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Coding Like a Girl

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Re: Coding Like a Girl

#101

Post by rfrey »

JDiculous wrote: post #74
zeendo wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Forget the connotation 'horrific'. Are you asking why we should work to stop this behavior? Pardon me for assuming but here are my thoughts - Because it's literally systematically oppressive. This behavior makes an entire gender less likely to participate in our field. That's bad for the gender and it's bad for the field. Isn't that enough reason to work to fix it? So what if there are non-malicious explanations for…

I'm saying that it's impossible to fix. If you're a short white guy, people will always initially assume that you're not a pro basketball player. Again, as long as you're not overly zealous about your assumptions and willing to accept when they're wrong, it's not discrimination or "systematic oppression". Feminists try to turn this into a gender war, but it's really not. It's the circumstance of any minority in any h…

Being short is a natural impediment to playing professional basketball.

Being female is not a natural impediment to programming. So, even if you're correct that gender assumptions are valid (and apparently OK) because of the prevailing gender makeup, it is not impossible to fix - you fix it by changing the prevailing gender makeup. (I don't agree with that assumption, but let's grant it for the sake of exploring the other point.)

If part of the reason for the prevailing gender split is the attitudes that are caused by the prevailing gender split, then sure, you have a chicken-and-egg problem. But it's far from impossible. You can, for example, change one half of the equation by social expectation manipulation. Or change the other half by affirmative action measures. You may think the cost is greater than the benefit, but it's not impossible.

Re: Coding Like a Girl

#102

Post by rfrey »

Bahamut wrote: post #88
spiffyman wrote: post #19

I posted this on FB last night and had quite a discussion ensue. I really like what the author has to say about assumptions. As a user group and conference organizer, time and time again I have seen men approach feminine people in the crowd with these just terribly naïve prejudices. "Oh, you must be a junior dev." Or "Who are you here with?" We men should absolutely try to set these poor assumptions aside -- if not f…

Or if one is going to make an assumption, err on the side of unoffensive ones. If there is a chance that it is offensive, don't verbalize it.

I very much like this simple, civilized rule.

Some people may call that political correctness or something, but I call it manners.

Re: Coding Like a Girl

#103

Post by evincarofautumn »

TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #24
spiffyman wrote: post #19

I posted this on FB last night and had quite a discussion ensue. I really like what the author has to say about assumptions. As a user group and conference organizer, time and time again I have seen men approach feminine people in the crowd with these just terribly naïve prejudices. "Oh, you must be a junior dev." Or "Who are you here with?" We men should absolutely try to set these poor assumptions aside -- if not f…

Reminds me of how when a female singer produces her own music and has limited assistance from a man, reviewers attribute the entire thing to the man: http://www.slate.com/blogs/browbeat/2015/01/21/bjork_pitchfo... It's not even some malicious, deliberate assumption. People have been raised to expect that it is men who do the "real work", and pass over women without thinking about it.

This was surprising and saddening…these are the sort of artists that I thought people sought out because they do so much interesting stuff largely on their own.

I’ll admit I’m guilty of assuming Taylor Swift was merely a front for a pop machine, but that’s because I’d prefer to believe she’s a better person in real life than some of her songs would indicate.

Re: Coding Like a Girl

#104

Post by lmz »

rfrey wrote: post #101
JDiculous wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm saying that it's impossible to fix. If you're a short white guy, people will always initially assume that you're not a pro basketball player. Again, as long as you're not overly zealous about your assumptions and willing to accept when they're wrong, it's not discrimination or "systematic oppression". Feminists try to turn this into a gender war, but it's really not. It's the circumstance of any minority in any h…

Being short is a natural impediment to playing professional basketball. Being female is not a natural impediment to programming. So, even if you're correct that gender assumptions are valid (and apparently OK) because of the prevailing gender makeup, it is not impossible to fix - you fix it by changing the prevailing gender makeup. (I don't agree with that assumption, but let's grant it for the sake of exploring the…

> Being short is a natural impediment to playing professional basketball.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Muggsy_Bogues

Re: Coding Like a Girl

#105

Post by rfrey »

mgkimsal wrote: post #68

A few random thoughts... "Who are you here with?" might be indicating... what company are you here with? Are you with Google, or MS, or... whatever. "Who do you work for?" might be more appropriately direct. I have a pink macbook. I wear pink headphones. You wouldn't believe the number of weird/sexist comments I get from time to time. Or maybe you would. There was a piece floating around a couple weeks ago about wome…

I'm sure the asshat behaviour you describe affected you as much as any individual woman is affected by similar behaviour. I know (in the abstract sense) the people you're describing and they make me mad.

That said, if the kind of behaviour you're describing affects women much more than men, can we still say there's sexism at work? Say I pull some statistics out of thin air: say 1 of 20 men get harassed like you describe, but 1 of 3 women experience it. Can we say there's sexism? If there is, can we address it or try?

You can say that women don't experience it more than men (that would be a surprising claim that would contradict a lot of evidence to the contrary, but it would be a valid criticism). Or you could say that they don't experience it to such a greater degree that justifies special attention. But I don't think it's a strong argument to say that men experience ass-hattery, therefore none of the ass-hattery directed at women is based on sexism.

(Edit: I don't mean to say the above arguments are your arguments - just that they would be legitimate arguments.)

