What's always very frustrating, some guy may hold a grudge or be sexist... but why does he always find so many supporters, like those who visited his web site and sent this woman emails? People who shouldn't have anything against this woman but just can't keep themselves from attacking her. Frat house? Too many people in this industry don't seem to ever graduate from it.
Speaking up
151–160 of 342 posts
Re: Speaking up
#152Re: Speaking up
#153Are 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?
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 roll my eyes at some of the white-knighting that goes when a woman is slighted on the Internet
I don't give a rat's ass what the definition of "white knighting is. I'm calling you out now to be much more specific about what kind of slighting is involved and what you're rolling your eyes at. Give examples. Justify yourself.
Re: Speaking up
#154Are 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?
On Friday I pitched my company to a room of 150 developers, since my company was a hackathon sponsor. I was the only female speaker out of about 15. Afterwards, a well-known, elite developer asked me if I programmed. When I said yes, he said that made me 50% less attractive. Then he asked me if I cooked and cleaned. To my face. You don't have to be high profile to deal with this stuff. Just being in a room where you'…
Oh, I would say "none of his f*cking business". As a woman, you don't need to even be a developer to get this kind of "attention" on a regular basis.
Re: Speaking up
#155Re: Speaking up
#156What do we do about less overt sexism? For instance, there's a popular developer who writes useful plugins named after genitalia and sex acts. I find his code useful, and I've asked him publicly and privately to choose nonsexual names for his code, but he and his users see nothing wrong with this. Even consider the "weinre" project that's on the frontpage right now. "Get your weinre out"?! His assertion is that it's…
Are you talking about Tim Pope, whose work includes vim-foreplay, vim-scriptease, vim-eunuch, vim-speeddating, and hookup?
I am talking about Tim Pope. I have forked his code and renamed it, but instead of the community helping me, I've received a lot of negative feedback about "fragmenting the community" for trying to maintain and evangelize a non-sexist version of the plugin. It is difficult to continue in the face of so little support, but I believe in what I'm doing, and all of my male and female developer friends agree with me.
Re: Speaking up
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
On Friday I pitched my company to a room of 150 developers, since my company was a hackathon sponsor. I was the only female speaker out of about 15. Afterwards, a well-known, elite developer asked me if I programmed. When I said yes, he said that made me 50% less attractive. Then he asked me if I cooked and cleaned. To my face. You don't have to be high profile to deal with this stuff. Just being in a room where you'…
I wonder what would happen if someone found out who this "elite developer" was.
Probably nothing. There would maybe be a few blog posts about it. Their comments would be filled with men defending his actions and suggesting that anyone calling him out was lying, that the real problem is "women that get offended too easily" or "women that don't get jokes," and straight-up male superiority.
Re: Speaking up
#158Earlier quoted context omitted.
Are you sure you aren't confusing "white knight" for "person who doesn't appreciate seeing other people treated like shit"? I originally thought that phrase meant something like "Claiming to represent someone's position or speak for them when they can very well speak for themselves." But assuming that http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/white-knight is a credible source, that phrase actually refers to dudes who argue again…
There ARE men who jump on others in a showy way for strictly imagined offenses against women. Sometimes (as in perhaps most cases of men fighting in public) the motivation IS at least partly sexual, e.g. to seem attractive, or at least part of an anachronistic image of the chivalrous savior. But the sexual part isn't defining. This doesn't mean that it is wrong to argue against misogyny. It just points to a real phen…
Really? Are there? Show me some examples.
What indications do you have that defending a woman is a sexually motivated act?
Re: Speaking up
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
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.
If the behavior makes me uncomfortable, it doesn't matter what the target thinks of it: I have a right to speak up. Even if the target is bothered by it I don't have a right to speak for her, though I can support her if she does speak up. All I can ever say is, "that behavior bothers me; I don't believe it is acceptable. Please stop." It doesn't matter if the offense is unclear to someone else, because it is about my…
This, a thousand times this. Misogyny, homophobia, racism, even slurs against programmers on the basis of their tool chocies: These are all offensive to me, and I wish to change that for my own reasons.
If a man hits his wife, I call the police. If she says, "No, it's ok, I provoked him, I deserve it," do I shrug and say, "Well that's all right then?"
Attempting to intimidate me out of speaking up by labelling me a "white knight" and questioning whether my motivation is to seduce women is pretty low and vile, but what I expect from the kind of apologist scum that perpetuate these kinds of social bullying behaviours.
"Reg, shut up, you're just trying to sleep with dykes" is not going to work in this or any century.
Re: Speaking up
#160Whenever an instance of blatant sexism comes up, an attempt is invariably made to rationalize away the fact that a sexist act has actually occurred. We have had two such attempts made here so far and I expect more. One commentator is attempting to advance the baseless theory that the bully did not care about the sex of his victim. This particular individual even goes so far to say that "the biggest problem" is the al…
To be honest I don't understand what this has to do with sexism. I would think this is actually a crime (stalking?) committed by some deranged individual, whose real motivations we don't know anything about. Even if they were "hatred of women" or whatever, I fail to see what the lesson to be learned from that should be? Is the implied assumption that the deed was encouraged by rampant sexism in the industry?
In the last story I read about stalking the stalkers were people who had personal relations to the victim. No idea if this is common for stalking (as for rape), but I wouldn't be surprised.
I don't mean it to defend anything (what?), just trying to understand the "xyz is sexism" mindset?