An attractive female that makes dorky men do stupid? You don't say...
Speaking up
71–80 of 342 posts
Re: Speaking up
#72Are there any high profile women in this industry who haven't been treated like shit in some way such as this? What a nasty bunch of people we are. Are we (developers) the douchey 80s guy of the 21st century?
I'm a man. We (male) developers don't have to be like this, and many of us aren't.
But, I've said it before and I'll say it again: men have even more of a responsibility than women to speak up and combat this kind of sexism. We (men) have the utmost responsibility to make sure that we are fighting to allow women a place in our industry, a place where they feel safe enough so that they can be equal participants without worrying about being looked down upon, harassed or concerned for their safety.
The sad reality is, more than having courageous women speaking up about sexism, men speaking up about sexism convinces other men to treat women respectfully.
Re: Speaking up
#73Earlier quoted context omitted.
And this is why you need moderated communities, because otherwise the assholes will dominate the discourse in your chosen milieu and drive out anyone they deem unacceptable. Very often it's women. I don't know why but either there's a class of developers who feel personally threatened by women in their chosen profession, or it's personal: some individual has believed themselves to be entitled to that woman's attentio…
Regarding your second paragraph, I think it's primarily a clash of two situations: software development by its nature attracts men who are socially awkward, and the women that are attracted to software development tend not to be there for the attention. Software development has a broader appeal now than it did twenty years ago, and in spite of the numerous cases like this one, there seems to still be a growing popula…
> there seems to still be a growing population of women in the community.
Just keep in mind that, whatever growth you've observed, the number of women in programming now is much lower than it was in the 1980s.
For some historical statistics see http://articles.washingtonpost.com/2011-08-26/opinions/35268...
Re: Speaking up
#74Please, tell me, how would comments look if someone did the same thing, but for the guy? The sight of a bunch of guys rushing to fight sexism (often without even understanding what sexism is) and solve women's issues for them is amusing. This is not to say, that there are no problems. But the biggest problem I see is a knee-jerk reaction to anything involving gender or race. Sometimes assholes are just assholes and c…
Please, tell me, why there is always one individual who reads an article like this and goes "but what about teh menz!?"
Re: Speaking up
#75Is there becoming a general consensus on what to do about a problem we are becoming aware is worse than most of us thought?
I glean the following from a few of these threads
1. Conferences, conventions, hackathons all should have published "acceptable behaviour" statements, and possibly a red / orange / green card system that everyone understands
2. online examples get red / orange carded though a bitly link posted on a red card site (did I read that?)
3. conferences share blacklists
4. we accept that this shit will continue and get worse in an anonymous internet and that we accept that as a price of freedom and try to mitigate it for those who actually pay that price.
Re: Speaking up
#76I worked with Sarah 1.5 years ago and can't imagine why someone would have a grudge with her personally - she's incredibly nice.
Re: Speaking up
#77Sorry about your treatment. :( (And here I go into down-vote territory... :D) Before I say anything, let me say clearly I am not sexist; I am a strong advocate of equal rights (key word: equal). Some of your attacks can definitely be attributed to sex, but it's bad propaganda just to throw them all in the sexism bucket, or treat sexism like it is the norm. I know several females in the industry who are not afraid of…
I think, based only on hunch and not recorded data I can source, that the more attractive the female the more likely they are to become a target of such behavior.
Re: Speaking up
#78Are there any high profile women in this industry who haven't been treated like shit in some way such as this? What a nasty bunch of people we are. Are we (developers) the douchey 80s guy of the 21st century?
Are we (developers) the douchey 80s guy of the 21st century? To paraphrase Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, one problem is guys believing that they're too smart to be sexist. I also believe that a lot of people involved can't handle the idea that they're being bullies, and so further attempt to rationalise their actions with terrible analogies and arguments that boil down to "I'm a geek - I'm incapable of oppressing som…
This isn't a problem with guys or with developers in general.
The vast majority of people who participate in conference are good people. However, it only takes one person (out of thousands!) who has this kind of personality dysfunction to lead an attack, and women are much much more likely to be the target of their dysfunction.
Re: Speaking up
#79Let's keep in mind that the perpetrator of the fake porn pictures might have been a woman
Why is that worth keeping in mind? The result is still sexist discouragement.
Re: Speaking up
#80Please, tell me, how would comments look if someone did the same thing, but for the guy? The sight of a bunch of guys rushing to fight sexism (often without even understanding what sexism is) and solve women's issues for them is amusing. This is not to say, that there are no problems. But the biggest problem I see is a knee-jerk reaction to anything involving gender or race. Sometimes assholes are just assholes and c…
yep, equality sucks, especially when you're attacked as an equal. The thing is, these idiots that do stuff like this are targeting the woman's sexual attributes, and not her intelligence or skills.
As for the guy that said he learned better from other men - maybe he does, give him the benefit of the doubt - it's not ALL about you.