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I'm not a Woman in Tech

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Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#81

Post by monksy »

aphextron wrote: post #2

>I want inclusivity, not exclusivity. Thank you. I find myself feeling the exact same way as a black man in this industry, and cringe at "minority only" events and clubs. We don't need token inclusion and separate praise for being "brave" and "fighting against the odds". We need a world where those things are irrelevant.

What gets me is that we have a ton of gender, sex, and race neutral user groups, but yet there is forceful attempts at creating a segregated user group. ("Bridge" being one) From what I've seen they're awful, they just reinforce really bad hyperbolic stereotypes about their group.

One of my experiences in this was a talk about imposture syndrome. They made the claim that "Women suffer syndrome the most". Also IIRC I couldn't attend because I didn't identify in their target audience and would have to "have a sponsor to attend."

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#82

Post by sremani »

throwaway170705 wrote: post #68
fruzz wrote: post #14

There's sexism in tech, and to address it you have to call it for what it is. I'm glad her experiences are such that she hasn't encountered these barriers, but other people have, and they need these words and spaces. Take my previous job. Women were objectified on Slack. A woman was groped, though she didn't report it out of concern for the repercussions. In meetings execs, male execs would only address/look at the m…

>I'm glad her experiences are such that she hasn't encountered these barriers, but other people have, and they need these words and spaces. This is what I intended to post; thanks for sharing your experience. I'm a gay Indian male living in Canada. I have never experienced marginalization for being Indian, but at my previous engagement, I experienced quite a bit of harassment and discrimination for being queer. Until…

It's important not to dismiss her experience as being extremely lucky. The thing is, there are lot of women like her, who were not harassed at their work places or have "grown-up" work environments with decent managers and HR policies.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#83

Post by skybrian »

serg_chernata wrote: post #4
aphextron wrote: post #2

>I want inclusivity, not exclusivity. Thank you. I find myself feeling the exact same way as a black man in this industry, and cringe at "minority only" events and clubs. We don't need token inclusion and separate praise for being "brave" and "fighting against the odds". We need a world where those things are irrelevant.

Watching from the sidelines as a white male, I have to say that I find these kinds of situations so confusing. Some people want these differences to be highlighted, while others like yourself want the complete opposite. I'm left believing that my only choice is to have no opinion. Though I lean towards your stance across the board.

We all do it, but sharing opinions tends not to be all that useful anyway. From someone else's point of view it's just another stranger's opinion on the Internet.

Better to ask questions, share links, and tell stories based on personal experience if you have any.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#84

Post by humanrebar »

problems wrote: post #55
booleandilemma wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing opinions is just not "safe" anymore Free speech is dead.

Not dead - you can speak your mind - just you pay a social price to do so. Free speech, even in the most libertarian concept I have doesn't prevent other people's right to criticize your speech - in fact, I'd say it encourages just that. Speak out against stuff you don't like rather than censoring it. Ultimately it's an effect of large, diverse communities and deep political divisions. If you want to have political d…

Just because something is legal doesn't mean we're at liberty to do it. People mistake society for government and vice versa.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#85

Post by iamatworknow »

nollbit wrote: post #62
iamatworknow wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point of the article. It's not that these things don't exist, or didn't exist for her -- of course they do. The point seems, to me at least, to be that in order to attempt to actually solve these problems you can't actively (or passively) try to exclude yourself from the people causing them. It's like politics -- if you separate yourself into "us" versus "them", how are you ever supposed to…

The women who report these issues has no obligation to solve the problems, they're simply pointing out that they exist (since for a long time, people wouldn't believe them).

You're right, there is no obligation to help. Likewise there's no obligation for me as a straight, white man in tech to help either.

But the more people working along side me who I can collaborate with, the better. That only makes both our jobs easier. It doesn't matter what you label yourself as. If labels are getting in the way of our mutual increased success by arbitrarily keeping you from working with me as an equal, why wouldn't I want to help?

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#87

Post by [deleted] »

problems wrote: post #55
booleandilemma wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sharing opinions is just not "safe" anymore Free speech is dead.

Not dead - you can speak your mind - just you pay a social price to do so. Free speech, even in the most libertarian concept I have doesn't prevent other people's right to criticize your speech - in fact, I'd say it encourages just that. Speak out against stuff you don't like rather than censoring it. Ultimately it's an effect of large, diverse communities and deep political divisions. If you want to have political d…

[deleted]

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#88

Post by richmarr »

Caveman_Coder wrote: post #44

You can and should have an opinion, its a part of being a discerning human being trying to navigate this world. It doesn't mean you should never listen to others opinions, but having your own informed opinion is a good thing. If others tell you that you can't because you're a white male, tell them to piss off. EDIT: Downvotes for saying that a white male should have an opinion??

I haven't downvoted you but... "informed" is a tricky beast. Many people, but especially white men, especially engineers, think that they're qualified to comment on fields where they are a novice.

(see Dunning-Kruger and others)

In the field of discrimination, women and minorities are statistically more experienced; so on the whole you'd expect them to hold more informed opinions than white men.

At the best of times telling anyone to "piss off" would be poorly advised, but especially so when the people so dismissed are likely better informed.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#89

Post by iamatworknow »

alistproducer2 wrote: post #64
iamatworknow wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you're missing the point of the article. It's not that these things don't exist, or didn't exist for her -- of course they do. The point seems, to me at least, to be that in order to attempt to actually solve these problems you can't actively (or passively) try to exclude yourself from the people causing them. It's like politics -- if you separate yourself into "us" versus "them", how are you ever supposed to…

But you also can't solve a problem if everyone pretends it doesn't exist.

Right. And I've never said that it didn't.

Re: I'm not a Woman in Tech

#90

Post by teacup50 »

dang wrote: post #60
fche wrote: post #49

> Some people want these differences to be highlighted Those people are political activists.

That's definitely not always true and probably not in the majority case either. Please don't escalate a discussion like this straight into political battle—we want interesting, thoughtful conversation here and the two aren't compatible. We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14702833 and marked it off-topic.

> That's definitely not always true and probably not in the majority case either.

I don't know what you're talking about; it's an inherently political position rooted in coherent ideology.

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