It's Different for Girls • Hacker News Board

Re: It's Different for Girls

#251

Post by vacri » Sat, May 03, 2014, 1:50 AM UTC

pencilcode wrote: post #237

sliverstorm wrote: post #172

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well, or they just feel that they will be much less successful hitting on a girl who is accompanied by a guy, platonic or otherwise.

And/or they simply want to avoid a direct confrontation, which might happen when a man is present, but not when the woman is alone. This just happened to me today, biking and of course i heard some rude comments. Really wanted to tell them to fuck off but then I would engage, they might respond, etc, and my biking zen would be even more disturbed.

It's really not "that guy might stop me". It's "they're probably a couple, what's the point". The default assumption is that a mixed-gender pair of people around the same age is a couple. I've been out wandering with female platonic friends plenty of times, only to have people assume we're a romantic pair.

Re: It's Different for Girls

#252

Post by danielweber » Sat, May 03, 2014, 1:52 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #231

frozenport wrote: post #184

>>My partners are concerned that when you have this baby you are going to lose interest in the company and not be a good CEO As a practical matter this is a legitimate question. For example, "why are you taking this job when you plan to be busy for the next 6 months?" (or even longer).

No, it isn't a legitimate question. In fact, in an employment setting, it's an unlawful question. It presumes that the interviewer can extrapolate from the probably irrelevant detail of someone's pregnancy status to their ability to perform after the birth; refuting that bogus extrapolation requires the candidate to explain and defend their child care arrangements and home life. As a practical matter, if someone in m…

I once thought that everyone knew not to ask things like this, but people don't.

Story: at a friend's place of employment, they were having an interview for a secretary, as the previous two secretaries had both left after their maternity leaves. During a group interview, one guy asks a candidate "hey, you're not planning on getting pregnant, are you?"

Did I mention this was at a law firm, and that the guy asking this was a lawyer? Yeah.

The poo instantly hit the fan from about a billion different directions. Everyone in the room, not just the guy who asked the question, got a very very long talk with HR. It entered company lore as "really stupid and expensive mistake this one guy did."

Whenever I'm on the questioning side, I always go over this with my coworkers.

Re: It's Different for Girls

#253

Post by tptacek » Sat, May 03, 2014, 1:56 AM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #44

britta wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can educate yourself and others! There are lots of resources for learning how to do more, including speaking up to other men and putting some money toward supporting people who are making a difference. Here's an article with a bunch of options ("What Can Men Do? Men working with other men against patriarchy in technology"): https://medium.com/tech-culture-briefs/a1e93d985af0 - and here's an allies training worksh…

Sorry, but I find Shanley's approach to framing this issue completely the opposite of the OP here. The OP sees the good in good men and lifts them up. The closing point about the joke she shared with her colleagues underlines it: there are people who are unable to laugh off a "dick in your hand" joke regardless of context and who it comes from. Not because of a lack of sense of humor, but because any such joke will b…

Wait, it's actually not okay to lean on a class of people you oppress to mitigate the oppression. We don't even have to get in to framing; the quote you used to sum Shanley up is self-evidently true.

Re: It's Different for Girls

#254

Post by vacri » Sat, May 03, 2014, 1:57 AM UTC

rando289 wrote: post #216

enraged_camel wrote: post #117

I have an ex-coworker who is a really attractive girl, and she used to tell me lots of stories like this about places she had worked at previously. Vice presidents calling her to their room and offering her promotions if only she would give them weekly blowjobs, prospective customers turning away from million-dollar deals at the last minute after she refused to sleep with them, etc. The really sad thing about is that…

“Every time I see the word ‘Girl’ used in scenarios that are supposed to empower women, it really grates on me,” http://www.forbes.com/sites/kashmirhill/2013/01/30/girls-lad... It bothers me too. The article is otherwise great. google, define: girl "1. a female child. 2. a young or relatively young woman." https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Girl : "A girl is any female human from birth through childhood and adolescence to…

I've had a 15-year experiment going in relation to this. Some adult females hate being called 'girls', because of the reasons you state. Some adult females hate being called 'women' in a general context, because they feel it brings a whole lot of feminist baggage they don't want to deal with. It didn't matter what word I chose, I'd find someone who was put off by it, and had had clear complaints verbalised about both words (ie: I'm not wrongly picking up on nonverbal cues).

So I started using 'lass' instead (I am not in an area where this is in common use). I haven't yet found anyone who bridles at this, when before I certainly did with 'girl' and 'woman'. No-one seems to particularly care for or against 'lass', with the exception of some elderly women, who seemed to like the suggestion of youth in the word. The experiment part was that I'd stop using 'lass' when someone complained about it, like they did with 'girl' or 'woman', and to see how long that would take.

