Our Culture of Exclusion (or, why I'm not going to *conf) • Hacker News Board

Re: Our Culture of Exclusion (or, why I'm not going to *conf)

#111

Post by coldtea » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 4:55 PM UTC

pessimizer wrote: post #19

coldtea wrote: post #2

> It's the booze. You can't go anywhere, do anything or talk to anyone in the tech industry these days without a drink in your hand. If you try to fake it with a soda water you may as well give up trying to have insightful conversations after the first hour, because everyone else is wasted. If "everyone else is wasted" then why should they catter to the non-wasted demographic? Should they spoil everyone's fun to make…

>If "everyone else is wasted" then why should they catter to the non-wasted demographic? This is self-fulfilling. If you create an environment that repulses non-drinkers, you will only have drinkers to cater to.

Maybe, but it begs the question: how come all those environments (events) come up as repulsive to non-drinkers (and not, say, the opposite)?

That is, how did they get their way? Doesn't that imply they are more numerous?

Re: Our Culture of Exclusion (or, why I'm not going to *conf)

#112

Post by coldtea » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 4:59 PM UTC

mtrimpe wrote: post #36

oskarth wrote: post #22

There's a world of difference between being excluded because you are of a certain gender, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation and because you don't like a certain beverage. Hey, I don't like the naive techno-optimist prevalent in many technology events, but that doesn't in any way make me excluded. It just means I might have a different attitude and hold a minority opinion compared to my peers, and that I find…

> If you feel like the event is too immature, don't show up or organize your own events. I don't know how you meant that, but it reads very much like STFU or GTFO to me. > The reason there's so much alcohol is because it acts as a social lubricant. Except that alcohol is more than just a social lubricant; it's a disinhibitor. That in and of itself creates an exclusionary environment for many women, because they can't…

>> If you feel like the event is too immature, don't show up or organize your own events. >I don't know how you meant that, but it reads very much like STFU or GTFO to me.

Well, when you want to change how MOST (by his admission) other attendants have fun, it's really par for the course, isn't it?

>>Except that alcohol is more than just a social lubricant; it's a disinhibitor. That in and of itself creates an exclusionary environment for many women, because they can't rely on physical dominance to counteract the dangers that come with a large group of uninhibited men.

I've never seen women have much trouble attending dance clubs, bars, concerts and the like -- places full of men and women drinking. A conference, if anything, sounds much safer than those.

Are we talking 1950's Alabama women here?

Re: Our Culture of Exclusion (or, why I'm not going to *conf)

#113

Post by coldtea » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 5:07 PM UTC

rmk2 wrote: post #7

coldtea wrote: post #2

> It's the booze. You can't go anywhere, do anything or talk to anyone in the tech industry these days without a drink in your hand. If you try to fake it with a soda water you may as well give up trying to have insightful conversations after the first hour, because everyone else is wasted. If "everyone else is wasted" then why should they catter to the non-wasted demographic? Should they spoil everyone's fun to make…

If "everyone else is white" then why should they catter to the non-white demographic? Should they spoil everyone's fun to make a minority feel "included"? I understand that the STATED purpose of the event is not "being white". But an unstated and real consideration for people attending is the opportunity of being with one or several white friends. Not everything operates on the "stated" level. A better way would be t…

If you're making "drinking at an event" to amount to "racism", then you're doing your argument a disservice and you probably don't know what racism is.

Worse, if this logic is accepted it sets up a hellish society, were that a few people don't like something would mean they can force the many who like it to cease it.

Notice how he doesn't ask for his right NOT to drink -- he asks that OTHERS do not drink because he doesn't like it.

That's like the inverse of democracy: the minorities clamp each other until everyone's not getting what they want.

Didn't we have that with the marijuana laws and sodomy laws already?Wait, we even tried it for drinking, during the prohibition. How did that turn out?

