Okay, Feminism, It’s Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013)
medium.com
medium.com
"I like building things because I am curious and I pursue knowledge for its own sake"
With all the confirmation bias and name calling (which I am certainly guilty of from time to time) it is refreshing to hear someone talking about how they just want[0] to focus on building something exciting and not focusing on politics.
[0]this originally said "both sides to shut up to they can get back to building and hacking.", which was not meant literally, but to convey the sentiment the edited section now reflects.
edit: If you strongly disagree with me, and I am being sincere here, I can promise your energy will be much better spent building/doing/creating/enjoying something than engaging in a debate with me. If you are up to the challenge, go out and do. If you take some time to go out and do something awesome and you still feel like you would like to converse, I would like to talk about your projects/etc and my email is listed.
Cheers.
[final edit:] I have been doing a lot of thinking about cultural problems. I have began a change in perspective that has lead to personal growth, asking not why something matters but when/contextually something matters. Maybe whatever is being argued down thread is the single biggest issue you find fault with in our society or maybe it is the 5th, 10th issue, etc. I can only reiterate that "creating" will better your cause but this is not the context or the "when". Go start a scholarship, teach people to code, work on a product, call your senator, etc. Doing something is much better than talking about something and if there was a place to reasonably have meaningful discourse, I assure you this is not that place.
> Why should women
Sorry, not keen to argue here. Quite a good post in the original article, thought it was an interesting take.
italics added for emphasis.
I suspect this is the big difference driving a lot of this debate. You see a clear advantage, I see a lot of small advantages in specific situations, along with personal preferences.
To a lot of us, it's not a clear advantage.
I definitely make more money, but I'm much more likely to commit suicide or become homeless. I'm a lot more likely to be injured on the job.
I understand that you think there's a very obvious advantage, but I don't really understand why. Said advantage isn't obvious to me.
I think the point the GP was trying to make was that while women face clear disadvantages in some contexts, they also have clear advantages in others. In many societies (but of course not all), women are a protected class of people. This comes with an assorted set of advantages (less strenuous work, better expected health outcomes, etc.) The argument is not that these advantages outweigh the disadvantages, or even that they necessarily even them out, but that to ignore them entirely in advancing an argument, and then to immediately attempt to draw (tenuous, at best) parallels to slavery is a disservice to serious discussion.
Also, apparently the Godwin's law corollary with regard to discrimination is slavery. :/
if I ever witnessed any kind of discrimination in my 11 year long career, in 3 different countries, working for... 7 employers? but many more customers, if was POSITIVE discrimination against women. they were strongly welcomed into teams, cherished (in a positive way), their opinions mattered (if expressed, of course), they worked hard as hell, kudos to all of them. no idea how things work outside IT, but that's not the topic here.
equivalence between men and women in WHAT? I am not same as my male colleague next to me, we're far from equivalent, and anybody with at least a hint in team management knows that damn well. equivalence in thinking? no way, and I would call it a benefit. But only thing that matter job-wise is performance for tasks given, and in that, there should be rough equivalence. if not, somebody, doesn't matter who and what gender, is incorrectly hired.
pfff, US and your funky over-correction issues...
2. The US is worker-hostile (no law-mandated vacation), not selectively female-hostile (lack of law-mandated maternity leave).
3. Most US companies have maternity leaves (typically 3 months). Not near quite enough, but not "incredibly backwards"
So then women are the ones who need to follow that advice. One only needs to look at CDC studies to see the socially wide preferential treatment they receive to see how great an advantage it is. Oh, it is called 'benevolent sexism' in an attempt to paint it as bad, but when you take a look at society as a whole, it is clear which group is actually better off.
If you don't do that you tend not to win many converts to your way of thinking.
A few examples:
So then women are the ones who need to follow that advice.
One only needs to look at CDC studies to see the socially wide
preferential treatment they receive to see how great...
Oh, it is called 'beneficial sexism' in an attempt to paint it
as bad, but when you take a look at society as a whole, it is
clear which group is actually better off.
Hope some of this helps.
It is only confrontational to those who are already biased. Now, had I said this statement in and of itself, with no prompting, and included the 'shut up', it would've been confrontational. Instead, I said it in response to a post that already had said that only one side needed to follow such advice and, while not explicitly stating such, did implicitly relay the gender basing off of social norms.
As far as resentment, seeing my statement as resentment but not the others is itself telling and, if I dare say, sounds of tone policing.
>Women are the group you want to convince people to stop feeling sorry for, but you haven't done that yet.
Or my audience would be the group already aware of the statistics. An already growing audience which is one reason that calling oneself a feminist is being avoided.
>Here you're not properly identifying your new topic, but more importantly you're treating your conclusion as if it were so obvious it's not even worth explaining.
It is pretty obvious to anyone who reads the full studies. Start with the 2010 report on intimate partner violence. Look at how they choose to define rape. Pretty obvious. Or look at numbers of which gender is more likely to be put in prison. I don't really need to point out a study that men are far more likely to end up in prison.
>This just makes you sound like someone suffering from confirmation bias.
And this sounds like rationalization of why an opinion should be dismissed.
>I had to Google this, I assume you mean 'benevolent sexism'
Yes, I did mistype that one and I'll go correct it.
>I now understand to be the assumption that (for example) women need to be protected by men.
That would be an attempt to give an example, though this could also be stated such as the assumption that a man should put a woman's safety before his own (not stated in the cost of not doing such, which is often that of not being a 'real man').
>Again, you jump straight to the conclusion without stopping to reason, which is the same symptom of confirmation bias as above.
And yet this is the behavior of many posts taking the opposite view point without their being called out on it. I find it interesting that the reactions to similar behavior differ.
Finally two points. First, if you want to get people to reconsider their position, logos and ethos will do little alone while relying only on pathos will get you much further. Evidence and logical arguments are second to emotional appeal.
Second, my original point of the post was not to actually say which group had it worse. Only to explicitly call out that there is not an agreement as to one group having it worse (no need to say which side in such a disagreement is right) so that the parent's implied response to both grand parents and great great grandparents point cannot be implied as was done. An actual discussion trying to determine which gender has it worse would get neither side anywhere unless hours were spent in a Socratic discussion of what worse actually means followed by even more time spent doing data comparisons to what ever agreed upon definition was decided upon.
It is only confrontational to those who are already biased.
seeing my statement as resentment but not the others is itself
telling and, if I dare say, sounds of tone policing.
And this sounds like rationalization of why an opinion should be dismissed.
Confirmation bias means you start with a very slim chance of changing anyone's mind on this kind of polarising topic. Using poorly structured arguments reduces your chances to zero.
Or my audience would be the group already aware of the statistics.
Evidence and logical arguments are second to emotional appeal.
Second, my original point of the post was not to actually say which group had it worse.
... there is not an agreement as to one group having it worse.
A good tip there is to align yourself with moderates rather than partisans. Claiming that men have it harder than women doesn't help you there; the moderate perspective is to empathise with the problems faced by both sides rather than to compete about which has it worse. I know you've said that's not the main point you wanted to make, but you did make that point.
Wouldn't it be even more refreshing, though, to watch them just choose to tune-out and go back to hacking, rather than asking anyone to shut up?
I think this is an unfortunate (though entirely relatable!) attitude because it ignores the fact that there are groups whose needs for a comfortable, collegial hacking environment are poorly met by many communities today. For people in these groups, and end to the ongoing inclusiveness debate would, in itself, prevent them from getting back to building and hacking in the same way that others can.
I agree that having this discussion can too often get in the way of everyone's ability to focus hacking in the way they want. Sometimes this is because feminists (and advocates for other groups) come on too strong, or call names, or use other unproductive (and sometime misdirected) tactics. But I think it equally often is a result of others' being unprepared to listen to others' reasonable demands for inclusion, resulting in battle instead of growth. I also think that "we" (i.e., those whose needs are already well met by the hacking community) should happily tolerate some degree of distraction from hacking if it will help make our communities more open to others who share our interests and goals.
Edit: Your edit is welcome. "I like building things because I am curious and I pursue knowledge for its own sake" certainly is a welcome message. In the context of this discussion, though, I still get the impression that this is supposed to imply: "can't we all just leave this arguing behind and get back to building things?" I think the answer is 'no' if we are committed, as we should be, to ensuring that the pursuit of this ideal is equally open to everyone. In fact, what makes that hacker ethos so important is exactly why it is important to engage in these debates. Of course if you instead mean "can't we all just listen to each other and try earnestly to meet one another's needs so that we can all focus on building things" then I say merely "amen."
Most notably, poor people. As a hackery type who came from poverty, these seem a lot like silly problems. I've hung out in some pretty hostile places to get time with a soldering iron or a computer.
If you have access to any "hacking environment" or even just tools, you're already incredibly privileged.
I don't think history bears that out. Society is a soft ductile metal. If you bend it, it'll stay bent. You have to hammer it back into straightness. Talking (and browbeating and prosecuting when necessary) is how you do that.
PS: I don't disagree with the author that not everyone needs to be on the front line of every culture war. But I think someone needs to be.
Yes, this is the economic assumption - folks are greedy and will exploit undervalued resources.
I don't think history bears that out. Society is a soft ductile metal. If you bend it, it'll stay bent.
This ignores the history of various oppressed groups who unbent themselves (east Asians, south Asians, Jews, Irish). It also ignores the fact that women have unbent themselves in most fields, just not math heavy STEM fields.
(My background: Grew up in the New England then moved to Austin. I look Mediterranean but my last name is Farrell and I play the bodhran...mediocrely)
I'm highly skeptical of the idea that this "unbending" is anything but a loud, activist process.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anti-Irish_sentiment
I'm not suggesting that "unbending yourself" is the only way to do things, just that it does seem as though it's possible. Maybe not easy, maybe not quick, but to suggest that "it can't be done" would be disingenuous.
The rest of the world stereotypes and is occasionally ignorant of history, but that's common for people from most countries.
Note: I am of Irish descent and not at all offended. What I wonder is if this impassive attitude to a relatively minor transgression, came about before or after the cultural "unbending"?
Are you even at all aware of the history of any of the examples you just cited?
Read Steven Dutch's essay "The world's most toxic value system" [1] before you recommend violence as a solution to any group's problems. It's a comfortably direct approach, but it backfires. It creates a class of violent people who will push others down, so the group as a whole stays down.
I just suggested one become a little more familiar with history before making absurd claims and value judgements against whole races of people. Every single one of the cited examples had to fight bloody wars of independence against occupation before their refugees were even seen as human. We enslaved the Chinese. We used the Irish in proxy wars between street gangs that still are going on today in parts of the Northeast. The Jews spend hundreds of years trying to assimilate into European society, and then the Germans killed 6 million of them. We gave them back their own country. Out of guilt.
Spouting a bunch of stereotypes about the local immigrant population is a pretty fucking ignorant view of that history.
Except that's not what history shows us. Economics didn't free the slaves. Guns did. Economics didn't end segregation in housing and education. Bitter, expensive litigation did.[1] Economics didn't make gay marriage legal. Waging a cultural war on homophobes until it became social suicide in most circles to be one did that.
[1] And guns when people defied the court judgments: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arkansas_National_Guard_and_th....
