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An open letter on feminism in tech

modelviewculture.com

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Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#41

Post by mendicant »

taybin wrote: post #25
danshapiro wrote: post #15

I appreciate the authors taking the time to write this (unfortunately this HN comment page emphasizes the uphill climb ahead). But there's one thing in particular I, selfishly, appreciated them addressing: "Does this mean we’re going to get angry at you if you try to help and get it wrong?" This fear was something that kept me from speaking out for many years. I'm a guy in tech and I want to see change occur but I'm…

Compare that with http://jacobian.org/writing/what-can-men-do/ , which is linked to in the OP in which he criticizes Jeff Atwood for doing it wrong. So wrong that he won't even link to him, even though he acknowledges that his intentions are good. Edited to fix pronoun.

Psssst. The OP of this article who criticizes Jeff is Jacob Kaplan-Moss. ie: A male.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#42

Post by mreiland »

steveklabnik wrote: post #6
optimusclimb wrote: post #3

It makes me sad to read this stuff, but a genuine question for other male readers. Have you heard of, or come into contact with any of this abhorrent behavior that's mentioned? I have never seen it anywhere I worked, or heard of that sort of thing through word of mouth, but obviously that's a terrible sample set. My experiences related to women in tech: * Everywhere I've worked, it's been a boys club, but we'd LOVE t…

You bring up an interesting point, which is visibility. All of this stuff absolutely happens, but a _lot_ of it goes unreported. This leads to a situation where if you're 'on the inside,' you see and hear about it all the time. If you're not, then you don't. Generally, when I say "women have informal networks where they share stories of abuse to help other women be cautious around certain actors", there are two react…

There is also confirmation bias.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#43

Post by arzugula »

> Feminism is the radical notion that women are people, and that we want to be treated as equals. Don’t let someone else pretend otherwise out of their own misguided notions.

So what do we call the feminists who work to suppress research that shows gender symmetry in domestic violence?

What do we call the feminists who demonize men as rapists, deadbeats, child molesters, and abusers?

What do we call the feminists who lobby against equal parenting rights for fathers and for stripping the right to due process of those accused of domestic or sexual violence?

Feminism is not about equality - that would be called humanism or egalitarianism and would not focus on one specific identity group.

Feminism is the dying ideology of demonizing and subjugating men. Feminism is Marxist ideology maladroitly applied to the genders in order to paint the male gender as sub-human, innately heartless, and evil oppressors, while painting women as perpetually innocent victims.

A movement truly concerned with equality would address areas where human rights are actually unequal such as the outcomes of family courts or no-fault divorce law. Instead we see feminism focusing on non-issues to further their political agenda (#banbossy) or in warping every situation in which a woman gets slighted by an asshole male into proof of "patriarchy".

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#44

Post by swombat »

ronaldx wrote: post #31
swombat wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have seen it once, in one of my employees. I fired him. I still don't like the ultra-feminist movement though. Hate doesn't achieve much good.

I feel uncomfortable that you have implicitly associated the parent article and its goals with extremism and hatred, which I don't observe.

I've seen those kinds of more extreme articles (and writers) on modelviewculture before, so I think it's fair to judge a publication by what it publishes. And some of these talking points were adopted by ultra-feminists.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#45

Post by taybin »

mendicant wrote: post #41
taybin wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Compare that with http://jacobian.org/writing/what-can-men-do/ , which is linked to in the OP in which he criticizes Jeff Atwood for doing it wrong. So wrong that he won't even link to him, even though he acknowledges that his intentions are good. Edited to fix pronoun.

Psssst. The OP of this article who criticizes Jeff is Jacob Kaplan-Moss. ie: A male.

Well, burst my bubble and call me Slim.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#46

Post by makomk »

optimusclimb wrote: post #26
anildash wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You read the story of a range of women from across the industry, said you haven't had the experience these women have had, and then explicitly asked men for their opinions. See if you can figure out the bug here. * "We have this problem with our iOS app." * "I use Android and have never seen this. Any other Android users encounter this?"

