Comment by Rariel | Hacker News Reader

Comment by Rariel | Hacker News Reader

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I've worked in IP Law and for the Senate and I've never really experienced overt sexism so I kind of thought it was on the decline in the work place. Imagine my surprise when I started joining tech/start-up communities (like this one) and witnessed unparalleled sexism and ignorance. I mean attitudes that make you think you're in the 1800s (once had somebody on HN tell me that women are genetically less likely to want to do tech![!!!!!!!]).

I'm still pretty shocked by it and also curious as to why this industry is so antiquated with regard to its' attitudes about women. There are a lot of women who want to distance themselves from the argument. At a SXSW session there were women extremely opposed to even acknowledging the discrimination for fear they'd be labeled a complainer and be seen differently than their male counter-parts (which unless you're an idiot you can see the difference between a man and a woman). I didn't consider myself a feminist before but the tech industry has made me up my feminism...

>(once had somebody on HN tell me that women are genetically less likely to want to do tech![!!!!!!!])

Are you trolling? That does not seem to be a sexist or retrograde statement.

I think this highlights the problem nicely: the recipient of the comment took it that way, and you don't seem to understand her response.

I think your attitude highlights a big part of the problem nicely as well. Whether or not women are more, less, or as interested in tech on average than men due to biological predisposition should be treated as a scientific question, not outright rejected as absurd because it could hurt someone's feelings. Maybe it's not a worthwhile question to examine, but to say it's wrong because it's offensive is incredibly unscientific, and geeks often are more interested in truth than getting along.

This attitude is totally different than harassing people, being disrespectful towards people, or discriminating against an individual. But when advocates of women's rights or whatever cause group these two separate attitudes as the same, there will be backlash from would-be sympathizers.

People have historically used "scientific" evidence to prop up spurious claims that women and blacks were inferior to white men. [1] OP is probably reacting to that whenever people try to bring in biological explanations for gender gaps. If you want her to be more understanding to your hopefully pure motivations in seeking truth, you should also be more understanding of her recognition that people often hide bigotry behind science.

[1] See "The Mismeasure of Man," by Stephen J. Gould. Broca, a pioneering scientist into brain research, devoted a lot of effort to measuring brain capacity in skulls and thereby "proving" that women and blacks would never achieve as much as white men could.

You couldn't have picked a worse example.

Go read the article "The Mismeasure of Science", by Jason Lewis et al. It's a fairly detailed analysis which shows that Stephen J. Gould was simply wrong about skull measurements (which were accurate).

From the abstract:

...We investigated these questions by remeasuring Morton's skulls and reexamining both Morton's and Gould's analyses. Our results resolve this historical controversy, demonstrating that Morton did not manipulate data to support his preconceptions, contra Gould. In fact, the Morton case provides an example of how the scientific method can shield results from cultural biases.

http://www.plosbiology.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjo...

It's a perfectly fine example. If you read the book, Gould is accurate in reporting that Broca genuinely thought differences in cranial capacity and the racial variations thereof meant differences in achievement. That your abstract reports that Morton's skull measurements were actually accurate actually just reinforces my point.

There is - and probably never will be - a scientific answer to this particular question, as establishing such an answer would involve taking a few thousand kids and raising them in isolation.

The offending statement is thus nothing more than unfounded gender-based stereotyping, which I consider sexist.

Personally, I suspect that social norms play a more important role here than genetics, so it's as ridiculous as the claim that because few people of Amish heritage hold tech jobs, people of Amish heritage are genetically less likely to want to do tech.

Agreed.

A lot of differences between men and women are measured in adulthood and just presumed natural, though a lot if it can be understood as the result of kid being shaped up by cultural expectations.

Since before my daughter was born, whenever I entered a baby store there was a drive from the salesperson to separate the stuff for girls and for boys. Well, should my daughter wear only stuff in the purple-pink palette? No thanks, but I got more than a couple askew looks from people when I got clothes, or socks "for boys".

Add that up 10 years of girls getting easy-bake ovens from relatives and boys getting firetrucks and you'll wonder why women tend towards humanities and men towards technical.

Add that up 20 years in life and what you'll have are very strong differences between men and women. Are they biological? Could they be the result of a sexist culture?

but asserting that it is true without scientific evidence is also unscientific. It's slightly better than classic Flying Spaghetti Monster territory (or Russell's teapot, if that's more your style), in that the question is presumably falsifiable, but without evidence we're clearly in ideology land.

Considering that they chose this baseless assertion (and not, say, that His noodly appendage prevents women from entering tech, or that sunspots on Betelgeuse are somehow involved, or any of the infinite other possible falsifiable statements), we clearly are in harassment territory, and "would-be sympathizers" are hiding behind crap logic.

I would say that if that comment was made without citing any scientific sources, its sexist.

Someone taking X as Y doesn't mean that X is Y. There is real sexism in the world, but Rariel's example isn't it.

Yeah well if the recipient is stupid, that doesn't make whoever said it an asshole, does it?

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