[citation needed]
From a quick skim, the US and Haiti seem to be the only non-peaceful abolitions out of hundreds.
More importantly, I'm not sure what this has to do with Rayiner's point. The realization that many plantation slaves would be better utilized as doctors and lawyers did not free the slaves, nor did economic competition from non-slaveholding plantations. It did, in fact, require coercion.
I just can't agree with Rayiner that we should escalate more because the current conflict is all-important. Game theory tells us that if everyone thinks that way, society loses. And game theory offers a way out: you need a shared culture that enables de-escalation without losing face. Conflicts would still get resolved, but without wasting tons of resources on both sides. Many countries have that.
If we wish this to be relevant to the current discussion: do you think the US has intense economic coupling to few-women-in-tech? Large regional identity defined by few-women-in-tech?
> It did, in fact, require coercion.
In a minority of instances, it was achieved through coercion. That doesn't mean coercion was the only way it was ever going to happen in those instances.
And when someone says "it took guns, not economics" then it seems entirely to the point that guns were only involved in a minority of instances. I'm not sure how you can not think this is relevant to what Rayiner was saying.
And even that movement began with drag queens throwing bricks at cops.[0]
Incidentally, you are aware that Jim Crow laws were mainly about economic protectionism, right? Raising wages for (white) workers by using guns against the competition. Folks at the time were well aware that greedy employers might tolerate black as long as it came with extra green. In fact, all your examples live outside the realm of greedy economic actors interacting via voluntary trade, so I really don't get the relevance at all.
To amend yours, one such normative claim might be: "Since all of these other groups managed to unbend themselves when the economic factors were right, we (society as a whole/at large) should figure out how the groups (or treatment thereof) which didn't unbend themselves differ from those that did."
I almost had a crazy theory about what determines if a group can overcome their oppression and become mainstream, but the Irish provided a counterexample that shot it down.
The theory was that to overcome oppression, a group had to contribute a cuisine or food style that became mainstream. Asians. Check. Jews. Check. Italians. Check. Hispanics. Check. Blacks...they contributed soul food, but it has not gone mainstream the way the others have, and they have not overcome oppression. Indians. Check.
But I don't think I've ever even seen an Irish restaurant in the US, so my beautiful theory went down in flames.
it's an interesting theory, and as HCIdivision said, there's indeed Irish pubs, and (mainly in the US) also that whole St. Patrick's Day thing that does indeed put Irish in a good light.
but realistically, for women in tech, I don't think baking cookies is going to do the trick. however going with the Irish example, some general celebratory thing could be nice. even if it doesn't work, at worst, you'd have a great time? I've always been of the opinion that pretty much whatever you do with a group of people (be it a convention, a party, study, or work) just steadily gets better in many ways the more the gender ratio approaches 50/50.
out of curiosity, what is popular Jewish mainstream food? (I can't think of any, perhaps it's something that I forgot was originally Jewish)
They might be better off than blacks, but I think they're at least as big a hole in your theory as the Irish.
I really believe that only love can overcome hate- you can't fight personal negativity with more negativity or disparagement. It only makes people dig their heels in deeper. I know this is a controversial and probably offensive opinion, but it's a core part of who I am so I feel I should say it and take whatever comes.
Society is constantly in flux: it's not like a metal in any way. Rather, it's like a fluid (or a particulate flow, such as a sand pile).
If you change things about the underlying flow dynamics -- viscosity, particle size, pressure, channels, etc -- you get significant effects on the structure of the society, or in analogy, the dynamics of the flow.
You're mistaking the foam for the wave, and the tsunami as being a crashing wave. Really tunamis are just little disturbances over a wide area, and they're best addressed at that stage, not when they're a crashing wave.
However, if you adjust something about the mechanics, it will settle in to a new flow, and remove the crufty parts on top naturally as those pieces of the flow dissipate.
It does not. It embodies the tacit assumption that some people prefer to spend their time building something tangible rather than devoting their lives tilting at the windmills of eradicating racism, sexism, and all the other bigotries endemic to our society.
Tilting at those windmills is important, and might be a cause worthy of devoting your life to it, but it's not everyone's calling.
Lastly, the author of the original article is arguably doing more to advance the cause of women in technology by participating in and engaging with the community, than many of the people writing articles and complaining about the problems.
"Tilting at windmills" means attacking imaginary enemies, you really can't have it both ways of calling work on eradicating racism, sexism, and other bigotries "Tilting at windmills" and then say it's important.
Further, eradicating racism, sexism, etc.. IS EVERYONE'S CALLING. If you don't hear the call, you're part of the problem, PERIOD.
You propose a world where a handful of us don't get to participate in society because all we have time to do is to yell at you about being a dummkopf.
In reality, there are those part of your preferred solution, those who actively oppose your solution, those who are content with the situation as it stands, and those who may prefer different solutions, or perceive the problem from a different perspective.
What you propose is a world where people are constantly being accused of stupidity and insulted simply because they hold different opinions than their accusers.
I am not responsible for the whole of human behavior. I am only responsible for myself. If I, myself, make a token effort to neither exhibit bigoted behaviors nor teach them to those under my influence, is that not enough? What if one of my personal values is that other people are entitled to their own opinions, even if they are incompatible with my own?
A few of my in-laws and distant cousins are extremely racist, but it is not my job to "fix" them. Nor could I. Their minds are closed tightly. And they too tend to think that "if you are not part of my solution, you are part of my problem."
If you spend so much of your time screaming that other people are doing it all wrong that you have no time to do anything yourself, then who is the dumb-head?
I've got a friend who is very white and very male and very straight, and honestly, it's worked out pretty well for him.
What is his incentive for abolishing racism, sexism, etc.? That incentive is certainly not outweighed by what he gives up.
Your argument (such as it is) is as foolish and baseless as his is practical and repugnant.
EDIT:
Downvotes as expected. Look, the only progress to be made is to show those folks that there is really a better outcome if they are more egalitarian.
The current guilt-based argumentation doesn't work, because it alienates the people who are actually trying to do the right thing and utterly fails to register for people like my friend who would agree with the points of privilege and proceed to exercise them to their fullest.
Seriously in the most crass cynical context imaginable, diverse teams should be expected to outperform homogenous ones. For some HN-relatable examples to this 101-level topic, see TNG: The Masterpiece Society, DS9: Melora, or Bill Burr's "Ashy" bit.
Does that explain the "incentive" to not be a bigoted shithead devoid of empathy?
If I'm building an algorithm for packing bytes into an array, inverting matrices, or some similarly technological issue, why would insights into police profiling or sexual harassment be useful?
Seriously in the most crass cynical context imaginable, diverse teams should be expected to outperform homogenous ones.
I note that two of your examples are from science fiction television, and the third is a (good) comedy routine.
I don't disagree with the spirit of the common-sense "should" in your sentence. I do question--because Lord knows we'd all be better off with concrete numbers so we can put this to bed and win a decisive victory for diversity--whether or not this diversity actually results in better outcomes reliably.
You're trading global progress for a blip of personal comfort extracted at a high cost from more vulnerable people.
Well, yes...that's pretty much the definition of capitalism as currently implemented: running arbitrage on scarcity of material or knowledge so as to enrich oneself and one's stakeholders.
~
Again, I'm all for diversity and these things. I'm just pointing out that these arguments would benefit from much more intellectual and practical rigor than many seem to possess.
Because most software that actually gets used on a day-to-day basis doesn't purely work on theoretical constructs, for one: even if your application just needs really basic things like names [1] or addresses [2], it will implicitly make at least some assumptions about users, which a diverse team is much better equipped to check and correct.
[1]: http://www.kalzumeus.com/2010/06/17/falsehoods-programmers-b...
[2]: https://www.mjt.me.uk/posts/falsehoods-programmers-believe-a...
And I think the parallels between a solid understanding of police "kettling" as they would apply to distributed systems and/or queueing are fairly clear. But I wouldn't expect someone who thinks inverting a matrix is tricky to appreciate either.
As charming as it is to see you sprint down the field with those goalposts in tow if you honestly thought your first reply warranted intellectualism instead of bro-pandering you're deluding yourself. Do yourself a favor and plug "diverse teams perform better" to educate yourself on a variety of studies across science, finance, and engineering coming to this conclusion. Don't act like "how do I convince my shithead friend" should be met with reams of dry papers instead of introductory pop-culture pablum to get the 101-grade materials across.
I guarantee that if I knew you and how you spend your time, I could quickly point out endemic, crucially important problems with a clear moral imperative, that you are contributing very little, if anything, to solving.
Hell yeah. I was just talking about it the other day: how we need to let it all go and get back to making cool stuff and having fun.
With all the vitriol in the industry at the moment I'm surprised that anyone wants to enter it. I agree that we need to sort out our demographics (we really need to sort out our demographics), but can't we do that with positivity instead of negativity? A positive attitude makes such a difference.
Bit of an anecdote: one team where I work are always too busy to help. Everyone knows it and they know it. Getting help from them is like trying to find the Higgs Boson. After my project was delayed by month because of the dependency on this team I was seconds away from escalating the shit as high a possible. Toys were going to be flung far and wide, heads were going to roll. For some reason I didn't. I walked into the office and said, "how can I help you guys help me?" Suddenly I was at the front of the queue. Ten minutes later we had a working solution.
Next time somebody does something unsavory think about approaching them as a friend and not an enemy. Maybe the dude isn't a misogynist, maybe he just had a brain fart. Maybe he didn't have bad intentions.
The only thing this bickering has achieved is labeling people. "Misogynist" is such a strong word to use when someone made a simple mistake. Don't we all care about losing the labels and having an equal standing with each other? Stopping other from doing that starts with stopping yourself.
Let's build something we can be proud of, instead of destroying the little that is left. The next time someone makes a mistake try building their character, don't destroy their reputation.
But Moore's law isn't a law of nature, it's a consequence of human behavior. Moore's law is true because hardware designers are focused on optimization! It just wouldn't be true if everyone agreed not to focus on optimization.
And here you are saying "If we all focussed on tech problems, we wouldn't have to worry about social problems." But social problems don't fix themselves. Social equality is not a law of nature. Someone has to work on it.
In effect, you are trying to argue something that contradicts one of the assumptions you've used in your argument.
I look at the Twttier-style feminists (I don't mean the traditional equality types, but the extremists) and can only think that they are doing it for their own gain. If they really wanted to participate in their targets of anger, they could just do what everyone else does: work hard at a hobby for years, even decades, and maybe, just maybe they too could dominate the field.
I work with business analysts. At first, I didn't think well of them - their job is to turn business rules into software requirements. They kind of understand the business, and kind of understand software. My feeling, which I was embarrassed by, is that I could do their jobs better than they can.
After having been here a while, I still feel the same way, but I'm not embarrassed by it. I have to understand everything that a business analyst does, and also how software works. Our company tells us we should spend 30% (!!) of our time on professional development. I think that's totally awesome. A business analyst recently made the comment "I don't even know what I'd spend 30% of my time learning about."
Most jobs really are about getting along with people. Even engineering jobs. But engineering requires paying substantial intellectual costs up front, and then paying on a continual basis, in a way that most other professions simply do not.