Re: Our Culture of Exclusion (or, why I'm not going to *conf)

#114

Post by coldtea » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 5:09 PM UTC

rmk2 wrote: post #29

jiggy2011 wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't really the same thing, you can't please all of the people all of the time. You could be as try and offer as diverse activities as you like, say drinking/sports/chess tournament and there is likely to be someone who doesn't like any of those things. A "whites only" restaurant is a different thing entirely to a restaurant where you're not thrilled about the menu.

Sure, but it does matter how you present your argument, and that's not at all what the GP expressed , even if it might have been the intended meaning.

Well, since I talked specifically about a PERSONAL behavior (drinking) to be ALLOWED (it's a fucking personal choice), instead of people to be excluded because of their COLOR, I'm pretty sure I didn't expressed anything like the BS racism argument above.

Re: Our Culture of Exclusion (or, why I'm not going to *conf)

#115

Post by coldtea » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 5:11 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #104

oskarth wrote: post #22

There's a world of difference between being excluded because you are of a certain gender, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation and because you don't like a certain beverage. Hey, I don't like the naive techno-optimist prevalent in many technology events, but that doesn't in any way make me excluded. It just means I might have a different attitude and hold a minority opinion compared to my peers, and that I find…

This is an embarrassingly facile response. Many religious and cultural minorities avoid alcohol-based gatherings, because their background forbids or strongly disapproves of such behaviour. Most recovering alcoholics avoid environments where drinking is taking place. As other commenters have said, a lot of women aren't comfortable being alone in a room full of drunk guys; Thanks to the tech industry's problems with g…

>Many religious and cultural minorities avoid alcohol-based gatherings, because their background forbids or strongly disapproves of such behaviour.

Yeah, should we encourage that too in tech conferences?

Re: Our Culture of Exclusion (or, why I'm not going to *conf)

#116

Post by yummyfajitas » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 5:40 PM UTC

mtrimpe wrote: post #109

yummyfajitas wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Personally I'm happy with bars and it seems like most people in the west are, so I'm not going to expend a lot of efforts fixing a non-problem. We don't need the alternative to have a tech community, and the fact of the matter is that any cultural choices we make will "exclude" some people. (I put "exclude" in scare quotes because it's self-imposed exclusion.) But if you find a good solution that might be deployable…

I find the degree to which you're comfortable using generic statements to define the issue a non-problem for the entire industry quite disheartening. That you personally don't feel the need to spend energy on these issues I perfectly understand however since it would do little to advance your personal goals. When it comes to those my comments to jiggy2011 might help get you started. Just like what it would take to ma…

The goal is to find something good enough for 80% of people - in the US bars are it and they are easy to organize. So for the US, it's a non-problem. In Pune, it's actually a bit more difficult to organize things.

Whatever group activity you pick somebody won't like it. Last year my company had a relaxation day and went to a baseball game. I hate baseball. Rather than whining like a spoiled child about how it's unfair that they excluded me, I just hung out with a pretty girl, watched Dark Knight Rises and ate some Indian food.

Re: Our Culture of Exclusion (or, why I'm not going to *conf)

#117

Post by drakeandrews » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 6:11 PM UTC

skrebbel wrote: post #32

> Come on, should we also have complimentary joints available? You know marijuana use can be linked to reduced stress and studies suggest it can be useful in treating depression! Please. This doesn't belong in the workplace! And I ask, why not?

Unless you're really, really bad at drinking, having a beer is not physically forcing others around you to drink. If you start smoking, then everyone else around you has to deal with the smoke. I'm told that using vaporisers removes the smoke aspect, but now you've got a cloud of THC laden steam which, whilst not as bad as a cloud of THC laden smoke, is still a pretty selfish thing to inflict on other people.

