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My positive experience as a woman in tech

lea.verou.me

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Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#291

Post by alashley »

humanrebar wrote: post #219
andrewvc wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You've got a point. I'm sure being physically attracted to someone enhances or diminishes the effect of their actual approach. Additionally, attractive people are more confident, and confident people tend to not behave in as many creepy behaviors. That being said, the underlying theme of cubano's comment was blaming women for (shockingly) responding positively to flirty men who they find attractive, and responding ne…

I think you're jumping to some conclusions there. Most "creepy" men are socially awkward and can't do anything about it, or at least they haven't been able to do anything about it yet. To villainize them out of hand isn't helpful either. Some of them undoubtedly have social disorders, so coming down on them seems unfair as well. Maybe there are some people that are creepy on purpose , but I suspect that is a very sma…

Walking to the other side of the room and talking to your friends about the creepy guy is literally the stuff of other peoples' nightmares.

Unfortunately, some people never leave high school.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#292

Post by microcolonel »

dragonwriter wrote: post #234
yummyfajitas wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is it sexism to make assumptions that are probabilistically correct? Consider the following procedure: 1) For a woman I don't know, I buy her frozen yogurt. 2) For a man I don't know, I buy him pizza. Now suppose my stereotypes are actually accurate - i.e., P(likes froyo > pizza|woman) > 0.5 and P(likes pizza > froyo | man) > 0.5. This procedure, based purely on stereotypes, will make everyone happier than flipping a…

> Is it sexism to make assumptions that are probabilistically correct? Judging people based on group membership rather than individually on axis that are not essentially tied (even if they are correlated with) that group membership is prejudice; prejudiced based on sex is sexism. So, yes, making probabilistic assumptions based on sex and acting on them is, in many cases, sexism. > ) For a woman I don't know, I buy he…

yummyfajitas is using the Pizza and Froyo examples from the post they're replying to. I don't think it is fair to grill them on the technicalities of those specific examples.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#293

Post by LesZedCB »

JDiculous wrote: post #246
zeveb wrote: post #169

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If a female is attracted to the guy, things he says or does are considered "cute", "flirtatious", and/or "interesting". > If not, the same actions are often considered "creepy", "jerkish", and yes even "sexist". In my experience, the exact same thing is true with the sexes switched: behaviour which I find attractive in a woman I find attractive is awful in a woman I don't find attractive. I think this is probably a…

I disagree. Most men if approached by an awkward unattractive woman at a bar will at least be polite and have a normal conversation even if they're not interested. Whereas women will often outright ignore or even act hostile towards an awkward unattractive man trying to strike a conversation. Men are expected to treat women courteously, whereas women aren't held to the same standard. A woman can treat a man like a di…

Citation needed. Your assertion is completely baseless. Even in the event where it was in fact true, altering your behavior towards the person based on your expectation of what they might do based on statistics is the very mode of sexism.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#294

Post by tangled_zans »

microcolonel wrote: post #277
tangled_zans wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about disagreement. The poster put "scare quotes" around sexism, implying that the issue does not even exist or is worth discussing. That's not an "opinion" it's an implicit way of saying that everyone talking about it is kind of dumb for even bringing it up. EDIT: OH WOW, I HAVE BEEN DOWNVOTED. Which is not something I normally care about since I post quite controversial things anyway. But downvoted by the…

By the way, it's against the guidelines to talk about being downvoted, that will explain further flagging of your post.

Thanks for letting me know. Feel free to share this fact with all the other people crying for their free speech being taken away.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#295

Post by dragonwriter »

microcolonel wrote: post #292
dragonwriter wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Is it sexism to make assumptions that are probabilistically correct? Judging people based on group membership rather than individually on axis that are not essentially tied (even if they are correlated with) that group membership is prejudice; prejudiced based on sex is sexism. So, yes, making probabilistic assumptions based on sex and acting on them is, in many cases, sexism. > ) For a woman I don't know, I buy he…

yummyfajitas is using the Pizza and Froyo examples from the post they're replying to. I don't think it is fair to grill them on the technicalities of those specific examples.

