Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are people that have the "I'm offended" weapon and people that don't. As far as I can tell offending a woman or a non-Asian racial minority is considered to be a Very Bad Thing. It might even get you fired. And there are no rules. Every person is different and you don't know who you will offend and who you won't. Adria was spotted playing "Cards Against Humanity" at the conference and I would assume that I woul…
Adria was spotted playing "Cards Against Humanity" at the conference and I would assume that I would be safe making almost any joke in conversation with someone that played CAH. /But I would be wrong and she would kill my job with her special weapon/ Evidence for this claim?
There are Ladies Present
81–90 of 113 posts
Re: There are Ladies Present
#82I went to school for a female-dominated profession (yes, there are quite a few out there where the balance goes the other way). I can assure you that if you find the things men say offensive, you haven't heard anything... I want to add the caveat that I am NOT attempting to appeal to hypocrisy. While I agree that there is a limit, I don't see how calling languages "estrogen" is offensive and I don't understand how ca…
> While I agree that there is a limit, I don't see how calling languages "estrogen" is offensive and I don't understand how calling a hat "cute" is offensive. To be frank, you don't see these things as offensive because you're ignorant. I grew up in the same era as you did, and I'm guessing you just had the misfortune of not being asked to walk in another person's shoes. You go ahead and enjoy all that delicious priv…
Please be civil. I asked you nicely when you were complaining about death threats and you ignored it. I've flagged that comment and the three comments since then. This isn't the place for sarcasm, all-caps, insults, or flame wars.
Re: There are Ladies Present
#83I went to school for a female-dominated profession (yes, there are quite a few out there where the balance goes the other way). I can assure you that if you find the things men say offensive, you haven't heard anything... I want to add the caveat that I am NOT attempting to appeal to hypocrisy. While I agree that there is a limit, I don't see how calling languages "estrogen" is offensive and I don't understand how ca…
No. Ellen Degeneres or The Voice or any of the other false equivalences you're desperately reaching to make is not the professional technical workplace. If you run in any of my technical circles, put on a technical presentation, or otherwise represent at a technical conference, and you make "jokes" that are sexual innuendos of any kind or are otherwise unprofessional.... You will be gone. Gone. Count on it. The tech…
Please be civil and don't make threats. I flagged your comment.
Re: There are Ladies Present
#84Earlier quoted context omitted.
"sexual joke" are not necessarily "sexist jokes" and there is no particular reason to say that women are somehow traumitized by the mere mention of sexuality. Is making sexual jokes at a conference unprofessional? Yes, but it's unprofessional regardless of the gender of anyone or everyone in earshot. Whether it's unprofessional enough to justify: "You will be gone. Gone." "Count on it." is quite clearly a subjective…
> "sexual joke" are not necessarily "sexist jokes" There is absolutely no point to this statement. Inappropriate comments do not need to be tied to a particular group of people. > there is no particular reason to say that women are somehow traumitized [sic] by the mere mention of sexuality. Thanks for the man-splaining. Are you, by chance, on a tour of inner city high schools telling black kids about how affirmative…
Please don't put words in my mouth. I will happily stand by any and every thing I've said here, but I feel no need to defend strawmen and intentional misinterpretations.
Better yet, just go back to Slashdot and do your trolling there.
Re: There are Ladies Present
#85A question for the guys of HN who know their movies: what would your reaction be to a service called Treehorn with a client program called LogJammer? I only found out where those names came from much later.
Do you mean, what would their reaction would be upon recognizing where those names came from? My reaction, in order, was (1) ugh, gross; (2) whoever named the service were being douchey idiots; (3) how much I dislike this aspect of the porn generation; (4) I would not feel comfortable using that software.
Re: There are Ladies Present
#86Earlier quoted context omitted.
There are people that have the "I'm offended" weapon and people that don't. As far as I can tell offending a woman or a non-Asian racial minority is considered to be a Very Bad Thing. It might even get you fired. And there are no rules. Every person is different and you don't know who you will offend and who you won't. Adria was spotted playing "Cards Against Humanity" at the conference and I would assume that I woul…
Yes, white and/or Asian guy. Live in fear. The rules have changed. There are no rules. Bullets won't harm the women unless they're made of silver. The garlic thing is a myth; they'll just laugh at you before they use their terrifying "I'm offended" fangs to rip your throat out. Keep dogs outside your door to spot the Terminators and the gay people who look just like real humans.
Some guy just lost his job you know. Yes he's a member of a majority and yes majority members have an easier time in their field on average than the minorities in it. But that doesn't change the fact that he suffered real harm and he has three kids to feed. Your flippancy is chilling.