I think "other careers don't require knowledge and ability like mine does" is the perfect example of illusory superiority.
In my experience, competent people are pretty good at making their jobs look pretty easy, but actually trying to do it without their built-up knowledge and ability is another story. The feeling that you can do their job better than they can might fade if you had to do it for a couple months. There are a lot of edge cases and unexpected complexities you don't get properly exposed to just looking over someone's shoulder sometimes.
Actually that's plenty fine. Just do a quick thought experiment: a career like garbageman or janitor. Some careers require more knowledge work than others. There's nothing wrong with that.
When did this attitude of "everything's equal all the time and nothing's different" become so pervasive and accepted?
On Twitter however, there is a more extremist crowd who go after people, manipulate facts, get people fired (who dare to have a different opinion), organise offended mobs, all sorts of unfortunate behaviour. To put it simply: they are pushing their selectively puritan views on bystanders who give in too readily and, in the process, become famous from those actions.
[1] A recent example http://jezebel.com/girl-fights-library-s-boys-only-robotics-...
They probably went with robotics over something like French history because the program can only work if it is interesting enough to get kids to sign up.
My daughter graduated form high-school last year. Not only had I not heard a single case of girls being refused entry to anything - most of the times it seemed like my daughter and her female friends (most of them straight "A" students in a very competitive high-school in the Boston, MA area) were almost harassed to join the math club, the robotics club, etc.
None of them had any interest - they all found it "boring". The reasons are complex and a another topic, but in short, part of it is biology, part of it pop-culture where "nerd"/"geek" is not something you want to be.
I was questioning the statement "many examples of girls being actively refused...", because the poster provided an example of ONE incident. I provided valid observations from my own experience, providing contrary evidence, just to make a point that we cannot form an opinion based on one event.
It's not. I can see how this myth took root on HN, but it's funny how persistent it is given that it was clarified quite a few times even by PG.
This is a dumb example.
https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c
My favorite bit:
The mainstream tech industry offers us money, status, and a stable (if weak) position in its idealised social hierarchy. The voices clamouring for change offer us no money, a social role reversal back to “disempowered outsider,” and a status demotion to “likely sexual predator.” (The polite euphemism for this is “creepy,” a pejorative applied indiscriminately both to those who actively transgress other people’s boundaries and to those with the unmitigated gall to be attracted to someone else while being funny-looking.) Given a choice between these two, which would you side with? It’s true that the one is confining, essentialist, and a far cry from the best of all possible worlds, but the other is all these things and a step backward for people who finally got to take a step forward for once when the internet took off.
This also seems like a straightforward example of how mainstream feminism is bad at intersectionality. Arguably both sides in this discussion are not great at it: I feel like there's probably a good answer that involves neither belittling people for having different reads of social interactions nor asserting that everyone else should read social interactions the way you do.
I wonder what the people in this disagreement would say today. I think tech feminism has been getting more aware of intersectionality of late, so I'm curious if the problems the author identified about have gotten better.
> This also seems like a straightforward example of how mainstream feminism is bad at intersectionality.
Can you explain? What are they bad at?
In particular, it seems to me like the author is part of a group of people for whom certain social cues fall on dry ground, and her critics are part of a group of people for whom those social cues take root and flower like a weed. By themselves, there are advantages and disadvantages to participating in tech communities as a member of either of these communities. But they also influence how the experience of other systems of oppression affect them -- like the sexist reviewer mentioned in the article -- and it's not very helpful to think of a one-size-fits-all "feminism".
For instance, I don't think it's the author's intention and certainly not her fault if she reinforces a belief that certain behaviors are okay, simply because those behaviors don't register to her. But yet people use her as evidence that the behaviors are fine, and there ought to be room for identifying that as a problem -- not as criticism of her, but as awareness of a problem with a system. At the same time, any solution to that problem must not shut people like her out by weaving subtle social cues into the fabric of the system, or else one system of oppression is just replaced with another one.
I think parent is referring to the fact that the author of the article seems to feel as if her experiences as an autistic person are invalidated by the dominant feminist narrative in tech, and that she is supposed to apologize for her experiences:
...if they tried walking around in my shoes for once.
There’s a noticeable empathy vacuum in the room, and for once it’s not coming from the direction of the sperglord.
http://web.archive.org/web/20131231191948/https://medium.com...
Linus is, by all reasonable measures, completely powerful at (I think) everything he wants to be doing. He's the only person with commit access to the Linux kernel. He works for a foundation named after himself whose primary goal is to employ him. When he yells at someone on a mailing list, it's doubly objectionable: first, for inherent human-dignity reasons of rudeness, and second, because he doesn't need to. To quote one of his former subsystem maintainers, "I've seen you be polite ... You just don't want to take the time to be polite to everyone. .... You are in a position of power. Stop verbally abusing your developers." If there's something he doesn't want in the kernel, he can just refuse to pull it. He doesn't need to get anyone's attention; he doesn't need to defend his point (there are plenty of good things that he's quietly refused to merge because he doesn't like them), he can just do what he wants. So the rudeness is gratuitous.
Shanley generally doesn't have those luxuries. She doesn't control the conversation on tech feminism, and she certainly doesn't control the culture of the Valley. When she's rude, it's often because that's the only way she can get attention. I actually think, if you read her tweets carefully, that she's very intentional in pushing the Overton window and making space for less-rude people to push their point. It's certainly possible she could accomplish her goals without rudeness, but she couldn't simply drop the rudeness the way Linus does.
(There are more things to consider here, like Linus still being in the industry and Shanley not. On the flip side, there's Shanley's treatment of people she works with and does have power over.)
If you consider those sorts of things and conclude that your problem is with the fundamental behavior of rudeness, or that neither form of rudeness is more defensible than the other, I don't think that's wrong at all. But if you haven't thought about it at all, and you look at Linus and say he's rude, and you look at Shanley and say she's rude too, I think your opinion is poorly informed, because they are coming out of very different places and they have very different intentions and effects.
That's an extremely interesting and helpful point, and makes me actually more sympathetic to her. Thanks for that.
Unless it also makes you more sympathetic to the Bill O'Reillys of the world and all the "problematic" blowhards on twitter, you're just falling victim to a convenient narrative.
This article by Susan Sons is also good: http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/girls-and-software
I think that most women that actually work in technology have feelings closer to the ones expressed here than the stuff that a vocal minority spreads all over the internet.
It blows my mind that this stuff still happens. In the OSS world of all places. I can't even compute how someone can apply such "logic".
1. The person was misogynist, and actually believed that women
are less capable than men, and their ideas less valuable.
2. The person was insecure about their own position of power,
and would seize upon any convenient excuse to undermine
potential future challengers to his authority.
3. The person minimized effort, and shot down the idea using
arbitrary reasoning only as the means to avoid having to
implement any part of it himself.
4. The person was inexperienced and ignorant about socially
acceptable behaviors, and was merely copying previously
observed behaviors.
5. The person was a troll, and chose that reason as the one which
would be most inflammatory to the target.
...
Another one that seems common is the assumption that all members of a synthetic tribe will tend to hold similar values and beliefs, and conduct themselves in a similar manner. People assume that members of a religion will behave in a particular way. People assume that members of a profession will act in a certain way.
Not only that, it also encourages them to argue even more in future. These types of people have already formed an opinion and then search for reasons to believe what they chose to believe. The best thing to do in such situations is to walk away.
Unfortunately, if that is the reaction to something like a patch being rejected because it came from a woman, being non-confrontational and ignoring someone who is an idiot, but has power, galvanizes their idiotic power.
You should think about what you're saying.
It's not a 100% accurate sign, but it's certainly a pretty good signal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence#S...
Why should a reason of "female" be special?
It just is. It doesn't mean that vapid reasons are not vapid, but this isn't vapid, it's toxic.
I don't know what other kinds of vapid reasons the parent was referring to, but many are just as bad as "female". There's the obvious ones: racist, homophobic and transphobic justification for example, but also less common, also harmful vapid justifications. Dismissing someone's idea because theyre an ex-convict is a good example. Or on the basis of their age.
These are all quite bad, even if not completely equally so. I'd humor an argument that "female" is the worst of these simply because there are a lot more women than ex-convicts and members of a gender or sexuality minority, and therefore more people who could potentially be hurt.
But not "it just is".
"He got teased for being fat". I got teased all the time, why is being teased about being fat any different/special?"
I.e. I'm not saying it's "okay" to tease someone just because I question why being teased about being "fat" is any different to other kinds of teasing.
This also blows my mind. 100% of my colleagues and friends who work in programming would suffer severe whiplash from the double take they would take after reading a statement like that from someone we were working with. How would someone who says something like that in a non-joking way not be immediately ostracized? They would be in any programmer community I've ever been a part of (besides maybe /g/? though even there I think people would just roll their eyes and assume you were trolling.)
When in a situation where someone might say something terrible, I'll sometimes go ahead and say it jokingly. The way I see it, getting everyone to laugh at how ridiculous it sounds is way to reinforce that it was unacceptable. And sometimes I think it was there anyway - somebody was thinking it but not saying it or it was implicit in their thinking and they didn't even notice.
For instance, when discussing which interns should be assigned which tasks, John was initially paired with the IT department. Then we realized that John was unavailable that day, so it defaulted to Julie. And I feigned puzzlement for a moment and said "Are you sure we should't wait for John? Girls don't like computers." Which was my way of needling my co-worker about the fact that initially defaulting to the male intern might not have been entirely arbitrary. I knew him well enough that he'd take my point without feeling like I was accusing him.
TL;DR, I think there's a difference between a sexist joke and joking about sexism
And nobody gets to "decide" what everyone else should feel. What I have a problem with is the idea that it's not the meaning of your utterance that makes it offensive, but merely the topic. The idea that tome expressed in the parent comment that there was literally no circumstance under which you could joke about women being treated unfairly (even if it was to call attention to the problem).
I find the idea of someone declaring what's "not okay" for everyone else to be as upsetting as a boor telling a mean-spirited joke and insisting that nobody should be offended because it's just a joke.
"It came from a woman" is one of the most irrational reasons I can imagine, but such a person also probably applies countless prejudices with no basis.
And this behavior is probably tolerated because some people on the project feel they can't get by without this person, which leads to subtle social cues that continue to fuel this behavior.
Of course, it's a lot harder to be positive rather than negative.
Dworkin: No, I wasn't saying that and I didn't say that, then or ever.… My point was that as long as the law allows statutory exemption for a husband from rape charges, no married woman has legal protection from rape. I also argued, based on a reading of our laws, that marriage mandated intercourse — it was compulsory, part of the marriage contract. Under the circumstances, I said, it was impossible to view sexual intercourse in marriage as the free act of a free woman.
> A human being has a body that is inviolate; and when it is violated, it is abused. A woman has a body that is penetrated in intercourse: permeable, its corporeal solidness a lie. The discourse of male truth --literature, science, philosophy, pornography-- calls that penetration violation. This it does with some consistency and some confidence. Violation is a synonym for intercourse. At the same time, the penetration is taken to be a use, not an abuse; a normal use; it is appropriate to enter her, to push into ("violate") the boundaries of her body. She is human, of course, but by a standard that does not include physical privacy. She is, in fact, human by a standard that precludes physical privacy, since to keep a man out altogether and for a lifetime is deviant in the extreme, a psychopathology, a repudiation of the way in which she is expected to manifest her humanity.