I'm not particularly suggesting this as a course of action for the general public, it's just a story to relate.

Re: It's Different for Girls

#255

Post by cinquemb » Sat, May 03, 2014, 1:59 AM UTC

mindslight wrote: post #243

cinquemb wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Attempting rational analysis in the presence of an angry mob is not a good idea - your only real options are to actively join in the fun, or stay at home with the lights off. Probably great advice for the meatspace, but I question if such needs to be the lowest common denominator for online interactions. But I guess some people must be thinking: "How could this person not derive any pleasure/fun from deriding anoth…

Well the online consequences are a lot less serious. The possibility of some downvotes is not dissuading either one of us from carrying on saying what we think. I said what I did mainly to point out that this whole thread is indeed mob behavior, because the phenomenon seems have gotten really bad in this community lately. But even if I do get greyed out, it doesn't really matter because a few people will still read n…

>I said what I did mainly to point out that this whole thread is indeed mob behavior, because the phenomenon seems have gotten really bad in this community lately.

Agreed. I figured maybe if I could try to frame the issue in a technical means that might interest people of this community in the context of controversial present uses of technology (trying to expand beyond the mob behaviors in the community towards present asymmetric usage of such) that could benefit us in many spheres if used to study our behaviors if the means were more available/accessible to all.

It's just funny because now people in my position have been pushed towards pursing startups in order to try to address social behaviors using technology because no such freedoms are granted in academia until one is grey haired, and even then you must pander the present status quo in academia which I have friends whine to me about all the time.

At least on HN, I can have a way to even find people trying to do similar things, and I wouldn't know if I didn't state what I was thinking which I think outweighs the fear of being grey out (it still is pretty unpleasant since that affects whether some people who may help pursue such ways of trying to address things may over look, but maybe it attracts those people even more, so maybe not!).

All in all, I'm still pretty hopeful that such interactions here and in derivative spaces like github/twitter can draw me towards people who want to think of/build something to address something like this one day. It's worked form getting me interested in decompiling firmware, network bruteforcing, learning different programming languages, writing code to mine twitter for social information corresponding to crowd sourcing campaigns and their influencers, etc…

> […]but a very base judgment of whether someone is with-us or against-us. Since you're not outraged, you must not share my exact values. Since you don't share my values, you must be part of the problem.

Yeah, I can understand that, but I just stated how such judgements can be construed as (with an intentional mocking touch placed in that train of thought). And this is coming from someone who had an official position at an Ivy League university before I dropped out, as a "Minority Peer Counselor". Funny enough, even there, people who normally initially associate with others (and me) on the basis of their skin (for a multitude of reasons, most predominantly surrounding some internalized fear of rejection/and derivatives from prior experiences or teachings) didn't like when I brought up such phenomena.

Re: It's Different for Girls

#256

Post by tptacek » Sat, May 03, 2014, 2:01 AM UTC

gfodor wrote: post #207

jdp23 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've shown Shanley's post to quite a few women in technology (including some diversity experts) and they all think her concrete suggestions are excellent. [As do I.] So I strongly suggest any guys who really want to help read it and act on the suggestions even if they would prefer a different framing. And specifically, which of her points do you disagree with? Are you saying that men don't need to work with each othe…

I push back hard on the tumblr-ization of language, much as I do with the Luntz-ification of language perpetrated by right wing outlets like Fox News. Terms like "patriarchy", "privilege", and even "problematic" serve to re-frame the debate in a way that causes many negative consequences. It is pretty much the same tactic used in politics to control the language in order to disarm your opponent before debate even beg…

Since you haven't acknowledged a single substantive point from the Shanley post cited upthread, you should reconsider writing 250+ words about "framing" and Frank Luntz. And by "should", I mean that you should follow the Principle of Charity.

If you'd like, you can wait to start doing that until the principle becomes an HN guideline. You might have a couple of weeks left to ignore it ('dang has more or less said it's coming). But since it's just a good plan regardless of what the site rules say, I think you should start now.

The tendency for people to litigate framing, tone, and decorum instead of substantive points has a name in online feminist circles: "tone policing". I find the application of that term incredibly annoying. Which is why it's especially discomfiting to see someone directly play into the pattern of behavior the term was coined for.

