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

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#261

Post by drhayes9 » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 9:06 PM UTC

peterwwillis wrote: post #237

drhayes9 wrote: post #182

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your first two points are classic victim-blaming. "You are going to get unwanted attention." Well, yes: there are assholes out there. But you seem to be implying that she is at fault for attracting the assholes, rather than saying there shouldn't be assholes in the first place. We should focus on rooting out the assholes rather than throwing up our hands and saying there's nothing we can do. I admit there's a fine li…

See here ( http://hackerne.ws/item?id=3164269 ) on why i'm not victim-blaming. I am not trying to imply anything. I'm simply pointing out what potentially motivates sexist assholes. I only advocate a "grin and bear it" attitude when it comes to getting trolled on the internet in relation to publishing material you know some people will disagree with greatly. You can not wipe out sexists completely just like you can't…

Those are good points and I'm glad you explained them further. It's the expectation that you talk about that we should be careful about. It's too easy to answer, "What did you expect?" as a dismissal, rather than talking about the real issue: bigotry.

So, given that there are sexist assholes out there willing to harass women, what are some options beyond tolerance and turning-the-other-stupid-cheek? I'm not advocating violence, I'm thinking more like sexist asshole outreach, or something. I dunno.

Beyond commenting on these stories as they come up, what can we do as a community? Education (starting with "sexism exists and happens near you"), open dialogue with less fear of reprisal, etc? Like, "I may be a sexist and I'd like to talk to other people willing to understand what I'm trying to sort out"?

These stories are like toxic waste on all sides: sexism and racism are touchy stuff that I think most people don't even want to talk about and, if they do, are afraid that they're saying it wrong.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#262

Post by efsavage » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 9:09 PM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #205

erikpukinskis wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's great that you're not the worst offender, but all people commit acts of sexism. All people. People who have been victims of sexism often do it less, but sometimes respond by paying sexism forward. People who put in effort to understand sexism tend to do it less. But we all do it, even the most dedicated of us. Imagine I asked you to write a page of code to do some specific thing, but told you not to run it. Then…

"all people commit acts of sexism." I have troubles understanding that, do you have citations or examples?

You wouldn't be asking for examples if he was a woman!

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#263

Post by tptacek » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 9:15 PM UTC

ladyada wrote: post #257

tptacek wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both. Very common problem: interviewers asking questions about who was going to take care of the kids. Actually happened: an interviewer displayed a picture of himself not wearing pants. That interview was in Chicago; I was in Michigan at the time, thankfully. I see no correlation between company size and occurrence of this stuff. I have friends who happen to be both notoriously successful in the tech field and femal…

""I have friends who happen to be both notoriously successful in the tech field and female. They are all extremely touchy about this subject. They are touchy because crazy shit like this happens to them all the time."" This is very true. unbelievable crazy batshit stuff happens to me -all the time-. Like "Police report filed" crazy. Like "I no longer open up any letters or packages unless I am positive I know who sen…

You did pick an awfully strange group of people to come up in the industry with, Limor. :)

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#264

Post by yummyfajitas » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 9:16 PM UTC

anigbrowl wrote: post #255

yummyfajitas wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Ok, I believe I now understand what you believe to be the problem: many people disagree with you on what should be the boundary of free speech. It's a little unkind to categorize disagreement as "the problem", but whatever. If that's what mootothemax and airlocksoftware meant, then I'd suggest they are wrong. Most of the people reading this page do "get it", but disagree because they assign a higher value to free spe…

No, you do not understand. You think my problem is that 'many people disagree with [me] on what should be the boundary of free speech.' This is incorrect. I am not making a normative argument about what the boundaries of free speech should be. Frankly, I don't know exactly where they should be; where many people see boundaries I tend to see a grey area, and my ideas on this tend to shift around a bit. It is much easi…

The problem I refer to is the invocation of 'free speech' to dismiss complaints about all undesirable speech, inclusive of that which may qualify as criminal.

Who has done this? I'd be curious to see which posts you believe do this.

I suspect all you will find is a set of posts which assume MikeeUSA committed no criminal acts. This is the assumption I'm working under, based mainly on the fact that no one has even accused him of doing so.

Perhaps the real problem you have is that the rest of us are assigning a lower probability of guilt (of crimes he has not been accused of) than you are?

