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An open letter on feminism in tech

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Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#271

Post by exo762 »

xamebax wrote: post #247
arbutus wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should probably read this article: http://jezebel.com/5992479/if-i-admit-that-hating-men-is-a-t... Specifically, this part from the bottom of the article: Feminists do not want you to lose custody of your children. The assumption that women are naturally better caregivers is part of patriarchy. Feminists do not like commercials in which bumbling dads mess up the laundry and competent wives have to bustle in and f…

Some concrete evidence: http://www.policymic.com/articles/88277/23-ways-feminism-has...

Ok, this article needs some dismantling. Huge amount of straight propaganda.

1. Or it was other way around. Women in workforce => Feminism.

3. And installed laws such as VOWA, installed Diluth Model etc etc.

5,6. More half-truths and lies. The only contraceptive that gives men power to control their reproduction is condom, which was invented long before Feminism. Pill and other forms of contraception are empowering ONLY women. "Men get abortions too" is beyond manipulation. Idea that by helping small group of LGBTQ folk Feminism is saving ALL the males is repeated few more times in this article. Ridiculous.

7. Beautiful manipulation. Indeed, this change of definition allowed persecution in cases where male is a victim. Still, it is not possible to persecute "envelopment" as rape.

10-17. Feminism also cured AIDS, send humans to the Moon and granted eternal salvation in afterlife.

18. Clearly, before Feminism women never left kitchen. /s

20. Imagine that? A Movie! Damn, Feminism is literally anti Hitler!

21. Hey, I fought against Putin's second, third and fourth term. And I failed miserably, just as Feminism in this particular case.

21. "Feminism teaches us that nothing is objective, not even science." Enough said.

Men does not need Feminism, they need their own movement. Otherwise we get such gems as this one: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Allies

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#272

Post by nwhitmore »

beat wrote: post #154
optimusclimb wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

@danilocampos - I think it matters for getting to a solution. If there's something inherent in tech, or its male work force that makes the problem worse, then knowing that might help get at the root of the problem a little faster.

We already understand the roots of the problem quite well... comparing to other industries won't make much difference. 1. Male-dominated environment, women are a significant minority. 2. Inexcusable tolerance of sexist behavior - not calling it out when we see it. 3. "Why are you blaming me? I'm not one of those guys. Men might listen to you if you'd just stop the blanket accusations." (extra credit: count how many c…

"Have you stopped enabling sexism in tech?". That's what most of the replies sound like to me. Sort of like "have you stopped beating your wife?". Hard to come up with a good response without looking guilty isn't it?

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#273

Post by mreiland »

jack-r-abbit wrote: post #264

> If you see someone engage in bad behavior and you do nothing, you've chosen to let that person think that what they did is okay. This leaves us feeling like we’re fighting this alone. There is easily dozens (hundreds?) of "fights" that I could get into everyday but I don't. I'm not really a confrontational person. Please don't take it personally when this fight is also one I don't get into.

It isn't even about that, you pick and choose your fights. If you try to fight every injustice, you'll succeed at none.

You have to choose when to fight.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#274

Post by steveklabnik »

nailer wrote: post #245
steveklabnik wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Swombat and the founder of MVC have sparred over twitter numerous times, and he had to unfollow me because I retweet her often. Sometimes, people just don't like each other. (I have no beef with Swombat.)

The article itself mentions disliking engaging with moderate voices as an attempt to silence more strident voices, and I get where that's coming from, but some of the people with more strident voices are hate-filled hypocrites. I see no harm in promoting the thoughtful stuff (like this article) and ignoring the angry noise.

I don't think anyone should be forced to listen to anything they don't want to. I'm just adding some context, not making a value judgement. I block the hell out of people on Twitter.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#275

Post by exo762 »

joaren wrote: post #241
arbutus wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You should probably read this article: http://jezebel.com/5992479/if-i-admit-that-hating-men-is-a-t... Specifically, this part from the bottom of the article: Feminists do not want you to lose custody of your children. The assumption that women are naturally better caregivers is part of patriarchy. Feminists do not like commercials in which bumbling dads mess up the laundry and competent wives have to bustle in and f…

Oh good, you replied to factual statistics with a bunch of feel good nonsense from Jezebel, which we all know is a respected journal in the social sciences.

This article deserves a comic which goes like that:

a) a man is shown suffering from some injustice that targets only men

b) his attempts to alleviate the issue via normal means meet a cold denial of society

c) a Feminist appears that points out "this is Patriarchy!"

d) Nothing changes; Feminist smugly walks away. He saved the day once again!

