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This Industry is Fucked

blog.jessfraz.com

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Re: This Industry is Fucked

#81

Post by jazzyk »

Frondo wrote: post #48
thirdtruck wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You probably haven't heard it from them because complaining about such is so often labeled as "whining" and met with replies of "get a thicker skin." Even if you, specifically, are a genuinely sympathetic ear, they've likely been burned too often to open up yet again.

This, this, a thousand times this. I have a few female programmer friends, and they only ever spoke about "well, you know, not too many women in the field" in careful, guarded tones. Until the Adria Richards thing happened, and I said something like "I don't really think either of them should have been fired, but I also think it's shitty how common those stupid sexual jokes are. I wish we could get past that stuff."…

Please do not bring the Adria story again - she made a fuss because of an adolescent joke she overheard two rows behind her in a private conversation, which was NOT DIRECTED AT HER, and was not about females or sexual or any other interaction with females. All the same while making crass jokes herself in her social media accounts.

As opposed to this case, where some sickos clearly send very troubling messages DIRECTLY ADDRESSED to Jessie. She should call the cops immediately.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#82

Post by [deleted] »

Kapura wrote: post #40
astrocyte wrote: post #27

This is not common and, given her focus area in tech, it just happens to be more pronounced among those individuals. Ever heard of 4chan? All it takes is one post of your info and you'll get a swarm of people descending on you... Linux/open source is full of such individuals. They do it to get a rise out of people and the internet is a nice anonymous vehicle to do it under. Has nothing to do w/ the broader industry o…

"Not common?" Really? This SEEMS pretty common. And while I believe it's true that not every woman in tech gets harassed, it's obvious that a much higher percentage of them get this sort of shit than men. And it only gets worse as they get more visible for the good work that they're doing. You say you're tired of this shit. How do you think these women feel? It's not you writing the tweets and emails, but if you beco…

[deleted]

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#83

Post by nmrm2 »

obstacle1 wrote: post #64
nmrm2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author received private messages saying that someone jerked off to a picture of her at a conference and also photoshopped pictures of her full of blood. Those sorts of messages -- even in isolation -- have real-world, often physical, consequences. This attitude that sexual harassment is only harmful if it's a physical assault needs to go back to the 1950's where it belongs.

>Those sorts of messages -- even in isolation -- have real-world, often physical, consequences. No, in the vast majority of cases they don't. Trolls gonna troll, sorry. I'll bet we can count on one hand the number of times Internet death threats have led to actual deaths. There's a reason authorities don't investigate or prosecute stuff like this. >This attitude that sexual harassment is only harmful if it's a physic…

I don't know how to respond to your assertion that receiving violent messages on a regular basis is only harmful if there's a credible threat of follow-through.

It's simply not normal to have to read email threatening you or making sexually harassing statements. No one should have to put up with that. The fact that you seem to think that this is normal is deeply concerning to me. If you regularly receive harassing messages, that's not okay and I'm really sorry. I'm really glad that you're apparently able to handle that without lots of mental anguish, but it's not something we as a society should shrug off.

> How is a death threat sexual harassment?

Please read the linked post. If you can't find the instance of sexual harassment in the author's blog post... god help you.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#84

Post by JoeAltmaier »

bcg1 wrote: post #79

You can say 'this isn't a problem with our industry, it is just internet trolls' but people outside our industry aren't going to docker conferences or paying attention to presenters at them. It might not be YOU that does this type of thing, but someone you work with is. You know who I'm talking about and you don't shun them or expose them... and until you do, author is correct, this industry is fucked.

But how do any of us know what online presence others we work with have? I don't pay any attention to what my co-workers do on their own time. They may be jerks in quite a few arenas; it can be quite invisible to me.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#85

Post by obstacle1 »

jessaustin wrote: post #70
obstacle1 wrote: post #57

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>it's obvious that a much higher percentage of them get this sort of shit than men No, it isn't obvious, since even in the case of women all we have are lots of really visible anecdotes, not statistics. It could easily be the case that the number of death threats received by males heavily outweighs the number of death threats received by females. I know that I don't write reactive blog posts every time some troll thr…

...every time some troll threatens to gut me via PM. Has that ever happened?

