171–180 of 311 posts
I'm currently working in a team that is 50% women, and I'm amazed at how many stories they have of previous work experiences and the culture of acceptance in medium sized companies. I hope Jessie doesn't give up. Not only for the sake of our industry, but also for the sake of girls who want to make it in this industry and not have to put up with what jessie has had to put up with. Her (or any person) having to leave…
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> Every time I see posts like this, I see people commenting on it with varying statement to the effect of "that's a shame, but most people in tech aren't like that", or "I'm so tired of seeing posts like this, quit making a fuss." I'm tired of people whining in a blog post instead of calling the police. Death threats and violence threats like this are unacceptable. CALL THE POLICE. After a couple of high-profile case…
One, demanding that the victims do extra work to solve the problem is problematic in that it shifts the burden onto people who are already having a hard time. (If you think this can be easily solved, volunteer to deal with the police for someone. Or just pay for someone to act as an advocate.) Two, if you were paying attention to previous victims of online harassment, you'd know that police generally don't give a shi…
I am a colleague of Jess, and have witnessed her dealing with this ordeal. She is a badass and doesn't need anyone to speak on her behalf. But some aspects of her experience are relevant to all of us and we have to talk about it. 1. If this is happening to you and you haven't spoken to anyone about it - please do. There is a specialized support group at https://www.crashoverridenetwork.net . Even if you feel you can…
It was covered on FLOSSWeekly earlier this year (https://soundcloud.com/twit/floss-weekly-331-oapi).
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One, demanding that the victims do extra work to solve the problem is problematic in that it shifts the burden onto people who are already having a hard time. (If you think this can be easily solved, volunteer to deal with the police for someone. Or just pay for someone to act as an advocate.) Two, if you were paying attention to previous victims of online harassment, you'd know that police generally don't give a shi…
So if I was mugged or being robbed, I have no friends around when this is happening, and I am not paying a security service, I shouldn't call 911?
I already thought this was something of importance, like, talking about a bubble or concerning trends in the industry. What I got was an emotional rant of someone who got trolled. Our digital media have more than enough possibilities to blacklist the baddies, or even whitelist the people you want to be in contact with. Don't look at things you don't want to see, nobody is forcing you to.
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Agreed. What Jessie is dealing with is classic internet trolls. They don't give a damn about "Women in Tech", her or anything else. All that interests them is finding a target to dig a reaction out of "for the lulz". They do it because it gives them little endorphin pops to think about how upset their victim must be and because it's very low risk. That's all there is to it. If there was any perception of risk in thei…
> They don't give a damn about "Women in Tech", her or anything else. I disagree. If this was a pure love of fucking with people, men and women would get equal levels of this. But that's definitely not the case. They have a strong opinion on women in tech (and in gaming): they're vigorously opposed. > The only way to discourage them is to introduce concrete risk to the unwanted activity. I'm all for that. But it's tr…
Women in tech and gaming are targeted because they are juicy targets. They have a high reward/effort ratio. It's easy to get hooks into a woman in tech/gaming. Vigorously opposing them is a means to the end of getting a reaction. It's relatively much harder to get a reaction from a man for being in tech or gaming. So, the trolls go for the low-hanging fruit.
> I'm all for that. But it's tricky.
Definitely. If this was easy, it would have been solved long ago. This is a problem as old as the internet. I'm just trying to direct attention to the actual problem. Indictments of whole industries are worse than distractions. The confused, heated, misguided, highly emotional arguments are troll dessert! Watching people in this discussion get angry at each other is the cherry on top of all the effort they put into Jessi.
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Someone shouting and being rude is a little different to gory Photoshopped photos.
true, but that didn't happen to my colleague. I'm just pointing out that one data point for people who are suggesting "ask your female colleagues".
FWIW, I know someone who takes a very public stand online with a few feminist issues and she cops brutal reactions on the net. I think many people simply cannot contain their natural reaction to beat down someone (especially a woman) who they perceive as being successful, or not deserving success by some metric (beauty, body, etc) unrelated to the point.
I just want to understand why people do this. If some men were afraid of losing their jobs because of a big influx of women I'd at least comprehend (but definitely not agree with) that behavior, but it's a job free-for-all now and seems like it always will be, so I just can't see what the motivation could possibly be. If they're just pure sociopaths, why don't they harass men this way as well?
Because men usually don't feel as vulnerable they can to a greater extent disregard certain types of threats or not get exposed to them (especially the sexual ones).
Unfortunately the abusers/bullies have a larger more powerful arsenal for attacking women than men.
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Respectfully, I think your rhetoric doesn't help the situation. It's not "gas-lighting" to be skeptical of the prevailing narrative that tech is a misogynistic boys club. The thing is, the harassment that Jessie is facing could literally be one person, right? Do you deny that? Absolutely no one suggested "was okay in any way shape or form", but the fact that you used all caps really drove the point home for everyone…
Skepticism is disbelieving something. Putting forward a conspiracy theory with literally no evidence (and evidence to the contrary) is not skepticism.
The thing is, the harassment that Jessie is facing could literally be one person, right? Do you deny that?
I give credit that there is a problem. I genuinely want to help improve things (my daughter might want to follow her old man into this field one day). What can an unassuming white developer do beyond publicly stating "This is unacceptable", and setting the right example of personal behaviour?