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Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

rt.cpan.org

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Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#21

Post by andrewcooke »

duiker101 wrote: post #8

website doesn't seem to work for me. what was it?

i never saw the page linked either, but i think these links are what people are discussing:

this cpan module - http://search.cpan.org/dist/Acme-CPANAuthors-Female/ - included this file - https://github.com/sharyanto/perl-Acme-CPANAuthors-Female/bl... (some data also visible in cpan synopsis - http://search.cpan.org/dist/Acme-CPANAuthors-Female/lib/Acme...) - which was later dropped by the author, steven haryanto - http://blogs.perl.org/users/steven_haryanto/2012/07/so-appar...

the file in question lists 10 (or 11) female contributors to cpan.

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#22

Post by anextio »

ars wrote: post #17
anextio wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You should not care what gender, or anything else, they are - except their ability. We don't live in that world. Neither do we live in a world where people of color are afforded the same opportunities as white people even though they have all the same rights. Software (and tech in general) is a toxic and often extremely sexist community towards women. It's easy to take your attitude of "not caring", but that doesn'…

> We don't live in that world. Online we do. No one can even tell what gender you are unless you tell them. And why tell them? Why should they care? > If women who are CPAN authors want to organize a community amongst themselves, then it's up to them to decide how they want to go about doing it. It is NOT up to men to do it for them To me you sound incredibly sexist. (Men do this, Women do that.) Women have their clu…

> If people need to see that there are others like them in a community (do they though?), then this module list is exactly right.

We don't. Especially in the tech community, everyone is assumed to be male by default. There was a post not two days ago by a woman programmer showing that a common complaint among men is that women "don't contribute technical articles". News flash: they do, but the commenters ignore the possibility that an anonymous blogger might be a woman and refer to the author as "he" anyway.

We simply do not live in the world you describe.

> To me you sound incredibly sexist.

Funny how sexists always say that to people who call out sexism.

> Sorry, but I don't divide up the world like you do.

Right, you'd rather completely ignore the issues facing this community.

> Are you saying that if a Woman made that list all is well?

In short, yeah. It's creepy for men to compose a list of 'females' without their consent and make it opt-out.

> Why does the gender of who made the list matter?

Because the tech community is utterly plagued with misogyny, sexual harassment at conferences, and people like you who want to ignore the whole issue in the name of not being told that they can't impose anything they want on a marginalized group.

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#23

Post by anextio »

Tichy wrote: post #19
anextio wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> You should not care what gender, or anything else, they are - except their ability. We don't live in that world. Neither do we live in a world where people of color are afforded the same opportunities as white people even though they have all the same rights. Software (and tech in general) is a toxic and often extremely sexist community towards women. It's easy to take your attitude of "not caring", but that doesn'…

"Software (and tech in general) is a toxic and often extremely sexist community towards women. " It really isn't. Maybe you get a distorted view because complaints get a disproportionate amount of attention (much like reports about crimes in the newspapers - most people overestimate the amount of crime happening, at least in Europe). Precisely a reason to deal with those complaints in a sensible way, because people l…

I was in denial about it for a long time, like you. I came up with excuses, like you are doing, to explain it away and not have to deal with it.

If it really isn't so much of an issue, then how come so many women are up in arms about it? [0]

[0] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Issues

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#24

Post by ars »

anextio wrote: post #22
ars wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We don't live in that world. Online we do. No one can even tell what gender you are unless you tell them. And why tell them? Why should they care? > If women who are CPAN authors want to organize a community amongst themselves, then it's up to them to decide how they want to go about doing it. It is NOT up to men to do it for them To me you sound incredibly sexist. (Men do this, Women do that.) Women have their clu…

> If people need to see that there are others like them in a community (do they though?), then this module list is exactly right. We don't. Especially in the tech community, everyone is assumed to be male by default. There was a post not two days ago by a woman programmer showing that a common complaint among men is that women "don't contribute technical articles". News flash: they do, but the commenters ignore the p…

> everyone is assumed to be male by default

Not by me. I make no assumptions on the matter at all, the entire topic never even crosses my mind.

I don't get why gender even matters for these topics. You aren't dating them.

> a common complaint among men is that women "don't contribute technical articles"

This is a common complaint? I've never even noticed the gender of someone contributing an article. Who are these people who tally these things up?

> In short, yeah

And you call me sexist? And how do you know if the author is male or female anyway?

You sound very obsessed with knowing the gender of each person you interact with online.

You are aware that discriminating for women on good things is just as sexist as doing it for bad things, right?

> and refer to the author as "he" anyway

Because that's how English grammar works.

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#25

Post by kamaal »

I have seen this in every culture. So as long this is for fun, its OK. But it isn't uncommon to have and list 'y who do x'(y being a set of people who do x). I've failed to understand the reasons for this. Is it because you feel a particular field x is is dominated by non-y people and want fellow y's to get motivated?

If that is so, I don't see anything wrong in it. But if this is to prove that y's are strange and are atypical of regular y's and then stereotyping them from there is on is creepy.

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#26

Post by PeterisP »

Loic wrote: post #13
spindritf wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Sex sells" is the big indictment of Ruby (and programming in general) community?

Yes, with respect to the situation of women in your community this is a problem. When you have highly visible people having such behaviour, it cripples down. It is always easier to cripple down bad behaviour than good one. More about it: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/04/silicon-valley-brog...

Can you name a single industry where "sex sells" isn't an accepted marketing consensus ? It is a fact about how homo sapiens works, and marketers have been using it for millenia for selling everything from medicine to wholesale building materials. Ignoring a true fact would be a problem, and an irrational action not worthy of anyone who claims to be an engineer or scientist. Not using "sex sells" in advertising would be suboptimal and simply stupid, of course, it has to be done with taste and (at least attempted) respect in order to be effective.

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#27

Post by hobin »

I don't think it's necessarily creepy. There is a whole list of classes depending on what 'type' of developer one is, found here: http://search.cpan.org/~ishigaki/Acme-CPANAuthors-0.19/lib/A...

But I know that I'm not known for my extreme sensitivity, so maybe I should withold judgement on this one.

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#29

Post by scotty79 »

I think that if you are female developer and you want to encourage other female developers and support the transition to a world where gender of the developer isn't important you should brag about your femaleness everywhere and encourage others to do the same.

You have to see something a lot and often to get used to it, tolerate it and finally accept it as norm.

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#30

Post by cloudier »

PeterisP wrote: post #26
Loic wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yes, with respect to the situation of women in your community this is a problem. When you have highly visible people having such behaviour, it cripples down. It is always easier to cripple down bad behaviour than good one. More about it: http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/04/silicon-valley-brog...

Can you name a single industry where "sex sells" isn't an accepted marketing consensus ? It is a fact about how homo sapiens works, and marketers have been using it for millenia for selling everything from medicine to wholesale building materials. Ignoring a true fact would be a problem, and an irrational action not worthy of anyone who claims to be an engineer or scientist. Not using "sex sells" in advertising would…

Firstly, I'm going to assume that by 'sex sells' you're referring to the use of sexualised (e.g. through sexy poses, clothing) females or males with little or no relevance to the product, to sell a product.

How about any industry where females make up a large part of your customer base? I think it is pretty hard to argue that, say, the iPhone would be more successful if it's marketing department decided that it would be better to use the idea that "sex sells" to sell their product compared to the type of marketing that it actually uses. "Sex sells" is never tasteful nor respectful: it's only useful when you're selling your product to a sexist audience. (Obviously this doesn't apply if you're selling sex toys, porn, body image, etc.)

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