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"Lighten up"

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Re: "Lighten up"

#441

Post by wpietri »

mhartl wrote: post #356
wpietri wrote: post #340

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Your notion of "rational" is weak. It's the small-minded, self-interested, narcissistic version of the term. Fixing this problem in the tech industry may or may not be beyond my reach. We'll see. But I will try as long as I'm involved in software. Hopefully I will have made a difference. But if I don't, that's still ok, because then I won't have been one of those assholes who stands around ignoring (or profiting from…

I think that blog posts like this are absolutely a part of fixing the problem. I hope you're right. You're far more optimistic than I am. In particular, I've seen an awful lot of hand-wringing about this subject in the Ruby community over the past five years—most of it similar in content and tone to the OP—and it doesn't seem to be having any effect.

This is one tiny facet of a society-wide problem that goes back millennia. How much progress can you expect in a few years? In the broader scope of things, I'd say we're making great progress.

But that progress has come through continuous effort, not from people saying, "Oh, honey, you should just accept that you can't vote. You'll never change it, so it's not rational to try."

Re: "Lighten up"

#442

Post by antiterra »

javascriptlol wrote: post #407
antiterra wrote: post #363

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems you're suggesting that working for a company in the technology industry is being imprisoned or that it's prohibitively (and increasingly?) difficult to start a small technology business. As far as I can tell, tech is still a growth industry, and the boats are floating higher, not sinking. Even if so, why is it irrelevant to bring up a specific reason that women might leave a company? If I was my own boss and…

You use sophistry. Punches to the face face will make a cancer patient worse. In fact, getting the flu may kill them. The poster is not a cancer patient; presumably, they are a reasonable independent person with some self esteem. So they are capable of learning resilience. We need to distinguish between small harms that ultimately do us good and large harms that are sending society on a destructive course.

Because of your plea for civil discussion, I mistakenly assumed that you would interpret my words in good faith (and, for the record, I can't downvote.) Instead, I suppose I should have qualified the hypothetical punches as just sufficient in force to cause pain and irritation but not enough to exacerbate health issues. I'm really not sure what the flu has to do with anything, facial contusions are quite a different thing than a systemic infection.

The point still stands, that small issues matter even when there are bigger issues.

You have given nothing to support the argument that treating someone as subservient based on gender 'ultimately does us good.'

Toughening (or lightening) up is a good thing. I was bullied in school to a distressing degree. Later in my life, I went through training where I learned to shrug off hits far worse than any bully had given me. Sometimes they were accidental and I laughed about it.

However, that doesn't mean it's ok for someone to just walk up to me and sock me in the face. It doesn't mean that it's ok to attack people and just demand that they toughen up and deal with it.

By your argument we should all treat each other like complete crap at home and at work, because it will build character like a lifelong boot camp. Heck, maybe we should treat women specifically like crap so they can get more resilient and perform better than men.

Of course, another poster claims that computer programmers are awkward around women and have such bad self-esteem they should be forgiven. I wonder how well they would fare if the tables were turned.

Honestly, it sounds like an argument born out of the desire to not give up being a jerk to women. It sounds like "lighten up," for no real reason. And, whatever the development potential, it's pushing women away from the field.

Re: "Lighten up"

#443

Post by javascriptlol »

Czarnian wrote: post #427
javascriptlol wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sexual assault is no joke. But so what if someone gives you "unwanted attention"? We have become a culture of whiners and rationalisers. It would be like me, as a man, going on and on about how unfair it is that I'm expected to hide fear and put the safety of females before my own. Of course, we're well along the way to destroying that tradition. People ignore the myriad of subtle advantages to this "sexist" approach…

I'm sure all of your coworkers are very thankful to have a super-hero like you around to protect them from all the mortal dangers that pop up in the office on a daily basis. If I heard you going on and on about how it's unfair that your expected to hid fear and put the safety of all the women-folk before your own, I wouldn't think you were a whiner, I'd think you have a damned screw loose. Read what you wrote, man. W…

What is your problem? I don't ever talk about this in that setting. I'm illustrating an idea, and you try to bully me with things I never did. I don't have "macho" baggage. Where did you get this information from? How would you even know if it was true? I'm pointing out that society imposes some limitations on people and that it's pointless to complain over every single little thing. Your admission that these impositions on men are no big deal just serves to illustrate my point: that there's nothing serious going on here. Just first-worlders complaining over every little perceived disadvantage. And yes I would say something if I witnessed someone bullying a coworker as the OP describes. That doesn't mean I'd be sympathetic to whining about it.

Re: "Lighten up"

#444

Post by antiterra »

xymostech wrote: post #435
antiterra wrote: post #293

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't think this is the core problem. Feedback is occurring, and the response isn't "Oh, I'm sorry. I'll avoid doing that in the future." It's "lighten up!" That translates roughly to: "what I was doing that bothered you is so important to me that I refuse to stop, so get over it." I think that is the core problem.

I think it's even more than that. It's not "It's so important to me" it's "this shouldn't be important to you, because it doesn't seem important to me."

Well, our pronouns refer to two different things, but, yes. It's two sides of the same coin.

Re: "Lighten up"

#445

Post by scott_s »

ryanwaggoner wrote: post #336
Swizec wrote: post #194

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Public perception (as judged by art, which usually represents a slightly caricatured version of reality) seems to imply that your attractiveness and the appropriateness of your comments are inversely correlated. That is to say, if you tell a woman she looks good, it will be a compliment if she likes you, a sexist remark if she doesn't.