I'll bet it's happened to anyone who has even slightly stepped into the spotlight of the Internet at large. I've received all kinds of death threats via PM, some extremely 'creative', and I've died precisely zero times. It's one step higher than fiction on the 'I need to worry about this' scale, and every investigative/institutional agency in the world agrees.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#86

Post by [deleted] »

astrocyte wrote: post #68
astrocyte wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This isn't pretty common nor are any of the off the wall comments and threats she's getting serious. It's called trolling. Have you been on the internet in the last decade? If you're dumb enough to let someone get under your skin, they will and will do so even more. I'm a minority. Do you know the kind of shit I've had to deal w/ in tech. Note the 'deal with'. Were supposedly in a society where women are demanding to…

lol @ all the downvotes I'm getting for this and the swift retracing of upvotes of my initial thread due this extended commentary. I would delete this but i'm going to let it stay... Just goes to show you the depth of people's view on such issues. You want to go on and on about surface issues and foolishness that has nothing to do w/ the root. Yet, the minute someone brings up something real.. Oh no !! That's too muc…

[deleted]

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#87

Post by bunderbunder »

obstacle1 wrote: post #64
nmrm2 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The author received private messages saying that someone jerked off to a picture of her at a conference and also photoshopped pictures of her full of blood. Those sorts of messages -- even in isolation -- have real-world, often physical, consequences. This attitude that sexual harassment is only harmful if it's a physical assault needs to go back to the 1950's where it belongs.

>Those sorts of messages -- even in isolation -- have real-world, often physical, consequences. No, in the vast majority of cases they don't. Trolls gonna troll, sorry. I'll bet we can count on one hand the number of times Internet death threats have led to actual deaths. There's a reason authorities don't investigate or prosecute stuff like this. >This attitude that sexual harassment is only harmful if it's a physic…

You're trying to move the goalpost here, and folks are right to not let you do it.

If you think abusive behavior is OK, show some courage of your convictions and just say it outright. Don't sit here playing word games that make you look like a coward.

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#88

Post by corysama »

There is a small culture of people online who make a hobby of harassment. They don't have an agenda. They aren't representative of anything. They're not distinguished by being part of any particular industry, race, sexuality or economic status. They are simply selfish individuals.

They do it because it gives them little endorphin pops to think about how upset their victim must be and because it is a very low risk activity. That's all there is to it. They don't particularly care about "women in tech" or "women in gaming" to any extent beyond the fact that the controversy gives them a hook they can latch on to dig a reaction out of their victim. Or infinitely better: the press!

The only way to prevent this activity is to attach a small but concrete level of risk to it. Quoting the article that chuckcode linked about Reddit's "Violentacrez":

> "My wife is disabled. I got a home and a mortgage, and if this hits the fan, I believe this will affect negatively on my employment," he said. "I do my job, go home watch TV, and go on the internet. I just like riling people up in my spare time."

Re: This Industry is Fucked

#90

Post by TTPrograms »

chuckcode wrote: post #33

The level of abuse the author has endured is ridiculous and she certainly has my sympathies. It reminds me of Louis CK's routine about why he doesn't give his kids cell phones ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5HbYScltf1c ) which boils down to without seeing the other person they can't empathize about the effect their words will have on other people. I can't help but wonder how these pseudo-anonymous people will feel…

I've sort of thought that this was a fairly consistent phenomenon since the origin of the internet, and that as more and more people come online they've been exposed to it and don't think it's reasonable. And to some extent they're right - it's not reasonable. Unfortunately being a public figure, especially by critiquing that phenomena, is going to attract more of that abuse.

It pains me to see people call that sort of thing an issue with the "tech industry", though. Not that the tech industry is perfect, but that grouping in the internet trolls with people who care and want to fix the things that do need fixing is really counter-productive when you're trying to win a war of hearts and minds.

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