Comment by torben-friis | Hacker News Reader

Comment by torben-friis | Hacker News Reader

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> Anything less than ‘real programming’ is now considered trivial, silly, artsy, female.

I am a very strong supporter of feminism, but this kind of reasoning needs to stop.

The idea of "as a man you're biased from your position of power, therefore your opinion is invalid/worthless" means that the opinion of any men can be shut off automatically just by finding a gender twist on any debate. It's incredibly condescending, and frustrating, since any rebuttal you might try will be dismissed as your inability to see the other side, no matter how tenuous the connection to gender is. I would even go as far as to say that it's a mirror of the old "these are men things, as a woman you wouldn't understand" that was sadly common in the past.

While I'm very happy to see women empowered and their perspective being taken into account more and more, I'm also worried about the rise of any system that leads to the opinion of a group not being listened to. That is never good, period.

And to be clear, I'm not equating the current trend of dismissing male ideas to the suffering of women under patriarchic societies. Just pointing out a worrying development.

There is a bias against the value of design in FOSS, the dismissive attitude described does exist, but I don't think that bias is gender based. The argument draws from outdated principles about gender division where "female" = "artistic/emotional/right-brain" and "male" = "scientific/rational/left-brain", concluding that HTML and CSS being "layout" makes them "design" and therefore more "feminine."

But HTML and CSS aren't art, nor is layout a "creative" activity. HTML and CSS are configuration. They're no more feminine than JSON or a Lua table. I don't think there's ever been a time where, even if the gender bias described existed, it was ever applied in the way described.

Yes, I absolutely agree with that.

Graphic designers tend to be pretty well respected, even though they are also very underrepresented and needed in the FOSS community. People that mainly work with HTML and CSS are less valued because they're seen as mere "transcribers" of the design made elsewhere, or at least that's my perception.

Reminds me of the "You're just a tracer!" scene from Chasing Amy.

>I am a very strong supporter of feminism, but this kind of reasoning needs to stop.

Yes, and insofar as feminists continue to use this reasoning, we should reduce our support. It may seem like a sad case of a few bad actors poisoning the well, but the lack of outcry by other feminists implies, to me, that the movement has gone rotten, no matter how I wish it weren't so. If you keep poking your allies in the eye, you can't expect them to remain allies for long!

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