Later in the same chapter you're quoting from, Dworkin says:
> Women have also wanted intercourse to work in this sense: women have wanted intercourse to be, for women, an experience of equality and passion, sensuality and intimacy. Women have a vision of love that includes men as human too; and women want the human in men, including in the act of intercourse. Even without the dignity of equal power, women have believed in the redeeming potential of love. There has been—despite the cruelty of exploitation and forced sex—a consistent vision for women of a sexuality based on a harmony that is both sensual and possible… These visions of a humane sensuality based in equality are in the aspirations of women; and even the nightmare of sexual inferiority does not seem to kill them. They are not searching analyses into the nature of intercourse; instead they are deep, humane dreams that repudiate the rapist as the final arbiter of reality. They are an underground resistance to both inferiority and brutality, visions that sustain life and further endurance.
http://www.nostatusquo.com/ACLU/dworkin/IntercourseI.html
Dworkin makes challenging reading, and is certainly extremely radical and outspoken. But most of the really unbelievable things attributed to her are misreadings or deliberate distortions. She just doesn't pull punches.
So she is saying that all cases, within marriage, are? Slightly different in the 'within marriage' aspect, but not by much.
I didn't think it was too unbalanced, but of course I'm a pretty committed feminist, which is why I saw the play in the first place, back in 2000.
I agree, some of the stuff from the 70s was downright incendiary (shooting Andy Warhol, etc). But feminism has evolved.
Most young feminists oppose alimony,
Men are violent.
If a man finds a woman physically attractive then he is objectifying her.
Men should not be paid according to the merits of their work and ability.
Men should not have any reproductive rights.
Men should continue paying for a woman's lifestyle after a divorce.
Men should recognize their "privilege" and be constantly reminded of it, even though being told you should be ashamed of your gender is at the very heart of sexism.
Men should not be allowed into women's "safe spaces", implying they are dangerous and intimidating by default. Similarly, men should not be allowed to have their own "safe spaces", because that's sexist and exclusionary.
Men cannot have body issues resulting from over-exaggerated muscle-bound heroes in cartoons and movies (He-Man and the like) because they represent a "male power fantasy". But Barbie is responsible for decades of female self-image issues.
Men cannot discuss their issues in a public forum without feminist protestors shutting down discussions.
If a female character chooses to dress provocatively, it is because a man chose to objectify her, not because a woman can take charge of their own sexuality.
If a man is harassed online, it's unfortunate (sometimes). If a woman is harassed online, it's representative of a disturbing trend. Similarly, men cannot understand the plight of a woman's harassment, even if said man also receives daily death threats and has had a gun fired through their living room window.
Men should receive much harsher punishments than women for committing the same crimes.
> Men are rapists and sexual offenders by default.
Nope, the argument is that there is a societal pattern that devalues the severity of rape through humour and other cultural tropes.
> Men are violent.
The patriarchal "masculinity" foisted upon men is one that is competitive and aggressive.
> If a man finds a woman physically attractive then he is objectifying her.
If you see a woman only existing as to please your sexual appetite, you are objecting.
> Men should not be paid according to the merits of their work and ability.
Women should be paid according to the merits of their work and ability, along with men.
> Men should not have any reproductive rights.
A woman's body is hers to do with as she should wish. Nobody should have operations forced upon them.
> Men should continue paying for a woman's lifestyle after a divorce.
Due to the fact that often a carer role is taken by a woman in a patriarchal society, this means that her earning potential and career is sacrificed.
> Men should recognize their "privilege" and be constantly reminded of it, even though being told you should be ashamed of your gender is at the very heart of sexism.
There are advantages that men get because of their sex/gender, and these should be recognised.
> Men should not be allowed into women's "safe spaces", implying they are dangerous and intimidating by default. Similarly, men should not be allowed to have their own "safe spaces", because that's sexist and exclusionary.
Due to many women having suffered terrible experiences at the hands of men, and the tendency for men to dominate discussions, there needs to be a place away from that where people can talk without fear and interruption.
> Men cannot have body issues resulting from over-exaggerated muscle-bound heroes in cartoons and movies (He-Man and the like) because they represent a "male power fantasy". But Barbie is responsible for decades of female self-image issues.
Not sure about that one, I think the argument drastically varies, but men are more often portrayed in a powerful, dominant role.
> If a female character chooses to dress provocatively, it is because a man chose to objectify her, not because a woman can take charge of their own sexuality.
Characters are often designed by men, for men.
> If a man is harassed online, it's unfortunate (sometimes). If a woman is harassed online, it's representative of a disturbing trend. Similarly, men cannot understand the plight of a woman's harassment, even if said man also receives daily death threats and has had a gun fired through their living room window.
Yes because receiving some flame or smack is the same as constant rape threats.
> Men should receive much harsher punishments than women for committing the same crimes.
This is bullshit, obviously.
> Nope, the argument is that there is a societal pattern that devalues the severity of rape through humour and other cultural tropes.
"Teach men not to rape."
"Teach your sons to respect women."
>> Men are violent.
> The patriarchal "masculinity" foisted upon men is one that is competitive and aggressive.
Framing masculinity as a negative is anti-male. "Patriarchy" as a concept, regarding men as responsible for all the ills of the world, is also anti-male.
>> If a man finds a woman physically attractive then he is objectifying her.
> If you see a woman only existing as to please your sexual appetite, you are objecting.
Physical attraction alone does not disregard a person's humanity or personal agency.
>> Men should not be paid according to the merits of their work and ability.
> Women should be paid according to the merits of their work and ability, along with men.
No arguments there. Unfortunately "positive discrimination" (an oxymoron I see as often as "reverse sexism" and "reverse racism") says otherwise.
>> Men should not have any reproductive rights.
> A woman's body is hers to do with as she should wish. Nobody should have operations forced upon them.
I never said anything about forcing or denying abortions, only that a woman has the right to cede responsibility for reproduction whereas a man has none. If a woman chooses to abort or put a child up for adoption, she is well within her rights to do so. If a man suggests the same thing, he is a "deadbeat".
>> Men should continue paying for a woman's lifestyle after a divorce.
> Due to the fact that often a carer role is taken by a woman in a patriarchal society, this means that her earning potential and career is sacrificed.
Again, "patriarchy" as a concept is farcical, and you're completely ignoring a woman's own personal responsibilities. You can either argue that women should be treated as equals, or that they should be treated like children in need of constant care, not both.
Also, men are not your personal ATM machines. If you see a man as only existing to please your handbag appetite, you are objectifying them.
>> Men should recognize their "privilege" and be constantly reminded of it, even though being told you should be ashamed of your gender is at the very heart of sexism.
> There are advantages that men get because of their sex/gender, and these should be recognised.
You've basically repeated what I said, except you seem to think sexism a good thing as long as it targets someone you perceive as "advantaged".
>> Men should not be allowed into women's "safe spaces", implying they are dangerous and intimidating by default. Similarly, men should not be allowed to have their own "safe spaces", because that's sexist and exclusionary.
> Due to many women having suffered terrible experiences at the hands of men, and the tendency for men to dominate discussions, there needs to be a place away from that where people can talk without fear and interruption.
Men also can and do suffer terrible experiences as the hands of women, and can be dominated by them. If a woman gets "safe spaces", so, too, should men.
>> Men cannot have body issues resulting from over-exaggerated muscle-bound heroes in cartoons and movies (He-Man and the like) because they represent a "male power fantasy". But Barbie is responsible for decades of female self-image issues.
> Not sure about that one, I think the argument drastically varies, but men are more often portrayed in a powerful, dominant role.
So as long as an exaggerated body image is accompanied by power and dominance, it shouldn't place unfair expectations on impressionable viewers?
>> If a female character chooses to dress provocatively, it is because a man chose to objectify her, not because a woman can take charge of their own sexuality.
> Characters are often designed by men, for men.
Bayonetta was developed by a woman. Women are allowed to be sexual if they please, and even if the character is designed by a man, ignoring the potential for sexuality in a woman's personality would result in one-dimensional and frankly unrelatable characters.
The idea of sexuality as being negative is also unhealthy, for both genders.
>> If a man is harassed online, it's unfortunate (sometimes). If a woman is harassed online, it's representative of a disturbing trend. Similarly, men cannot understand the plight of a woman's harassment, even if said man also receives daily death threats and has had a gun fired through their living room window.
> Yes because receiving some flame or smack is the same as constant rape threats.
You must have missed the part where I mentioned men also get serious threats to their person, and that there are documented cases where those threats have been acted upon.
>> Men should receive much harsher punishments than women for committing the same crimes.
> This is bullshit, obviously.
Yes, obviously.
http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_gender...
> "Teach men not to rape."
Many (most?) rapists are men. Many men are not rapists. These quotes aren't claiming that all men are rapists, and you've pulled them out of their social/political context in order to claim that they are. You're taking those quotes a bit out of context: they are responding to the cultural expectations/norms/memes of teaching women to avoid rape (and blaming them if they do not) instead of teaching men to not rape (and not really blaming them if they do). The studies (not feeling up for going and fetching them ATM, but let me know if you want me to) have generally shown that rape prevention teaching aimed at women reduces the chance that any particular woman will get raped, but does not reduce the overall incidence of male on female rape--while rape prevention teaching aimed at men does reduce the overall incidence of rape. (Note: female on male rape/sexual assault is generally thought to be much less common, but that may be due to serious stigmatization of reporting by men and poor metrics for measuring it--which is a separate issue than what is trying to be addressed by these sorts of slogans/philosophies. TBH, I think the best option may be universal "don't rape each other" training given to everyone, rather than classes aimed at preventing yourself from getting raped or preventing only men from raping.)
> Framing masculinity as a negative is anti-male. "Patriarchy" as a concept, regarding men as responsible for all the ills of the world, is also anti-male.
Patriarchy, as a sociological concept, is not about blaming men for the ills of the world. It refers to a hegemonic system which shoehorns both men and women into specific roles, values the male roles more, and punishes both men and women for stepping outside of them. It can (and is) bad for men as well as women--look up the research on what emotions are acceptable for men to show, how many preventable deaths occur because men didn't go to a doctor when they should have, etc. It is also tied to the devaluation of certain activities men might want to take part in (homosexuality, acting 'feminine' in any way, wearing dresses, whatever) and the potential for assault if people who were identified as male at birth don't go along with it (look up murder rates for MTF women, for instance). Framing some parts of masculinity as 'toxic'--inability to express emotions other than anger without being socially sanctioned, masculinity being tied up in punishing those who deviate (attacking homosexuals, crossdressers, etc.) is perfectly reasonable, too, and not an attack on men or masculinity as a whole--just the parts of it that involve hurting people. I will agree, however, that some folks don't seem to understand the nuance of what was is a formal academic term and misuse it. ('patriarchy'; this observation also applies to many other terms with formal academic contexts which were adopted by people without the background.)
> You've basically repeated what I said, except you seem to think sexism a good thing as long as it targets someone you perceive as "advantaged".
