Speaking up • Hacker News Board

Re: Speaking up

#271

Post by moe » Tue, Feb 05, 2013, 1:51 AM UTC

timsally wrote: post #90

Whenever 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…

Whenever an instance of blatant sexism comes up

Excuse me, have you even read the article?

Someone uploaded fake porn pictures of her to a forum and then persistently sent the URL to her employers and acquaintances.

This was a targeted attack on her reputation, or perhaps malicious stalking, but how on earth does sexism factor into this?

The porn pictures were merely a vehicle. If the attack had been carried out against a man they would probably have used accusations of child pornography or such.

Re: Speaking up

#272

Post by geoka9 » Tue, Feb 05, 2013, 1:54 AM UTC

saraid216 wrote: post #263

geoka9 wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Come on, guys (and gals). If we accepted that "Beards of Experience" is sexist, we would have to accept that it's also racist (many Asian men can't grow beards like the guy on gun.io) and maybe homophobic. Don't you think it would get ridiculous at that point? What about parenting sites where the design and images are clearly targeted at mothers (and not fathers)? Are they evil? Sexist?

I don't see anything that makes me think it's homophobic? Are you implying that gay men tend to be beardless? And yes. Parenting sites that assume that fathers can't be parents are sexist. Parenting sites that assume that fathers won't be primary caretakers because their target demographic's culture is sexist and doesn't understand that male parents are important are fence-sitting and sexist by omission.

I don't see anything that makes me think it's homophobic?

Me neither. But then again, I don't see anything that makes me think it's sexist. Or racist, for that matter.

And yes. Parenting sites that assume that fathers can't be parents are sexist.

Well, that's the problem I'm trying to highlight. They probably assume no such thing. But we must brand them as sexist by the same token that we are not supposed to tolerate a guy with a beard on an IT recruitment site.

Here's another example: when Nike uses a photograph of a tall black guy to advertise their basketball shoes - are they being racist, sexist and disrespectful to short people?

Re: Speaking up

#273

Post by timsally » Tue, Feb 05, 2013, 2:15 AM UTC

Tichy wrote: post #160

timsally wrote: post #90

Whenever 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 l…

I've read all your comments on the various threads and a central theme seems to be the following question: how does sexism fit into all of this, isn't this just harassment/stalking? It's a fair question. Recall that sexism is discrimination based on sex OR behavior that fosters stereotypical/hurtful attitudes and roles. The attacker did both here. He attempted to drown out the technical ability of the victim by, during her technical presentation, spamming pictures that quite literally turned her into an object. This is a manifestation of classic behavior where men value women for their appearance only and everything else is ignored. Had that attacker had his/her way, this would have been the reality; all the attention would have been on her appearance and no attention would have been paid towards her technical presentation. His/her goal could not be more clear. To tie the goal back to sexism: what the attacker wanted is both a distinguishing treatment based on her sex (the first definition) AND a behavior that encourages ignoring the technical ability of women in favor of focusing on their appearance (the second definition).

I hope this makes my use of the word sexism clear. I welcome further communication here in this thread or at my personal email, which can be found in my profile.

Re: Speaking up

#274

Post by thaumaturgy » Tue, Feb 05, 2013, 2:36 AM UTC

itsybitsycoder wrote: post #265

thaumaturgy wrote: post #223

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, I know that. And yet, people love them anyway. Again: "sweet" vs. "creepy" is all down to reading the situation.

If you're suggesting that nerds are incapable of "reading" the difference between fantasy and reality, I'm not really sure what to say. Certainly most nerds I know are capable of doing so. That's such a basic thing that I don't even think that falls into the category of social skills anymore. If nerds think that seeing something in fiction is a good reason to try it IRL then the anti-videogame-violence crowd has a lo…

I think at this point there's a fairly well-accepted connection between autism spectrum disorders and the software development community. (If you really need citations for this, I'll provide some.) One of the common side-effects of autism spectrum disorders is an impairment in interpreting other people's facial expressions, body language, and vocal tones.

When I mentioned the romcom stuff, it wasn't because I was arguing that it was a how-to or that nerds couldn't distinguish fiction from reality. It was only there to illustrate that the line between "creepy" behavior and behavior that in the ideal sense might be considered "sweet" is really blurry, and that it's dependent largely on receptivity of the people involved, and that as a trend, people in software development have a more difficult time correctly interpreting these situations.

I could go a lot more in-depth on this. I think there's a lot of very interesting cultural stuff happening in the U.S. (and to a larger extent, Japan) in male-female relations, I think there's a lot of uncertainty now about what constitutes "attractive" behavior and what doesn't, and I think that the ability to correctly interpret body language and other subtle cues is the only substantial edge anyone has over other people in this environment.

However, none of that should be read as a defense of behavior like posting fake nudge images of someone or outright harassment or any of the other things that women have recently been rightly complaining about. I was only wondering aloud earlier whether the combination of the ratio of men to women in software, combined with social impairment by a significant number of people in the industry, might be contributing to the problem.

I'm not really sure what else to say to defend my earlier comment; I honestly wasn't expecting it to be controversial. At this point though, if you'd like to continue to disagree, and you expect me to respond, I'd like for you to at least argue against what I actually write (e.g., I did not say, "nerds are incapable of 'reading' the difference between fantasy and reality"), and I'd love it if you bundled some kind of insight or evidence with your argument.