There's a running joke on Reddit that the best way to avoid being labeled creepy when hitting on a woman is to: 1. Be attractive. 2. Don't be unattractive. And there is definitely truth to this.

Then it's a good thing this isn't Reddit.

Re: "Lighten up"

#446

Post by aptsurdist »

I just want to say a sincere thank you for writing this. I hope the whole community will read this with an open mind and understand how important it is to be conscious of these subtleties.

Re: "Lighten up"

#447

Post by wpietri »

tomp wrote: post #406
djcapelis wrote: post #230

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it hard to believe that you think women should have to dress differently so as not to attract a running commentary.

Maybe not should , but could ? I'm not saying that it's their fault, but there certainly are ways to prevent what they're experiencing. We men have to deal with another type of assault, physical assault. Most of my male friends were assaulted in one way or another (in clubs, on the street, ...) before the age of 20, in Slovenia. Yes, we could blame other people, but a matter of fact is that we are more likely targets…

You're not just saying could.

Because there are a lot of things she could do. She could flap her arms and make chicken noises. She could read a newspaper. She could tazer somebody. She could fold everybody paper hats. There are pretty much an infinite number of things she could do, and we all know that. So when you focus on some small set of those, you're not just saying "could".

When you say, "Oh gosh, if only those women could learn from my youth and just avoid situations where people might be sexist (say, by staying home and making babies)," then you're shifting the burden of action from the culprit to the victim. It's bullshit. Everybody has the right to go to work without having to deal with sexual, sexist crap like this.

But suppose she followed your advice and wore only turtlenecks. Golly, then we've eliminated one symptom. But as she remarks in the article, she's just gone from "slut" to "ice queen". What do you recommend she wear to fix that? And what outfit keeps people from seeing her as the person to organize a potluck or take notes?

Re: "Lighten up"

#448

Post by javascriptlol »

antiterra wrote: post #442
javascriptlol wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You use sophistry. Punches to the face face will make a cancer patient worse. In fact, getting the flu may kill them. The poster is not a cancer patient; presumably, they are a reasonable independent person with some self esteem. So they are capable of learning resilience. We need to distinguish between small harms that ultimately do us good and large harms that are sending society on a destructive course.

Because of your plea for civil discussion, I mistakenly assumed that you would interpret my words in good faith (and, for the record, I can't downvote.) Instead, I suppose I should have qualified the hypothetical punches as just sufficient in force to cause pain and irritation but not enough to exacerbate health issues. I'm really not sure what the flu has to do with anything, facial contusions are quite a different…

>You have given nothing to support the argument that treating someone as subservient based on gender 'ultimately does us good.'

I never said this. Quote me where I said this, or I will be forced to regard you as a liar.

And I never said "small issues don't matter". Why make things up? I am saying that I am bored with endless complaints that exist around noise level. Since I posted a few times and I may not have been redundant enough, I'll be explicit in that I think taunting women about their breasts in the workplace is despicable and anyone who witnessed such a thing should immediately speak up. Anything less is cowardice.

My beef with this post is the complaints about "subtle" sexism. People don't seem to understand that people are unfair to others all the time. There is nothing but a kind of blind secular faith that eliminating these micro-injustices is going to help anybody. So you show me someone who refuses to hire women or abuses them and I will tell them where to stick it. I stand up to people who promote ideas I think are harmful. But I don't want to hear about "perceived" problems that are indistinguishable from the noise-level unfairness that nobody can stop ("boohoo I got asked to take some notes and I think it _might_ have been because I am a woman"). If you don't want to take notes say "no". Better yet do a shitty job. Instead we have people arguing about how one type of slave gets whipped on the buttocks and the other gets it on the thigh, missing the point that if we set the slaves free they wouldn't be getting whipped at all. But don't let me stop you opining about the decor while the house burns down.

And the people down-voting me are just PC thugs with no ability to confront an alternate point of view.

Re: "Lighten up"

#449

Post by Alex3917 »

lifeisstillgood wrote: post #187

Will Schumpter win out here? Presumably in a perfect labour market competant women will leave companies like this and go work for the non sexist competition I believe that will be true for companies that do not embrace for example lean product discovery or software as transformative. But I just don't think the labour Market is really perfect enough to make this kind of difference but even so, start looking at jobsite…

No, because of the marriage monopsony (among other reasons). Because most women choose to live where their husbands live, they will essentially never be able to command the same wages or working conditions as men (under the current system) because the employers have significantly more power than what a competitive market would otherwise dictate.

Re: "Lighten up"

#450

Post by javascriptlol »

javascriptlol wrote: post #417
wpietri wrote: post #323

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You justified bullying when you talked about how childhood aggression is useful because it toughens the victim up for later life (that is, putting up with other aggression). Sexism is not some uncontrollable virus. Sexism is something that people do to other people. And, happily something that some people don't do to other people. We have a choice, and pretending otherwise is absurd.

Give me one example of a society where youthful aggression has been eliminated.

Again, HN shames itself by down-voting a point it has no answer. Someone show me how we can eliminate "bullying" and unfairness anymore than we can eliminate disease. Too much social control will just give rise to new problems, thus creating more need for the "fairness" industry.
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