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I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

imallika.com

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Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

#141

Post by mirimir »

pixl97 wrote: post #123
mirimir wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Maybe sexlessness overstates the case. It was more like sex blindness. Or sex irrelevance. I mean, she writes: > I come from a country and a back ground where intelligence and the ability to work extremely hard is valued highly, with beauty, money and popularity ranked far, far below. In contrast, modern American culture (which is globally pervasive) is just so incredibly sexualized. And incredibly polarized. Many wo…

> strategy by the kleptocrats. But maybe it's just chaos. Maybe it's just advertizing? Someone want's to make you buy a product that makes you more "more". More manly, more womanly, more better looking, more money. News and TV wants to make you more engaged, if that is by telling you more lies, or making you more angry they will do it, so you watch more ads.

Right, sex sells.

It'd be hilarious if it were just greed-driven advertising that's destroying American society.

Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

#142

Post by DoreenMichele »

edaena wrote: post #137
DoreenMichele wrote: post #63

On the one hand, I agree. And on the other hand, I wonder how helpful it is to be writing this and posting it to HN instead of writing about some engineering subject and posting that instead. I think we need more women in tech talking about tech and less women in tech talking about the problems with being women in tech and only getting attention of the wrong kind -- for being women in tech. I mean, it's kind of recur…

That's exactly why I started The Women in Tech Show: https://thewomenintechshow.com/ To have women in tech talking about tech topics instead of what it feels like to be a woman in tech. Although the show is labeled "women in tech", it's simply to raise awareness of this. This is a good way to help our industry.

Sorry for the late reply. I didn't see this earlier.

I have followed the twitter handle. It looks like it is all audio, which I suspect is not very compatible with Hacker News, but I am trying to ask around and get some feedback on that detail.

How are you promoting it? Would it be possible to create transcripts? With transcripts, they could be posted to HN as actually relevant here instead of the angry feminazi crap I so often see posted.

Good on you. Feel free to email me if you want to talk.

Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

#143

Post by belorn »

fatbird wrote: post #130
belorn wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats not studies on sexless-ness, but rather plain discrimination. There are many such studies, some which favor men and some which favor women, but all falls within typical gender roles and expectations. Sexless-ness and gender roles are opposites. Lets bring in other similar studies. Physiologist that work for the juridical system and makes decisions about the mental status of accused criminals. Identical submitte…

There are many, many studies of the justice system in the U.S. showing very biased outcomes depending on factors like gender or race. Practicing sexless-ness is, as you observe, what's supposed to be done already ("All dictate that professionals... treat both women and men equally"). Do you think we believe that we're practicing sexless-ness and then not doing so in practice? Or that there are unconscious or systemic…

I do not think anyone is practicing sexless-ness at all. While the law says that they should treat both women and men equally, people still perceive women as women and men as men. That in turn carries with a huge number of cultural expectations and values.

Race has a similar problem, through here it seems to be a proxy for social economical status (class), which then leads to the cultural expectations and values.

In both cases it seems very conscious behavior, and when it comes to diversity work its explicitly so. Few are still preaching that you should not see gender or race, and those that do are generally attacked for doing so. Gender roles are emphasized and highlighted in practically all form of news and cultural media, occasionally reversed for the shock or comedy effect. Its very explicit and conscious.

Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

#144

Post by meebs »

beaner wrote: post #7

"All one should care about is - is this excellent or is it not? Is this right or is this wrong?" I generally agree with this article. But you can't be a white male and speak this way in silicon valley without being shamed and being labeled a Trump supporter. Especially if your company has militant diversity advocates.

Nobody is saying to hire people who are less excellent than you normally would. What people are saying is make an effort to find candidates that are underrepresented.

Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

#145

Post by jameskegel »

dang wrote: post #74
jameskegel wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Instead of hinting at something, why not just tell us how you really feel? Is it because it's a conclusion that is generally not accepted when put in plain terms?

The HN guidelines ask you not to take HN threads further into ideological flamewar, so please don't. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

I disagree with being categorized as such, but respect your decision.

Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

#146

Post by fatbird »

belorn wrote: post #143
fatbird wrote: post #130

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many, many studies of the justice system in the U.S. showing very biased outcomes depending on factors like gender or race. Practicing sexless-ness is, as you observe, what's supposed to be done already ("All dictate that professionals... treat both women and men equally"). Do you think we believe that we're practicing sexless-ness and then not doing so in practice? Or that there are unconscious or systemic…

I do not think anyone is practicing sexless-ness at all. While the law says that they should treat both women and men equally, people still perceive women as women and men as men. That in turn carries with a huge number of cultural expectations and values. Race has a similar problem, through here it seems to be a proxy for social economical status (class), which then leads to the cultural expectations and values. In…

You're conflating an intent to practice sexless-ness with the actuality of it. You're right that we're not practicing it--everywhere we look we see inequity that's obvious tied to gender (or race, or disability...). But we think we are, or at least that we're trying. We've spent a century disassembling laws and customs that treat women differently, and yet the inequities remain. Why are you so hostile to the idea that we're not all that conscious of our lack of sexless-ness in application? That the inequities of sexism are at least partly systemic and not a conscious choice to be discriminatory?

Re: I don’t want to be the pink elephant in the room

#147

Post by jancsika »

chewxy wrote: post #81
jancsika wrote: post #78

> Intelligence was, and still holds the top spot amongst almost all South Indian families. What's the evidence for that claim?

She's Indian. Does lived experience not matter?

I was all in until this sentence:

> Intelligence was, and still holds the top spot amongst almost all South Indian families.

She can say that intelligence is highly valued, and she can say that not a single person she knows or grew up with fought the kinds of battles against sexism we're familiar with in the U.S. Likewise, I can say, "I'm familiar with battles against sexism in the U.S.," without needing to cite or defend a single thing.

But the moment either one of us makes a statement to characterize some grouping of people outside of our direct experience, there almost always needs to be more than anecdotal evidence to back it up.

Likewise, me saying, "blank is the single greatest problem facing U.S. corporations today," would need citations-- plus probably an elucidated theory. Otherwise I'm just stating my own personal intuition in language that is unreasonably broad.

clarification: I changed "all" to "some grouping of people outside of our direct experience." I think that's a much more meaningful way to put it, as it doesn't matter whether someone is talking about "all", "almost all", "most", etc.

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