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Speaking up

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Re: Speaking up

#301

Post by jjcm »

afarrell wrote: post #33
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.

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…

I think the point he's trying to make with regards to the white knighting going on, is that when a nude of Gabe Newell or Sergey Brin is made it doesn't hit the front page of HN. We respond differently when it's done to a woman.

Re: Speaking up

#302

Post by ordinary »

mnicole wrote: post #200
knowtheory wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Really? Are there? Show me some examples. What indications do you have that defending a woman is a sexually motivated act?

I have only seen it happen once or twice in-person, but I've run across it multiple times online. Had one guy, known for being awkwardly friendly (as in, had a motive) with the women in the group, even try to invite himself to stay with me multiple times while he would "be in town" and even when others would say "Dude, please stop," he would retort with "Once she meets me, she can decide!" Wouldn't let up on it, even…

I think you provided a counter-example, instead.

Re: Speaking up

#303

Post by 9392732 »

wilkie wrote: post #260
FireBeyond wrote: post #224

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"since men at large are not discriminated against based on their gender" Some examples at random: percentage of males in teaching professions, and/or daycare? Breast cancer funding and research versus prostate cancer funding and research, despite the relative frequency of each? Hint - 1:6 men will get prostate cancer, 1:8 women will get breast cancer. But the National Cancer Institute allows for $1,318 worth of resea…

That's totally a valid point. I wish more men would speak out against this and, honestly, that it is not used to diminish the equally valid point of sexism in technology. But we have to understand that in those situations it is not oppression. And that is a key point. Men are not oppressed by society when they are discriminated, because by-and-large, men make more money, have more opportunity, stay within their indus…

Go volunteer at a homeless shelter - they must be sexist as they are full mostly of men.

Go to a morgue in a place of heavy industry - mostly men.

Go on a cargo ship, spending weeks at sea in less than comfortable conditions. Oil rig, mine, etc

Re: Speaking up

#304

Post by _Simon »

MacsHeadroom wrote: post #294
ender7 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent's point is that she is a target because she is a woman , and society gives such people more tools to abuse women than to abuse men. This makes it a sexist act. There are significantly more males in this industry with significantly more popularity. Yet no evidence is presented that these figures also have received this level of harassment. When the OP says that "[women in technology] are scared" it is becau…

>she is a target because she is a woman We don't know that. This is an assumption made with no meaningful evidence.

Not really. That this doesn't happen to men with the same frequency or degree of severity is enough of a smoking gun to suggest that this is indeed the case.

Re: Speaking up

#305

Post by andrewcooke »

hopeless_case wrote: post #268
andrewcooke wrote: post #256

Earlier quoted context omitted.

because discrimination is about power. if two groups have equal amounts of power it really doesn't matter that much (except for social courtesy sake) what they say about each other. discrimination is a problem when it's associated with inequality. it's a big deal when a majority bash a minority. the other way round, not so much. even less so when the criticism is internal to the majority.

I think you are conflating these two statements (the apex fallacy): 1. Most of the those who have power are men. 2. Most of those who are men have power. They are very different statements and one does not imply the other. The average man has no more power than the average woman.

first, the apex fallacy is about, say, most ceos (most people at the top) being men - it's about assuming things given the extremes. but in the case of the tech industry, most programmers (most people at all levels) are male. we simply dominate - we are a clear majority. so it's not about bias from extremes. we dominate even in the middle.

second, arguments based on the apex fallacy assumes that power can be treated in some "average" way, so even if the top has power, if the bottom doesn't it somehow "averages out". and that's pretty clearly not a good model for how society works (which is why these kinds of arguments are popular only in fringe anti-feminist groups).

Re: Speaking up

#306

Post by RyanMcGreal »

moe wrote: post #292
ender7 wrote: post #287

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The parent's point is that she is a target because she is a woman , and society gives such people more tools to abuse women than to abuse men. This makes it a sexist act. There are significantly more males in this industry with significantly more popularity. Yet no evidence is presented that these figures also have received this level of harassment. When the OP says that "[women in technology] are scared" it is becau…

How do we know she was targeted because she's a woman? This whole jumping to conclusions is just a bit much for me. Couldn't she just as well be targeted because she rejected some nerd who had a crush on her? Or even by another woman who is jealous of her? That obviously doesn't make the actions any better, but seems a more plausible motivation to me than "a random guy running a smear-campaign against a random woman,…

Please, please, please take the blinders off. This is unambiguously a misogynist attack that follows a painfully well-established pattern of targeting and harassing women online - a pattern that nearly every single woman who has a significant online presence experiences.

Please, please do some reading on this - it's not hard to find reports and analyses of online woman abuse, and it's not hard to recognize the recurring themes and motifs, which prominently include image-based harassment.

Re: Speaking up

#307

Post by hopeless_case »

enraged_camel wrote: post #290
hopeless_case wrote: post #254

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Men and women commit rape and are raped in roughly equal numbers, and that is not including prison rape. When do include that, men are the majority of the victims. The CDC's 2010 National Intimate Partner and Sexual Violence Survey, which looked at society at large and excluded the prison population, found that 1.1% of women and 1.1% or men surveyed were raped in the prior 12 months. 98% of women who had been raped i…

>>Men and women commit rape and are raped in roughly equal numbers, and that is not including prison rape. When do include that, men are the majority of the victims. Statistics have very little meaning without context. From your first link: >Men are the vast majority of rapists and women are the vast majority of victims because rape was defined in such a way to make sure that this was so. Exactly. This is so because…

If men as a group took advantage of women as a group, then why would men define rape to deny their own victimhood? That is not acting in the interests of men.

I agree that the narrative of men being strong serves the interests of the men at the top of the power structure, but that is a tiny percentage of all men.

The average man has no more power than the average woman.

Re: Speaking up

#308

Post by guard-of-terra »

randomdata wrote: post #150
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 would suggest that harassment of white men (and men in general) usually comes in the form of attacking one's mind, rather than body. George W. Bush stands out as a notable example. I don't know of anyone posting supposed pictures of him naked, but the jokes about his intelligence were seemingly never ending.

They surely did: I remember several times when I saw Bush's monkey face mounted on top of a slightly NSFW girl.

Re: Speaking up

#309

Post by guard-of-terra »

randomdata wrote: post #150
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 would suggest that harassment of white men (and men in general) usually comes in the form of attacking one's mind, rather than body. George W. Bush stands out as a notable example. I don't know of anyone posting supposed pictures of him naked, but the jokes about his intelligence were seemingly never ending.

They surely did: I remember several times when I saw Bush's monkey face mounted on top of a slightly NSFW girl.

Re: Speaking up

#310

Post by hopeless_case »

h2s wrote: post #297
hopeless_case wrote: post #268

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you are conflating these two statements (the apex fallacy): 1. Most of the those who have power are men. 2. Most of those who are men have power. They are very different statements and one does not imply the other. The average man has no more power than the average woman.

> The average man has no more power than the average woman. Can the average woman apply for any given technical position with an equal chance of being interviewed by a person of her gender? When the average woman's colleagues organise a social event outside of work, does she feel as powerful as the average man when she's the only female in a room full of inebriated men? When the average woman's colleague accidentally…

Can the average man expect to marry a woman with a higher educational attainment than him, who will bear more of the load of providing for the family so he can spend more time with the children? Does a man have an equal chance of getting a college degree (college enrollment and graduation now favors women by 60 to 40 percent)? When a man's wife beats him up and the police not only refuse to take him seriously, but arrest him instead (the primary aggressor doctrine) how does that make him more powerful than the average woman?
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