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Female Engineers: Too Fit For The Role

vagendamag.blogspot.co.uk

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Re: Female Engineers: Too Fit For The Role

#51

Post by [deleted] »

arethuza wrote: post #32
seanmcdirmid wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> For the record: I have always felt americans (and anglosaxons in general) are orders of magnitude more afraid of the world than any other people I've ever spoken to. Men and women alike. You should qualify that by where you live. There are dangerous places and there are safer places. America is a bit more dangerous in many places than Europe. I wouldn't let my wife walk alone at any time in India these days but I h…

"America is a bit more dangerous in many places than Europe." I'd be surprised if the most violent places and times in the US were really that different to the most violent places and times in Europe. However, what I suspect is different is where and when violence is likely to occur.

[deleted]

Re: Female Engineers: Too Fit For The Role

#52

Post by thezoid »

jbcurtin2 wrote: post #48

Anyone else notice that 'The Vagenda' has a lot of articles that are aimed at men being jerks? I think any man reading this site will not have an accurate understanding as to what any writer is trying to convey. - My opinion on this article: If you don't like it leave; there are plenty of establishments that'll treat you the way you want to be treated. You just have to go through all the BS to figure out what you lik…

> Anyone else notice that 'The Vagenda' has a lot of articles that are aimed at men being jerks?

I knew immediately by reading the domain that it was going to be a feminist leaning blog, and that's totally fine. Perhaps that's what their content is based on. Unfortunately there's lots of examples of men being jerks, so they have a massive grab bag to pull content from.

> If you don't like it leave

That's always the easy answer, and it's unrealistic and unfair. You don't know the conditions of the author. Maybe they have a boatload of debt or are in a situation where they need stability. Moving jobs is always a risk because there are things like probation periods. Even if you are good at what you do, a probation period is still scary, even more so if you have dependents.

Re: Female Engineers: Too Fit For The Role

#53

Post by treerock »

swombat wrote: post #5

Kind of puts the "sexism in tech" discussion in perspective. These guys make the Mad Men lot sound respectful. Here's a simple way they could deal with that - create a new company (or even just a new department within the company), hire only civilised people, fire anyone who proves to be an uncivilised jerk, and slowly grow that department/company to take over the company/industry because it's not full of retards...

I would love it if there was a way of testing these things out. I've a sneaking suspicion (based on absolutely no reason) that the company 'full or retards' would outperform the company of nice, respectful people. But the real world is a big messy place.

Re: Female Engineers: Too Fit For The Role

#54

Post by jiggy2011 »

gertertsgsdfa wrote: post #50
jiggy2011 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

By the sounds of the article this is British construction workers we are talking about. They have their own culture which is equally as strange as ours, they literally rip on each other all of the time. They must find something to tease you about, whether it's being "gay" , your nationality or just the football team you follow. Unfortunately in this case in the absence of anything else they chose to pick up on her be…

That's not really much of a defence though, is it? British construction workers have decided for themselves which jokes are normal, which are funny, which jokes cross the line. Their tastes are biased in a very sexist way (probably more to do with subjective bias than actual misogyny, but still sexist in content). Think about your list of things to joke about. If you're not a straight, masculine, white, English man t…

They'd probably call you gay even if you weren't, whether or not you actually are is probably not that important to them.

You'd also probably get made fun of more for being say Irish or Scottish than for being black.

Whether or not it's "okay" it is not something you could reasonably expect to be changed for one person.

I would think that really her employer should have managed her expectations better.

Re: Female Engineers: Too Fit For The Role

#55

Post by treerock »

angersock wrote: post #3

Yep. Sounds like shop talk--amazing how things at machine shops, oil rigs, and construction sites can be very similar at times. The women I know that work in any of those fields tend to either ignore it or join in--depending on their mood. One wonders how things would be different were roles reversed--indeed, what sort of talk was common on factory floors during the world wars?

Here is one example.

"A female council boss has been suspended for biting a 24-year-old junior employee so hard that she drew blood through his underwear.

"The worker was taken to hospital, after the incident, for a tetanus injection.

"A colleague called the bite a horseplay that got out of hand."

http://www.business-standard.com/article/news-ani/boss-bites...

Re: Female Engineers: Too Fit For The Role

#58

Post by JanezStupar »

tome wrote: post #14
Swizec wrote: post #8

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When a man walks into a predominantly female group, the behaviour is exactly the same, just the words are different. At least in my experience.

I would be interested in hearing about your experience.

When in my early 20's I once walked into a factory floor full of women in their 30's and 40's

Boy did their looks and remarks make me feel uncomfortable.

I also got groped and really unpleasantly advanced by a drunk older woman once.

Shit like this really does happen, and women are no better than men.

Re: Female Engineers: Too Fit For The Role

#59

Post by cafard »

Swizec wrote: post #13
JonnieCache wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>But how is it any different than how men in groups behave towards one another? Men do not typically fear sexual violence from each other. Not that the men on that site were necessarily going to rape the engineer, but it was certainly orders of magnitude more likely than them raping each other. For the record I understand your point and you might be right, she may well be being accepted, but I don't think it's really…

> Men do not typically fear sexual violence from each other. Women do not typically fear sexual violence from men either. Any woman I've ever asked "Do you really live in constant fear from rape as the internet activists suggest" has answered with "Not really, unless I'm going down a dark alley alone at night it doesn't really cross my mind" But y'know, going down a dark alley alone at night, I'm pretty damn on guard…

"For the record: I have always felt americans (and anglosaxons in general) are orders of magnitude more afraid of the world than any other people I've ever spoken to. Men and women alike."

Would it be fair to rephrase this as "Americans and citizens of the UK and its former dominions have an expectation of public order that many other people do not, and are troubled when the expectation is not met."?

For the record, I (an American) have been held up at gunpoint. It did not keep me from being out and about late at night, though it made me more aware of what was around me. What should I have done to reduce my fear by an order of magnitude?

Re: Female Engineers: Too Fit For The Role

#60

Post by IsaacL »

Swizec wrote: post #44
IsaacL wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You seem to be all over this thread saying "oh well this is bad but men also have it equally bad sexism is exaggerated etc etc". I agree that women can be shitty to men. But men, in general, can be far shittier to women. Being patronised by your female relatives is a completely different league to having sexual abuse shouted at you by strangers (strangers who should be subordinate to your professional expertise). And…

I'm saying this isn't a gender issue. This is a basic human psychology issue. This is the way humans behave, regardless of gender. Gender doesn't even have anything to do with it, gender just defines the specific words used in the overall pattern. In the article men are making fun of a woman. Here on HN startups are making fun of lifestyle businesses. On r/programming Scala developers are making fun of Java developer…

"People poke fun at each other. It's how we establish groups. It's how we operate. We pick a trait and converge around it, as soon as we see a member of the species who does not have that trait, we make fun of them and maybe, just maybe, we eventually let them join the group."

That's true. But the traits chosen are not arbitrary. There are some traits which are consistently used to exclude people from certain groups. As a lifestyle entrepreneur, people on HN look down on me. 99% of the population don't care. Whereas if I was female, or black, or whatever, suddenly I find myself excluded from a lot more groups.

Yes, there is much worse sexism in the world, but I can't think of many people who would think shouting sexual abuse at your manager as anything other than sexism. You seem like an intelligent guy, but you seem to have already reached the conclusion that this isn't sexism and are now trying to justify that conclusion.

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