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Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

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Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#91

Post by DarkShikari »

srl wrote: post #81
DarkShikari wrote: post #55

Othering . Get that word into your head, and keep it there. Othering . Othering is when you make someone feel as if they don't belong in a community, that they're different from other people there. Making stupid (racist) Asian jokes about the only Chinese-American member of your team. Writing flyers that assume that your entire audience consists of a certain type of heterosexual man. Even something small, like consta…

Take what I say with a few grains of salt - I'm one of those weirdos whose always tried to be at least a little bit different - to avoid ever becoming wholly "in". But, in my experience, othering isn't going to drive people away, not in any significant numbers. Sure, it can make people feel uncomfortable in the wrong context, and cause social tension, but so can criticizing ideas, or mocking political parties. What y…

But, in my experience, othering isn't going to drive people away, not in any significant numbers.

Are you a straight white male? If so, you probably shouldn't be generalizing your own experience to everyone who isn't.

Try talking with some people who aren't. Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of many examples of people who have spoken out on this topic, and there are many open source advocates who can give you their own experiences. Lydia Pintscher of the KDE project (and author of "Open Advice") has much experience with communities and such problems.

Artificially suppressing occasional acknowledgment of differences

Nobody ever asked you to do that.

only teaches that these differences are a bad thing.

If someone wants to make a point of a difference they're proud of, they'll do it themselves. Don't force it upon them!

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#92

Post by einhverfr »

DarkShikari wrote: post #55

Othering . Get that word into your head, and keep it there. Othering . Othering is when you make someone feel as if they don't belong in a community, that they're different from other people there. Making stupid (racist) Asian jokes about the only Chinese-American member of your team. Writing flyers that assume that your entire audience consists of a certain type of heterosexual man. Even something small, like consta…

A couple points.... Keep in mind that I may be different because I start to worry about the people I am with if I fit in too much. I actually prefer to be a liminal figure (look it up).

First, humor is a way of managing tensions. It can create, dissolve, and transform tension from one form into another.

One of the real problem trends in America today, IMO, is rewarding hypersensitivity to taking offense. The problem is that it is possible to deconstruct a sufficiently large corpus by anyone to find something arguably worth taking offense to by today's standards. Thin skin should not be rewarded, but that's what happens when we focus on the negative side and place all the onus for change there.

A better approach is focusing on the positive side. Welcome people to your team and empower them. Trust them. Where they have relevant differences (that MBA on your hacker team) take that into account perhaps making him a go-to-person for business questions relating to the software? Focus on being what you want to be, not avoiding bat things. That means that jokes, etc. are far more likely to be offered in good faith and taken in good faith than they are if tensions are already of a bad kind.

LedgerSMB under my leadership has done quite well with a very diverse group of contributors. Nearly a third of our committers and contributors over the history of the project are women (noteworthy because that approaches commercial software development gender gaps rather than the larger gaps of open source), and we have people contributing from at least 5 continents (none from Africa yet to my knowledge). In the process we've had contributors whose countries were talking about going to war with eachother a few years ago (Colombia and Venezuela).

Moreover one could take your approach to othering to the other extreme, welcoming a talented woman as "one of the guys." Even assuming this has a welcoming effect, would this really reduce the level of sexism in place if the environment is male-normal?

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#93

Post by einhverfr »

DarkShikari wrote: post #91
srl wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Take what I say with a few grains of salt - I'm one of those weirdos whose always tried to be at least a little bit different - to avoid ever becoming wholly "in". But, in my experience, othering isn't going to drive people away, not in any significant numbers. Sure, it can make people feel uncomfortable in the wrong context, and cause social tension, but so can criticizing ideas, or mocking political parties. What y…

But, in my experience, othering isn't going to drive people away, not in any significant numbers. Are you a straight white male? If so, you probably shouldn't be generalizing your own experience to everyone who isn't. Try talking with some people who aren't. Neil deGrasse Tyson is one of many examples of people who have spoken out on this topic, and there are many open source advocates who can give you their own expe…

"Are you a straight white male?"

I can't speak for the other guy but I was until I discovered through reading history how artificial a concept that was.....

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#94

Post by srl »

xibernetik wrote: post #84
srl wrote: post #69

Ugh... the reactions to these idiotic, misogynistic statements always feel overblown. Yes, sexism is a pretty big problem in the industry (and adjacent ones). But you're not going to fix it by griping about a horny 20-something saying something stupid about women (surprise!). You're not even going to help. You're just going to walk away with a "there I helped" endorphin rush and go back to not really caring for the v…

Fixing stupid mistakes like this is a lot more straight-forward than figuring out how to encourage young girls to participate in science - it's a completely different order of complexity and the former can be acted upon immediately and effectively whilst the latter cannot. It's the difference between having a recycling bin in your house and changing the idealization of suburbia and car-culture in North America. It do…

> If it was a case of people shrugging it off, if this sort of thing could occur without anyone batting an eyelash... I'd have a lot more second-thoughts about my career path for one, and I'd have turned away from the start-up community on top of that.

I'm not suggesting we shrug it off, not batting an eyelash. It's completely idiotic and should be mocked appropriately. But I'm guessing (with high confidence) that if the frequent posts about this brand of stupidity were replaced by articles discussing the actual roots of the "science/technology is for men" prejudice, and blog posts from, say, the khan academy, on how they're working to fight those conceptions, you'd feel a heck of a lot more welcome, and the many, many women who are just on the "no" side of getting involved in the tech industry would be much more likely to get involved.