I wasn't grilling yummyfajitas over the choice of examples, I was supporting the point made in the post they were responding to (and rejected in their post) regarding the example.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#296

Post by leaverou »

danr4 wrote: post #136

>" It takes a lot of introspection to see one’s internalized stereotypes. " I think she hit spot on with this - But that bit was directed at men, when the reality is that it goes both ways. The problem is that it's a cycle hard to break from - it's not just men being sexist, it's women being unconsciously sexist towards themselves because they grew up in a sexist environment. That's why you need to raise awareness, t…

It was absolutely NOT directed just at men. We all have internalized stereotypes and biases.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#297

Post by tangled_zans »

reitanqild wrote: post #266
tangled_zans wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about disagreement. The poster put "scare quotes" around sexism, implying that the issue does not even exist or is worth discussing. That's not an "opinion" it's an implicit way of saying that everyone talking about it is kind of dumb for even bringing it up. EDIT: OH WOW, I HAVE BEEN DOWNVOTED. Which is not something I normally care about since I post quite controversial things anyway. But downvoted by the…

I did not downvote you. Maybe I should, but I tend to reserve that for special cases. That said I and a few others here are downvoted for no apparent reason as well and personally I don't care to much about it except they never care to tell why. That is annoying.

I've noticed that any time a debate of this sort comes up, and someone states a strong view supporting either side, the other side will start downvoting them. That's usually counteracted by their own side upvoting them back up.

It happens to everyone, so it annoys me when I see people complaining about it in every HN thread that has divided opinions on some social justice movement or whatever.

There's no "Please explain why you've chosen to up/down vote" pop up on HN, so no one really owes anyone an explanation for it either. That's just how things are.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#298

Post by microcolonel »

tangled_zans wrote: post #294
microcolonel wrote: post #277

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the way, it's against the guidelines to talk about being downvoted, that will explain further flagging of your post.

Thanks for letting me know. Feel free to share this fact with all the other people crying for their free speech being taken away.

You should know that on HN you're speaking with the voice of the platform. You have a right to your own voice; they have a right not to give you theirs.

Usually though, the rationale for "downvoting" (really flagging) is that somebody is being unreasonably negative. I think it's rare that a well-researched non-disparaging comment is flagged more than a couple times.

We have all said things on HN that have been flagged, we all know it feels bad. That doesn't mean there shouldn't be moderation.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#299

Post by tangled_zans »

microcolonel wrote: post #277
tangled_zans wrote: post #218

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not about disagreement. The poster put "scare quotes" around sexism, implying that the issue does not even exist or is worth discussing. That's not an "opinion" it's an implicit way of saying that everyone talking about it is kind of dumb for even bringing it up. EDIT: OH WOW, I HAVE BEEN DOWNVOTED. Which is not something I normally care about since I post quite controversial things anyway. But downvoted by the…

By the way, it's against the guidelines to talk about being downvoted, that will explain further flagging of your post.

Replying here cos I can't reply to your other comment.

Either I have been so bad at communicating my point that it came out as garbled nonsense or you've confused me with someone else.

I am all for people being able to downvote whoever they want without needing to explain themselves. The only reason I mentioned being downvoted at all - by 1 guy, I think - was to point out that the same people complaining that they are being "unfairly downvoted for having controversial opinions" have no qualms about downvoting people with opposing views. Which, in my eyes, is hypocritical.

Re: My positive experience as a woman in tech

#300

Post by nuclearcheese »

sarahnadav wrote: post #83

I am glad that this woman had a good experience, but it is the exception rather than the rule. Anyone who wants to use this as social proof that gender discrimination isn't a huge problem in the industry is fooling themselves.

Of course you think that it's a big problem, your paycheck depends on it!
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