Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Men In Tech

wekeroad.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 155 posts

Re: Men In Tech

#51

Post by kejmen »

tomp wrote: post #41
redwood wrote: post #22

Wtf, sure we need to be cognizant of discrimination against men in our society, and I think there are great arguments to be made that men are generally portrayed as dumb in TV shows, for example. However we cannot equate men's and women's experiences of the world we live in. I want to, and have the mistake of doing so many times, but I've since seen how wrong I've been. My female friend told me the following which ra…

> When you ask men the same question [...] the answer is just about nothing. From my personal experience, men are much more vulnerable than women. A lot of my friends got assaulted/beaten up (me included) (some multiple times), and it's always been in public , either in clubs or even in broad daylight on a busy street ! As you stated above, women can protect themselves in very simple ways: stay with other people, and…

You sound like a jerk, that's why you and your jerk friends got beaten up.

Why couldn't man and women protect themselves the same way?

And WTF does it mean "women can protect themselves in very simple ways: stay with other people, and watch what you're eating."

Re: Men In Tech

#52

Post by madamepsychosis »

wpietri wrote: post #44
georgieporgie wrote: post #3

I think this is largely the expression of terrible, terrible social skills. I've seen appalling things toward women and men alike from young, socially inept Bay Area tech males. Also, for what it's worth, I've received a lot of crap from women over the course of my working life. In college, I worked in a deli where I was the only male. There was outright sexual harassment, and regular dismissal of me solely because I…

I'm not persuaded. I know a number of socially inept people. Some of them are perfectly pleasant, just hopelessly awkward. Others are jerks to everyone. But some are sexist jerks. And there are some people who are perfectly well socialized who are also sexist jerks. Women were oppressed for millennia. Women in the US haven't had the vote for even 100 years. Men and women didn't have equal college enrollment rates unt…

^This. It's not that exclusively women have these problems, it's that they have them to a greater extent than men because of centuries-old ideas about how women and men should act. Articles like these are just saying it'd be nice if we made some effort to reduce the effect of these old social conventions on women in tech today.

Re: Men In Tech

#53

Post by s_baby »

wpietri wrote: post #44
georgieporgie wrote: post #3

I think this is largely the expression of terrible, terrible social skills. I've seen appalling things toward women and men alike from young, socially inept Bay Area tech males. Also, for what it's worth, I've received a lot of crap from women over the course of my working life. In college, I worked in a deli where I was the only male. There was outright sexual harassment, and regular dismissal of me solely because I…

I'm not persuaded. I know a number of socially inept people. Some of them are perfectly pleasant, just hopelessly awkward. Others are jerks to everyone. But some are sexist jerks. And there are some people who are perfectly well socialized who are also sexist jerks. Women were oppressed for millennia. Women in the US haven't had the vote for even 100 years. Men and women didn't have equal college enrollment rates unt…

>I'm sorry you've received crap. Due to your gender or anything else. But understand that jumping into a discussion of sexism with "but that happens to me too!" is such a common problem that it's listed in the "Derailing for Dummies" guide: http://www.derailingfordummies.com/menu.html

This guide makes zero rational arguments for why those examples are derailment... It's completely rhetorical.

Intellectually, it's appropriate to discuss female/male oppression in the context of one another since the idea of patriarchy has been replaced with the idea of kyriarchy; A system where everyone oppresses/stratifies everyone else. It's a matrix of relationships that cannot be examined in isolation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyriarchy

>Women in the US haven't had the vote for even 100 years. Men and women didn't have equal college enrollment rates until circa 1990. I just don't buy the thesis that sexism is now suddenly extinct, especially in a male-dominated field.

Only ~10% of early Americans were eligible to vote. All white men weren't given the right to vote until the mid 19th century. A generation before women were granted the right.

Very few men benefited from a "patriarchal" social configuration. The fact that a small minority of white men had privilege doesn't negate the social costs externalized on the average man. The only realistic opportunities available to these men were war, working on a farm, working in a coal mine, or working in an industrial era factory. Having the "freedom" to be part of the workforce did not offer you the opportunities it does today...

Re: Men In Tech

#54

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

awakeasleep wrote: post #23

Wow. What a killer article. I think it went pretty far in depth, and I let myself take the time to imagine everything the author was describing, and I fuckin felt it man. If this was written by a man, I applaud the effort you put into empathizing with women. If it was written by a woman, Thank you for thinking up so many creative and kick ass examples. Our society has a long way to go before we reach equality. And I…

> If this was written by a man

Rob Conery is a male dude. He's also replying in these comments.

Re: Men In Tech

#55

Post by spindritf »

tomp wrote: post #39
awakeasleep wrote: post #23

Wow. What a killer article. I think it went pretty far in depth, and I let myself take the time to imagine everything the author was describing, and I fuckin felt it man. If this was written by a man, I applaud the effort you put into empathizing with women. If it was written by a woman, Thank you for thinking up so many creative and kick ass examples. Our society has a long way to go before we reach equality. And I…

> Our society has a long way to go before we reach equality. Why is there such a strong emphasis on equality? In Slovenian, we have two similar words, of which one means "equality", and the other means roughly "equal rights". I'm always annoyed when the former is stated as a goal, instead of the latter. We're not equal, and never will be. For example, men don't have to bear children, they don't need a "paternal leave…

> We're not equal, and never will be.