Re: Speaking up

#275

Post by [deleted] » Tue, Feb 05, 2013, 2:59 AM UTC

rjknight wrote: post #207

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #41

It's somewhat encouraging to read the comments here and note that for a change they are not already overrun by aggressive apologists for the continuing misogyny in software development.

Hmm. The number of apologists is actually quite small, in my experience. I think the problem here is that most of the people here are men, who have no real idea what being on the receiving end of sexual or sexually-motivated harassment is like, but they also don't see what they can or should do about it. I think it goes something like this: "Stories like the OPs are terrible, I get that, but by saying that 'the tech…

[deleted]

Re: Speaking up

#276

Post by RyanMcGreal » Tue, Feb 05, 2013, 3:00 AM UTC

rjknight wrote: post #207

RyanMcGreal wrote: post #41

It's somewhat encouraging to read the comments here and note that for a change they are not already overrun by aggressive apologists for the continuing misogyny in software development.

Hmm. The number of apologists is actually quite small, in my experience. I think the problem here is that most of the people here are men, who have no real idea what being on the receiving end of sexual or sexually-motivated harassment is like, but they also don't see what they can or should do about it. I think it goes something like this: "Stories like the OPs are terrible, I get that, but by saying that 'the tech…

I think you make a fair point. However:

> We need to make a clearer distinction between the average member of the tech community and, for want of a better word, the 'asshole contingent' who are the source of the problem.

What I'm suggesting is that the average member of the tech community himself needs to do a better job of being distinguishable from the asshole contingent - and the typical pedantic, aggressive, head-buried-in-sand HN reaction to instances of sexism, chauvinism and abuse is a real part of the problem.

Re: Speaking up

#277

Post by pekk » Tue, Feb 05, 2013, 3:15 AM UTC

raganwald wrote: post #159

roguecoder wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Whoa, hold up. Is it really necessary to label me as "apologist scum"? This seems in itself a bit of bullying.

To be very clear: I haven't labeled you a "white knight," accused you of "trying to sleep with dykes" (!?), said that you shouldn't report men hitting their wife, approved of racial slurs or anything like that.

I have simply made an observation about an certain, occasional obnoxious behavior by certain males... I have never said that arguing against misogyny, or speaking out against bullying (etc.) are wrong. I certainly don't think those things. I certainly don't "apologize" for people behaving in a discriminatory way. I simply say that sometimes people aren't doing what they say they're doing. I refuse to give men carte blanche provided only that they claim or pretend to be defending someone weaker than themselves, but this doesn't in any way imply that I reject people trying to defend those weaker than themselves. Why does this seem to be so controversial?

Re: Speaking up

#278

Post by chaostheory » Tue, Feb 05, 2013, 3:32 AM UTC

mwetzler wrote: post #131

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?

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'…

Where did this happen? I'm reading this and I'm a little shocked. I don't understand why people can be such jerks.

Re: Speaking up

#279

Post by rdl » Tue, Feb 05, 2013, 3:46 AM UTC

geoka9 wrote: post #251

mwetzler wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think two things make it more likely for me to encounter incidents of sexism: 1) I do some programming for my job, but a majority of it involves going out and meeting other developers, learning about their work, and seeing how we can make our API better for them. I live in SF so I can't get a coffee without bumping into another developer. I bet I have many more interactions than someone who is developing full time…

Come on, guys (and gals). If we accepted that "Beards of Experience" is sexist, we would have to accept that it's also racist (many Asian men can't grow beards like the guy on gun.io) and maybe homophobic. Don't you think it would get ridiculous at that point? What about parenting sites where the design and images are clearly targeted at mothers (and not fathers)? Are they evil? Sexist?

There's nothing evil or even sexist, IMO, about reinforcing stereotypes. However, given that there is a shortage of tech workers, and there are fewer women in tech than would be predicted based on accomplishment in other fields (bio/chem/pharma/med, specifically), I think it's reasonable to make an effort to be inclusive and try to reach out to women when recruiting or conducting other professional activities.

It's even more wrong to criticize someone aggressively for sexism in this case, but overall I think there would be net gains to everyone by attracting and retaining more women in technology. So, while it's not evil or sexist, "beards in technology" is counter to one's own interests even as a male in technology.

Re: Speaking up

#280

Post by saraid216 » Tue, Feb 05, 2013, 3:48 AM UTC

geoka9 wrote: post #272

saraid216 wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see anything that makes me think it's homophobic? Are you implying that gay men tend to be beardless? And yes. Parenting sites that assume that fathers can't be parents are sexist. Parenting sites that assume that fathers won't be primary caretakers because their target demographic's culture is sexist and doesn't understand that male parents are important are fence-sitting and sexist by omission.

I don't see anything that makes me think it's homophobic? Me neither. But then again, I don't see anything that makes me think it's sexist. Or racist, for that matter. And yes. Parenting sites that assume that fathers can't be parents are sexist. Well, that's the problem I'm trying to highlight. They probably assume no such thing. But we must brand them as sexist by the same token that we are not supposed to tolerate…

> Well, that's the problem I'm trying to highlight. They probably assume no such thing.

That's true. It's a good thing someone points it out, then.

> Here's another example: when Nike uses a photograph of a tall black guy to advertise their basketball shoes - are they being racist, sexist and disrespectful to short people?

Yes.