This is a subtle point, but: acknowledging that you are, in some ways, given huge advantages by society as a whole doesn't require you to feel terrible because of it. This is something I think a lot of people miss: privilege isn't something you can do something about in the present, aside from acknowledging that it benefits you and that you may not experience the same struggles and hardships, or may not experience struggles/hardship in the same way as someone without those benefits. The difference is subtle, but pretty important. The things you can do to address that, though, are listening to the experiences of those who don't have the systematic benefits you do, call out when you may be getting what seems to be an unfair advantage, and when possible, using your advantages to benefit those who do not have them. (A super simplistic example of the last would have been, as a man, voting for women's suffrage when they did not have the right to vote. A more subtle and modern example might be speaking up if you notice that a female colleague's ideas are often restated by and then credited to men, as you're likely to be perceived as a neutral party in a case like that.)
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Should we go around devaluing the accomplishments of a person in the First World because they were born into the life they got? Do we tell them that everything they achieved was purely a result of the luck of the draw, and that their hard work and dedication means nothing?
People don't seem to have any problems understanding that: if I was to start saying that villagers in (African or Asian country) who live on less than a dollar a day (or whatever) should just go to a good US college and get a tech degree (when, say, no post-primary or even just primary school education is available), nobody has any problem looking at me and going "Really? You f'ing serious right now?"
That doesn't devalue the fact that I worked hardish in high school, got into a good US school, finished two undergraduate degrees and almost finished a masters degree in four years and from that and my extensive programming hobby got a job, where I've been recognized for being a solid developer: those are all meaningful accomplishments that I worked hard or work hard on and things I can (and do!) celebrate!
However, realizing that they aren't necessarily options that are as readily available to everyone or as accessible to everyone is basic empathy. This is something I don't understand: we both have no problem acknowledging this when the person in question a black woman from Uganda, where the structural inequalities are so stark it'd be impossible to miss them, but when it's only a black man from Detroit or even a white woman from New York who might not have had the opportunities and support I had, it somehow devalues my accomplishments? The deck I was given at birth was stacked in my favor, with (quite literally) almost every educational + societal opportunity: that doesn't reduce my accomplishments, but I can't say it definitely didn't contribute to them! (And that even means acknowledging the subtle things, like the fact that I was able to work on my second undergraduate degree and the masters coursework over the summers instead of needing to support myself or save money for the next year, or things like the fact that my high school had a lot of AP courses and I didn't have to start working as soon as I was legally able to in order to help my family's financial situation.) Acknowledging things like that may explain how I managed to do what I managed to do: but that doesn't mean that I just walked in the door and was handed two degrees without any work or was handed a job simply for being who I am. It doesn't devalue my accomplishments, but if someone had achieved the same things as me from a less advantaged position, then that would certainly be more impressive. And I'm fine with that: if someone had to work harder to get what I had to work hard to get, then their accomplishments are that much more impressive. If someone else, say, was genetically engineered and then programmed to know everything about computer science and modern mathematics, then maybe their getting degrees in CS and math would be less impressive... in the same way of if I went back to college knowing everything I learned and got an A+ in a class I used to TA, maybe that isn't really much to celebrate.
The differences between First World Male and First World Female opportunities are also stark, unfortunate, and inarguably unfair:
https://www.scholarships.com/financial-aid/college-scholarsh...
https://www.scholarships.com/financial-aid/college-scholarsh...
But even putting educational and financial disparities aside, let's look at how the term used in the real world:
"I am a white male that has achieved moderate success in life, but still face financial difficulties due to the harsh economy that puts an undue burden on the middle class."
"Stop complaining and check your privilege."
I agree that there are competing definitions for the word patriarchy. The usage I see most often used in feminism tends to be the toxic version.
That is word-for-word the way I hear it phrased, and no context can make it right. It implies that men are rapists who don't know any better, and need educated on what rape is and how not to do it. It implies that all men are sociopaths, and need to be taught basic human empathy.
Saying that all/many/most men are rapists is an unsupportable claim, as in much of the Western world rape has been (and still is) defined specifically as unwanted male-on-female penetration. Until statistics can be presented that have substantiated backing, this is an unfair assessment.
"Teach X not to Y" is an ineffective method for preventing Y. You can put everyone in the world in a class telling them not to mug, murder, rape, pillage, stab, shoot, or use the Oxford Comma. People will still act according to their own personal motivations and (presence or lack of) morals. If I want to prevent myself from being mugged, I will learn to recognize the sort of dangerous situations that could lead to that eventuality. I will take personal responsibility for my safety. I will also understand that there will be times that there was nothing I could have reasonably done to prevent it from happening, if it should.
If the numbers agreed with you, then I'd say that "teach X not to Y" being ineffective was true.
However, the numbers really don't agree with you, given the repeated case of things like this being effective: http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/dont-be...
And even for things like muggings/theft, a lot of the time the crime is an impulsive act, and there's also evidence that you can teach people to avoid making that impulsive jump to mugging/etc. It's a bit more complicated than just telling people "Don't mug", but something pretty much resembling "Teach X not to Y" is used by the US Govt. to reduce recidivism in criminal offenders: https://www.crimesolutions.gov/ProgramDetails.aspx?ID=242 and there's a large body of research that shows that it's effective. (There are other studies of similar CBT based programs in inner city schools with similarly good effects on people who aren't yet criminals but are likely to become criminal.)
What about "teach black people not to murder"? Does that not sound incredibly racist to you? If it does, and I really hope it does, what is the effective difference? After all, there is ample data that the majority of murders are by blacks.
https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in-the-u.s/2013/...
Regardless of the effectiveness of "Don't Be That Guy", the ends do not justify the means. It would also be effective to immediately throw into prison the people most "at risk" to commit a crime, but that does not make it morally right. After all, how well do you think a "Don't Be That Black Guy" campaign would go over in Detroit?
Phrased like that, yes, it does sound a little racist. However, your point is slightly facetious: I think you and I are both aware that the statistical link between murder and blackness is poverty (i.e. control for poverty/neighborhood and the link between murder and blackness goes away), which is exacerbated in the US by a lot of structural racism/etc. that black people face.
However, from a practical standpoint, I believe that I actually advocated for exactly that, and I stand by my arguments: my point about CBT-based crime prevention (teaching people to not X)? Perhaps obviously, those programs are most effective at reducing criminal behavior from those who are most likely to commit crimes in the future. In the US, the places where they've been shown to be effective are for youth from high crime, poor urban neighborhoods and current prison inmates... both of which are populations that are predominantly black. I'd totally advocate for the expansion of programs like the ones I mentioned if they continue to show statistically significant results RE: reducing criminal behavior, and I think most people would. Teaching people who are most likely to commit criminal acts to instead not commit criminal acts is a net benefit to society and to those people. I'm not, I hope obviously, claiming that being black makes you criminal (or more likely to be a criminal) or that black people alone should be targeted with programs like the ones I mentioned regardless of location, risk, etc. at the expense of similarly high risk white people, in the same way that I'm not claiming that being a man makes you inherently a rapist.
RE: "Don't be that guy" and the ends do not justify the means: It's possible to come up with all kinds of exaggerated scenarios to argue this. I would agree that, say, killing all men to prevent male on female rape would be both very effective and completely unjust.
So let's keep in mind the comparison you're making here: we are talking about, variously, (a) a public advertising campaign about how it's bad to rape people versus actual rape, (b) a course that lasts a few days at the start of college or a week in middle or high school on the importance of consent (tbh, I'd claim it'd be good for it to be aimed at men and women) versus actual rape or (c) a month or semester long course on self control and healthy behaviors in middle/high school/prison versus actual mugging/assault/murder. The "means" we're talking about are not exactly things with a particularly high human cost, especially when compared to the "ends".
If your "means" involve teaching young men that they are considered sociopathic abusive rapists by society and that they need extensive education to learn otherwise, and you do not consider that a "particularly high human cost" then I think we should leave this conversation as it is. Neither of us will be able to convince the other of our position, and we'll only talk in circles trying.
Rape prevention education is generally along the lines of "This is what consent is. It's important! If you don't get consent and have sex with someone, that's rape, and that's bad! These are situations where someone really isn't capable of consent: when they're incapacitated, if you're blackmailing them, if you're holding them down and they're verbally objecting, or really if you haven't gotten a clear and enthusiastic "Wow I want to bone you" from them. You may see someone try to have sex with someone else under those circumstances: that would make you a bystander! If you are a bystander, here are some things you can do to keep that person from raping someone: (a), (b), (c). Etc." Similarly, the crime prevention things I linked and referred to take a different tack of "These are ways to control your emotions and think through the consequences of your actions".
Your portrayal of it as anything else leads me to believe that you haven't ever gone through a rape prevention course and have done absolutely no research on what they usually entail. The reason I'd advise them for everyone is because they're valuable courses for women, too: both because if there's a explicit culture of "nobody is getting laid without an explicit 'yes'", it's shocking how quickly people will start actually getting explicit 'yes'es (See Antioch College), and because I've known of at least one woman who got a man extremely drunk, well beyond where he could remember or consent, and then had sex with him. (Spoiler alert: The guy there was me. I remembered none of it and only found out we'd done anything a few weeks later. I never pressed charges, sought help, or reported it, because like in many situations these things are complicated and she was a friend. When we discussed it later/I'd found out it happened, she didn't think she'd done anything wrong, and that was probably the most messed up part of it. Let's just say universal consent training is something I have personal reasons to feel strongly is important.)
This is true! The thing is, most feminists I've met also believe this. When people complain about 'objectification', they are not complaining that someone might find them physically attractive at all--it's the patterns of behavior and speech which some/many men exhibit which clearly show that they are not valued beyond their physical appearance or are primarily valued for their physical appearance.
> I never said anything about forcing or denying abortions, only that a woman has the right to cede responsibility for reproduction whereas a man has none. If a woman chooses to abort or put a child up for adoption, she is well within her rights to do so. If a man suggests the same thing, he is a "deadbeat".
There are some fundamental challenges to 'perfect equality' w.r.t. reproduction. I don't think any feminist platform I'm aware of suggests that men should not be able to put forward their feelings on adoption/abortion when they are the father and in a relationship with the mother: simply that the father in those situations doesn't have the final say and should not have the final say, particularly w.r.t. abortion. Things get significantly more complex after a child is born, and I don't know many feminists who think the current situation is ideal either. (That the mother is primarily responsible for the child, or that the mother almost always gets custody in a custody battle. That isn't equality either.)
> So as long as an exaggerated body image is accompanied by power and dominance, it shouldn't place unfair expectations on impressionable viewers?
Male incidence of eating disorders is, as I recall, actually heavily underreported (partially b/c of how it manifests, partially for other reasons), but I don't know many nonradical feminists who claim that male self image issues are not a problem--simply that given our current societal norms and values, women's appearance is more heavily focused on then men's... and that is an issue perpetuated by things like Barbie. I'd strongly disagree with the original sentiment, but I also haven't met any recent feminist claiming that and don't believe it's part of any particular non-radical platform.
> The idea of sexuality as being negative is also unhealthy, for both genders.
