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The fight against sexism is not a free pass

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Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#131

Post by catwell »

stephp wrote: post #66
yeukhon wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am just afraid there is going to be a retaliation against Ben. Remember what happened early this year at PyCon? Honestly, people need to stop acting like animals and stop bash him out. There are other contributors who can rule him out and we don't need those hash comments. Sexism is not about woman. When we call a country "she" we are making a female description of what a country is: nurturing her citizens. And sin…

Saying "your average uncle joe" does not ring sexist to me? You're drawing a comparison, to whomever you want to, and not making any radical assumption about a specified group of people. As for your rape anecdote... I hope you'll give the mechanics of that a bit more thought? And also consider the type of physical injury. (Many rape victims suffer damage to their internal organs and/or lose the ability to conceive.)

About "uncle Joe": in France the most popular equivalent is "Madame Michu" (female). And a lot of people consider this is sexist.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#132

Post by ceautery »

thescribe wrote: post #121
ceautery wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just about anything by bell hooks. But if you want a specific starting point, try "Feminism is for Everybody".

Ok, on your recommendation I found a copy of the book and read it for the last three hours. I am significantly less convinced of the thesis "Feminism is about equal rights" after reading this book. "Most women in the United States do not even know or use the terms colonialism and neocolonialism." I found this statement to be emblematic of the issues this book has, it is right around 125 pages of assertions and 0 page…

That title would be too long.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#133

Post by melindajb »

Never mind those generations of discrimination. We men will tell you what is an acceptable commit and that's that. Offended? Tough luck. We run the world! It's a meritocracy don'tchaknow??!!

(But don't publicly shame us! We're too threatened a species! we're just innocent victims of tradition! Who got this way through our own hard work! Oh no the womenz are attacking!!!!!!!!! Poor us!)

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#134

Post by melindajb »

rosser wrote: post #51

It is so incredibly, profoundly frustrating to watch (mostly) male nerds grapple with sexism. Guys (and I mean that specifically and gendered-ly), you don't get it. You kinda can't, and I say that as a cis male person. I don't get it, either, except maybe intellectually, and even then only occasionally. To get a little meta for a moment, I think a lot of the disconnect that happens in these discussions (to, admittedl…

What's really telling is how far this thoughtful response is being voted down the list.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#135

Post by melindajb »

yapcguy wrote: post #96
smtddr wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And I'm focusing on what you wrote: >> What we have learnt is that the CEO of Joyent is prone to over-reacting and will fire people over nothing. If you think what took place in that github thread was nothing, you represent exactly the dismissive attitude of sexism the tech-industry needs to get rid of.

I don't see anything in that Github thread to warrant summary dismissal of an employee. A good CEO would ask the relevant manager to sit the two parties down and resolve the situation. If it were not possible, human resources could be brought in to assess the situation and perhaps administer training and/or disciplinary action. A sign of a bad CEO is knee-jerk firing and to write a blog post, boasting about such a hy…

No you don't get it. When you ask someone who is part of an underrepresented minority to "work it out" on an issue of gender discrimination, you are putting the onus on the person who was acted upon to resolve the situation. If you're mugged, do you think the police should ask you and the mugger to meet and "work it out?"

The person who committed the offense is the person who should be held responsible. this isn't a matter of opinion or a "cat fight" and your response is exactly why things aren't changing in tech. Most women have encountered a sexist at some point or another, tried to get it fixed and been told to "work it out." How exactly do you "work it out" with someone who is fundamentally convinced your issues are irrelevant?

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#136

Post by stephp »

reeses wrote: post #111
stephp wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Saying "your average uncle joe" does not ring sexist to me? You're drawing a comparison, to whomever you want to, and not making any radical assumption about a specified group of people. As for your rape anecdote... I hope you'll give the mechanics of that a bit more thought? And also consider the type of physical injury. (Many rape victims suffer damage to their internal organs and/or lose the ability to conceive.)

Male prison rape is a joking matter in many places. "Pound me in the ass prison" is well-known in the hacker community. Think before you react.

To state the obvious: female rape jokes are everywhere, all the time. Both are terrible, of course.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#137

Post by tree_of_item »

jrockway wrote: post #95
ben0x539 wrote: post #89

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Singular 'they' has been a thing for centuries.

And it's sucked for centuries. If it were clearly better, the gender-specific pronouns would be gone, right?

No, not right, because sometimes when people try to use it they get resistance like you see in the commit.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#138

Post by tree_of_item »

jrockway wrote: post #71
moocowduckquack wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They or their as singular has been part of recognised English for a very long time. "God send every one their heart's desire!" - Much Ado About Nothing, Act III Scene 4 "There's not a man I meet but doth salute me, As if I were their well-acquainted friend." - Comedy of Errors, Act IV Scene 3

That's a fair point, and "they" certainly does work well in some places. But if you took every use of "he" or "she" from Shakespeare and replaced it with "they", then we'd have a problem. And that's what this post is hinting at doing.

Running `s/he/they` on Shakespeare's current literature would fail, but why is that a problem? Don't you think Shakespeare could have made it work from the beginning if that was a big issue at the time?

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#139

Post by reeses »

stephp wrote: post #136
reeses wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Male prison rape is a joking matter in many places. "Pound me in the ass prison" is well-known in the hacker community. Think before you react.

To state the obvious: female rape jokes are everywhere, all the time. Both are terrible, of course.

Indeed. However, you tell a rape joke about women and someone should (and very likely will) tell you that it's not funny.

Comments like,"Don't drop the soap," are so benign in our culture that you would have to be in a hypersensitized environment to be concerned about repercussions of any sort.

How many people feel as if justice is served when a male prisoner is raped to death, à la Jeffrey Dahmer. In fact, many would not call Dahmer's homicide a rape, but switching genders would absolutely qualify it as such.

I'm sounding as if I'm on a soapbox about this, but I'm not defending female rape in any way or the power imbalance of gender in most of the world.

Re: The fight against sexism is not a free pass

#140

Post by theorique »

yxhuvud wrote: post #129
jrockway wrote: post #28

Gender neutral pronouns suck in English. Fix that before you start firing people over not using them.

We recently added 'hen' as a gender neutral pronound in Swedish, to go with 'han' (he) and 'hon' (she).

The impression of that change in the US media seemed to be "oh my God, look at those overly politically correct Europeans inventing words to be politically correct" (when they noticed it at all).

What was the impression on the ground in Sweden?

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