91–100 of 175 posts
Very interesting story. I wonder if it would have been as effective without the male villain. The trope reinforces the moral, but it kind of beats us over the head with it.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
The real question should be: why does a class respond proportionately badly to the 'helpful jerk'? We can't reasonably say this is a female specific phenomenon when our only point of reference is a female-only class. Send the guy to a bunch of different classes (of mixed and single gender, and of mixed skill-level) and see how they all respond. If one guy is monopolising the time and help available in the class, it s…
> We can't reasonably say this is a female specific phenomenon when our only point of reference is a female-only class. Then why is the article about gender at all?
The author volunteers for female-only class (which he makes sure to highlight), and thus assumes his whole experience is down to the fact the class is all female.
Remove all references to gender and there is no significant change to the story. I think that reveals the complete irrelevance of gender.
My original point, which I guess wasn't worded very well, was that we're told about one experience in one classroom, and that has been blown up to account for the entirety of female-kind.
I think we simply need to start calling people out in person regardless of their gender. If I saw "Dave" acting like this I'd pull him aside and set him straight. And if he couldn't pull his shit together i'd ask him to leave. And if he couldn't manage to do that, I'd help him leave. Not that your post is passive-aggressive, but we need to start being proactive about this. In all realms of life. Call people out on th…
Maybe Dave isn't a jerk or a showoff. Maybe he is like me. I learn by asking questions during the learning process. I feel like I'm not really learning very well unless I can say "does this material imply this other conclusion?" or "if we extended this to more dimensions, would we just have to change these things, or am I missing something?" I learn by stretching the edges of what I think I'm learning.
I'm also on the autism spectrum, which means I'm unlikely to pick up on whatever social signals the rest of the class might be sending. I've tried to learn those things, but they're still pretty opaque to me.
So I would appreciate, if I'm in a circumstance where my question-asking is causing problems, if someone would pull me aside and say "can you save your questions for later? They're a bit distracting for the rest of us." I'm not doing it either to be a jerk or to show off, so I'll gladly stop if the problem is clearly communicated to me.
Gender bias is a touchy subject in these tech blogs and the responses to this (yet another) article are, predictably, dismissive. It was one person's fault, there's no widespread gender bias, the instructor should have things differently, someone has seen women be jerks too, etc.
So while there really does seem to be a measurable, observable difference in gender involvement in computing (e.g. in CS enrollments, in working in the industry, etc), these anecdotes always get tossed as not significant.
So what I'm wondering, and this is an open question to everyone here: would anything convince you, personally, that gender bias is real, or has a significant measurable effect, or is a problem? Would it take a certain kind of experiment? Some kind of data or analysis? (Or is the answer, "it's not a problem"?) Like, what sorts of articles would people _not_ jump on the bandwagon to tear to shreds?
best,
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Wasn't the term "computer" at one time used to describe usually female mathematicians who worked in all female groups at DoD? Perhaps the problem isn't women, and it isn't men, but instead the urge to force them together and then demand they suppress their natural gender differences? Based on experience I would guess having gender segregated groups of technical workers could be quite productive. But anyone trying wou…
Completely agreed. People often forget that some gender differences are what make each gender powerful. Gender equality should not be about expecting the same features in both genders, but about having the same rights.
That's not a call for single-sex education. That's a call for good teachers who are willing to crack down on the class clown. There's always a class clown, and he always needs to be cracked down upon for the good of the class. This is teaching 101. Sorry you didn't have a good teacher. >Dave was really excited by the class, and, like me and the other volunteers, had a lot of experience with Python. Sounds like Dave w…
This is not to imply that there aren't good reasons for women-only education, but this isn't one of them.
That's not a call for single-sex education. That's a call for good teachers who are willing to crack down on the class clown. There's always a class clown, and he always needs to be cracked down upon for the good of the class. This is teaching 101. Sorry you didn't have a good teacher. >Dave was really excited by the class, and, like me and the other volunteers, had a lot of experience with Python. Sounds like Dave w…
Similarly, there is nothing to prevent a 'female Dave' from joining the next single-sex educational group. This is not to imply that there aren't good reasons for women-only education, but this isn't one of them.
That's not a call for single-sex education. That's a call for good teachers who are willing to crack down on the class clown. There's always a class clown, and he always needs to be cracked down upon for the good of the class. This is teaching 101. Sorry you didn't have a good teacher. >Dave was really excited by the class, and, like me and the other volunteers, had a lot of experience with Python. Sounds like Dave w…
Similarly, there is nothing to prevent a 'female Dave' from joining the next single-sex educational group. This is not to imply that there aren't good reasons for women-only education, but this isn't one of them.
Would a group or women react differently if the conference jerk was female? I'd guess the answer is "No", but then I've never experienced that situation.
I have experienced the male version of this, and unlike the author of the article I never see this kind of show-off behavior as a "call to arms", unless that means fighting the urge to wing something heavy at someone's head.
Perhaps there's a selection bias here, but when I see this happen the people around me tend to concur that "helpful jerk" is being an unhelpful douche.
It seems that when enough guys get together there often ends up being some amount of dick-size measuring; is there something similar when groups of women gather?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similarly, there is nothing to prevent a 'female Dave' from joining the next single-sex educational group. This is not to imply that there aren't good reasons for women-only education, but this isn't one of them.
What are the good reasons for gender-segregated education? (I hope it's not offtopic since the article itself discusses this)
That's not a call for single-sex education. That's a call for good teachers who are willing to crack down on the class clown. There's always a class clown, and he always needs to be cracked down upon for the good of the class. This is teaching 101. Sorry you didn't have a good teacher. >Dave was really excited by the class, and, like me and the other volunteers, had a lot of experience with Python. Sounds like Dave w…
"That's a call for good teachers who are willing to crack down on the class clown. There's always a class clown, and he always needs to be cracked down upon for the good of the class. This is teaching 101. Sorry you didn't have a good teacher." Most of the people who lecture at these events are programmers, not folks who have a masters in teaching along with their state certification.
Looks like the author of the article was either incapable or unwilling or unprepared to perform one of the basic teaching functions - ensuring that jerks do not disrupt the process for the rest of the group. It may stem from inexperience - well, that's what experience is for. One doesn't need masters or certificates to learn such things though, it's perfectly available to any common person.