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Men In Tech

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Re: Men In Tech

#141

Post by yummyfajitas »

banter wrote: post #140
yummyfajitas wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, lets read an article by a straight man about how the gays kept him out of the fashion industry by finding him attractive and behaving effeminately. Then lets try to take it even half as seriously as articles about how those geeks keep women out of tech by finding them attractive and behaving nerdily.

You do realize that there are plenty of gay men in the tech industry, don't you? You also know that "behaving effeminately" is not characteristic of all homosexual men, right? Consider, instead, a tech environment dominated by gay men and the article is about, as you put it, "how those geeks keep men out of tech by finding them attractive and behaving nerdily." Scotty79 may be onto more than is immediately obvious, a…

Thanks - you just demonstrated my point. If a man were to whine about how he avoided some field because he didn't like gays hitting on him, or because he was uncomfortable working within that field, both you and I would tell him to stop whining and learn to deal with it.

Why don't we tell women the same thing?

Re: Men In Tech

#142

Post by TheSOB88 »

NotMyMorals wrote: post #117
TheSOB88 wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You obviously are a jerk. But sadly that's also normal amongst our CS population.

>You obviously are a jerk. And you are obviously a "nice guy."

Yeah, thanks - I do try to do the right thing. But that doesn't mean I'm a pushover. You can be alpha and still be a nice guy, it's just how you deal with those who -aren't- nice that matters.

Re: Men In Tech

#143

Post by banter »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #141
banter wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You do realize that there are plenty of gay men in the tech industry, don't you? You also know that "behaving effeminately" is not characteristic of all homosexual men, right? Consider, instead, a tech environment dominated by gay men and the article is about, as you put it, "how those geeks keep men out of tech by finding them attractive and behaving nerdily." Scotty79 may be onto more than is immediately obvious, a…

Thanks - you just demonstrated my point. If a man were to whine about how he avoided some field because he didn't like gays hitting on him, or because he was uncomfortable working within that field, both you and I would tell him to stop whining and learn to deal with it. Why don't we tell women the same thing?

> Thanks - you just demonstrated my point.

How so? I argued that it would be a good idea to give not only the perspective of women, but that of the gay men and women being ostracized in the workplace too. Situating an attractive, straight male in a hypothetical, heterophobic environment dominated by gay men would illustrate the kind of uninvited sexual cut and thrust that some men in tech impose upon women, as well as the passive bullying that comes from homophobic language in the workplace, language that gay people generally have to endure. All this, of course, in an effort to get people, men and women alike, to clean up their acts.

> If a man were to whine about how he avoided some field because he didn't like gays hitting on him, or because he was uncomfortable working within that field, both you and I would tell him to stop whining and learn to deal with it.

No, I can't say that I would tell him to deal with it. The point of the suggested narrative would have been to show how difficult it is to say "stop whining and learn to deal with it" and actually mean it once all parties have a thorough grasp on the circumstances.

> Why don't we tell women the same thing?

People already do, and that's the issue.

I believe what you're trying to argue is that, because men would be told to "deal with it" when put a similar situation, it's alright to tell women to do the same. Please let me know if I'm wrong about that. As far as the argument is concerned, it's flawed in that it makes assumptions about the needs of both genders while altogether disregarding the human needs for belonging, self-respect, and respect by others. Instead of telling victims to deal with it, we should be telling instigators to cut it out. I'm all for hominism and feminism once the usual, and mostly misguided, misogyny and misandry are set aside.

Re: Men In Tech

#144

Post by georgieporgie »

wpietri wrote: post #133
georgieporgie wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your theory that apparent sexism in the tech community is actually only poor social skills I said "largely the expression of". requires that sexism in the tech community has died out It absolutely does not. Because otherwise poor social skills would just make the tech community sexism more obvious than mainstream sexism. And there you go. It's unlikely that misogyny and 'real' sexism exist among the tech community at…

You can't have it both ways. You started out by saying, "I think this is largely the expression of terrible, terrible social skills." If our level of sexism and sexist behavior is the same as the rest of society, then social skills are irrelevant. If lower social skills magnify existing sexism, then either our level of bad behavior should be much higher or our level of sexism would have to be lower. I think the reaso…

You can't have it both ways.

You aren't getting it.

If our level of sexism and sexist behavior is the same as the rest of society, then social skills are irrelevant.

What? That makes no sense.

If lower social skills magnify existing sexism, then either our level of bad behavior should be much higher or our level of sexism would have to be lower.

Depending on your definition, the level of "bad" behavior in the tech industry is much higher than other industries!

Re: Men In Tech

#145

Post by yummyfajitas »

banter wrote: post #143
yummyfajitas wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks - you just demonstrated my point. If a man were to whine about how he avoided some field because he didn't like gays hitting on him, or because he was uncomfortable working within that field, both you and I would tell him to stop whining and learn to deal with it. Why don't we tell women the same thing?

> Thanks - you just demonstrated my point. How so? I argued that it would be a good idea to give not only the perspective of women, but that of the gay men and women being ostracized in the workplace too. Situating an attractive, straight male in a hypothetical, heterophobic environment dominated by gay men would illustrate the kind of uninvited sexual cut and thrust that some men in tech impose upon women, as well a…

How so?