Re: Coding Like a Girl

#106

Post by danielmiessler »

I hear and feel the frustration, but it's misplaced.

If a man shows up to a tech conference dressed like the guys from Jersey Shore, he's going to be looked down on by everyone there. He'll be assumed to be part of the delivery people doing setup for the booths.

If he complains that he's a programmer and that he shouldn't be judged by his clothing, he will get mixed results.

It's true that if he turns out to be a nice guy, and a great programmer, then people will change their opinions of him.

But the one thing we cannot do is demand that the entire world see signals differently than they see them out on the street.

When someone dresses like the men on Jersey Shore, they do so because they are signaling certain things. They're signaling masculine power. Strength. Sexual prowess. Fighting ability. Etc.

Women who dress extremely femininely and girlishly are also sending signals that literally BILLIONS of people already know how to receive.

Don't be surprised when people interpret signals the way that is most beneficial to them in 99.9% of cases.

This is not a message that men from New Jersey or Women in general cannot be seen as programmers. It's a message that signaling matters, and we must be aware of what messages we're intentionally sending to others that we may need to overcome.

Re: Coding Like a Girl

#107

Post by c22 »

logic404 wrote: post #100

A couple years ago she attended a technical conference and on the first day, she wore a dress...wore a nerdy t-shirt and jeans instead, and she had a better experience that day. People assumed she was technical and didn’t dilute their explanations to her I'm not sure this really makes the case that its sexism at play. For example, if a guy wore a suit and tie to a conference, people might assume he's not a programmer…

Yeah, I don't get it. She keeps saying she's "presenting" as feminine and then complaining that people are basing their assumptions on how she presents herself. If more programmers wear pretty dresses maybe that look will become stereotypical of programming, but it hasn't historically been the case. If I show up at a tech conference presenting as a wrestler I might be displaying all sorts of macho manly cues but I stil wouldn't expect to be taken seriously without extra effort.

Re: Coding Like a Girl

#108

Post by hasenj »

polarix wrote: post #46

Something is twisted in all these discussions of gender in tech, it really seems like we're just going around in circles over and over again. I've never read anything that felt like a particularly insightful explication of the cause here. Is it possible there's something more fundamental in society that this phenomenon is merely a symptom of, and that the fix is not going to be something like "just challenge yourself…

Perhaps the average/typical "nerd" type male has experienced (either directly or indirectly) some form of rejection from members of the opposite sex sometime during adolescence and the rejection was mostly based on the type of person he is (i.e. computer nerd), so somewhere deep in his mind there lays a thought of "pretty/attractive/feminine girl" type being the polar opposite of the "programmer/nerd" type of person.

Re: Coding Like a Girl

#109

Post by rfrey »

danielmiessler wrote: post #106

I hear and feel the frustration, but it's misplaced. If a man shows up to a tech conference dressed like the guys from Jersey Shore, he's going to be looked down on by everyone there. He'll be assumed to be part of the delivery people doing setup for the booths. If he complains that he's a programmer and that he shouldn't be judged by his clothing, he will get mixed results. It's true that if he turns out to be a nic…

I agree with everything you said, except the conclusion (that you led with.)

The OP said she wore a dress. Not "extremely femininely and girlishly". She wore a dress.

"But the one thing we cannot do is demand that the entire world see signals differently than they see them out on the street."

Apparently the entire world thinks wearing a dress is a signal that one cannot be a technical person. That's the point of the article.

Re: Coding Like a Girl

#110

Post by alexmat »

wongarsu wrote: post #92
JDiculous wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can someone explain to me why this is so horrific? When 95+% of music producers are male, of course men are going to assume that you're not a producer if you're female. When 90+% of developers are men, of course men are going to assume you're not a developer if you're a female. If I saw an extremely tall, handsome, well-dressed, and sociable man at a tech conference, I wouldn't take him to be a developer either. If y…

>When 90+% of developers are men, of course men are going to assume you're not a developer if you're a female For one, that's a crime against statistics and formal logic itself. "90% of RAM is not fault tolerant, of course men are going to assume it's not RAM if it's fault tolerant" would be a ridiculous thing to say, because you just can't reason that way. The kind of reasoning you want to do works like this: 90% of…

>"90% of RAM is not fault tolerant, of course men are going to assume it's not RAM if it's fault tolerant" would be a ridiculous thing to say, because you just can't reason that way.

If you had to make an assumption, and all you knew about an item was that it was fault tolerant, ruling out RAM is not a terrible strategy if 90% of all RAM is not fault tolerant.

Likewise, if all you know about someone is they are a developer, assuming they are male is not a terrible strategy since you are correct 90% of the time! I'll take those odds of being right without having to gather facts in most circumstances.

Obviously in a social setting (especially a tech conference) being wrong even once can be painful to the other party, so we should avoid making our assumptions known until we've verified them when trying to be civil.

But in most matters it's not unreasonable to prejudge and then verify, otherwise we'd spend too much time being uncertain. And in some cases, choosing to act on certain assumptions leads to a higher payoff than waiting to act on facts (which can be expensive to procure).

Until passing over women for developers costs more than assuming they're not developers, this will continue. The strategy being used by disgruntled female developers seems to be to inflate the social cost of not assuming all women are equally likely to be developers. In some circles that will matter, in others it won't. I don't blame women for using guilt to gain leverage. I'd do the same thing in their place.

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