Is this considered creepy in all cultures? • Hacker News Board

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#31

Post by richardv » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 10:00 AM UTC

I think it is only creepy when you consider that no benefit can be achieved based on the sex of an author. For instance, your enjoyment levels of a piece of software bares no correlation to the sex of the developer who created it.

This is in contrast to works where the sex of the author can have an impact on the overall enjoyment.

For example, I have playlists with over 100 female artists... because sometimes I do just want to listen to a female singer. My "database" of female singers in the form of a playlist isn't creepy, but a database of female developers could quite easily be considered so, since for the most part it's hard to think why anyone would need this information. (Aside for research purposes?).

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#32

Post by cloudier » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 10:01 AM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #29

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.

I think that the burden of this transition shouldn't be laid entirely on females: there are plenty of examples of plain misogynistic behaviour in the tech world - Loic linked one article on this in another thread (http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/04/silicon-valley-brog...).

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#33

Post by [deleted] » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 10:07 AM UTC

Loic wrote: post #14

anextio wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In what field is it not creepy to have a man keep a documented list of all the women contributors for purely 'curiosity' reasons?

The fact is, in no other fields you would have people thinking about doing this. It is just that they do not care. It is not part of the culture to focus on women from a sexual/stalking point of view. They only care about lack of women in management and engineering positions and the salary difference. Or how to better manage the maternity leaves in the company to keep interesting jobs for the women while potentially…

[deleted]

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#34

Post by scotty79 » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 10:26 AM UTC

cloudier wrote: post #32

scotty79 wrote: post #29

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.

I think that the burden of this transition shouldn't be laid entirely on females: there are plenty of examples of plain misogynistic behaviour in the tech world - Loic linked one article on this in another thread ( http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/04/silicon-valley-brog... ).

Lot of that is just sheer stupidity carried straight out of american college. I'm not sure how this culture came to be and why fraternities, sororities and such things are even tolerated. Nevermind. I'm just saying that you can't get acceptance by hiding. Gays weren't accepted at all till they became visible. More visibility, more acceptance. It's positive feedback loop but there have to be brave souls to start.

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#35

Post by cloudier » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 10:41 AM UTC

scotty79 wrote: post #34

cloudier wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think that the burden of this transition shouldn't be laid entirely on females: there are plenty of examples of plain misogynistic behaviour in the tech world - Loic linked one article on this in another thread ( http://www.motherjones.com/media/2012/04/silicon-valley-brog... ).

Lot of that is just sheer stupidity carried straight out of american college. I'm not sure how this culture came to be and why fraternities, sororities and such things are even tolerated. Nevermind. I'm just saying that you can't get acceptance by hiding. Gays weren't accepted at all till they became visible. More visibility, more acceptance. It's positive feedback loop but there have to be brave souls to start.

Haha I see...thanks for replying.

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#36

Post by cloudier » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 10:50 AM UTC

ars wrote: post #24

anextio wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pe…

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

Anextio was pointing out the the tech industry is sexist, not trying to call you in particular sexist. It's cool that you make no assumptions if that's the case (although, to be honest I find that a bit unbelievable since you think the tech industry doesn't suffer from sexism), but that doesn't change the tech industry.

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

There are links (e.g. http://blogs.perl.org/users/steven_haryanto/2012/07/so-appar...) that show that the author is male.

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

I don't see where you got the idea that anextio was doing anything other than pointing out that women in the tech community don't get the credit they deserve.

> Because that's how English grammar works.

So it's suddenly not sexist to assume that the author of an anonymous blog is male? (Just to clarify: I don't mean sexist as in 'I'm out to systematically repress all women!', I mean the follow-the-leader sexist as in 'it's okay to x because everyone else does it.') 'He', unfortunately, isn't a gender-neutral pronoun.

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

So...the gender of another person only matters if you want to get into their pants? It's really quite obvious that you don't respect whichever gender you are not.

Edit: formatting

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#37

Post by Tichy » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 11:15 AM UTC

anextio wrote: post #23

Tichy wrote: post #19

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"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

There is certainly sexism, but I doubt it is "extremely common", or at least not more common than in other parts of life. Just watch ads on TV - evidently the advertising industry and all their clients are very sexist. That makes every industry.

Why many women complain? I'm no expert, but I would guess (apart from the lack of actual numbers: what percentage of women in IT complain, and what percentage in the average population) there are a couple of reasons. I think some of the issues are issues women face everywhere. Like indecent proposals: is the likelihood higher to get those on a tech event than on other events? But it is easier to point a finger (those IT guys), instead of just "men".

Maybe I can write more tonight, must work now...

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#38

Post by andyzweb » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 11:22 AM UTC

anextio wrote: post #7

Wow. This thing is totally inappropriate and extremely creepy in all contexts. Out of "sheer curiosity"? Jeepers. I hope this gets removed. Great message to send to the women in the tech industry: come join our community and we'll single you out in a git repository like a museum exhibit. Even better, the whole thing is a perl script, so anyone can programmatically do whatever they want with your personal information!…

I don't think there's any bad intention here. I think this is part of a larger meme in the Perl community: http://search.cpan.org/search?m=all&q=Acme%3A%3ACPANAuth...

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#39

Post by Tichy » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 11:25 AM UTC

anextio wrote: post #7

Wow. This thing is totally inappropriate and extremely creepy in all contexts. Out of "sheer curiosity"? Jeepers. I hope this gets removed. Great message to send to the women in the tech industry: come join our community and we'll single you out in a git repository like a museum exhibit. Even better, the whole thing is a perl script, so anyone can programmatically do whatever they want with your personal information!…

If you are on GitHub (also as a male), you can be singled out in a lot of ways. There is an app that ranks developers by city, depending on their productivity, popularity, connectedness, whatever. Nobody complained - you know that if you go on GitHub, your data is public.

Re: Is this considered creepy in all cultures?

#40

Post by ars » Wed, Jul 04, 2012, 12:38 PM UTC

cloudier wrote: post #36

ars wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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 pe…

> Not by me. I make no assumptions on the matter at all, the entire topic never even crosses my mind...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? Anextio was pointing out the the tech industry is sexist, not trying to call you in particular sexist. It's cool that you make no assumptions if that's the case (although…

> I find that a bit unbelievable

I find it unbelievable that you (or anyone) pays any attention to the gender of a programmer you only met online.

> that show that the author is male

I searched and couldn't find it. The closest I came is the name on github.

> women in the tech community don't get the credit they deserve.

Why do they deserve credit as women? Who cares if they are women? Give them credit for doing something as a human, not for their gender.

> 'He', unfortunately, isn't a gender-neutral pronoun.

Yes it is. The fact that you think it isn't is a discredit to your education.

> So...the gender of another person only matters if you want to get into their pants?

Or if you want to be close friends with them. Online it makes no difference.

> It's really quite obvious that you don't respect whichever gender you are not.

And yet you can't even tell which it is despite me writing about gender. (And no, I'm not going to tell you.)

I ignore gender for things that have nothing to do with gender. There are plenty of things (including online) where gender matters, but programming isn't one of them.