Anil - I'd have expected a bit less snarky of tone from someone so public, but I'll try and answer you anyway: Yes, I asked other males what they've seen. You can't change reality. Our industry is about as male as the army. I could probably have counted the females in my computer science program back in college on one hand. I'm just wondering if it really all is as behind closed doors/hidden as is implied, or perhaps…

Why should he be less snarky? After all, the tech industry supposedly loves straight-talking engineers like Linus Torvalds who don't beat around the bush and tell people bluntly why they're wrong - so much so that we even let them get away with gratuitous personal insults and misguided arguments.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#47

Post by mycroft-holmes »

dominotw wrote: post #33

"Some men made statements that made us feel unwelcome in the tech industry" We are going to respond my making generailized hate speech towards all men in the industry. But seriously, are people expecting 100% support from all sections of society? Is that even a realistic expectation?

> We are going to respond my making generailized hate speech towards all men in the industry.

This is a large part of my problem with some of the MVC writers. If you're a male, you're guilty. If you're white and male, you're really guilty.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#48

Post by agentultra »

optimusclimb wrote: post #3

It makes me sad to read this stuff, but a genuine question for other male readers. Have you heard of, or come into contact with any of this abhorrent behavior that's mentioned? I have never seen it anywhere I worked, or heard of that sort of thing through word of mouth, but obviously that's a terrible sample set. My experiences related to women in tech: * Everywhere I've worked, it's been a boys club, but we'd LOVE t…

> Have you heard of, or come into contact with any of this abhorrent behavior that's mentioned?

Yes.

White, privileged male.

I was attending Pycon 2013 in Santa, Clara. I had just spent the lunch hour with a good friend and his acquaintance, X. As we were leaving X decided it was an appropriate time to quietly share his views about women in tech with me. I was mortified at that moment and promptly exited the conversation without addressing X's comments to me.

I've felt terrible about that exchange ever since.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#49

Post by hkmurakami »

>Kat has started organizing casual lightning talks featuring female speakers. The talks have now taken place in both San Francisco and New York.

I thought that attending these would help me in various ways (all the words I can come up with fail to fit my sentiments so I'm going to leave it vague like this), but the link [1] doesn't lead to any resource where I can find out about future such events (presumably they'd be held at Stripe since Kat, the host, is employed there). Does anyone know where I can find this info?

[1] https://stripe.com/events/lightningpies

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#50

Post by stackcollision »

aaronem wrote: post #27

[Quick prefatory update: HN's throttling algorithm has decided, on the basis of five comments counting this one over the space of the last hour, that I'm "submitting too fast". It'll therefore be a fair while before I am able to respond to the replies I confidently expect this post to provoke.] You know, at base, I think this is a class issue. No, I don't mean in the Marxist sense, so all you libertarians who're even…

s/class/common human decency/g

I think a lot of what you're talking about has more to do with an apparent inability of some people to act with any sort of common sense around other human beings rather than 'class'. This happens in any workplace (my mother was a secretary, and had to leave one of her companies because her boss was consistently making advances), but in technology especially so.

Perhaps this is a symptom of the social environment a lot of programmers seem to have in common. A lot of us spend our teenage years alone or with a small group of very close friends. Because of that, certain people might not develop a full understanding of social customs, or worse: deride them as 'silly'. This is a fundamental mark of immaturity, and most people and most programmers grow out of it. Some people don't, and I think it's especially common among programmers because they (and yes, this is stereotype) tend to be very solitary.

People like us tend to spend a lot of time online, where you can make sure you only talk to people who are very similar to you (case in point: HN). Not being forced to talk to people with different opinions results in stunted social growth. A huge part of life is learning to interact with people who are different than you.

When you throw someone who doesn't have a lot of experience with social norms and is used to having everything their way into an office work environment, they generally don't mesh well.

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