I knew exactly how she felt • Hacker News Board

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#151

Post by rjknight » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 8:51 PM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #124

> She then talked to me about robotics and physics and programming and how none of the other girls in her class understood anything she was talking about. They thought she wanted to build the next Terminator or hack into Government systems, when she just wanted to build self-driving cars. All the other girls would talk about fashion labels and gossip and she would be bored out of her mind, wondering why nobody else w…

And it goes to show that "sexism is the barrier" is not the whole story

This is true but possibly not in the way that you think. I'm not sure that girls are choosing that different way of life quite so much as they're conditioned to do so, and this is discriminatory. I think it's possible to explain the phenomenon described in the OP via "intersectionality" - in other words, there are multiple forms of discrimination and they overlap in ways that sometimes confuse us and deflect us from the true course of treating people equally. About the best intro I've seen to it is here: http://miriamdobson.wordpress.com/2013/04/24/intersectionali...

In this case, both geeks and women suffer from discrimination in different contexts. Being a geek and a woman is doubly difficult because mainstream society (both men and women) say "you're a woman, you shouldn't be a geek".

This ends up producing some pretty weird conclusions like this: http://thesituationist.wordpress.com/2010/02/01/the-nerdy-ge... - which argues that women can only be encouraged into computer science if we make it less geeky, which basically discriminates against those who got into computer science because it's geeky and that's what they like. A properly intersectional understanding would argue for maximum freedom for both women and geeks and, especially, female geeks who suffer from multiple discrimination.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#152

Post by jiggy2011 » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 8:52 PM UTC

mynewwork wrote: post #80

rdouble wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Outside of Silicon Valley anything that has to do with a computer has always been called IT.

This is entirely wrong. I've always thought one of the peculiarities about the UK is that they refer to all things computer as "IT" while the rest of the english-speaking world differentiates. I don't work in IT and I never will, it's a different job with a different skill set. I'm not tech support, a dba, or 'the network guy'. I'm a software engineer and I work in R&D.

In the UK too. While I'm mainly a developer, most of the jobs I've worked have also involved being a defacto IT person.

Thing is , I work with unix 99% of the time so when it comes to fixing driver problems in Windows 7 or whatever I'm just as clueless as the next man most of the time.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#153

Post by clerestorian » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 8:56 PM UTC

SPSteinbeck wrote: post #131

newnewnew wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we are experiencing is a particular flavor of secular religion called "cultural Marxism". Marxists believe that social forces are best understood through a model of class conflict . Economic Marxists explained the ills of society through the conflict between rich capitalists and the poor working proletariat. The rise of the middle class threw it a curve ball that it couldn't explain and it fell out of favor (out…

"Cultural Marxism" is an ahistorical term and suggesting deracinated American nerds whining about "sexism in tech" are in any way successors to the likes of Stalin is absurd. Marxists viewed this kind of thing as an effort by bourgeoisie money-driven "democracies" to neutralize and discredit revolutionary consciousness. Marxist-Leninism, as it actually existed, was masculine, authoritarian, implicitly violent, autocr…

The point is that Marxism "as it actually existed" isn't what this term is referring to. It's referring to Marxist theory, applied to dialectical struggles beyond just the bourgeoisie and the proletariat.

And Marxist theory is definitely not "masculine" or "authoritarian". Marx was always critical of the family and stressed the fact that marriage was a form of exploitation, famously comparing it to prostitution. This is why many Marxists have called for the abolition of the family, and why Marxist-Feminism exists -- it's just an extension of dialectical materialism with primacy placed on gender relations.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#154

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 8:58 PM UTC

Androsynth wrote: post #149

dragonwriter wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Feminism split off from Marxism in the 2nd wave of the 60's/70's when it was decided that class based oppression is a derivative product of patriarchy. Gender took the center stage to class, race, and other forms of marginalization. No, it didn't. Feminism predates Marxism ; certainly, some strands of feminism were informed by Marxism in some way, and certainly there is a school of Feminist criticism that largely f…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Second-wave_feminism

I'm not sure what the point of that was. It doesn't contradict my point that feminism predates Marxism and was never subsumed by it (and, as such, could never "break off" from it), or that the description of "feminism breaking off from Marxism" with the so-called "second wave" and taking the analytical approach described in the post my earlier post responded to was more accurately a description of a particular school of Feminist criticism that was influenced by Marxist criticism.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#155

Post by subsystem » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 9:01 PM UTC

narrator wrote: post #105

newnewnew wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we are experiencing is a particular flavor of secular religion called "cultural Marxism". Marxists believe that social forces are best understood through a model of class conflict . Economic Marxists explained the ills of society through the conflict between rich capitalists and the poor working proletariat. The rise of the middle class threw it a curve ball that it couldn't explain and it fell out of favor (out…

This is where I was a few years ago. You've found the enemy and it's Marxism. However, Marxism is just an abstraction that is related to the underlying epistemological disease of the modern era which is that we use statistics to prove our assumptions regardless of an actual identified mechanism of the phenomenon. We discard the search for the theory because it's hard and we've become accustomed to believing hand-wavy…

I actually think social science is one area which got it right by, in most cases, recognizing it own imperfections. Some people tend to take things for truth when it's rely more of a concept or a foundation for discussion. The only person who seem to be sure is the one studying just enough to make up their mind.