Re: Our Culture of Exclusion (or, why I'm not going to *conf)

#118

Post by mattzito » Thu, Jan 30, 2014, 6:17 PM UTC

jdietrich wrote: post #104

oskarth wrote: post #22

There's a world of difference between being excluded because you are of a certain gender, religion, ethnicity or sexual orientation and because you don't like a certain beverage. Hey, I don't like the naive techno-optimist prevalent in many technology events, but that doesn't in any way make me excluded. It just means I might have a different attitude and hold a minority opinion compared to my peers, and that I find…

This is an embarrassingly facile response. Many religious and cultural minorities avoid alcohol-based gatherings, because their background forbids or strongly disapproves of such behaviour. Most recovering alcoholics avoid environments where drinking is taking place. As other commenters have said, a lot of women aren't comfortable being alone in a room full of drunk guys; Thanks to the tech industry's problems with g…

There are religious and cultural minorities that don't believe in men mingling with women who are not their wives or relatives - do we restrict women from attending for fear those minorities would be uncomfortable?

I know a number of recovering alcoholics - some will avoid situations where alcohol is available altogether, some will happily go to a bar and drink a club soda all night, or somewhere in between. You can't generalize about a group like that.

And personally, I don't like strip clubs, never have. In various jobs, there have been a lot of sales dinners and the like that ended up at a strip club. I always left before we got there. I didn't feel put out, or uncomfortable, I was just frank about my dislike for them, and encouraged everyone else to go have a good time.

To a certain degree, I agree with you - if an event is ostensibly about topic X, but is really about getting hammered, that's unfortunate. But almost all of the conferences I go to have technical talks, and then a cocktail hour/binge drinking session for networking. Or it's a meetup/user group meeting at a bar, in which case, those who are uncomfortable in bars should just not go.

I dispute that drinking at conferences is "marginalizing a large group of people". I think there should be a balance, but ending the practice entirely is silly.

Re: Our Culture of Exclusion (or, why I'm not going to *conf)

#119

Post by mtrimpe » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 9:22 AM UTC

yummyfajitas wrote: post #87

mtrimpe wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's plenty of actual harrasment to be found in this list of incidents: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/index.php?title=Timeline_of_in... Keep in mind that this is just the subset of women who were strong and determined enough to come out and risk retribution and damaging their career prospects.

It's hard to take seriously a list of incidents that starts with "a model was photographed, and the photo was later cropped and used as a test image in image processing." Jumping to the very bottom, I see the Paul Graham non-incident and gendered pronouns. (Admittedly, I didn't read too carefully after seeing obvious nonsense everywhere I looked. Perhaps a list which is curated and has silliness removed would be a mo…

How about this one from October 2013 where a 25-year old woman gets talked into doing a body shot in a bar and ends up getting fingered by her boss while lying on the bar? http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Codemash_sexual_assault

That's when limiting myself to bar-related incidents in direct technology events. If you include conferences here's a full on attempted rape from last year: https://web.archive.org/web/20130627000201/http://georgiawei...

I'm even excluding the comic cons because they're arguably not that tech-related but harrasment there seems even more prevalent.

Notice how they also all refer to archive links? That's due to a mix of for fear of the consequences of having these posts be at the top of Google when searching for the victims name and straight-up libel suits being initiated by the perpetrators.

Re: Our Culture of Exclusion (or, why I'm not going to *conf)

#120

Post by mtrimpe » Fri, Jan 31, 2014, 9:34 AM UTC

coldtea wrote: post #112

mtrimpe wrote: post #36

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you feel like the event is too immature, don't show up or organize your own events. I don't know how you meant that, but it reads very much like STFU or GTFO to me. > The reason there's so much alcohol is because it acts as a social lubricant. Except that alcohol is more than just a social lubricant; it's a disinhibitor. That in and of itself creates an exclusionary environment for many women, because they can't…

>> If you feel like the event is too immature, don't show up or organize your own events. >I don't know how you meant that, but it reads very much like STFU or GTFO to me. Well, when you want to change how MOST (by his admission) other attendants have fun, it's really par for the course, isn't it? >>Except that alcohol is more than just a social lubricant; it's a disinhibitor. That in and of itself creates an exclusi…

I know that you're not particularly sensitive to these issues, but there's a huge difference between attending a bar by choice for personal reasons and having to attend a bar to be able to fully participate in all parts of professional events.

As for how much safer it is; I've already commented a bit on that here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7155984