I'm not trying to replace criticizing language with fixing deep problems. I'm trying to replace criticizing language with discussing, directly, deep social problems. They're the same order of complexity, and one helps much, much more.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#95

Post by ars »

tptacek wrote: post #3
pavel_lishin wrote: post #2

What was the sexist language in question?

[Benefits to the event include] Women: Need another beer? Let our friendly (female) staff get that for you.

I feel embarrassed to type this, but could someone explain what's wrong with that?

They are offering to give women a beer? Why is that bad? Is it because they are assuming only women drink beer? That seems the reverse of the stereotype if anything.

Edit: I think I got it - they are assuming the women will drink beer and not participate intellectually? Is that it?

Personally I would assume you would drink and participate at the same time, so maybe that's not it.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#96

Post by einhverfr »

fruchtose wrote: post #77
Jun8 wrote: post #20

Here's more coverage: http://bostinno.com/2012/03/20/boston-api-jam-publishes-even... The organizers' apology is: "While we thought this was a fun, harmless comment poking fun at the fact that hack-a-thons are typically male-dominated, others were offended. That was not our intention and thus we changed it." Which completely misses the fact that the other items on the announcement seem to be written by a 11 year old…

Their apology is even worse than the original flyer text. Getting super worked up about this idiocy and saying "THIS is why there are few women in tech", as some tweeters did, is not constructive either and trivializes the problem of women (and minorities) in tech. I would argue that pointing out the sexism of the ad doesn't trivialize the problem of women in software. It's a multi-part problem. Society primes girls…

I think we have to be careful about defining "in tech." If it means founding employees of technology startups, that's very different from working in technical fields. The latter is approaching gender parity albeit slowly.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#97

Post by groby_b »

OneBytePerGreen wrote: post #80

Sexist comments like the one on the flyer are dumb, and these people deserve to be called out on it, but to imply they are keeping women out of tech careers is ridiculous (and in itself, sounds kind of sexist to me - like we are tender plants who change our career paths because some jerks like to see boobies). If the flyer reflected the spirit of the event and the attitude of the organizers, I'm glad for the heads up…

I wouldn't change my career path because there are idiots around, but there _are_ quite a few women who don't even want to embark on that path because it feels like you're entering frathouse central some days.

Especially since there are a few other (related) fields that seem to have a slightly lower jerk quotient.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#98

Post by groby_b »

angersock wrote: post #19
lomegor wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Do you have sources to back that up? (That it appeals to 85% of the target demographics). Either way, you are treating women as objects, as perks, as things that men want to look at. And you are treating men as cavemen who want to see women all the time. These ideas have affected (and are affecting) society in a bad way. By using women in that sense, they are promoting the idea that women can be used in that way if y…

"Do you have sources to back that up?" Interesting article here covering sex (not gender) gap: http://www.techrepublic.com/blog/programming-and-development... ...and then there's the actual BLS stats here (ftp://ftp.bls.gov/pub/special.requests/lf/aat11.txt) which suggest something like 20% females in the workforce. In the game industry, at least as of the IGDA survey in '05, we see something like 92% identify as str…

That makes the assumption that pretty much every straight male loves looking at women all the time, even when coding.

I'm so glad my co-workers occasionally manage to focus on the work at hand instead ;)

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#99

Post by chalmerj »

ars wrote: post #95
tptacek wrote: post #3

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[Benefits to the event include] Women: Need another beer? Let our friendly (female) staff get that for you.

I feel embarrassed to type this, but could someone explain what's wrong with that? They are offering to give women a beer? Why is that bad? Is it because they are assuming only women drink beer? That seems the reverse of the stereotype if anything. Edit: I think I got it - they are assuming the women will drink beer and not participate intellectually? Is that it? Personally I would assume you would drink and particip…

It was about context: The item in question appeared under the heading "Great Perks" – as if to say that women were one of the 'perks' in question.

Out of context, it appears as though they're addressing women directly. In context, they're offering women as a 'perk' to a male dominated event crowd.

Re: Sexism in Tech. Or: CloudMine pulls its sponsorship of API Jam.

#100

Post by groby_b »

srl wrote: post #94
xibernetik wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fixing stupid mistakes like this is a lot more straight-forward than figuring out how to encourage young girls to participate in science - it's a completely different order of complexity and the former can be acted upon immediately and effectively whilst the latter cannot. It's the difference between having a recycling bin in your house and changing the idealization of suburbia and car-culture in North America. It do…

> If it was a case of people shrugging it off, if this sort of thing could occur without anyone batting an eyelash... I'd have a lot more second-thoughts about my career path for one, and I'd have turned away from the start-up community on top of that. I'm not suggesting we shrug it off, not batting an eyelash. It's completely idiotic and should be mocked appropriately. But I'm guessing (with high confidence) that if…

You won't get to that discussion without calling out the problems at hand. I believe we are much closer to being able to taking that step than we were even a few years ago - I recall quite a few conferences were open misogyny was 'cool' - but we need to keep calling out this nonsense.

There are strangely still quite a few people who believe that sexism is not an issue.

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