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Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

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Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#121

Post by michaelochurch »

rmc wrote: post #116
michaelochurch wrote: post #113

I'll make a controversial observation, but it's worthy of discussion. If you're a woman of average or better looks, you have one under-spoken superpower. Namely, how you interact with other men will have a huge effect on their social status. I'm not talking about overt flirtation (don't do it) or office relationships (avoid, avoid, avoid). I'm talking about more subtle stuff, like who a woman smiles at, who she initi…

(a) In your hypothetical example, everyone seems to be heterosexual. I assure you reality doesn't fully match your theory. (b) It's just an "attractive female" advantage, "attractive men" have been found to have similar advantages.

(a) In your hypothetical example, everyone seems to be heterosexual. I assure you reality doesn't fully match your theory.

I'm talking about social status and "coolness" which are not identical to sexual "market value". In fact, I think it's a bad idea for women to exploit any sexual "assets", because a woman who is visibly trying to do so won't be taken seriously. I'm talking about a more general-purpose social asset which is that an attractive woman is judged to be "cool" (even by gay men).

The initial conditions of social status are set by people wanting things, in the aggregate, so the heterosexual 93% have disproportionate influence. The final conditions are set algorithmically by something that looks like PageRank: people care about popular peoples' opinions because other people care about popular peoples' opinions.

This isn't about what's right or how things should be. It's about what is.

(b) It's just an "attractive female" advantage, "attractive men" have been found to have similar advantages.

True, but the ages in which people are most attractive are 18-29. Men in that age range have low social status (theirs starts out very low, but increases into the 40s and 50s) while women at that age have high social status (and it declines with age). Again, I'm not saying this is how things should be, but it's what is.

The result is that women reach their maximum attractiveness at a time of high social status, while men reach maximum attractiveness at an age when society still considers most of them to be unproven losers who jack off and play videogames all day. People tend to become more average in looks as they get older, and by the age of peak social status for men, almost all of them are in the "average" range where attractiveness doesn't have a major push.

A woman doesn't have to be highly attractive to take advantage of this, by the way. She has to be seen as preternaturally cool. There are women of average or below-average looks who can pull this off.

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#122

Post by kalkin »

Wintamute wrote: post #91
rmc wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How and in what way would that be sexist remark The assumpution behind that question is that women could not be a developer. To give racist equivalents, it's as if in the USA, imagine you came into the room and there was a latino man there "Are you the new cleaner?"; or in UK, imagine one was introduced to a new eastern european member of staff, "Are you the new cleaner?". These questions are motivated by racist assu…

In those situations the assumptions may, or may not, originate from core racist/sexist beliefs. You need to be careful going around labelling people like that just because they made an assumption. For better or worse it's just a fact that at the moment a girl working in a software shop is more likely to be a graphic designer than a coder. If I was in a rush looking for the new freelance designer one morning and walke…

> You need to be careful going around labelling people like that just because they made an assumption.

1) Actually, I think you want to be a lot more careful about labelling people as "must be X" because of their gender than about labelling them as "made a sexist comment" because they maybe made a sexist comment. It is actually still worse to be a victim of sexism than to be called a sexist.

2) Having core sexist beliefs isn't a prerequisite for making a sexist comment. You can have a momentary sexist thought without consciously believing that women are inferior to men or anything like that - in fact, momentary sexist thoughts are almost inevitable if you're in a culture where sexism is pervasive, no matter who you are. Moreover, a comment can be sexist even if it is made with completely innocent intentions, if it predictably has the effect of (re)enforcing hierarchical gender roles. Sexism is not an ideology, it's a social structure.

You can do "s/sexism/racism/g" for all of the above as well.

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#123

Post by yummyfajitas »

rmc wrote: post #90
victorhn wrote: post #11

"If a male and a female developer with a similar skill level apply for a job, I bet that in 99.9% of the cases the girl will get the job." That looks like sexism to me.

There are several definitions of sexism, one is essentially "taking someone's sex or gender into account when making a decision". This appears to be the definition you're using. It's a very simple, easy to understand, easy to identify definiton. It also means that in many cases (e.g. hiring in an IT company), men can be the victims of sexism. There's another definition, which is actions that's designed to maintain &…

if modern UK life was a video game, "male" would be an easier difficulty level than "female".

Can you explain this in concrete terms? This meme is repeated often, but few people actually explain what it means.