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#276

Post by anuleczka »

fred_durst wrote: post #246
anuleczka wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure! But I guess my point is that by embracing the voices of marginalized groups, we can solve a huge chunk of that at once. If you think about it, jerks usually act the way they do because of a perceived power differential. The guy with enough insecurity to harass a woman (or POC, or LBGTQ person) is likely to try to power trip other men, too.

I think I understand your logic here. It does make some sense to use the harassment of a marginalized group as a sort of "tell" that this person is a jerk. I do worry though that it is a bit divisive. A lot of terms like "white male" and "feminist" are very loaded at this point and it feels to me like focusing on specific groups might be a distraction. For example if I were to say that one of the most arrogant and ag…

Yeah, it's sad how those terms ("white male", "feminist") have become loaded. But again, I think it's because of perceived power differences. For some reason, the term "feminist" has come to mean, in some circles, "person who wants to take away my power". When in reality, promoting an egalitarian world benefits both women and men, since it reduces jerk behavior. Promoting equal rights for women does not take away rights from men, you know?

I feel you on the second paragraph, but I think what's really distracting is the unnecessary stigma of the labels. What if more women and men, especially those with influence, openly identified as feminist? It's like the xkcd comic about girls being bad at math (https://xkcd.com/385/). If one self-described feminist behaves poorly, you'd probably blame that on her personally, instead of writing off all feminists (and feminism, at the same time).

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#277

Post by mreiland »

gress wrote: post #253
mreiland wrote: post #217

Earlier quoted context omitted.

why should they? I mean that honestly because context matters. Why didn't you say something? Why should they be expected to step up and say something if you yourself are not willing to (was it a superior, for example?). Was there some brouhaha in which they sat silent while you had to defend yourself? And why not ask them if you can submit their name to HR as a witness to the behavior instead of getting disappointed…

So you don't care about injustice you witness and you don't want others to either? Women already have less power because they are in a minority. It seems as though you want them to take responsibility for all cultural change. It sounds as though you don't think there is a problem.

I think expecting a male to put himself at personal risk for a women who won't put herself at personal risk is unfair.

We have no context, we don't know if the person in question doing the injustice was superior in the company, or not. All we know is person A did something bad to person B, and person C did nothing about it.

Why shouldn't we ask my person B did nothing either?

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#279

Post by chc »

mreiland wrote: post #177
lhnz wrote: post #75

>> We are not the 'nice feminists' of this community. > Being nice doesn’t work. We’ve been nice. In this article you were actually all nice and I read right to the bottom. I certainly do find it a lot easier to listen to and agree with people that aren't spilling hatred at me. I never want to feel like I'm giving time to somebody trying to extract some psychological harm as revenge on my gender - whether or not they…

>I don't think all men are out to get you. I also don't think there's a huge misogyny problem in the industry in comparison to some other industries and cultures I've mixed with. (Perhaps my bad luck.) This is my opinion from listening to the perspectives of the people around me and watching their behaviour around women. However I do think we have a significant diversity problem and that it's altering the interaction…

"Men's rights activism" is seldom more than bashing women and attempting to shout down and dismiss any issues they might raise. I think this is sad, because there are some interesting issues a "men's place in society" movement could address, but unfortunately whatever reasonable folk there might be under the "men's rights" label, they're drowned out by a flood of really hateful people.

Re: An open letter on feminism in tech

#280

Post by sliverstorm »

sequoia wrote: post #78
optimusclimb wrote: post #3

It makes me sad to read this stuff, but a genuine question for other male readers. Have you heard of, or come into contact with any of this abhorrent behavior that's mentioned? I have never seen it anywhere I worked, or heard of that sort of thing through word of mouth, but obviously that's a terrible sample set. My experiences related to women in tech: * Everywhere I've worked, it's been a boys club, but we'd LOVE t…

a genuine question for other male readers. Have you heard of, or come into contact with any of this abhorrent behavior that's mentioned? Why do you need a "male reader" to confirm this to you? Your question reads thus: 'I can't believe this if I only hear it from a woman-- is there a man in the audience who can confirm this?' To turn it around a bit, why do you find these stories unbelievable & why do you need a man…

Perhaps the question is more along the lines of "Men are being called upon to act against this discrimination, but I as a man have never seen it. Other men, what about you?"

In which case the gender of the audience is important to the question. For example, while women might see it all the time, if there are no men present other than the offender, the "ordinary" men would never see it and never have the opportunity to act.

Personally I can say it can be frustrating when you are damned (as a group) for not acting, when you as an individual have never to your knowledge witnessed the event.

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