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Comment by voidr | Hacker News Reader

> For instance, once I was accused of being emotionally attached to my code (in front of a client, might I add) – an accusation I didn’t believe anyone would levy at a man.

I have used harsher words towards males, the author just can't take a negative criticism and is using her gender as an excuse instead of facing the facts.

> I don’t mind taking on a difficult task, I just minded having to do it alone and unseen.

If she has all the skills and was unfairly criticised then why can't she get stuff alone?

How the heck does she want to educate others in this case?

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In the following paragraph she dissects her reaction and tries to reason about it--seems to come to the conclusion that she was being emotional, which isn't an unreasonable response in that situation.

I have used harsher words towards males

Wow, you must be a riot to work with.

> In the following paragraph she dissects her reaction and tries to reason about it--seems to come to the conclusion that she was being emotional, which isn't an unreasonable response in that situation.

And follows up with:

> I’ve struggled with this for over a decade now, coming to terms with the humanity of those I believe oppress me.

And the title is: "Sexism and Tech and Love"

> Wow, you must be a riot to work with.

I'm not a diplomat, nor a politician, nor a kindergarden teacher, I'm a programmer, I don't get paid to talk nice to people, I get paid to get stuff done to best of my abilities, and forgive me if I dare use harsh words towards people who deserve it.

Woah there, software development is a very collaborative field. You can be the best programmer on the team, but if you go around putting others down and name calling you are going to sabotage your product.

There are ways to criticize people constructively, and sometimes that requires being nice to others.

We are working in the same team, you screw something up once. I will very politely show you why it's wrong and show you the correct way to do it and maybe tell you a story of when I was "young" I thought the same thing. I will not call you names, because everybody makes mistakes.

However if you for some reason will insist on doing it the wrong way despite the fact that you can't back up your claims, I will call you names, and I won't care a shit about your skin colour/gender/nationality/whatever.

Yes it is a collaborative field, that's why I will do everything I can to make you do your best for the product, however if it's a lost cause, I will call you names.

>Wow, you must be a riot to work with.

And you must be a cry-baby nobody would want in his team. See how ad-hominen cuts both ways?

Now, if we are to discuss seriously as adults, what he says sounds correct to my experience to. In teams I've worked with (in over 5 companies), people have said way harsher words than "you're being too emotionally attached to my code".

Not only the project lead -- you can hear such things between team members, even from team member to project lead. And 99% of the time it's not even taken personally -- a little later the crisis is resolved, a decision is made, and people are working together just fine, including having fun together with Nerf guns or what have you, again.

> ad-hominen

The very words "sexist" and "racist" are really just smear words. They convey no meaningful information and really only serve to attack a person or institution. As soon as I hear either word I assume the user is merely axe grinding and has no interest in conversation.

If I say "Bill is sexist", What precisely does that mean? That Bill hates all women? That Bill generally assumes female engineers are less skilled? That Bill will try to sleep with women he works with? As a statement it conveys nothing. It is nothing more than an attack on Bill.

>The very words "sexist" and "racist" are really just smear words. They convey no meaningful information and really only serve to attack a person or institution. As soon as I hear either word I assume the user is merely axe grinding and has no interest in conversation.

Well, the same applies to me too -- not sure why you commented that to my response.

Although I still believe there are some legitimate cases for the use of such words -- a KKK member is racist. A guy believing that blacks are lazy is racist. Someone like Zimmerman is racist. A guy hiting his wife is sexist. Somebody denying a promotion to a programmer because she's a woman, is sexist.

When these terms are used by privileged people they are, more often than not, misapplied and/or exagerrated to death. They are used as token examples of tolerance, as a show off to how progressive they are.

> A guy hiting his wife is sexist.

A man can hit a woman (whether or not he is married to her) for reasons other than her gender. So, no, I'd say this is an invalid statement (unlike your other examples, which seem to be more valid.)

Yeah, that's correct. I was thinking of the example of the guy beating his wife to "put her to place" and show her who "rules the house", but clearly there can be other examples too (and of course men hit men too, all the time).

I have been in meetings where a woman boss cruelly criticized male developers with things along the line of "shit code" "why is this still a problem, do you know what you're doing?"

Yes, there were pressures and yes, she was new to the project so didn't have some of the background insight, but I felt compelled to call the developers privately and apologize as a human that they had to endure the chew.

Point is, bosses under pressure can be se-holes.

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