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Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

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Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#251

Post by KingMob »

ianstallings wrote: post #199
KingMob wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, given how atypical the author's experience and outlook is, her advice doesn't translate well to others, and unfortunately, she fails to realize this. I have to admit, I never imagined the mindblindness of ASD could ever result in a misguided empathy article.

No she does realize that and goes over it in the article. She's trying to ask you to respect her opinion regardless. Which obviously went over the heads of many here. Even though all she is essentially saying is "listen to me", you refuse to listen and try to invalidate her opinion. Because "her advice doesn't translate well to others". The only advice she gave was to acknowledge her experiences and perhaps digest th…

I appreciate that she's asking to be heard and acknowledged. But she does suggest she has important advice to offer when she says "why won’t you let me give you what I have?", and my take is that her advice is only narrowly applicable to women like her.

I think her offering her "advice" counterproductive, because not only does it not apply to most women in tech, who do not have the requisite ASD traits, it also makes it seem as if other women in tech who want to be accepted as theirselves are somehow mistaken in not taking her path. Worse, articles like this provide ammo to men who have zero desire to change, since they can now complain, "This woman's happy, why can't you be like her?"

The irony is that both groups of women want to be accepted as themselves, but Meredith is unaware how she already fits in to male tech culture, and how that partially eases her path. Also, given her ASD-ness, she's probably missed out on much subtle discrimination; it's easy to ignore discrimination you don't notice.

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#252

Post by Ygg2 »

Lawtonfogle wrote: post #163
Ygg2 wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is this downvoted? Wasn't homosexuality treated as a mental illness?

But it does exist. Diagnosing it wasn't the issue, it was labeling it as an illness that was. Of course, this opens the big question as to what is or isn't an illness, especially when you begin to look at things given hypothetical accepting societies that may not currently exist.

> But it does exist.

Sure it doesn't, but the context was diagnosing it. As in recognizing it as a disease.

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#253

Post by hodwik »

ceejayoz wrote: post #19
hodwik wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Asperger's is a real diagnosis.

Certainly, when diagnosed by a doctor. I'm talking about the "I've never been formally diagnosed but..." and "I think I'm a little on the spectrum" sort of comments that often wind up in threads about programmers being socially awkward. Side note: having Aspergers doesn't make you an asshole.

> " having Aspergers doesn't make you an asshole."

My experience of people (medically diagnosed) with Asperger's does not support that statement.

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#254

Post by pavedwalden »

tome wrote: post #138
savanaly wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There had been interest, but one of the committers had dismissed the idea out of hand because a woman had proposed it. This also blows my mind. 100% of my colleagues and friends who work in programming would suffer severe whiplash from the double take they would take after reading a statement like that from someone we were working with. How would someone who says something like that in a non-joking way not be immed…

How would someone who says something like that in a joking way not be immediately ostracized?

I really hope that this doesn't becomes something that's NEVER OK to joke about.

When in a situation where someone might say something terrible, I'll sometimes go ahead and say it jokingly. The way I see it, getting everyone to laugh at how ridiculous it sounds is way to reinforce that it was unacceptable. And sometimes I think it was there anyway - somebody was thinking it but not saying it or it was implicit in their thinking and they didn't even notice.

For instance, when discussing which interns should be assigned which tasks, John was initially paired with the IT department. Then we realized that John was unavailable that day, so it defaulted to Julie. And I feigned puzzlement for a moment and said "Are you sure we should't wait for John? Girls don't like computers." Which was my way of needling my co-worker about the fact that initially defaulting to the male intern might not have been entirely arbitrary. I knew him well enough that he'd take my point without feeling like I was accusing him.

TL;DR, I think there's a difference between a sexist joke and joking about sexism

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#255

Post by KingMob »

venomsnake wrote: post #80
smacktoward wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> My experience with women in tech is that they are smart, strong, foul mouthed, sarcastic, heavy drinkers and awesome dirty joke storytellers. In other words, they're "one of the guys." Which kind of summarizes the whole problem -- women who want careers in tech who aren't naturally "one of the guys" either have to learn to pretend that they are, denying their entire personality in order to fit in, or find another l…

Or there are a lot more women that can be "one of the guys" but their upbringing and the culture imposed onto them fucks them up?

Why not turn that around?

"Or there are a lot more men that can be "accepting of women's perspectives" but their upbringing and the culture imposed on them fucks them up?"

E.g., beliefs in being the sole breadwinner, beliefs that women are less suited for STEM work, that men are (or should be) superior to women, my workplace should be like my frat house, etc.

It's great for women that can be one of the guys (e.g., Meredith), but why is that a requirement to work in software?

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#256

Post by nailer »

msandford wrote: post #119
afarrell wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'd argue the Irish have "unbent themselves". What prejudice or discrimination do the Irish face in contemporary America? (My background: Grew up in the New England then moved to Austin. I look Mediterranean but my last name is Farrell and I play the bodhran...mediocrely) I'm highly skeptical of the idea that this "unbending" is anything but a loud, activist process.