Re: It's Different for Girls

#257

Post by Castlereagh » Sat, May 03, 2014, 2:01 AM UTC

enraged_camel wrote: post #117

I have an ex-coworker who is a really attractive girl, and she used to tell me lots of stories like this about places she had worked at previously. Vice presidents calling her to their room and offering her promotions if only she would give them weekly blowjobs, prospective customers turning away from million-dollar deals at the last minute after she refused to sleep with them, etc. The really sad thing about is that…

There's a counter-point to this that is likely to be unpopular, but it's deeply rooted in human biology and isn't going to go away any time soon. Attractive young women may have difficulty getting people to take them seriously, and have to deal with things like frequent unwanted sexual advances, but they have no trouble getting laid. Attractive young women have easy, practically unlimited access to sex (if they so desire). Unsurprisingly, this comes at a cost.

Meanwhile, while it's easier for men to be taken seriously, and they much less often have to deal with sexual harassment, they often have trouble getting laid—especially with the aforementioned attractive young women. It may be true that "the vast majority of guys...are simply not aware that women...go through this stuff all the time". But it's also true that the vast majority of women are simply not aware of how hard it is for young men, especially nerdy young men, to get appealing women to have sex with them. They would be utterly flabbergasted if they learned just how many computer geeks, science grad students, etc., have never even kissed a girl, much less had sex with one.

We see that there are plusses and minuses to each respective situation, but arguably men have it worse off, because women can complain freely of the terrible things they have to put up with, and they're generally met with sympathy by the mainstream (and backed by the full force of Federal law). Meanwhile, men who complain that attractive young women won't sleep with them are shamed and belittled, and told that no one owes them sex. Which is true—but is hardly helpful to the proverbial 40-year-old virgin.

Re: It's Different for Girls

#258

Post by tptacek » Sat, May 03, 2014, 2:05 AM UTC

benihana wrote: post #100

jdp23 wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I've shown Shanley's post to quite a few women in technology (including some diversity experts) and they all think her concrete suggestions are excellent. [As do I.] So I strongly suggest any guys who really want to help read it and act on the suggestions even if they would prefer a different framing. And specifically, which of her points do you disagree with? Are you saying that men don't need to work with each othe…

> I've shown Shanley's post to quite a few women in technology (including some diversity experts) and they all think her concrete suggestions are excellent. [As do I.] So I strongly suggest any guys who really want to help read it and act on the suggestions even if they would prefer a different framing. Sorry, but an anecdotal story from a random anonymous person on Hacker News isn't very convincing. Put another way:…

Did you read the post? Which substantive point in the post do you disagree with? If you have a problem only with the tone of the post, or its framing, then an honest rhetorical strategy would start by conceding that you agree with the substantive concerns of the post before moving on to attack the writer for tone, framing, or approach.

As it stands, the comment you wrote could have been written by someone who hadn't read the post at all. I imagine that's not the message you meant to send.

Re: It's Different for Girls

#259

Post by skywhopper » Sat, May 03, 2014, 2:09 AM UTC

teacup50 wrote: post #206

eli wrote: post #192

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is the same though: it's about power and privilege.

I am an individual! When you equate power and privilege with my appearance and gender, not only do you dehumanize me and treat me like a caricature, but you seem to assume that I hold some sort of power that makes me immune to your hate -- or you just don't care. Well, I'm not immune, and I'm sick of it, and if anything, I'd like you and people like you to take your message of prejudice somewhere else. I never gradua…

I agree that we should be judged as individuals, but if you are white and male, then you should also be aware that you are perceived differently and generally more positively in many situations than minorities and women. If you apply for a job or a loan, you have an advantage. Even without a Stanford MBA, you would have an easier time getting VC funding than more qualified women and minorities.

Re: It's Different for Girls

#260

Post by gfodor » Sat, May 03, 2014, 2:10 AM UTC

tptacek wrote: post #256

gfodor wrote: post #207

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I push back hard on the tumblr-ization of language, much as I do with the Luntz-ification of language perpetrated by right wing outlets like Fox News. Terms like "patriarchy", "privilege", and even "problematic" serve to re-frame the debate in a way that causes many negative consequences. It is pretty much the same tactic used in politics to control the language in order to disarm your opponent before debate even beg…

Since you haven't acknowledged a single substantive point from the Shanley post cited upthread, you should reconsider writing 250+ words about "framing" and Frank Luntz. And by "should", I mean that you should follow the Principle of Charity. If you'd like, you can wait to start doing that until the principle becomes an HN guideline. You might have a couple of weeks left to ignore it ('dang has more or less said it's…

It seems you are doing the same thing you are accusing me of by not addressing my points. The specific calls to action she makes for the most part seem reasonable. But they are hung not just on a poor tone but a general worldview that in my view alienates both genders from one another and in general would cause more friction and emotional hurt in day to day life if it were adopted by all. Hence the reason I called out what I saw to be a poor comparison, the OP and Shanley are coming at this from what I think are completely different angles. (And yes I agree with you, the 'tone police' card is overplayed and stupid.)