There are many people who believe, or effectively believe even if they acknowledge some innate differences, that people are essentially the same, and all differences between them can be explained by cultural, social and personal experiences. A paradigm which is sometimes, mostly by critics, called "standard social science model" (basically a polar opposite of believing that we are all born stratified into casts, classes, races, sexes... and that this stratification determines each person's fate).

If you adopt this paradigm, all inequalities must be a result of sexism, racism, or some other discrimination or failure on the part of society. It's seen as unfair and unjustified and in turn results in actions against that perceived injustice (legislation, shaming, protests, demonstrations, blog posts...).

And it goes deeper than that. Some people will say that beauty is a cultural/social construct, that obesity is a result of unhealthy food being priced lower than healthy choices and affects poorer people more (it doesn't btw[1]). This pattern of conflict between being affected by circumstances vs having some innate qualities is very pervasive.

[1] http://www.overcomingbias.com/2011/08/the-poor-are-not-fat.h...

Re: Men In Tech

#56

Post by SideburnsOfDoom »

tomp wrote: post #41
redwood wrote: post #22

Wtf, sure we need to be cognizant of discrimination against men in our society, and I think there are great arguments to be made that men are generally portrayed as dumb in TV shows, for example. However we cannot equate men's and women's experiences of the world we live in. I want to, and have the mistake of doing so many times, but I've since seen how wrong I've been. My female friend told me the following which ra…

> When you ask men the same question [...] the answer is just about nothing. From my personal experience, men are much more vulnerable than women. A lot of my friends got assaulted/beaten up (me included) (some multiple times), and it's always been in public , either in clubs or even in broad daylight on a busy street ! As you stated above, women can protect themselves in very simple ways: stay with other people, and…

> men are much more vulnerable than women. ... For men, it's almost impossible to protect ourselves

What?

Re: Men In Tech

#57

Post by TheSOB88 »

tomp wrote: post #42
robconery wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You're being a tad too literal with your critique (if I may). The whole point is to take you into a realm that's utterly absurd from the male perspective -- which is entirely my point in writing this . Yes, male nurses face weird moments in life - but as you say it's mostly from other men. That has nothing to do with being a woman in the tech industry who get to listen to cracks about "being on the rag" or PMSing whe…

> You'd be surprised the shit women deal with. I'm not sure, but I think you're being too general. I'd rather state this: You'd be surprised by the shit *attractive* women have to deal with. And I 'm pretty sure that attractive men have to deal with the same kind of "shit". They just react to it differently. Edit: I expected the downvotes, but please reply, do you disagree with the stated facts (i.e. does you experie…

Attractive men DON'T have to deal with the same kind of shit, in general, because they are not a minority. They are not in a minority with social precedents to keep them down, which is what this article is all about. Institutionalized sexualization of women through teasing and joking is pretty common. This piece is trying to get you to where you try to understand what it's like.

Most of us have wondered if our bulge was big enough - imagine if it was judged daily, by every oncoming woman, in every meeting. Imagine if you were constantly teased about getting a boner, and people acted as if it were normal.

I imagine some people around here aren't very good at imagining, are too literal, and hence react badly to this sort of thing.

Re: Men In Tech

#58

Post by wamatt »

chrisguitarguy wrote: post #21
wamatt wrote: post #15

Would someone be kind enough to get us the TLDR version? Not sure the point, the writer is trying to make.

Essentially the author is trying to put the male readers in a women's shoes. In other words, take every sexist tech story that's popped up in tech news in the last few months and reverse the pronouns. It's certainly an interesting read, but not particularly well executed. There is a book called Egalia's Daughters [1] that does a similar thing in a much more powerful, primal way. Seriously worth a read. 1. http://www.…

Ok but why should we care? I mean it's not like men are raging about the lack of male orientated pregnancy articles.

I don't get it.

Tech is male orientated because there are much more males in it. It make sense to then align the reporting towards the base.

Re: Men In Tech

#59

Post by bjornsing »

knowtheory wrote: post #6

Reading this is really awkward. And it's not awkward because it reveals some hidden truth, or because it's a good piece of writing that reflects on the issue it's tackling. No, instead it's awkward because the gender dynamics are not reversible. At least, not in the manner that's intended here. You can't just take the circumstances that women face in tech fields, and switch around the pronouns and have the circumstan…

I think the writer actually made a pretty good job of "reversing the gender dynamics". I especially like the retrospect into young adulthood. Sure made it easier for me to understand the seriousness of what you call social awkwardness. Stuff that puts us off in adulthood is often grounded far back, and the exact same concrete circumstances may not affect somebody who doesn't have that background.

If the last paragraph of your comment is your attempt at "reversing the gender dynamics" I think you have it all backwards, reversing the wrong thing. You could write another essay in the OP's style about what it's like being a female in the "macho man" dominated nursing profession. Makes sense to me.

Post reply on HN