Re: There are Ladies Present
#87Do a lot of guys approach coding with a conquest mentality? I found this sentiment particularly interesting. I've always had a more creative / constructive mindset while coding and curious / scientific mindset while debugging. As a male programmer, I'm curious if I live out in the tails of the distribution, or if Uncle Bob is less average than he assumes.
Not really. It feels more like building a house, or putting together some kind of machine.
Re: There are Ladies Present
#88Earlier quoted context omitted.
Adria was spotted playing "Cards Against Humanity" at the conference and I would assume that I would be safe making almost any joke in conversation with someone that played CAH. /But I would be wrong and she would kill my job with her special weapon/ Evidence for this claim?
Please tell me you don't really care.
Do you know what Cards Against Humanity is? The moderator puts out a prompt card like "Santa ran out of coal, so this Christmas he is stuffing bad kid's stockings with __________". And then other players anonymously submit cards to fill in the blank with words on them like "AIDS", "A starving African child", "Michael Jackson", "White Privilege", "Anal Beads", "the Holocaust" and etc. The idea is to hit every awful thing you could possibly say. People find this funny because it has all the jokes you can't make in it because they are so horrible. Sort of like dead baby jokes.
I would assume I could joke about a dongle with such a person.
Re: There are Ladies Present
#89A question for the guys of HN who know their movies: what would your reaction be to a service called Treehorn with a client program called LogJammer? I only found out where those names came from much later.
Note that I'm writing this 2am because I just returned from Lebowski Fest LA, so my judgement may be warped by both the lateness of the hour and my personal admiration of The Big Lebowski (henceforth abbreviated as "TBL")
I wouldn't use those names in a work environment, although if I came across them already being used, I'd probably see them primarily as references to TBL and not as references to porn. And remember, both LogJammer and Treehorn are both mocked as completely ridiculous in TBL, and not admired in the least.
I guess what I'm saying is that if you're trying to gauge how offended to be, consider that any offensive nature of the names were almost certainly due to tone-deafness rather than maliciousness.
(In a non-work environment, I'll be dropping potentially crude TBL references all the time, because it's a hilarious movie. Say what you like, at least it's an ethos.)
Re: There are Ladies Present
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
No. Ellen Degeneres or The Voice or any of the other false equivalences you're desperately reaching to make is not the professional technical workplace. If you run in any of my technical circles, put on a technical presentation, or otherwise represent at a technical conference, and you make "jokes" that are sexual innuendos of any kind or are otherwise unprofessional.... You will be gone. Gone. Count on it. The tech…
Maybe because I'm young and I don't know "how it works" yet, but I would hate for the Tech industry as I know now to become "professional." To me, the tech industry is one of the few places I can work without wearing a suit and tie everyday and still make more than 6 figures. I don't want my presentations to be "censored" because someone has a stick too far up their ass. I don't want the next Linus to be fired becaus…
When I say that I think we need to be more inclusive of women, the last thing I'm saying is that we need to turn every company into an HR police state (trust me, I've worked in those places before and they're hellish).
However, I think I can touch on one of your points to help explain why these seemingly petty word choices are more important than most people think.
> I understand there are lines however. The CouchDB porn star talk was way over the line. That is something I don't even understand how most guys would be comfortable with.
Your response to the CouchDB talk was similar to many people in the tech community, which (correct me if I'm wrong) was, "how did they even think that that would be a good idea?"
Well, chances are the CouchDB guys wanted to be funny and push the envelope a little to generate buzz about their product. But when we're constantly surrounded by this subtle sexualized environment in tech, our perspective changes as we become desensitized to it. So, what may have seemed to be a slightly risque presentation to the CouchDB presenters becomes a much bigger deal to people on the outside looking in.
While it might not seem like a man saying "and look at that cute little hat" about one of the most respected women in our field is a big deal, consider it in the context of what women see or hear at that conference on the same day:
* booth babes
* "dude, I fuckin raped that shit" (related to any job 'done well')
* being groped in an elevator
* scantily-clad women on every desktop background for entire rows of machines
* constant unsolicited flirtation and getting 'checked-out' (and being called a bitch after you say no)
* Guy 1: "I swear to God, this bitch that works with me never does anything right." Guy 2: "Well, I saw on Reddit that a lot of women's brains just aren't designed to program. They're designed for raising children and..." Guy 1: "Making sandwiches" [Both share a laugh]
* "Wow, I'd totally fork his repo."
It's just like...enough already, you know?
Also, I just want to point out that, no matter what the severity of the offense is in the tech community, there are always people that try to diffuse the conversation by saying,"Now, I consider myself to be a die-hard feminist, but we need to learn to pick our battles..." yada yada.
Here's part of Matt Aimonetti's infamous response to the criticism of his CouchDB presentation: "The topic of my talk was obvious, and I would have hoped that people who were likely to be offended would have simply chosen not to attend my talk or read my slides on the internet."