There are Ladies Present • Hacker News Board

Re: There are Ladies Present

#111

Post by mgkimsal » Sun, Mar 24, 2013, 6:47 AM UTC

numo16 wrote: post #102

mgkimsal wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not in an IT dept, but when I was going to school, I worked in a restaurant where I was the only male most of the time. Well, I was a shift manager, and all the shift managers and store manager were females except me (4-5 others). I got the crap shifts, had my schedule changed on a whim by others, and was often given crap tasks - moving/unloading stuff "because you're the man - I can't lift that!" It was funny for ab…

Funny you mention this, as I was told by the hiring manager at a wendy's that I worked at that she was hiring me to "do the man work", which meant unloading and putting away truck, working grill,taking out the trash, etc... Never really thought about that until now...

Things never change, do they. :)

IIRC, the issue started because one of the shift managers was pregnant, and couldn't do some things - fair enough - it doesn't last forever, and I'm fine with helping out now and then, but not being taken advantage of. And really, most of this stuff really wasn't heavy - boxes of up to 25 pounds on occasion, but rarely ever more than that, and there was trollies and carts and stuff to move heavy stuff around (and usually delivery drivers would unload stuff to a fridge or freezer for you anyway. Give them a nice cup of coffee and they'd handle some of the shifting in the freezer too :)

Re: There are Ladies Present

#112

Post by EliRivers » Sun, Mar 24, 2013, 2:17 PM UTC

theoretick wrote: post #110

MoreMoschops wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you left out some context there. Grace Hopper, one of the most accomplished computer scientists not just of her day but ever. Rose to dizzying heights in the US military because they needed her so much. A towering giant of the field. So when the picture of her comes up on screen, does the speaker say any of this? Does he acknowledge her greatness? No. He says she's wearing a cute hat. All her accomplishments…

This debate is entirely moot without context. I imagined/read it as something like: >"...Ah, and this absolutely brilliant woman started that trend. Just look at her, a beacon blahblahblah wrapped in that cute hat." If neither of us have been there, its pointless arguing the statement. My point is simply that when I do such talks I frequently inject humor into it, just the way he had. Reading it as a completely isola…

When you give your talks with humour injected, do people in the audience come to you afterwards and suggest that your remarks were unhelpful to some people in the audience, as someone did in this case? In essence, do people politely complain to you about what you said?

If they did, would you ignore them and carry on injecting your humour?

Re: There are Ladies Present

#113

Post by shmidley » Sun, Mar 24, 2013, 8:14 PM UTC

illuminate wrote: post #100

summerdown2 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Women have an instinctive revulsion of anything that could be construed as sexual. Do you have a source for this information, or is it, as it appears, complete rubbish?

All pop (and most academic) evo-psych is absolute rubbish. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Just-so_stories

The "probably" part is definitely a "just-so" story. It is unfalsifiable. As for the hypothesis that the revulsion is instinctive, well, the only other possibility is that it is learned. But if its learned, then this conversation wouldn't be happening in the first place. It wouldn't be a big deal. The only reason this conversation is even capable of happening is because everyone already implicitly believes that women and only women are instinctively repulsed by direct or subtle sexuality that isn't pre-approved, that is, it is a violation of their core values and therefore we have a problem to be solved.

If men will admit to themselves what they already know and believe, they will be better prepared to handle themselves to avoid conflict with their female counterparts.