Comment by borgia | Hacker News Reader

Comment by borgia | Hacker News Reader

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>Is it because you assumed it was a dad? Me too. :(

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.

I don't think any of us are ACTUALLY berating ourselves. I took "asshole" at least partially facetiously--like saying "I dun fucked up" when the pasta boils over. The point is just that it's good to recognize and question the assumptions our mind make.

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.

Yes, but by the same token, every tech article written by a woman seems to have a comment saying "Oh, I'm such an asshole, I assumed you were a man". Now I can't speak from personal experience, but that seems to be pretty explicitly enforcing the impression "people think there are no women in tech" (and, by extension, "people think it's unusual and/or weird that I'm a woman in tech").

Asshole is of course facetious, and I don't think anyone suspects any of the posters here of beating themselves up horribly about it, but the general sentiment being expressed is still one of regret and feeling bad, and for what? Because you assumed the sex of someone in an article and ended up being wrong? This doesn't hurt anyone, I suspect. I don't believe that the positive energy in the ether is going to suffer a net loss because some people made this assumption either.

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.

You're here fighting against the _grave injustice_ that someone ... felt a little bad about an assumption they made?

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.

> You're here fighting against the _grave injustice_ that someone ... felt a little bad about an assumption they made?

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.

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