This is the entire point of sex positive feminism. I don't think any sex positive feminists have argued that female characters shouldn't be allowed to have any sexuality--just that they are often portrayed in unrealistic ways that are designed to appeal to male fantasies. I'm not familiar with Bayonetta, but from looking at google images, at least from her exaggerated appearance, impractical clothing, etc. I'd say that she may very well qualify. (It's also just as possible for women to design unrealistic characters which appeal to male fantasies as it is for men--nobody I know has claimed that every woman is by necessity a perfect feminist.)
> Men also can and do suffer terrible experiences as the hands of women, and can be dominated by them. If a woman gets "safe spaces", so, too, should men.
No feminist I know has said "Men should not be allowed safe spaces", particularly not "Men who are survivors of abuse should not be allowed safe spaces." Every feminist woman I know would be 100% behind these getting set up by men who felt they needed them: perhaps it would be better to ask why they are not getting set up by men who need them? This is actually of personal interest to me, because I would have greatly benefited from one (as a male survivor of abuse who has been diagnosed with PTSD) had one existed in the past.
> You must have missed the part where I mentioned men also get serious threats to their person, and that there are documented cases where those threats have been acted upon.
Cases of men getting serious threats to their person is, as you said, 'unfortunate'. (I'd take a stronger stance and say it's pretty bad.) That is, however, different from the recent trend of women who have been harassed, doxxed, received rape threats, etc. for publicly expressing feminist viewpoints. If it did seem like a plausible trend existed in the harassment of men, I'd be interested.
> http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_gender...
The statistics there don't actually prove that point... it's definitely possible that women simply commit fewer crimes, less serious crimes, or are caught less often. That being said, let us presume that men do get, on average, longer sentences for the same crime (I think this is plausible): do you know of any feminists who are claiming that this should be the case? (Most I know are generally against the current prison system and rate of incarceration in the first place, for both men and women, so I'm not sure where your argument is here anyways.)
Your argument is perfectly reasonable, it would be nice if other feminists understood the difference. In my experience, it is more often used as a spark for a larger confrontation or an excuse to bash males in general.
> I never said anything about forcing or denying abortions, only that a woman has the right to cede responsibility for reproduction whereas a man has none. If a woman chooses to abort or put a child up for adoption, she is well within her rights to do so. If a man suggests the same thing, he is a "deadbeat".
In an ideal world, a father would be told of the pregnancy immediately, and given the opportunity to absolve himself of responsibility for it. With this knowledge in hand, the mother would have the opportunity to decide to abort, give up for adoption, or keep the child with the understanding that there would be no (legally mandated) financial support from the father.
> So as long as an exaggerated body image is accompanied by power and dominance, it shouldn't place unfair expectations on impressionable viewers?
I most often see it as a corollary to arguments about the representation of women in movies/TV/video games. If the representation of a fictional woman is attacked for unrealistic standards, the rebuttal will be that the men are held to the same standards by male characters in the same space. Feminists then reply that it is a "male power fantasy" and does not count.
A perfect example, and most of the women's "before" representations aren't even unrealistic to begin with!
http://motherboard.vice.com/read/lara-croft-gets-a-realistic...
> The idea of sexuality as being negative is also unhealthy, for both genders.
A "sex positive" outlook would not care whether or not Bayonetta was designed by or for men. Bayonetta would have the inherent right to dress and behave as she pleases, with no care for the viewer's tastes.
> Men also can and do suffer terrible experiences as the hands of women, and can be dominated by them. If a woman gets "safe spaces", so, too, should men.
If you go to a college campus and attempt to set up a "mens center" in the same vein as the womens centers that are increasingly common, you will most likely be 1) called a misogynist, 2) not taken seriously, 3) not succeed.
You will also very likely be harassed and carry the "misogynist" label for the remainder of your tenure there. School newspapers will have carte blanche to drag your name through the mud in any way they can. An "example" will be made of you.
> You must have missed the part where I mentioned men also get serious threats to their person, and that there are documented cases where those threats have been acted upon.
https://soundcloud.com/totalbiscuit/enough
Anyone, man or woman, that disagrees with feminist narratives, can be immediately and unquestionably be labelled a harasser and misogynist.
In case you don't care to listen to that SoundCloud, it involves a case where a man tries to remain a voice of reason in an online debate that has extremists on both sides, and because he adhered more strongly to ethical standards than "choosing a side" he was labeled the enemy. He has seen harassment and vitriol slung at him primarily from the "feminist" side, and even a great deal from people that could be considered celebrities. Those people will gladly attack him, and have absolutely no fear of reprisal for doing so.
The only time they face the consequences for their actions is when they upset their own compatriots. In those cases, they will not hesitate to turn on them like a pack of rabid dogs on an injured prey. But that is only the same hatred that is flung at men every day in that space.
> http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_gender....
http://gothamist.com/2013/04/29/male_teachers_get_longer_sen...
This is a small example, however every time it's brought up it's immediately shut down by popular feminist voices.
"Longer prison sentences for men" is not a stated goal of feminism, but maintaining that status quo which greatly benefits women and greatly disadvantages men, is time and again strongly implied by their words and actions.
> If you go to a college campus and attempt to set up a "mens center" in the same vein as the womens centers that are increasingly common, you will most likely be 1) called a misogynist, 2) not taken seriously, 3) not succeed.
Interestingly, one of the longest running institutions at universities are fraternities.
> Men also can and do suffer terrible experiences as the hands of women, and can be dominated by them. If a woman gets "safe spaces", so, too, should men.
This may be a kind of blunt observation, but perhaps you see what you're looking for?
I don't think I've even met a single person, male or female, who seriously complained when someone (a) expressed interest in a reasonable way/place/situation and (b) was clearly willing to not continue if the person who had interest expressed in them did not reciprocate. Both (a) and (b) have had to be the case for all men and women I know to be comfortable with people's expression of interest: and its been my female friend's experience that men are generally much worse about both (a) and (b). Does that mean all men are bad at (a) and (b)? No. But most of my friends who're women have at least one story (usually many more) about a guy who was bad about both (a) and (b), and the incidence in friends who're men is much lower (although goes up again if you limit it to just my gay friends--turns out gay men are not necessarily magical wizards about being good at (a) and (b)). Taken out of context, a woman complaining about how several men have been bad at (a) and (b) in her life seems like something you'd be likely to read as "bashing men" as a whole, especially if you didn't have any context for her complaints. Not hearing the whole story here might be exacerbated if your general model for interacting with women who bring up their frustrations here is to go on the offensive. ("not all men are like that!"/etc.) If I wanted to vent about an unpleasant experience, I know I wouldn't go to someone I thought might engage me in an argument over it rather than listen, and I'd almost certainly shut down any argument that happened and refuse to share more if I felt like I was being attacked. That's human nature and not at all unreasonable: the last place I would've gone after I was read as gay and threatened with violence by a group of drunk men would be someone who'd I'd imagine would've told me that "not all Southern men are like that" or questioned me on it--I went to the closest gay friendly bar I could find and promptly got sloshed before getting a trusted friend to drive me home.
> If you go to a college campus and attempt to set up a "mens center" in the same vein as the womens centers that are increasingly common, you will most likely be 1) called a misogynist, 2) not taken seriously, 3) not succeed.
The thing is: is this a problem with feminism? I'd argue no. I think that you'd get a lot of pushback from more mainstream culture, and that push back would likely be very tied to patriarchal (as a hegemonic system) ideals about what men "should" be or do or how they "should" act.
> A "sex positive" outlook would not care whether or not Bayonetta was designed by or for men. Bayonetta would have the inherent right to dress and behave as she pleases, with no care for the viewer's tastes.
As a fictional character, Bayonetta has no will or desires beyond what her creators attribute to her. If we were talking about an actual woman here, I'd agree completely: but we're talking about a fictional character who uses magic. Critiquing characters and critiquing people are two very different things. As a counterpoint: I'd argue that characters like "He Man" (or many other male superheroes) or those in "Magic Mike" are a male equivalent and just as unrealistic.
> This is a small example, however every time it's brought up it's immediately shut down by popular feminist voices.
I'm not aware of things like this getting shut down except in cases where its brought up as a bit of a red herring to distract from another debate. I'm not aware of any feminist voices that have literally said "Male teachers who assault their students should go to jail for a longer period of time"--In fact I think the general feminist critical theory perspective would be that patriarchal ideas about sex (i.e. that men always want it, etc.) contribute to lower than deserved prison sentences for female teachers who abuse male students. What was the context for this getting brought up and "immediately shut down"?
Saying I'm looking for an excuse to get offended in a conversation about feminism is a level of pot and kettle I haven't experienced before.
I can barely turn a corner anymore without being accused of objectifying women somehow. Every movie I want to watch, every video game I want to play, everything "objectifies" women somehow now, as long as it has any hint of sexuality and male demographic.
So you haven't come across and/or recognized that yet. Good for you, you're living in an ideal future and I someday hope to join you there.
> The thing is: is this a problem with feminism? I'd argue no. I think that you'd get a lot of pushback from more mainstream culture, and that push back would likely be very tied to patriarchal (as a hegemonic system) ideals about what men "should" be or do or how they "should" act.
"Patriarchy is not some claim that men are responsible for everything bad that happens."
"This isn't feminism, it's the patriarchy."
Sure, it's primarily feminists that fight those initiatives, but they're not acting in their capacity as a feminist. They took that hat off first.
> As a fictional character, Bayonetta has no will or desires beyond what her creators attribute to her. If we were talking about an actual woman here, I'd agree completely: but we're talking about a fictional character who uses magic. Critiquing characters and critiquing people are two very different things. As a counterpoint: I'd argue that characters like "He Man" (or many other male superheroes) or those in "Magic Mike" are a male equivalent and just as unrealistic.
Feminists say that fictional women (Barbie et. al) are representative of women as a whole, and should be treated as such.
If this is the case, then a fictional female character has the right to be represented as a complete character, sexuality and all.
If you're telling me it's otherwise, then why does a fictional female character's sexuality even merit discussion?
> I'm not aware of any feminist voices that have literally said "Male teachers who assault their students should go to jail for a longer period of time"
Well I'm aware of at least one: https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/06/...
> What was the context for this getting brought up and "immediately shut down"?
http://metronews.ca/news/ottawa/1000093/protesters-shut-down...
Not at all.
A huge amount of mainstream media and art is aimed towards men, marketed to men, designed to titillate men, and involves objectification of women. To be completely honest: I don't think that completely removes it of any artistic merit (or fun factor for video games) or that it means you shouldn't be allowed to enjoy it.
Similarly, I firmly would defend a woman's right to enjoy (the small, percentage wise, and often looked down upon, culturally) pieces of media which are marketed to women, aimed at women, designed to titillate women, and involve objectification of male characters.