I interpreted you as reacting negatively to the idea that gay men in fashion should be blamed for the absence of straight men. If I misinterpreted, my apologies.

I believe what you're trying to argue is that, because men would be told to "deal with it" when put a similar situation, it's alright to tell women to do the same.

Not quite, I'm saying that a lot of people would object to my characterization of gays driving straights out of some field, and I'm suggesting there is probably a bit of a double standard present.

Re: Men In Tech

#146

Post by niete »

wpietri wrote: post #44
georgieporgie wrote: post #3

I think this is largely the expression of terrible, terrible social skills. I've seen appalling things toward women and men alike from young, socially inept Bay Area tech males. Also, for what it's worth, I've received a lot of crap from women over the course of my working life. In college, I worked in a deli where I was the only male. There was outright sexual harassment, and regular dismissal of me solely because I…

I'm not persuaded. I know a number of socially inept people. Some of them are perfectly pleasant, just hopelessly awkward. Others are jerks to everyone. But some are sexist jerks. And there are some people who are perfectly well socialized who are also sexist jerks. Women were oppressed for millennia. Women in the US haven't had the vote for even 100 years. Men and women didn't have equal college enrollment rates unt…

Just because someone stuck it on DfD, does not mean its a bad argument. DfD is pretty trite.

Re: Men In Tech

#147

Post by niete »

yummyfajitas wrote: post #120
knowtheory wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've been trying to figure out whether turnaround is fair play: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hxvujEmyiPQ

I'm confused - is the video mocking women who whine about "that's what she said" jokes?

I hope so. They are annoying.

Re: Men In Tech

#148

Post by wpietri »

georgieporgie wrote: post #144
wpietri wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can't have it both ways. You started out by saying, "I think this is largely the expression of terrible, terrible social skills." If our level of sexism and sexist behavior is the same as the rest of society, then social skills are irrelevant. If lower social skills magnify existing sexism, then either our level of bad behavior should be much higher or our level of sexism would have to be lower. I think the reaso…

You can't have it both ways. You aren't getting it. If our level of sexism and sexist behavior is the same as the rest of society, then social skills are irrelevant. What? That makes no sense. If lower social skills magnify existing sexism, then either our level of bad behavior should be much higher or our level of sexism would have to be lower. Depending on your definition, the level of "bad" behavior in the tech in…

I believe I do get your point; I just disagree with it. I think it's a convenient way to shift blame to a small subset of people rather than the much larger group that benefits from endemic sexism.

I also disagree with your assertion that sexist behavior is particularly worse in our industry than any other, but if you have evidence on the point I'd love to see it.

Re: Men In Tech

#149

Post by wpietri »

niete wrote: post #146
wpietri wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not persuaded. I know a number of socially inept people. Some of them are perfectly pleasant, just hopelessly awkward. Others are jerks to everyone. But some are sexist jerks. And there are some people who are perfectly well socialized who are also sexist jerks. Women were oppressed for millennia. Women in the US haven't had the vote for even 100 years. Men and women didn't have equal college enrollment rates unt…

Just because someone stuck it on DfD, does not mean its a bad argument. DfD is pretty trite.

Sure. Derailing tactics often include perfectly good arguments. Just ones that shift the discussion to other topics so that no privileged person actually has to face their privilege and acknowledge the systemic negative experiences of the unprivileged group.

Also, "trite"? You're going to talk about argument quality and then reject something because it's trite? Because that's purely a stylistic criticism, which is just the opposite of being concerned about argument quality.

Re: Men In Tech

#150

Post by petercooper »

knowtheory wrote: post #6

Reading this is really awkward. And it's not awkward because it reveals some hidden truth, or because it's a good piece of writing that reflects on the issue it's tackling. No, instead it's awkward because the gender dynamics are not reversible. At least, not in the manner that's intended here. You can't just take the circumstances that women face in tech fields, and switch around the pronouns and have the circumstan…

But the sorts of circumstances that guys face, while there are some correlations, are not analogous problems to the problems that women face in fields in which they are the minority. The oft cited thing keeping men out of nursing and dietetics are cultural things like the work not being "manly" enough

Not adding anything other than a data point here. My wife used to be a nurse for deafblind teenagers. She prefers male company so was friends with the few men there. I used to ask her about this topic, and while the men weren't being sexually harassed, there was more to it than the above.

The key things the men seemed to face was social exclusion (that is, women are engaged in "women talk" or women are socializing together outside of work and not including the men) and regulatory sexism (male attendees weren't allowed to bathe female residents or attend to any of their hygiene needs).

I thought this was pretty interesting because while it didn't seem like they had that bad a time, the social exclusion and the 'like sticking with like' aspects do ring true to what I've heard from women in the tech industry. That is.. even if the men aren't overtly harassing the women, there's an element of 'boys stick together and do boy things' which the women at my wife's workplace also fostered.

No judgments or anything here, just a datapoint! :)

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