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Speaking up

sazzy.co.uk

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Re: Speaking up

#91

Post by juridatenshi »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #40

Sorry 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…

If you have to preface your comments with "I am not sexist," there's probably something sexist about the words that are going to follow. You're hitting a lot of the derailing for dummies points here...

Re: Speaking up

#92

Post by cllns »

DasIch wrote: post #89

Sexist misogynistic asshole on a project? Take away his commit access and ban him from all channels of communication, if you have the power and if you don't, don't contribute to the project anymore, make the reason public and create an alternative if possible. In daily life I don't hang out with those assholes, do you? If not, why the fuck are you doing it online? Just because they have decent skills? How many people…

Worth noting that outing someone requires an immense amount of courage.

I think the more privilege you have, the less courage it takes.

Re: Speaking up

#93

Post by mezzoblue »

gavanwoolery wrote: post #40

Sorry 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…

Maybe you're not sexist, but I dispute your simple truth. I have been on the same conference speaking circuit that Sarah has for 9 years now, and not once have I been on the receiving end of a similar attack.

I am a male. I have had my ideas challenged, but no one has ever made it personal. Do you really think most female speakers are so lucky?

Re: Speaking up

#94

Post by onemorepassword »

DanBC wrote: post #54
rimantas wrote: post #38

Please, 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, how would comments look if someone did the same thing, but for the guy? HN is getting better at being less aggressive and at being more constructive with criticism. Perhaps you can find an example where a male dev had pictures of his face, and pictures of another man's penis, posted to a website with his name and email address. And, when you find it, HN will be supportive of that man and will conde…

Even if there is such an example, you really need to have your head stuck firmly up your ass if you're willing to argue that it would have anywhere near the same social and emotional impact.

Perhaps "outing" a developer as gay could have a comparable impact for men, but that would only apply in predominantly homophobic communities.

Which in turn says a lot about this community's attitude towards women. If it wasn't hostile to women in the first place, extreme examples like this troll would never have such an impact.

Re: Speaking up

#95

Post by roguecoder »

icebraining wrote: post #67
CJefferson wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's interesting that you say "couldn't care less if their victim is a women or black person, or whatever". Can you come up with a good example of this kind of extreme attacking of a white man? You say "How would this look for a guy", I honestly can't think of any examples where people go anywhere near as far trolling and harassing white men. I may of course just be forgetting some obvious cases.

I can, unless you mean white straight men.

In tech?

Not that it doesn't happen in day-to-day life, but I can't think of any case where even a white, gay cis man was targeted this way during a conference or subjected to an online harassment campaign. When maddog came out there were a couple comments quoting Leviticus and that was it. Certainly the HN threads about sexual orientation are almost completely free of the sort of "they're lying!" or "they're just manipulative!" or actually any sort of vitriol whatsoever (and what there is is rapidly down-voted.)

This is a good thing! But if you are going to argue that straight gay men in tech are treated similarly, I'd like some citations.

Re: Speaking up

#96

Post by nollidge »

tudorw wrote: post #4
h2s wrote: post #2

Are 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 agree, all the stuff I read it's like going back a century, we are supposed to be on the vanguard of a brave new world, not re-hashing the same dumb ass attitude that has contaminated the past decades. Grow up, get on and be nice.

See, but the fact that you're reading about it at all, that people are arguing about it at all, means we're doing better. The fact that outrage about sexism even exists is progress. It's the (slight) progress of shining a harsh light on the previously unnoticed realities that were always there.

Re: Speaking up

#97

Post by pekk »

roguecoder wrote: post #86
mattdeboard wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Seriously. I roll my eyes at some of the white-knighting that goes when a woman is slighted on the Internet but holy crap I get nervous for my girlfriend who's a talented programmer and about to graduate with a CS degree. Is this kind of bullshit in store for her? Sheesh.

I think the difference between white-knighting and not is whether it's about the woman or the person who's behaving badly. "You shouldn't hit a girl!" It's not about women needing special protection, it is about the community not welcoming people who act like assholes. Of course women can defend themselves, but no one should have to defend themselves against that kind of behavior. And the only reason I believe it is…

To clarify, it is white-knighting when the woman doesn't care, when there was no actual offense, and it is really just an opportunity for someone to show off about how chivalrous or sensitive they are.

You don't have to be sensitive or show yourself off to shut down misogynists and you definitely don't have to go looking for unclear offenses which the purported victims have no complaint about.

Re: Speaking up

#98

Post by mnicole »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #75

Is 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 o…

I read that the card system turned into a running joke at DEFCON (people giving their buddies cards at the slightest insinuation), which could lead to watering down the purpose or making it somewhat of a joke to receive one in a literal sense. Do any other conferences have in-the-moment/non-confrontational methods of calling people out?

Re: Speaking up

#99

Post by belorn »

Conferences are a problematic area even if one ignore what kind of community it is. (be that IT, gardening, Sci-Fy, trucks, manufacturing, or furries). The math is not giving out pretty numbers.

Lets compare two conferences. One is 5% females participation, and a other is 50%. We can directly say that the risk of getting sexually assaulted is minimum 20x larger at the 5% conference than the 50%. there is also a number of additional considerations one can add to the risk assessment like age, marital status of people in the conference, and access to alcohol.

Re: Speaking up

#100

Post by DasIch »

cllns wrote: post #92
DasIch wrote: post #89

Sexist misogynistic asshole on a project? Take away his commit access and ban him from all channels of communication, if you have the power and if you don't, don't contribute to the project anymore, make the reason public and create an alternative if possible. In daily life I don't hang out with those assholes, do you? If not, why the fuck are you doing it online? Just because they have decent skills? How many people…

Worth noting that outing someone requires an immense amount of courage. I think the more privilege you have, the less courage it takes.

You are probably right but that just makes it more important that we all do it, whether a victim or a witness and especially if we are privileged. Privilege is power and while its existence is bad just as the ways in which it is so often used, I believe we can use it for good as well.
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