I honestly believe that people should be allowed to enjoy the media that they enjoy as long as it isn't harming other people, as long as they are willing to do some critical thinking about what enjoying it means. If you have done some critical thinking about what your enjoying of media that objectifies women says about you, your sexuality, and etc., and are comfortable with that, then who am I to stand in your way? If, however, you believe that all media should be that way, I'd have a bone to pick. If you don't believe that all media should be that way, then perhaps you should consider sampling other forms of media (including those aimed at women! Some romance novels can be /quite/ fun: I'd personally recommend Eloisa James, as her novels are accessible, adult without being particularly pornographic, and quite intelligent, and have quite interesting female leads) or pushing for media that is more accessible for people who aren't you. If it seems like 'absolutely everything' you want to consume involves objectification of women, then perhaps your taste in media leans towards the kind of mainstream media that doesn't include well rounded female characters, and perhaps those desires would be worth delving into and examining critically.
My root point is, though, that asking for well rounded, realistic female characters in what people are marketing as the primary pieces of an art form is totally reasonable, just as it would be reasonable for me to demand art or media that doesn't only portray "tall dark handsome men who're bad boys with a streak of gold" male characters. The problem is when two dimensional characters who are comparable in depth and characterization to the male leads of some romance novels are the only or the primary examples of female protagonists, or trumpeted as beacons of equality.
> Sure, it's primarily women that fight those initiatives, but they're not acting in their capacity as a feminist. They took that hat off first.
Women, even women who identify as feminists, do not always act completely in accordance with the principles they espouse. It may surprise you to learn that religious people, democrats, republicans, libertarians, etc. also fall victim to this. I don't know the details of the things you're referencing, but tbh it sounds like a bunch of college students behaved as a mob. That kind of thing is never alright.
> Feminists say that fictional women (Barbie et. al) are representative of women as a whole, and should be treated as such. If this is the case, then a fictional female character has the right to be represented as a complete character, sexuality and all. If you're telling me it's otherwise, then why does a fictional female character's sexuality even merit discussion?
Barbie, as a product, is marketed as an ideal that all (or most) (white?) women should push towards. If there was a good, interesting range of complete portrayals of fictional women in mainstream film, television, and video games at all, then one or two or even a genre of uniform female characters wouldn't be a problem for me (or, indeed, I think most feminists--do you hear many women decrying the two dimensional female characters in grocery store spy novels, which I'd claim are probably the male equivalent of romance novels? I certainly haven't heard a lot of uproar over that.), just as a genre or piece with flat male characters wouldn't be a problem! It is when all or most representations of women in all or most media are two dimensional and unrealistic (and this is being called 'progress') that there is a problem. Unfortunately, that's largely also the current state of affairs! There has been a lot of great movement towards interesting/nonstandard female leads in recent television (Interestingly, I'd say that Mad Men comes to mind as a very strong example of this, despite its period setting.) and I think that trend is moving into movies as well, so hopefully this state of affairs won't last forever.
> https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/06/...
That's an interesting argument, although to be completely honest it seems kind of ridiculous. Replace "women" with "people" in that article and aside from needing to fix the statistics RE: violent crime, you have a pretty standard (if slightly overwrought) argument against imprisoning most nonviolent offenders--which isn't completely beyond the pale and something I could get behind.
> http://metronews.ca/news/ottawa/1000093/protesters-shut-down...
College students are dumb. They always have been, they probably always will be. The funny thing is, they almost certainly have legitimate complaints about the campus culture, society, and the world, but they're likely behaving in such a juvenile fashion because they feel like it's one of the few ways they /can/ affect change. Judging every anti-war protester by the actions of the Weathermen would also paint a pretty bad picture of anti-war protest.
Look up Erin Pizzey- she makes an excellent foundation for any research into this area. After founding the world's first women's shelter, she discovered in interviews that many (if not most) of her victims were also abusers themselves. She suggested opening a men's shelter, and was driven from her own movement- receiving death threats, and being forced from her home after he dog was shot and left at her door. IIRC, she said that it came down to money. It was easier to raise money for women than for men or even just people... And easier to control, too.
> do you know of any feminists who are claiming that [men should receive harsher punishments] should be the case?
Feminists saying women shouldn't be jailed for anything https://www.washingtonpost.com/posteverything/wp/2014/11/06/...
My reading of that is that she wants nobody to be imprisoned, she just thinks that for various reasons, the argument is more realistic for women right now -- for instance, the far lower incarceration rate of women, and the otherwise-irrelevant practical reason that there's a O(number of incarcerated genders) monetary cost in prisons with a high constant factor. Getting all the women out of prison is a greater cost savings than getting the same number of men out, and easier than getting all the men out. But I don't see any indication that she thinks her arguments wouldn't apply to men as well: "Essentially, the case for closing women’s prisons is the same as the case for imprisoning fewer men."
In a similar fashion, your entire post is misaligned with the kind of feminism I see on the daily basis.
http://reason.com/archives/2015/07/23/sexist-scientist-tim-h...
http://www.latimes.com/opinion/op-ed/la-oe-goldberg-rosetta-...
Some small form of feminism may still be necessary in this day and age, but no meaningful progress can be made until the extremes of modern feminism are torn down.
This is true. Objectification is a complex subject with lots of potential targets: you can treat a person as a sexual object, you can portray/view a character as a sexual object, etc. In the context of that post, I was referring to specific complaints of flesh and blood women RE: being objectified. Objectification in fiction and advertising is a separate thing: characters who exist primarily to titillate a male audience's sexual desires would qualify... as would characters who exist primarily to titillate a female audience's sexual desires. (See: Magic Mike, Magic Mike XXL for really good examples of male characters who are pretty obviously objectified.)
To be completely honest: I don't have any serious problem with what I'd view to be pulp-y fiction or characters in the rough. (Hell, romance novel characters seriously qualify here too!) However, if it seemed like every male lead character in a genre primarily characterized by how they were "tall, dark, and handsome, with a bad boy streak and a heart of gold" then I'd probably get the message that the genre was not necessarily aimed at me or about characters I could relate to or find interesting. If that was true of all genres, or most popular works, then I'd probably get the message that I wasn't the audience for any genre, and perhaps even that men existed to be "tall dark and handsome" and should behave as "bad boys with a heart of gold". Being short and generally well behaved, I'd probably complain about unrealistic male characters who ride horses into the sunset and have perfect abs. Perhaps I'd even come to believe that I should wear platform shoes, work out all the time and never eat to get the abs I needed, start behaving like a bad boy, and learn how to ride horses so that I could meet a basic bar of manliness. Fortunately, that fantasy world that I just described doesn't exist for me, because romance novels are not the primary genre or what we base our societal expectations of men on, but replace "tall dark and handsome and a bad boy with a heart of gold" with "skinny, brunette, and buxom" and you begin to hit the issues that some women have with many video games.
> In a similar fashion, your entire post is misaligned with the kind of feminism I see on the daily basis.
The thing is, my post is aligned with the feminism I believe in and try to push forward. It's aligned with the feminism that I've heard expressed by my close friends, some of whom are activists for various feminist causes (equal job rights, etc.). That doesn't necessarily correspond with the loudest "feminist" voices on the internet (or tumblr), in the same way that someone like "Maddox" doesn't necessarily correspond to mainstream male views.
To me this sounds less like a product of a complex underlying notion and more like simple inconsistency created by equating fundamentally different things.
Characters are not people. They are fictional entities. Arguing that it is immoral to design them in a way that sets "unrealistic" examples of behavior attacks the foundational premise of fiction itself. There is no rational criteria that would make this a valid argument in regards to sexuality while sparing any other aspect of human behavior.
So yes, there are plenty of one-dimensional characters who are products of someone's fantasies, designed to appeal to a select audience. That's a design/writing issue, not moral/social issue. If you're arguing to the contrary, you're effectively demanding to edit all fiction to become a form of propaganda.
No, I think we should put anyone who creates unrealistic fictional characters in prison. Maximum security. Single confinement on weekends. Or maybe just shoot the bastards.
I have no issue with claiming that "feminazis" are a minority of feminists, as I'm sure they are. But to pretend they don't exist or that they aren't the most outspoken is being in denial of reality. Any memorable contact I've had with feminists has been with that nasty, confrontational "1%".
I'm not alone with these poor interactions - as people are quickly referring to that 1% group as "feminists". Representative of the entire group as a whole, which is a bad image for the more reasonable feminists to hold and why many feminists refuse to call themselves a feminist. They might be mistaken for "that kind" of feminist.
The "fight" has become so polarized by extremists from both sides (MRA and feminist, to clarify) that as an egalitarian I get called a "man-hating feminist" by many MRA and a "disgusting misogynist pig" by many feminists. I find this funny - but also very depressing.
Many feminists actually do talk about "sorority" in that sense of women helping each other, however, many other feminists don't agree with that. First reason is that this would block criticism within feminism, such as the one made in the post.
Second reason is that women aren't all equal, women don't all have the same problems, so if feminism embraces the sorority concept, it would lead to minorities' issues just getting ignored, i.e. no one would care about autistic women. So, it's not that feminism isn't for women, but women do have their differences and they need to deal with that.
Lastly, feminism isn't about being against men. Sure, some radical feminists are against men, but I don't think they're taken seriously. Actually, there is a debate among feminists about whether men should or not be allowed to engage in feminism, and there are plenty who think they should. How can you expect men to help in feminism if feminism is against them? You can't, so that's not the case.
[Edit: removed a line I thought it wasn't polite 10 minutes after posting.]
Journalism in particular seems to be very radicalized. What you end up with is an outsized voice for an extreme minority opinion. I think a lot of the backlash against feminism is about the traction some of the more radical ideas have made.
Examples: #killallmen, male tears...
There are other extreme examples that have been codified in academia, but the media issues seem more cut and dry.
"Male tears" isn't a radical feminist thing, many non-radical feminists use it. Actually, it's quite the opposite, it's men who have always said feminist women (radical or not) are anti-men, so they decided to play along and made a joke about it.
While I think "male tears" isn't anti-men, I do think it could be against hegemonic masculinity, which is when men are told they have to be strong, non-emotional, etc; e.g. the past few days people have been talking about some research that implies that male gamers who harass women (i.e. they comply with hegemonic masculinty) are "losers", and some people have talked about it using #maletears. There's some anti-hegemonic masculinity Schadenfreude going on there. Some people think #maletears create a stigma around men who do cry, but it's also the opposite, it's joking about men who think they can't cry, they should be allowed to cry if they want to.
About the #killallmen, I think it didn't get traction where I live, in Brazil, I hadn't heard about it. I'm not sure what is it about, but I can see how some feminist women would argue that men do assault and kill women every day, systematically, so it could be sarcastic. Also, as something that would instantly backfire, it could be an attempt to destroy feminism from within, but you see, any feminist with a basic understanding of gender theory would immediately see thru that: men are not all equal, just as women are not all equal. So, let's say, if we're killing all men, what do we do to trans women? See, it doesn't work in a feminist framework.
"Male tears" definitely went beyond a joke as well. It's often used now to celebrate events that anger men.
If feminists (radical or otherwise) want people to take them seriously, they must treat people as they want to be treated.
"It's just a joke" most definitely doesn't work when it comes to men talking about women so it shouldn't be used in the opposite direction.
However, I do agree that in the context of a honest debate this really doesn't help, and I wouldn't use it there. But I know many people would, because in both sides so many people think debate is about winning, not conveying ideas.
The nearer-to-the-median feminists are quieter because, in 2015, they have already achieved a large majority of the original goals of the movement, and all that is really required now is for the old bigots to die off or retire, and for the largely sex-egalitarian younger generations to take over the reins of power.