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#265

Post by tptacek » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 9:19 PM UTC

VladRussian wrote: post #224

tptacek wrote: post #195

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Both. Very common problem: interviewers asking questions about who was going to take care of the kids. Actually happened: an interviewer displayed a picture of himself not wearing pants. That interview was in Chicago; I was in Michigan at the time, thankfully. I see no correlation between company size and occurrence of this stuff. I have friends who happen to be both notoriously successful in the tech field and femal…

>Very common problem: interviewers asking questions about who was going to take care of the kids. how the interviewer would know about the kids to start with? Did he ask about it? That question is already illegal. Or was the fact of having kids brought up by the candidate? Then the candidate got what s/he was asking for. >Actually happened: an interviewer displayed a picture of himself not wearing pants. That intervi…

"I see a gap in your resume. Why were you out of the work force for 10 months?"

I'm sure you have some nerdy comeback to this too. Feel free to the last word.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#266

Post by yummyfajitas » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 9:27 PM UTC

zasz wrote: post #215

franticpedantic wrote: post #209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think your attitude highlights a big part of the problem nicely as well. Whether or not women are more, less, or as interested in tech on average than men due to biological predisposition should be treated as a scientific question, not outright rejected as absurd because it could hurt someone's feelings. Maybe it's not a worthwhile question to examine, but to say it's wrong because it's offensive is incredibly unsc…

People have historically used "scientific" evidence to prop up spurious claims that women and blacks were inferior to white men. [1] OP is probably reacting to that whenever people try to bring in biological explanations for gender gaps. If you want her to be more understanding to your hopefully pure motivations in seeking truth, you should also be more understanding of her recognition that people often hide bigotry…

You couldn't have picked a worse example.

Go read the article "The Mismeasure of Science", by Jason Lewis et al. It's a fairly detailed analysis which shows that Stephen J. Gould was simply wrong about skull measurements (which were accurate).

From the abstract:

...We investigated these questions by remeasuring Morton's skulls and reexamining both Morton's and Gould's analyses. Our results resolve this historical controversy, demonstrating that Morton did not manipulate data to support his preconceptions, contra Gould. In fact, the Morton case provides an example of how the scientific method can shield results from cultural biases.

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjo...

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#267

Post by VladRussian » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 9:32 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #265

VladRussian wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>Very common problem: interviewers asking questions about who was going to take care of the kids. how the interviewer would know about the kids to start with? Did he ask about it? That question is already illegal. Or was the fact of having kids brought up by the candidate? Then the candidate got what s/he was asking for. >Actually happened: an interviewer displayed a picture of himself not wearing pants. That intervi…

"I see a gap in your resume. Why were you out of the work force for 10 months?" I'm sure you have some nerdy comeback to this too. Feel free to the last word.

"attended to [urgent] personal/family matters".

>some nerdy comeback

it isn't first time you use "nerd" as pejorative. Why such a hate? Did nerds pick up on you at school?

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#268

Post by i_c_b » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 9:40 PM UTC

mkramlich wrote: post #259

I wish this kind of thing never appeared on HN. This kind of thing, involving gender/harassment/PC-ness always tends to devolve into flamefests and pedantry, and nothing tangible comes of it. Demonization, stereotypes, extreme generalizations, cherry picking, etc. Over and over and over again. My take: there are bad people in the world, yes. And we have no control over them. Sometimes bad things happen. And we have n…

I used to feel exactly the same way you do... but to be honest, over time, I'd say these kinds of conversations have actually gradually affected my viewpoint.

I agree that the conversations, _in the comments_, never seem to resolve, but never underestimate the impact on people who aren't typing. Knowledge, education, and maturity aren't equally distributed, but conversations like this, even if they are exasperating, are one way to change that. It's affected me, anyway.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#269

Post by Tichy » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 9:42 PM UTC

efsavage wrote: post #262

Tichy wrote: post #205

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"all people commit acts of sexism." I have troubles understanding that, do you have citations or examples?

You wouldn't be asking for examples if he was a woman!

Um, why not? Sorry, but that is over the top. Maybe it surprises you that I have in fact talked to women in real life before. I even asked them questions occasionally. Most didn't falter from that kind of "aggression".

Also I didn't even look at his username, so the gender really played no role.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#270

Post by ladyada » Thu, Oct 27, 2011, 9:46 PM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #263

ladyada wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

""I have friends who happen to be both notoriously successful in the tech field and female. They are all extremely touchy about this subject. They are touchy because crazy shit like this happens to them all the time."" This is very true. unbelievable crazy batshit stuff happens to me -all the time-. Like "Police report filed" crazy. Like "I no longer open up any letters or packages unless I am positive I know who sen…

You did pick an awfully strange group of people to come up in the industry with, Limor. :)

ah, you are conflating two things. the hacker scene is full of assholes, but they are not the batshit crazy people. so all the fucked up people you're thinking of? no, i'm saying there are other people, and they are /much much/ worse because they dont even have a 'scene' with basic social pressures and 'outing' them has no effect