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I'm not a Woman in Tech

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Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#161
post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Here is the thing. You can have private opinions but when you express them publicly, the larger the audience the larger the chance that someone can totally misinterpret / take out of context / take IN context but write a diatribe against / etc. what you say. It could be someone who is outraged or someone who actually uses your words to further their ideological agenda against those who are outraged. In short, the mor…

My personal view is that Trump is deliberately trolling the media, and they are taking the bait every time. There's also a "they can dish it out but can't take it" element to it.

I've watched him and I think it is just too hard for him to control himself. He's got the political correctness and factual accuracy version of dyslexia.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#162
People have a great ability to put labels indeed. Whenever you do something "untypical", you earn a label. This pisses me off. It's not about women only, it's about judging people by any set of attributes and making conclusions that it's unusual to do thing A because you do thing B.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#163

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not dead - you can speak your mind - just you pay a social price to do so. Free speech, even in the most libertarian concept I have doesn't prevent other people's right to criticize your speech - in fact, I'd say it encourages just that. Speak out against stuff you don't like rather than censoring it. Ultimately it's an effect of large, diverse communities and deep political divisions. If you want to have political d…

Exactly. Free speech goes both ways. The only people I see saying things like 'free speech is dead', are usually the ones who want to say ignorant things and get away with it.

I'll file that away alongside, "The only people who care about privacy are those with something to hide".

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#164

I really agree with this. It has always disturbed me when a push for female developers is mentioned; a company should be focused on acquiring the best developers they can, not finding ones of a specific gender. This behaviour is literally an example of the problem it is trying to resolve. To the company I work for, I am a software engineer, not a man or woman.

> a company should be focused on acquiring the best developers they can, not finding ones of a specific gender I agree, that's why I think companies should consider what is putting off women & why the gender balance in tech is so heavily weighted towards males. That is, most companies (regardless of conscious choice) are finding the best (young, white) male developers only.

I don't think the fault lies at the employment level.

I think the societal biases are imprinted in people during their social development.

Girls are less likely to be given the equipment and backing to get into software development at an early age, and their peers would rarely understand such an interest.

The field and the associated character traits around it are viewed as nerdy or boring, the people who don't give a stuff about such judgements seem to be the people who do gain an interest in the field and consider working in it.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not dead - you can speak your mind - just you pay a social price to do so. Free speech, even in the most libertarian concept I have doesn't prevent other people's right to criticize your speech - in fact, I'd say it encourages just that. Speak out against stuff you don't like rather than censoring it. Ultimately it's an effect of large, diverse communities and deep political divisions. If you want to have political d…

Social media can become mass media, and it's not up to you to decide if and when that happens. In the past, you could just vocalise your opinion, and it would not survive many hops in the real-world social network. So yeah, you can express your opinion, but your chance of being crucified for it has risen significantly.

> In the past, you could just vocalise your opinion, and it would not survive many hops in the real-world social network.

In the past, "vocalizing your opinion" meant debating friends over drinks, the difference today is that every person with an opinion deliberately leverages modern technology to broadcast that opinion to as many people as possible, and the more that receive it, the better. Naturally, people who disagree will respond... the system is working as intended.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#166

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Opinions about -only events aside, there's a difference between a homogeneous group of people choosing to be together, and a group of individuals who were barred from using specific toilets, water fountains, seats, education opportunities, jobs, etc. Comparing segregation to voluntary -only events is a gross misunderstanding of how things were.

I think you're missing qualifiers there because men-only social clubs, for example, have been frowned upon for quite some time now.

True, but that's not a gender issue per se. Women-only programming groups are based on the theory that women are not being well served by co-ed programming groups, as a combination of socially enforced gender roles plus an understandable discomfort at being the only woman in a room. All male groups are generally frowned upon because there's no reason to think the average male would be prevented from participating in a technically co-ed but heavily male group.

I suspect men-only clubs for traditionally female dominated fields, something like an all male kindergarten teacher group, would be broadly accepted as reasonable.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#167

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you don't want to hear others opinions.

No, it's because I'll get attacked for not agreeing with x y z position. It's no longer acceptable to have discussions about such topics. It's no longer acceptable to just not stand in the way of such topics (I'm not against people being feminists for example, I don't care) - you must agree, or you're regarded as being against. Unless you specifically agree with illegal immigration and feminism, then you are against…

Maybe I'm missing part of the thread, but who is attacking you?

This is a discussion forum and people are discussing the opinions you shared... because that's what happens on discussion forums.

Do you expect to only receive praise and agreement?

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#168

edit Why did my comment get dislodged from being underneath another comment that I was replying to? It's now showing as a stand-alone comment under the thread. ------------------------------------------- I'm doing a similar thing. I stopped posting anything personal on Facebook about a year ago and I never post to Twitter. I'll never go back to posting personal thoughts on social media, not under any circumstances. I…

What do you mean by "the left", and who do you consider to be part of it?

It's fairly vague (and I'm ok with that), just as my use of "right" in another post is. I'm going to continue using it even if it generates a silly over-reaction by some people on the left and right.

There's an aggressive coalition on the left that now likes to use labels as a control vector for stopping free speech (any speech they disagree with in fact). The major social media platforms for example have all taken up the cause and are beginning to shut down free speech (it'll get far worse yet, it'll become hyper restrictive), and nations such as Germany are doing the same.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think you are approaching this right. You are painting an entire group of people under the same brush... Also, feminism is promoting equality.

Feminism is not simple as that. > People ask me sometimes, when — when do you think it will it be enough? When will there be enough women on the court? And my answer is when there are nine. This is from Justice Ginsburg, and a widely shared quote by a lot of feminist articles. This claim feels pretty vindictive to me and definitely not about equality. In the other words, it is not about REDUCE the inequality, it is a…

You are misunderstanding the quote. She's not saying that she wants there to always be nine female members of the SC like it had been with men for so long - rather, the proof of true equality would be when that happened by chance at some point (not sustained), and it wasn't a big deal. That's true equality when it comes to randomness - occasionally it'll be all one gender. If the answer is "half", then that could just be some level of intentional selection of women to reach a quota, which isn't equality.

Of course, as with anything, there are a very small number of people who call themselves feminists who are extremists who believe in sexism against men. That is a vanishingly small group, however, and mainstream feminism, even the more fringe wings, want equality, not revenge.

Your claim is just misrepresenting the ideology.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#170

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Just because something is legal doesn't mean we're at liberty to do it. People mistake society for government and vice versa.

I'd argue you're still at liberty to do it - you just have to be willing to accept any social prices associated with it. Other people enjoy the same liberties that you do, they have every right to think and say whatever they will about you due to your speech. Of course, this is really only a significant issue on a public forum, on which you can post pseudonymously and still gain any benefits of discussion without pay…

>Id argue you're still at liberty to do it - you just have to be willing to accept any social prices associated with it.

You can say that about almost anything. I'm at liberty to murder my neighbor, I just have to accept the price.

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