The Male Programmer Privilege Checklist

So, if you pay attention to history, you can see that there isn't actually a predisposition which affects this.

In the 1980's, about half[1] of computer scientists were women. Now? 10-20%. Something is being done, and it is being done wrong. So it's not as simple as "They don't want to" or "Society makes them".

[1] I believe it to be about half. However, it might be slightly more or less. Definitely far higher than today.

I think that in a healthy society the point of someone talking about things that make them feel uncomfortable is that you have an opportunity to spend some time thinking about how what they are saying applies to that society rather than telling them the one hundred ways how what they just said can't possibly be true.

If we don't take those opportunities to think about what makes someone else uncomfortable (maybe because it makes us uncomfortable ourselves?) then, over time, the people with the willingness to speak out about something which could be improved simply leave and an opportunity to improve that society vanishes with them.

Which is a great sadness because I think we've all got our own stories about things we don't like about the software biz and I think many of us feel a little bit hopeless about ever being able to change some of that...

...but discouraging folk willing to talk about things that can improve, even if it's not something we find important ourselves, means that it's a little less likely that any other conversation about improvement is going to get a hearing either.

For the record, I'd like to see more women and other types of human than white&male&alpha in software myself because over fifteen years of doing this I have found that the most toxic development environments (high levels of stress, distrust, dishonesty, coercion etc.) have also been the environments with the lowest human diversity.

It is not difficult to scare away people who are different from you or people who you expect to silently put up with problems caused by your point of view.

But the problem is, as that happens, without differences your society slowly stops having anything to communicate about and without communication it becomes dumber and without intelligence it eventually becomes a target for attack and takeover by some other failed community with an eye to your resources. (Sun / Oracle anyone ? ;-D)

I'm a guy.

Female Programmer Privilege Checklist:

Guilting every male programmer for both real and imagined slights.

The beauty of startups is that no one cares who or what you are, so long as you can deliver. So stop complaining , AND BUILD SOMETHING ALREADY.

I find this kind of thing absolutely nauseating, divisive, and thoroughly unhelpful.

I'm sure it makes you feel good, Mr Ultra Feminist, but you're not advancing "your" cause whatsoever by trying to guilt people - and with such weak, whiny examples, too.

You just make women look weak and whiny. (And, by extension, yourself, since you're not even a woman.)

That's unproductive and leads to - guess what! - women being not taken seriously, and being avoided because well-meaning men will assume everything they say will cause offense, and women not getting hired or picked because they make everyone else uncomfortable.

Isn't that ironic?

You also treat all women the same when you presume to speak for them. That's just more plain old sexism dressed up in a suit of righteousness.

I hate people grouping me with all other breast-and-vagina people, and assuming I like them, and agree with them, and share their agenda... and support them speaking on my behalf, as if we are all alike.

If you want to create change, you have to stop whining, stop laying blame, stop pointing fingers and saying "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE WHEN THEY CALL OBJECTS 'GUYS'!!!!" and do useful, productive things. This is not it.

For what it's worth, men in IT are more likeable than women, because when men fail, they don't blame it on other people's oppression of them due to their sexual equipment.