Taking it literally, it would suggest that monsters receive +20% elemental resistance when women attack them with an ice-infused mace. But that's probably not what you mean.

There are statistically less problems for the "male" group.

If we are discussing statistical incidence of problems, why choose "male" and "female" as your reference classes? Why not simply choose incidence of problems as the variable to slice on?

This definition is harder for some people to accept...

It's not the definition that is hard to accept. If this was a definitional problem, we'd quickly find ourselves here:

http://lesswrong.com/lw/np/disputing_definitions/

Your "definition" contains implicit claims about the world which you haven't justified (i.e., it's a definition + assertions).

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#125

Post by kalkin »

theorique wrote: post #119
abrahamsen wrote: post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe you think of this campaign? http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FxsMWnK1X7k The tag line is "there is a lot of stuff women don't understand", and the format is a womans literal visualization of a sport metaphor. In this case, "giving away a goal". The campaign is still running, and considered one of the most successful advertising campaigns in Denmark. The company behind it is 80% state owned. and 20% owned by the n…

Interesting - I hadn't known that about Danish humor. It is probably also no accident that the Mohammed cartoons were made in Denmark. The thing is, those weren't even offensive or derogatory. The rest of the world overreacted and rolled over because of overblown threats from the Islamic world.

You don't think an image of Muhammad where he's wearing a bomb for a turban is derogatory?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Descriptions_of_the_Jyllands-Po...

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#127

Post by saucetenuto »

cbsmith wrote: post #42

I'm starting to think it is impossible for someone to write about gender issues in the tech industry without at least one reference to porn.

Yeah, that jarred me too. The author's dad is a farmer, and her go-to example of a job that requires stamina is...porn star? The fuck?

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#128

Post by xmonad »

nazgulnarsil wrote: post #3

I suspect a big driving factor is that being forced to be around tons of low status guys all the time is literally worse than hitler for women.

"low status" Men who value other's opinions of them over voicing their real feelings.

How many comments in this thread asked the OP "what projects have you worked on", "what have you contributed as a woman?".

Why? Because the larger issue isn't woman. It's "Nice guy" syndrome. Deferring to woman, being "pc", repressing opinions. The book No More Mr. Nice Guy (http://www.amazon.com/No-More-Mr-Nice-Guy/dp/0762415339) is a great read on this.

As for the OP. I don't care about your gender or race. I want to know what you code. I want you to be great. But will not enable my fellow men nor you to be weak prima donnas.

We have a destiny. We owe it to our children not to show such weakness.

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#129

Post by jrogers65 »

rmc wrote: post #108
Wintamute wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In those situations the assumptions may, or may not, originate from core racist/sexist beliefs. You need to be careful going around labelling people like that just because they made an assumption. For better or worse it's just a fact that at the moment a girl working in a software shop is more likely to be a graphic designer than a coder. If I was in a rush looking for the new freelance designer one morning and walke…

it's just a fact that at the moment a girl working in a software shop is more likely to be a graphic designer than a coder Yes, it is accurate to say that "statistically a new female hire in an IT shop is likely to be a designer, not a coder". It is factually accurate to say that, but is it right and moral and nice to say it? Words can affect people, and set tone and expectations. Is it right for all us men to presum…

I think that the point the guy is trying to make is that there is nothing sexist about this. If I saw a new guy at work with a beard, jumbo sized cup of coffee, glasses sitting in front of a dual monitor setup, I would assume that he is a programmer. Does that make me sexist against men? Or prejudiced against people with beards or coffee drinkers?

There's an old saying which appears to have been lost somewhere along the way:

"Offense can only be taken"

Live by it and you will never be offended. It is not the job of everybody around you to constantly walk on eggshells just to keep you happy. You are not at the center of the universe, after all.

Re: Why it is Awesome to be a Girl in Tech

#130

Post by IsaacL »

michaelochurch wrote: post #113

I'll make a controversial observation, but it's worthy of discussion. If you're a woman of average or better looks, you have one under-spoken superpower. Namely, how you interact with other men will have a huge effect on their social status. I'm not talking about overt flirtation (don't do it) or office relationships (avoid, avoid, avoid). I'm talking about more subtle stuff, like who a woman smiles at, who she initi…

Out of interest, are you familiar with Venkatesh Rao's "Be Slightly Evil" mailing list? He has a similar worldview to you (cynical realpolitick as an amoral tool, usable for good or evil).
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