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Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

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Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

#51

Post by lukev »

w1ntermute wrote: post #5

The problem with this woman's story is that she takes a few cases of explicit sexism and extrapolates them as the reason why everyone is saying rude things to her. Or at least that's how I see it. Perhaps she is just commenting on the general douchebaggery of the community, but even then much of the criticism she received could be seen as fair if she was actually in the wrong. Although sexism is clearly an issue in t…

As a hacker, you should know that even a "small" statistical bias (10%-20%) can invalidate experimental results, or contribute to large problems in a complex system.

So why is a small but real bias against women in tech still not a huge problem?

Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

#52

Post by tomc1985 »

There is a general thread of sexism that permeates much of western life. It's endemic to all levels of American society. Addressing sexism in the hacker community seems fruitless to me when there is a much larger fountain of hate spewing forth over the general public. New souls will come into the hacker community and old souls will leave, and some of the new souls are going to be incorrigible sexists. Sexism must be fought at the society-level, where it originates, not in subcultures.

That, and more boys need to grow up with sisters. If you want to kill sexism, make sure boys and girls respect each other at an early age...

Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

#54

Post by jiggy2011 »

"on-going experiences of misogyny, abuse, threats, put downs, belittlement, harassment, rape."

This seems a little strong, is there any evidence to suggest that women in a technical field have a heightened risk of rape vs any other field?

Especially something like lapdancing which seems to have no lack of female participants.

Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

#55

Post by aeturnum »

kabuks wrote: post #17

If you are a man reading this, I invite you to: a. Resist the urge to pick apart the OP's life and criticize how/what she said. b. Honestly reflect, without shame or blame, about what you know of sexism. What do you understand of it? What do you understand it's roots are, and how it works? What do you think your responsibility is, as a man, and as a member of this community? I invite you to do this, because it's a ch…

I am a man, and the question of how to apply these experiences that female colleagues have has always troubled me.

Many of the events she lists seem commonplace in decentralized movements (groups are often mis-represented by zealous adherents without the leaders' knowledge or throw out their founders). Public faces of projects are often viewed as difficult to work with or technically lacking (partially or fully) due to their high profile.

So, part of me reads this and wants to say that she's experiencing the problems that I've read about (but not experienced) when dealing the "hacker community."

However, there are also instances of language that could ("level-headed", "don’t worry your head about it") or definitely are ("mommy-type") aimed at her gender. I don't defend people who dismissed people for their gender. I also think everyone needs to understand that it's her call if she felt discriminated against. We can't deny how she felt, even if all of the people who said what they said didn't mean it that way.

So the other part of me wants to do something that will help women feel welcomed into communities, but I'm at a loss as to what.

So much of the language quoted in the blog is subtle and insidious. If they had said "parental-type" instead of "mommy-type", it still could have been just as alienating, just not as quotable. The comments all seem to have two components: a neutral complaint (difficulty collaborating, concerns about technical skill, disagreement about direction) and sexist sentiment (don't worry about it, let us handle it, it's too much for you). I can see the second component, but I don't know how to call it out without getting the other party to buy into the undertones of their statements.

I feel like I understand where the author is coming from, but I also feel like these are also probably socially inept people who didn't like her. For some portion of those quotes, they probably did not consciously intend to be sexist, or reference her gender. It's a problem, and no one should be made to feel like they're rejected for their gender, but I don't know how to address it.

Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

#56

Post by cooldeal »

rachelbythebay wrote: post #50
cooldeal wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>That's just one way sexism rears its ugly head at times in my experience Sorry but what in your story shows that it's sexism? It could easily have happened to a guy or been done by a lady security expert and is more a symptom of a superiority complex.

I'm mostly talking about the situation of reacting to the "wrapping" and missing the content entirely. The fact it comes from person X instead of person Y, and person X is not like person Y. When you see it enough times, you start hypothesizing about why it happens. Then you share notes with others in your situation and your hypothesis gets stronger. ... then you post about it to HN and have a handful of comments ins…

> The fact it comes from person X instead of person Y, and person X is not like person Y. When you see it enough times, you start hypothesizing about why it happens. Then you share notes with others in your situation and your hypothesis gets stronger.

>... then you post about it to HN and have a handful of comments insist that it's not happening at all.

The problem is that without this additional context you just posted it's hard for someone to make the connection because we see all of this happen regularly around us even without the gender or a race factor thrown in.

Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

#57

Post by jiggy2011 »

moomin wrote: post #27
w1ntermute wrote: post #5

The problem with this woman's story is that she takes a few cases of explicit sexism and extrapolates them as the reason why everyone is saying rude things to her. Or at least that's how I see it. Perhaps she is just commenting on the general douchebaggery of the community, but even then much of the criticism she received could be seen as fair if she was actually in the wrong. Although sexism is clearly an issue in t…

Yeah, it's all just a few bad apples, there's no underlying problem. Just like all the other women with appalling experiences of sexism in the tech community. Seriously, if you can't see a fundamental problem, I seriously doubt you're looking very hard. http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/mar/21/lighten-up/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cerian-jenkins/the-tech-indust... http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/CouchDB_talk h…

To be fair , a handful of blog posts (some with a feminist bent) could be as much a confirmation bias as anything else.

Technical people are more comfortable publishing online than those in other professions.

Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

#58

Post by thaumaturgy »

rachelbythebay wrote: post #42

>> He sat in on the crowd-sourced process of writing of the application, contributing nothing except criticism to anything I wrote for hours. That's the part of this post which really grabbed me. I went through the same sort of thing in a corporate environment not too long ago. I had suffered through discovering a massive security hole on an internal system, managing disclosure to just the right groups, writing the f…

I'm going to piggy-back on your comment here solely because I've appreciated your comments in the past:

There clearly are talented women in tech (and other fields, I know a pretty amazing CEO), and clearly this is a problem that a lot of men aren't "getting", in the sense that either they don't see it as a problem or they don't know what to do about it.

Do you think there's an opportunity yet for some of the leading women in tech to start collaborating on projects together, just to see how that goes? i.e., conferences where both genders are invited, but the organizers are strictly (or at least mostly) women. I'm partly curious to see if there would still be some of the same personality conflicts, but mostly, I'm starting to think that excluding guys from awesome things might be the best way to change behavior.

Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

#59

Post by thejsjunky »

tomwalker wrote: post #11

" I didn’t create Cryptoparty just so a bunch of privileged white boys could.." Why did she drag race into it? Completely unnecessary. She has valid points without this.

It's inherent to the concept of "privilege"; the understanding is that the people with the most "privilege" in the western world are men who are white. If you are making a point that a group has "privilege", it makes sense to point out they are mostly white since it affects the amount of "privilege" they have.

That said, that particular remark seems to be imbued with some bitterness and desire to wound; which may be understandable coming from someone frustrated, but prevents me from endorsing it myself.

edit: quotes are not for sarcasm, but to denote less common usage/meaning

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