Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons) • Hacker News Board

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#261

Post by coridactyl » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 7:30 PM UTC

cbs wrote: post #249

coridactyl wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

An attack on culture is not an attack on community. You're part of the community by default, but you can be better than the failings of its culture. No one is baiting anyone here except the people who feel the need to poke holes in a call for decency.

* No one is baiting anyone here except the people who feel the need to poke holes in a call for decency.* Am I supposed to sit back and just let ends I happen to agree with justify means that I don't? Why?

No, because I don't get to tell you what to do. All I get to do is tell you what I think, and I think you cried "Troll!" at someone's honest attempt to participate in a discussion.

By all means, disagree. Just try not to freak out when other people disagree with your disagreement.

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#262

Post by coridactyl » Thu, Aug 16, 2012, 7:35 PM UTC

activepeanut wrote: post #154

How about we let women attend these conferences for free? Like a form of affirmative action to help balance the sex ratio. Would that help?

Is that a serious question? 'Cause I can think of enough ways women are made to feel unwelcome at these events without the added bonuses of envy and/or resentment.

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#263

Post by jleader » Fri, Aug 17, 2012, 6:53 AM UTC

mhartl wrote: post #253

jleader wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Never take advice from someone who thinks it's meaningful to talk in terms of "what women want", as if there's this undifferentiated mass with a unanimous set of values. If you haven't noticed that different women want different things, and are attracted to different kinds of guys, that might explain why you have trouble telling the difference between flirtatious give-and-take, and one-sided harassment. Or for that m…

Never take advice from someone who thinks it's meaningful to talk in terms of "what women want", as if there's this undifferentiated mass with a unanimous set of values. Never underestimate the power of generalization. Women are shorter than men. Women are slower than men. Women are physically weaker than men. These generalizations allow for individual exceptions, of course, but they are true in an important statisti…

Statistics provides a wonderful set of tool for summarizing the opinions of a large group of people, but if you use it to determine your interactions with one individual instead of looking at the reactions of the person in front of you, You're Doing It Wrong.

"Men have no slack in this regard"? Really? I've never had anyone accuse me of harassment. I've only ever met one person who claimed to have beeen accused of harassment; based on the other tall tales he told (going 130mph on a dirt bike while being chased by a police helicopter, killing people with his bare hands in the Marines, and more), it's entirely possible that he made the whole thing up, or equally possible that he was actually guilty of harassment (he claimed the jury found in his favor).

The cases I've read about recently involved women clearly telling their harassers to stop, that the attention was unwanted, and the harassers refusing to heed those repeated requests. Rather than "one strike", it was more like "3 strikes, and still swinging".

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#264

Post by bethly » Fri, Aug 17, 2012, 1:54 PM UTC

demewmew wrote: post #149

s_baby wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Proof? Some research suggests women are turned off from the "hard" sciences before they reach high school. It's likely a factor but you're putting the cart before the horse.

I think what agpen is trying to say is, "Statements like this are offputting to some people [women] who want to participate in tech." That's going to vary by the individual, but acknowledging that these statements have an offputting effect is proof in itself. Most people reading those statements aren't going to step in and say "this makes me not want to participate," because they know they won't be taken seriously. S…

Citations provided: http://blog.bethcodes.com/is-the-internet-convincing-women-n...

The includes links to studies (like Sapna Cheryan, Andrew N. Meltzoff, Saenam Kim, Classrooms matter: The design of virtual classrooms influences gender disparities in computer science classes, Computers & Education, Volume 57, Issue 2, September 2011, Pages 1825-1835, ISSN 0360-1315,) that show a "lack of ambient belonging", that is being alienated by other group members, was the primary cause, and another that interacting with sexist male engineers lowered women's performance ( http://www2.psy.uq.edu.au/~billvh/LWSIvHB.JPSP.09.pdf)

Few people seem willing to accept that the lack of women in tech has something to do with men, but it does. Included the "high school girls" who aren't interested: the Girl Scout's study found that the biggest thing keeping them out was expecting to face sexism if they chose those professions.

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#265

Post by illuminate » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 4:41 PM UTC

blhack wrote: post #236

demewmew wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So well said. When people don't take you seriously, clever hacks are the next best solution. The "What She Really Said" IRC bot story reminds me of this as well.

No they're not. The cards thing establishes the premise that women are incapable of holding social status. They're not. The cards enforce the very thing they're trying to prevent.

The cards are a reflection of reality, not an endorsement of the current state of things.

Your tactic of putting your hands over your eyes and ears has been tried, at length in the past. It hasn't ever worked wherever it's been tried.

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#266

Post by illuminate » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 4:42 PM UTC

s_baby wrote: post #129

agpen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

THIS is what prevents more women from going into tech fields. From academia to the workplace, IT/CS has been built into a self-reinforcing boys club. Until on a large scale it is no longer socially acceptable for geeks to treat women like shit, there won't be many women in technical fields.

Proof? Some research suggests women are turned off from the "hard" sciences before they reach high school. It's likely a factor but you're putting the cart before the horse.

"Some research suggests women are turned off from the "hard" sciences before they reach high school"

This is not unrelated to how they're turned off further after and into their careers.

Re: Sexual Harassment at DefCon (and Other Hacker Cons)

#267

Post by illuminate » Mon, Aug 20, 2012, 4:48 PM UTC

minikites wrote: post #115

danielweber wrote: post #23

Nerds (and I say this as one) have problems dismissing their anti-social members, because nerds have been dismissed from other social circles, and hated it. They don't want to be the bully. And so real asshole behavior is allowed to continue far longer than it ought to. The computer security industry has its own special problems. There is a very significant segment of the population that has "do whatever you can get…

http://www.plausiblydeniable.com/opinion/gsf.html "GSF1 is one of the most common fallacies, and one of the most deeply held. Many geeks have had horrible, humiliating, and formative experiences with ostracism, and the notion of being on the other side of the transaction is repugnant to them."

"Many geeks have had horrible, humiliating, and formative experiences with ostracism, and the notion of being on the other side of the transaction is repugnant to them"

If you think being bullied and abused removes the possibility of them feeling comfortable being bullies and abusers, you have issues with reality.