jr stood up for his rights and was shot. As we all are, I am very saddened by his loss. However I think that this brings up a very important point. If you stand up for an unpopular belief, you can expect abuse.
Should you expect abuse? Should you be forced to endure unpleasantries because you expect the same rights as any one else? No, but you will receive it. And if you are really committed to your cause you will stand up for yourself anyway. Reading about the protests of the past. When people stood up against the war in Vietnam and participated in legal protests they were beaten by police. By police. I would like to let that sink in for a moment.
So forgive me for expressing my disappointment when an activist decides to back down from their cause. And not because she was beaten by police or because she was beaten by people with opposing viewpoints. Not because she was shot. But because she was receiving emails, comments on a blog, and prank phone calls.
Maybe I am a hypocrite because I have done nothing. I am. But I still look at something like this and say to myself "I wish someone would stand up for those rights." I mean really stand up for them. Not just run away because of a few bad eggs. I don't think we can expect change otherwise.
Last year at FooCamp I went to a panel about women in tech (I believe I was the only guy) for two reasons: 1) I have no qualms about offending people if I feel my point is valid, and in fact enjoy being in situations where I risk such things (I find it incredibly rewarding to have meaningful discussions about things that are considered taboo). 2) To find out what the problem was Let me clarify #2: I didn't see a prob…
Imagine I asked you to write a page of code to do some specific thing, but told you not to run it. Then I say: Go find as many bugs in your code as you can. You come back with none, saying you've never really noticed bugs in your software. There are two possibilities:
1) Your code is naturally bug free. You are just that special.
2) You stink at finding bugs.
In this case, you're saying you don't see any bugs in your gender programming. How certain are you that #1 is true?