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Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

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Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#331

Post by bzbarsky »

Wintamute wrote: post #308
kbenson wrote: post #203

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> perfectly capable of moving into and dominating a technical field when that chimes with some aspect of female nature. It doesn't have to be female nature. It could just as easily be culturally encouraged nature, or a combination of the two (a culturally encouraged aspect that was originally developed from human nature, in a self reinforcing loop). > The male predilection towards abstract and systematic thinking cou…

Care to expand on what you think that horrendous reasoning could be?

The point when you transition from "X and Y are different" to "X is better than Y".

It commonly takes the even more pernicious form of going from "X and Y are different on average" to "any given X is better than any given Y". If you're lucky, this last statement at least has a "until proved otherwise" caveat.

Unfortunately, history is rife with this sort of reasoning. People slip into it _really_ easily. It doesn't help that there is a natural tendency to perceive your in-group as better than out-groups, so to the extent that X above ends up feeling like someone's in-group and Y ends up feeling like an out-group, the "X is better than Y" conclusion is very hard to avoid.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#332

Post by BrainInAJar »

beevai142 wrote: post #274
j_s wrote: post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5419071 I don't have more time to figure out the guy's name but his HN username is mr-hank: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=5398681

Richards got fired and got loads of death threats and racist messages, because of a single tweet. The guy got off easier with just being fired.

The dudebros also got new jobs. Richards did not.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#334

Post by johnbm »

kbenson wrote: post #121
johnbm wrote: post #93

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Criticizing a woman, even calling her a bitch, is not misogyny. Misogyny is hating women because they are women. What OP described is just heckling. And what OP did is white knighting, i.e. a man defending a woman, because she's a woman, in order to appear virtuous. Like posting about it on HackerNews.

No, what he did was reinforce what is acceptable social behavior in that situation. While the specifics of the situation may have spurred him to act quicker or in a case he wouldn't have, that's irrelevant. The behavior being called out is unacceptable no matter who is giving the talk. People did not attend the talk to hear people heckle the talker, there are other forums for that (stand-up, and there are some talks…

I seem to recall a similar inappropriate joke being called out. Something about dongles.

Man, I hope when the big one hits, San Francisco falls into the sea, so all these guys can finally fulfil their fantasy of saving a m'lady like Leo Dicaprio in Titanic.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#335

Post by BrainInAJar »

dsfyu404ed wrote: post #116
BrainInAJar wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

whose career ? Name one.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/R_v_Elliott

Dude continuously harasses a woman well after being told to stop, then having his account suspended. That's not "I said the wrong thing", that's criminal harassment.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#338

Post by btilly »

andkon wrote: post #175
btilly wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argue for your limitations, and surely they're yours. To the extent that you can focus on what is under your personal control, you are likely to be happier and more productive. To the extent that you focus on things that are not under your control and can't be changed, you will be unhappy, unproductive, and will have a built-in excuse for your failures. This is not an either-or choice, it is a spectrum. And the farth…

Nah man, of course it diminishes their challenges. You literally start your post by diminishing their challenges; you do this in response to a post that makes the highly uncontroversial point that minorities are perceived differently in the workplace. The interesting thing is that your line of advice really just needs a single, model minority person to prove it right. "Look! She didn't accede to the haters! Please ig…

You appear to be arguing against your impression of what I said, instead of what I actually said. What I gave was practical advice for how to have the best life possible given the circumstances. I said nothing about how easy it is to do it, or the circumstances.

Furthermore the REASON why I pointed out that it is a spectrum is that it isn't all or nothing. If you're truly stuck feeling like a victim a lot of the time and can't change it, you're still better off than you would be otherwise. Better off does not mean well off - discrimination is real. It just means better.

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#339

Post by Frondo »

gmarx wrote: post #76
Frondo wrote: post #28

Personal story time...I was at a recent conference, listening to men, women given talks. One of the women, in her talk, uses an interaction with her daughter as the framing narrative for the talk (imagine Socrates and Glaucon, only this woman and her daughter). Almost immediately, three guys to my right start making fun of the speaker, sotto voce, making all manner of little jokes to themselves, that are becoming inc…

Granted, people should not be distracting class clowns during a conference. The line about the daughter? It's impossible to tell if it was funny without knowing what the speaker had just said. This entire post appears to be a statement about how female speakers are unfairly treated at tech conferences, but in reality it is the poster saying "look everyone, I'm a hero"

If you think shushing some jerks at a conference is heroism, I submit to you that you have set the bar too low.

I also shush kids who talk in movie theaters and tell irate customers to back down when they're yelling at store clerks. None of that is heroic, either, it's what I would hope is basic human decency.

I don't want to live in a world where the guys sitting next to me are calling a conference speaker's daughter a bitch. Do you?

Re: Why I won’t give talks about being a woman in tech

#340

Post by btilly »

junko wrote: post #201
btilly wrote: post #124

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Argue for your limitations, and surely they're yours. To the extent that you can focus on what is under your personal control, you are likely to be happier and more productive. To the extent that you focus on things that are not under your control and can't be changed, you will be unhappy, unproductive, and will have a built-in excuse for your failures. This is not an either-or choice, it is a spectrum. And the farth…

I sortof agree with your "toughen up!" stance; as a member of a minority group this is actually practical - but only when I've developed sufficiently thick skin. I've worked in organisations where I was blatantly ignored/sidelined (I'll spare the details of how I came to conclude that it was due to discrimination rather than other factors) and that was pretty demoralising. I share your opinion, but count my blessing…

Exactly.

The phrase, "To the extent that you can..." was meant to convey the fact that the perfect ideal is not feasible. I also tried to make it clear that the attempt is worthwhile because even if your best is only an occasional success, you'll still wind up better off than you would otherwise.

On the question of toxic organizations, I'd like to point out that recognizing that the organization is toxic and choosing to be elsewhere was under your control. I commend you for making that choice. There will always be toxic people and toxic organizations. Some, like the police, we have little choice about dealing with. But there is no need to put up with ones that we can avoid. And by avoiding them, we make our lives better.

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