961–970 of 1001 posts
The one concrete example that comes to mind is mentoring: Not wanting to take a special interest in a more junior team member's career development, or have lots of one-on-one meetings, because she's a woman and they're worried about accusations of sexual harrassment.
I'm really glad to see this here. I don't have a better word readily available than sexism for trying to talk about patterns like this but when I use the word sexism , I think people think I mean "Men are intentionally exclusionary assholes just to be assholes because they simply hate women." and that's never what I'm trying to say. I find my gender is a barrier to getting traction and my experience is that it's due…
What is described in the article isn't sexism - it's fear. Fear of being labeled as a sexist.
What's different is the moral color of the sexism. If Eric treats women differently in his workplace because he thinks they should be raising babies, not writing code, our cultural norms say Eric is a Bad Person.
Now suppose Bob genuinely believes women and men should have equal opportunities and career paths in the workplace. But Bob treats women differently in his workplace because he's afraid of a false accusation that ends up with him getting sued, fired, having his reputation ruined, etc.
Then we'd say that Bob isn't a bad person. Or at the very least, he's not anywhere near as bad as Eric. He's just trying to do his best to protect himself from a social system he doesn't control, that will grind him up if he gets caught in its gears.
If you take the definition of "sexism" to be "treating people differently based on their gender," the case against Bob is airtight. Bob's literally a sexist: He treats women differently because of gender.
I think the reason you're trying to argue Bob's not a sexist is because the word "sexist" itself is normative. Sexists are Bad People like Eric. Bob's not a Bad Person, so we shouldn't use the word "sexist" to describe him, because "sexist" has a moral color -- part of the meaning of the label is that you're a Bad Person.
In other words, if you say Bob's not a sexist, you must be taking your definition of "sexist" to be something else. Treating women differently for a certain kind of reason.
With this more nuanced definition of "sexist," it's possible that Eric's a sexist and Bob is not, even if their actual actions toward women are the same.
To properly describe what Bob is, you might need to create a new word to describe someone who treats women differently, but in a morally neutral way (or at least a lighter shade of grey).
Racism might also benefit from having a term that fills this linguistic / conceptual niche. ("Systemic racism" might have fit the bill at one time, but I think that particular term has become colored -- pun intended -- by a moral connotation.)
The other day, I was in a Zoom meeting with another man and a woman. The call had too much latency, and the conversation was a tad heated, so we were all interrupting each other to some extent—but I noticed halfway through that I was interrupting the woman more, and she was speaking the least. Just like in all the research. While I certainly didn't go silent for the rest of the meeting, I made a concerted effort to l…
The quietest person in our group meetings is a guy. Nobody will ever let him speak, I guess.
Maybe the investors shouldn't be such fucking cowards? Unless you have a long, storied history of being a sexist piece of shit, you should have no fear of being "me too"'d over the scenario presented in the article's intro. And seriously, why should I believe any of this? Sorry, but the article reads as feminist-boogeyman porn for insecure male investors.
Looks like I'm being downvoted into oblivion by insecure male investors. Perhaps they are bitter about lacking the gumption to handle such situations professionally and ethically? Perhaps they avoid any and all critical conversations with the people they work with? Enjoy watching all of your ventures fail! Or maybe it's: conducting themselves like professionals while concealing their sexism just breaks their poor ric…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Please don't take HN threads further into gender flamewar. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
THIS is the comment you deemed taking the thread into a gender flamewar? Not the dozens of other posts throughout this thread of people making unequivocal statements about how A) one cannot speak to women or minorities anymore without being accused of discrimination, B) how "every" (or some variation of that summary) minority/woman are hurting their cause with constant insistence of discrimination? Dang, just because…
This trend isn't going away anytime soon, In fact I think it's just ramping up and is accelerating, especially with the racism narrative the main stream media outlets started to heavily push ~2 years ago and the big identity movement. It will continue until there is consensus, that this climate is bad, for everyone involved. I don't see that happen anytime soon, the cancelations will continue until moral improves.
I saw some improvement in the Netflix movies getting less extreme over time. Emily in Paris was the first movie where the woke Netflix made fun of itself using French people / culture as props. Disney and Netflix had to lose billions of dollars to understand that the loudest voices may not represent the majority of the people.
Seriously, Paris is never that clean.
I also work in a very “woke culture.” In fact, as a straight, white, cis man I am in the extreme minority. I have been told that I can’t do my job which includes negotiating with LGBTQ+ companies because I am an “old, white, cis guy and there is always an unfair power dynamic there” just because of my identity. It is discrimination plain and simple, but I literally stand to have my career derailed if I fight back. On…
As a gay man myself, I urge you to consider leaving such a toxic environment. I’ve experienced similar (even though I’m gay myself). A more extreme version of what you described actually exists within the LGBT community itself; being gay is sometimes not enough anymore. A common theme I’ve noticed in these groups is their penchant for using the term “cis male”. Doesn’t matter if you’re straight or gay, the hate is st…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I won’t even pretend to know enough to be able to solve this problem. But does your social circle not include other female friends that you could discuss the optics of this situation with? Or better yet, be honest with the female friend that you wanted to advice, pointing out what she had done before and expressing your apprehension in providing critical feedback?
This is a fair question - not sure why you are getting down votes. Background - I'm actually on the left a fair bit. So one issue - you are not supposed to really ask minorities / women to explain / teach you / help you deal with these issues because it in fairness burdens them. I'm not looking for that either. In terms of my colleague who I'd mentored in past (before things had gotten more extreme). I think others h…
This meshes with an experience I had a few years into my career which I'll never forget and had definitely influenced and will continue to influence my future interactions with women in tech. I, cis white guy in the bay, was hired as a consultant to help build out a product and was pair programming with a woman founder & new engineer and made some passing comment about the CSS quality not being "ideal" or something o…
> made some passing comment about the CSS quality not being "ideal" or something of the sort Not saying you weren't the subject of over-reaction, or not, but I think this is an example of sub-par feedback. It would be better to point out the issues in concrete terms, and say this is something that should be addressed, and why. And if you can't do that, you should ruminate on it until you can reify whether it is wrong…
Communicating "this is what I think of your work, some of it is negative but isn't intended as an attack against you" (without actually using any of those words, otherwise you run into the "my human trafficking shirt" problem) in a way that you're confident your criticisms won't be used against you, it's a skill you can and should train.
But it's work. Like, okay, social stuff is a part of the job, but when you're an engineer in a room with other engineers you'd like to be able to speak your mind without constantly simulating a PR team in your brain.