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

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#341

Post by dreww » Mon, Oct 31, 2011, 9:21 PM UTC

sp332 wrote: post #152

dreww wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the daily life of most women is filled with navigating a hostile space that may break out into sexual violence at any time. having an obsessed troll on the internet following you around, or threatening you before you show up to a conference, goes way beyond what you're talking about here. your whole point comes from a place of the privilege of relative security. imagine that is not the case.

the daily life of most women is filled with navigating a hostile space that may break out into sexual violence at any time. Who are you talking about?

ask any woman how often she considers her personal safety navigating the world. consider how often you do it.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#342

Post by nickknw » Mon, Oct 31, 2011, 10:27 PM UTC

kamaal wrote: post #311

tptacek wrote: post #265

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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.

"I see a gap in your resume. Why were you out of the work force for 10 months?" Is asking this question illegal? Girl or Boy - Shouldn't it be OK for the candidate to give an answer to such a question. I'm failing to see anything offensive in the nature of the question. Please let me know about it, I'm about to interview someone and I don't want to look offensive or rude.

tptacek was responding to this question by VladRussian: "how the interviewer would know about the kids to start with? "

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#343

Post by erikpukinskis » Tue, Nov 01, 2011, 7:42 AM UTC

yew wrote: post #197

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…

This attitude towards the problem has always struck me as counterproductive. It's true, of course, that everyone has biases, but it's possible to address those biases without putting such a strong emphasis on their permanence. (I won't go into whether or not they are permanent here.) That emphasis seems more likely to create a self-fulfilling prophecy than anything else. I'm only speaking from personal experience, of…

Any individual sexist practice isn't fundamentally permanent, but because of time constraints, some will turn out to be, in practice.

I think it's counterproductive for people to shift attention onto the things other "real" sexists/racists do, rather than Do Their Own Work. That's why it's productive to point out that everyone has work to be done.

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#344

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Nov 01, 2011, 8:41 PM UTC

dreww wrote: post #341

sp332 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the daily life of most women is filled with navigating a hostile space that may break out into sexual violence at any time. Who are you talking about?

ask any woman how often she considers her personal safety navigating the world. consider how often you do it.

[deleted]

Re: Female FOSS dev quits tech industry due to harassment

#345

Post by sp332 » Tue, Nov 01, 2011, 8:41 PM UTC

dreww wrote: post #341

sp332 wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

the daily life of most women is filled with navigating a hostile space that may break out into sexual violence at any time. Who are you talking about?

ask any woman how often she considers her personal safety navigating the world. consider how often you do it.

Seems they think about it somewhat less often than I do. But you said "hostile" which I think is not true, and you said "may break out into sexual violence at any time" which (putting aside the fact that anyone around us could rape us at any time) seems pretty unlikely both to me and to the women I asked.

Are you talking about women in a particular place or subculture? You do know that men are more often victims of violence than women in the US, right?