Where I really see a problem is where social sciences interact with natural science and acts as a natural science in the eye of the beholder, which happens in macro economics and even sometimes in things like programming methodology.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#156

Post by fudged71 » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 9:02 PM UTC

andor wrote: post #150

fudged71 wrote: post #137

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Irony: how do you pronounce that? IPA isn't exactly readable.

RTFM ;-) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Help:IPA_for_English#Key

Right, but it's unintuitive and takes a while to decrypt. Browser extension idea: hover over IPA to see only the relevant glyph pronunciations.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#157

Post by dragonwriter » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 9:04 PM UTC

dcalacci wrote: post #140

nhebb wrote: post #96

This actually explains why more women do not get into tech careers. In the same way that this young woman felt alienated from her schoolmates, many women who are not into geek culture would feel alienated by CS classmates and the tech industry. There's been a lot of talk about getting more women into this industry, and it's often looked at as a failing of the industry itself. What's plainly obvious to me is that many…

Many women not being interested in the field is not a _cause_ of the male-oriented tech culture; it's a symptom (although it is self-perpetuating) The idea that 'most women just aren't interested in the field' because they're women, and not because the male-dominated culture _makes_ most women uninterested in the field, is harmful. Making that statement on a male-dominated community site perpetuates and constructs th…

> The idea that 'most women just aren't interested in the field' because they're women, and not because the male-dominated culture _makes_ most women uninterested in the field, is harmful.

I suspect that most women aren't interested in the field the same reason most men aren't. Despite how interesting it is to those of us -- women and men -- who have chosen the field, the fact is that most people just don't see (or share) the attraction, for reasons which have nothing to do with either their own sex or their perception of the culture of the field.

The minority of women interested in the field may be a smaller minority than the minority of men, and that may be because of either perception (accurate or not) of the welcomingness of the culture of the field by women (and, for that matter, men) or actual sex differences, or both, but that is a whole different set of things than the reason most women aren't interested in the field.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#158

Post by philwelch » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 9:08 PM UTC

eightpersimmons wrote: post #101

s_baby wrote: post #61

I see plenty of insightful comments here but no one acknowledging the conclusion. >It’s funny because the evening started out with a lady giving a speech about how the IT industry is alienating women. But for some girls, it feels like women are alienating the girls who want to be in IT. How many of these articles/talks put the impetus on changing women alienating women from tech? How likely are you to see some twitte…

Absolutely - women sometimes internalize and participate in misogynistic and cruel behavior, and it can be hard to talk about. I've seen this happen with the "fake geek girl" phenomenon - some women who feel that they are legitimate parts of the community participate in this kind of destructive policing because they've bought into the cultural misogyny and are often rewarded and have their status reinforced in their…

Do you realize how ridiculous that sounds? When women bully other women, it's because they're agents of the patriarchy?

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#159

Post by DanBC » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 9:09 PM UTC

memset wrote: post #65

_pmf_ wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> because that pretentious image is something we want to overcome If this is true, you're very subtle about it.

Hah. Realize that wine is made, literally, by farm boys who spend the year picking and crushing grapes from the field. When you visit a winery you realize how far-removed the winemaking process, which is as down-and-dirty as any other farm work, is from its cultural air. This is my experience with many wine professionals - people who procure, ship, or teach about wine for a living. There is a valid criticism of sommo…

I found wine-types much easier to deal with once I learnt that there's a bunch of chemicals which cause tastes in wine, and there's a list of recognized names that people use to describe those tastes.

Still, I would strongly prefer any tasting sessions and reporting to be done double blind. With only a sub-editor knowing the name of the wine and putting that in at the last minute.

Re: I knew exactly how she felt

#160

Post by philwelch » Fri, Apr 26, 2013, 9:10 PM UTC

AlexandrB wrote: post #116

newnewnew wrote: post #90

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What we are experiencing is a particular flavor of secular religion called "cultural Marxism". Marxists believe that social forces are best understood through a model of class conflict . Economic Marxists explained the ills of society through the conflict between rich capitalists and the poor working proletariat. The rise of the middle class threw it a curve ball that it couldn't explain and it fell out of favor (out…

> nobody cares that there are no female garbage collectors or miners Just like nobody cares that there are very-few/no male prostitutes or strippers. The underclass you speak of is split along gender lines too - unfortunately.

Prostitution and stripping can be very lucrative professions.