> No, son, your mom just phrased the question badly.
Aaaaaand... I am an asshole. Thank you for reminding me.
Aaaaaand... I am an asshole. Thank you for reminding me.
[EDIT]
Sadly my point is being proven. I REALLY wanted to hear about teaching Haskell to 10 year olds but now we've got the same boring ass gender war going on that never goes anywhere and is totally off topic. I wonder if you could delete your comment before it gets too out of hand. At the very least try not to bring it up next time.
[EDIT]
The responses that amounted to "You did nothing wrong!" "We don't need to talk about this!" were what made the thread heated -- outside of that it was just a couple of posters realizing they made an incorrect assumption, what need was there to _debate_ that?
First of all he called himself an asshole for making that assumption. What about others that made the same assumption but didn't feel the need to derail the thread? Are they assholes too? Maybe people felt the need to chime in since there was an insult implied and they wanted to make it clear that by having the same assumptions about the author, they did nothing wrong.
Second, his post has NOTHING to do with the original article, it's just off topic noise.
Yeah, god we're such shitlords, aren't we? Time to go give myself some lashings at my home built shrine to Ellen Pao.
Seriously though, this is entering the realm of stupidity. You made an assumption based on your own experiences (that the vast majority of computer programmers and enthusiasts are male) and one that is backed up by data - the vast majority of computer programmers and enthusiasts are male.
Coupled with that assumption is the many other various "I'm teaching my kid to program" blogs and similar that pop up here from time to time that to date, as far as I recall, have all been written by men. A story about a programmer is highly likely to be male. A story about a programmer regarding their son wanting to learn programming and them teaching them is likely to be a male teaching a male.
When women are showing the same level of interest in computers, in programming, in computer science, etc. as their male counterparts and are blogging, developing, taking part in the community at the same level, then it may be questionable to automatically assume it must be a man teaching his kid to program.
You are as sexist in your assumptions here as you are in your transphobia in automatically assuming the son is "cisgendered".
C'mon now, let's take a large step back from this nonsense.
Just because assumptions correlate with real statistics doesn't de-facto mean the assumptions shouldn't be questioned. For example, why should we assume a gender one way or another at all?
Also it is worth entertaining the possibility that our assumptions can have cultural effects. Assuming it will rain today because I'm in London doesn't effect the weather. However, one can imagine that our assumptions about gender can impact the cultural zeitgeist making women feel more or less comfortable in tech. And for both selfish and altruistic reasons, I want women to feel as comfortable in tech so their numbers increase. It's not random happenstance that there are so few women in tech. Maybe this sort of thing has zero effect, but there's no harm in not simply yielding to our base biases.
But it's not just that, feeling bad about about assuming the incorrect sex of an author and recognizing a simple mistake. This can be seen in the fact that one poster even went so far as to describe their assumption and one of another user's as being 'sexist', which it most likely is not. Someone said it best earlier, so I'm just going to quote them,
'Making an assumption about someones gender, race, age, etc based on what is most common (or most common to you) does not make you a sexist, racist or agist. It just makes you human.'
When presented with a faceless author and no hints of their sex or appearance, its pretty typical for one to fill in the blanks in their mind. The picture they come up with will be informed by all the experiences that they have encountered in their lifetimes. Simply being wrong doesn't suggest any ill will, belief of inequality, discrimination, or prejudices towards or against any group of people. Whoops seems like a level headed response, Oh shit I'm being sexist seems like a bit of an exaggeration.
Although it totally could be case, and kudos to someone who suddenly has the self realization that they're a sexist and wants to post about it.
Having that "oh shit" moment isn't a bad thing. Realizing that these assumptions aren't necessarily true is important -- If you just subconsciously know computer people are dudes exclusionary behavior is really hard to notice.
The problem is that they insulted everyone who made that assumption.
Edit: Downvote? Look at the wording. It wasn't swearing from making a mistake, it was saying that the mistake was shameful to make, as a general statement.
If, after realizing your assumption was wrong, you said "omg, I can't believe a woman knows haskell, how did she ever learn that?" THEN you're being sexist.
I mean this guy called himself an asshole because he came to a very probable and realistic conclusion. Sometimes I think feminism goes a bit too far;... especially when the topic takes up 50% of my news feed nowadays.
In an era when the "media" we consume is "free" (entirely supported by ad revenue driven by clicks), clickbait, bent sensationalist narratives and faux outrage appear to win the day.
Personally I'm sick of it. The tech media have went from reporting tech news to hiring culture vultures from Vox, Salon and the Gawker network to stir up click counts from idiots.
First I assumed a man.
Now I know it is a woman, I still have some mental assumptions of what she looks like, what her son looks like etc. Weird.
I don't think it is sexist just human nature. I mean you can't imagine a person who is a 'schrodinger's cat' of all possible people :-)