They don't face it in contemporary America, but they did face it when they started immigrating to the US many years ago. Given that you don't discern any anti-Irish sentiment I might argue that they did a fine job of "unbending themselves" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment I'm not suggesting that "unbending yourself" is the only way to do things, just that it does seem as though it's possible. Maybe…

Only place I've ever heard people openly hate Irish people is Scotland, only place I've heard people claim intellectual inferiority is Australia. One of my parents is Irish, and I don't have an accent, so people tend to say what they think.

The rest of the world stereotypes and is occasionally ignorant of history, but that's common for people from most countries.

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#257

Post by KingMob »

Kenji wrote: post #94
KingMob wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... more perceptive women, who see from the outset that they will have to work twice as hard to be only equally respected in the industry, should shut up and get to work instead of pointing out the unfairness? They should toil for a decade or two in order to have the requisite cred before complaining about injustice? You don't even know your "stop complaining and start doing" solution will work. Since the anti-fema…

Any company that arbitrarily discriminates against talented women cuts into their own flesh: The competition will be able to hire this talent. If I were an employer, I wouldn't give two cents about gender as long as the work is done well. As a consequence, female-friendly workplaces have a larger pool of talent to hire from, therefore, they would thrive against the misogynistic competition.

You sound like an economist who believes in rational behavior and frictionless spread of information. Sadly, we're not there yet.

In the real world, the subconscious belief that women aren't as good at tech is widespread, and access to studies demonstrating a lack of gender-based differences in ability is not. In such a world, managers with unexamined biases believe they are justified in paying women less and down-weighting their ideas and work. Plus, until the spread of the bias decreases, no company is at a relative disadvantage for having it.

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#258

Post by tzs »

juliangregorian wrote: post #206
onion2k wrote: post #118

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many examples of girls being actively refused entry in to technology classes[1] based on their gender. When the education system itself is prejudiced against women it's unreasonable to suggest women aren't getting tech jobs because they're unwilling to put in the effort - they can't because they're blocked from doing so. [1] A recent example http://jezebel.com/girl-fights-library-s-boys-only-robotics-...

The justification given is extremely interesting as well (if misguided?). We generally wouldn't have a problem with a girls-only tech program because girls are disadvantaged in tech. But boys in school are lagging behind in lots of school subjects. Still, one wonders why robotics is supposed to improve literacy.

It's probably not robotics per se that are supposed to improve the boys so they won't fall behind over the summer. It's probably anything that gets them thinking systematically.

They probably went with robotics over something like French history because the program can only work if it is interesting enough to get kids to sign up.

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#259

Post by KingMob »

throwaway999666 wrote: post #233
KingMob wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So... more perceptive women, who see from the outset that they will have to work twice as hard to be only equally respected in the industry, should shut up and get to work instead of pointing out the unfairness? They should toil for a decade or two in order to have the requisite cred before complaining about injustice? You don't even know your "stop complaining and start doing" solution will work. Since the anti-fema…

> So... more perceptive women, who see from the outset [...] Way to diss the authors' intelligence.

I'm criticizing her emotional perception, not her intelligence.

She self-identifies as ASD, and the problems of ASD people with emotional perception/empathy/mindblindness/etc are very well-documented.

Would you rather take coding advice from the person who wrote a ball of mud in PHP, or John Carmack?

Re: Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)

#260

Post by Balgair »

chippy wrote: post #223
Balgair wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the initial thesis and would go so far as to say two of the top functions of 'education' are to create empathy for others and to create self-respect. However, I don't believe that the internet has made things worse; rather it has just uncovered what was already there. Also, trying to argue that our species reverts to the base programming is specious. If that were true, polygamy and murder would be the ru…

> rather it has just uncovered what was already there I would disagree a little on this part (agree with the rest), by giving the example of "The Left". The Left Wing was primarily socialist and communalist. It emphasized the similarity between people, races, countries, sexes. What we have in common is more important than what separates us. The Internet and the stcredzero's thesis says is that the Internet shows what…

What is social justice anyways? I only ever hear it in a negative way, that of Social Justice Warriors.

Here in the states, the republican right has historically been the people's party too. Part of their appeal is being the 'party of Lincoln'. Really, both of our parties have made good appeals to being a 'people's party' in their history. But trying to say that the international left was historically a party for all peoples is tough too. Russian reds started as an all inclusive bunch, but became quickly co-oped by anti-Semites, racists, and nationalists. Still, I think you can very well categorize them as Left through and through.

I still really believe that the internet has cemented our commonality. White folk in America are now seeing the daily interactions of black folk with the cops, and how unjust that is. And they are going out and protesting with them now. Cries of 'we are the 99%' are being made by all of us now. The treatment of women in Tech and elsewhere is at the very least, known to be a problem now. Say what you will for solving these issues, but the Internet has incited just communal outrage in it's short time in our lives. I say give the internet time to work itself out. There are still congresscritters that boast about not using email and we are just now raising an internet-always generation in many countries. This, like all things human, takes time.

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