Feminist extremists are, by demanding faster and more extreme cultural changes, rallying the last bastions of misogynists to unite in opposition, in one of the best real-world examples of the Batman Effect[0] that I have ever seen. Anyone who joins in their squabbles tends to get dragged down into the mud with them. Just back away slowly.
Additionally, newly-minted masculinists revive "manly" traditions like moustache waxing, shaving with straight razors, overblown midlife crises, cars with carburetors, and paleo dieting and lifestyle practices. Their champions are characters like Ron Swanson and Isaiah "Old Spice Guy" Mustafa. They avoid conflict with feminists by focusing mainly on things most women simply have no interest in. Like growing out your facial hair.
If you avoid looking at the loud, flashy extremists, we all seem to be doing pretty well, and still steadily improving, on the remaining sexual equality issues.
[0] Batman Effect: Any sufficiently powerful social force will generate its own opposition. Corrupt Gotham created the Batman. The Batman created crime-lords like the Joker. There is no sound of one hand clapping, because another hand always rises to meet it.
I like to complain a lot, about many things, for like an hour, and then I get frustrated without observable resolution. It's all thinking noise, patterns, I prefer to stay at home, I like sleeping, so tired of arguing on the internet.
"Principle NLP engineer at Nuance Communications"
If you need to encode everything that a person does to properly parse sentences and sentiment and intent and whatever, do you want someone whose in the "unconscious competence" category, where it's effortless and they barely know what they're doing? Or might you prefer someone who really has to work at it, who still has to reason through things in their own mind? The person who is only "consciously competent" probably still has hooks into their own mental processes and can explain them to themselves, to others, and to the computer.
A person who is unconsciously competent just reacts a certain way and can't tell you why.
Yes, probably. Both if you're a man or a woman.
I think the last great frontier for humanity's "waking up from history" is awareness of group psychology, particularly the psychology of the "other." Ironically, as noted by GCP Grey, widespread access to the Internet has actually made such group psychology worse.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc
One of the big problems with an awareness of what Noam Chomsky called "irrational jingoism," is that currently society is made out of it. Our organizations and social norms and structures actually use the natural jingoism built into Homo sapiens in order to increase group solidarity.
The cognitive distortions that come out of such group psychology are a big problem online. It's been noted that if you go far enough in either direction of the political spectrum, things start to look the same. Historically, both extremes become militaristic and convinced of a duty to righteous aggression. I would invite hardy and curious souls to plumb both more militant feminist and more militant Men's Rights groups online, and witness firsthand the degree to which both sides can be eerily reminiscent of each other in tone and self-righteous attitude. (For example: Intolerant "you're with us or against us" attitudes.)
As 21st century citizens, we should already be aware of "bait and switch" tactics. We should also be savvy about the psychology of online groups, and be able to read when a group has started to cross a threshold and becomes driven by positive feedback cycles of outrage to garner more attention. We should recognize when the ideology of whatever movement has been thus hijacked to become hateivism. (EDIT: To clarify, what I refer to as "groups" are small-granularity, as in a few person's social networks, not everyone who identifies with a particular label!)
To clarify: my issue is not with either side of any debate. There are a few ideas on both sides of the issue I would agree with. My chief concern is whether the groups in question are self-aware concerning their own group dynamics. Such an organizational awareness was perhaps the chief accomplishment of Martin Luther King Jr. and his compatriots, though there seems to be no awareness of this particular accomplishment in the culture at large.
EDIT: I should clarify what I meant by saying "made such group psychology worse." Creating virtual meeting spaces and virtual online groups is far easier and far cheaper than organizing face to face groups, and the same communication resources also make it easier to facilitate such meetings in person. Much good has come of this. However, it has also created far more opportunities for the incubation of distorted mob psychologies. Often these take the name of some cause or ideology but are distorted in a jingoistic direction.
As 21st century online citizens, we should be as aware of such "bait and switch" with the labels of ideologies as we are aware of the same tactics with regards to name brands. We should be as savvy about the intellectual provenance of an online group's teachings and its actual practices as we are savvy about online shopping or choosing which Kickstarter campaigns to support. If just about anyone can set up shop online as an "activist," doesn't this create the same situation that arises when just about anyone can set up a web store? (Isn't this the same economic situation as with travelling medicine shows?)
From what I have seen online, people are often remarkably unsophisticated about evaluating distortions in their particular group's interpretation of ideologies or activist programs, and largely blind to their own group dynamics. This is especially true when "othering," stereotyping, and group hatreds have taken hold. Most importantly: It is just as true online as it is in-person.
Also, do you have a reading recommendation for learning more about that aspect of Martin Luther King Jr. and his compatriots?
I do believe that the internet, like fire, can burn or heat our species. We learn, slowly, how to use this medium. I think that we are slowly bending towards justice, to borrow from MLK, but that it will take a long long time. Also, something that is always lost is the inherent entropy in the system, the chaos that comes to any complex network. Some amount of 'bad' will always be here, if only by the random chance of life. Most 'hatevists' have logical arguments, it's just that the lemmas and starting points are off or they have taken one wrong step that sent them spinning into hate and terror. Fixing those steps is arduous and energy intense, but necessary.
Hopefully, the tech will help us here. The massive amount of data that Google and the NSA collects could be put forth in an effort to study the mechanics of ethics and personalities. That, again, is fire, and in the wrong hands, it'll burn. But discovery is like that, and you have to see through the flames of chemical weapons and siege towers to get to fertilizers and the Hagia Sophia.
Exactly! One of the interesting things that's happened is group discussions that would've taken place in private now often happen in very public places. Imagine, for instance, who would have access to the equivalent of Hacker News 100 years ago. Now, for better or worse, the community's discussions are out there and available for analysis not only by its own members but also interested outsiders.
This is another way of saying the Internet has facilitated the appearance of more toxic noise in societal discourse. This is nothing new. Much the same was said with the advent of pamphlets and newspapers. No doubt, this is counterbalanced by the tremendous good it more communication has enabled.
Also, trying to argue that our species reverts to the base programming is specious.
This is a tremendous distortion of what I am saying. I am not saying that our species always reverts to base programming. I am saying that it does so given certain conditions. Are you trying to say that there is no mob psychology on the Internet? No, that would be just as much of a strawman of your position as you (probably inadvertently) just made of mine.
I would disagree a little on this part (agree with the rest), by giving the example of "The Left". The Left Wing was primarily socialist and communalist. It emphasized the similarity between people, races, countries, sexes. What we have in common is more important than what separates us.
The Internet and the stcredzero's thesis says is that the Internet shows what defines groups as being different, as being the other. The Left has, along with the Internet and along with many of us here who may see ourselves as supporting social justice, focused on the differences between people. The group of persons is more and more defined, the individuals within a society is more and more defined. The differences between people and groups are more and more emphasized with the Internet.
The Internet has not led to an increase in communality, it has not led to an increase on people feeling like they are more similar to others. The Left used to and socialist used to work against a trend of group psychology to bring together peoples into a whole, to reduce differences. The successful politicians recognize the important of group thinking. In the recent UK election, the party who ran with the ideology of "all in it together" and "the party of the working people" was the right wing Conservatives! (They won)
Social justice cannot happen if we focus our energies as to what divides us.
Here in the states, the republican right has historically been the people's party too. Part of their appeal is being the 'party of Lincoln'. Really, both of our parties have made good appeals to being a 'people's party' in their history. But trying to say that the international left was historically a party for all peoples is tough too. Russian reds started as an all inclusive bunch, but became quickly co-oped by anti-Semites, racists, and nationalists. Still, I think you can very well categorize them as Left through and through.
I still really believe that the internet has cemented our commonality. White folk in America are now seeing the daily interactions of black folk with the cops, and how unjust that is. And they are going out and protesting with them now. Cries of 'we are the 99%' are being made by all of us now. The treatment of women in Tech and elsewhere is at the very least, known to be a problem now. Say what you will for solving these issues, but the Internet has incited just communal outrage in it's short time in our lives. I say give the internet time to work itself out. There are still congresscritters that boast about not using email and we are just now raising an internet-always generation in many countries. This, like all things human, takes time.
Arguably, a slightly autistic personality is helpful for a programmer. Possibly it could also be a big reason for many future programmers to turn to tech in the first place, where you deal with strict, deterministic rules instead of emotions.
This would obviously not excuse misogyny in tech, but could help explain the gender imbalance.
This sounds a bit like people who go "haha, I'm so OCD, I like my pencils all pointing the wrong way" - incorrect self-diagnosis. "Slightly autistic personality" unfortunately seems to be fairly frequently used as an excuse to be an asshole.
I'm talking about the "I've never been formally diagnosed but..." and "I think I'm a little on the spectrum" sort of comments that often wind up in threads about programmers being socially awkward.
Side note: having Aspergers doesn't make you an asshole.
My experience of people (medically diagnosed) with Asperger's does not support that statement.
It's the people who are aware of and excuse being an asshole by a self-diagnosed "oh I'm probably on the spectrum" statement I've issues with.
Wasn't homosexuality treated as a mental illness?
Sure it doesn't, but the context was diagnosing it. As in recognizing it as a disease.
the identification of the nature of an
illness or other problem by examination
of the symptoms.
And yet there may be a connection between a predisposition to work in tech and autism. See http://archive.wired.com/wired/archive/9.12/aspergers_pr.htm... for the argument but also http://www.kennethrobersonphd.com/silicon-valley-breeding-gr... for an objection.
Maybe, or maybe wealthier folks are more likely to a) have computers for their kids b) have access to doctors for diagnoses and c) be white. We'll have to get the causation right.
"Maybe this group of people has more of X because X is more likely to have a neurodevelopmental disorder"? Nice. Thank you so much for associating a whole industry with autism.
A disorder that apparently 1-2 out of 1,000 people have, at that.
You have it flipped. "This group of people with a neurodevelopmental disorder are more inclined to X and therefore industry of X has more of them."
Which is an entirely valid thing to say, by the way.
I'd be willing to bet that people with higher-than-normal levels of empathy and an outgoing attitude are more inclined to work social jobs than solitary jobs. Would you disagree with that?
I can understand a displeasure that the association is with something "negative", but that doesn't immediately invalidate the statement.
>A disorder that apparently 1-2 out of 1,000 people have, at that.
And how many people work in "the Tech industry", specifically coding/engineering related fields, compared to other areas like Marketing, Sales, Design, Social Workers, etc? Maybe 1 or 2 in 1,000? If this is your biggest defense against their statement being "wrong" I have to find it unconvincing at best.
> Which is an entirely valid thing to say, by the way.
The point was the severity. 1 to 2 persons in a thousand, and you think this is sizeable enough to impact a whole industry which is not really small at all? To colour a whole industry? To such a degree that everyone or a majority is on the autism spectrum, to refer to your last paragraph? Ridiculous. Not to mention that would require all people with autism to be functioning enough to maintain a job. Assuming I would even accept your pulled-out-of-your-hat numbers.
What is effectively being said is that many of those nerd archetypes are born out of, or affected to a large degree, by people with neurodevelopmental disorder. A great springboard for people who hate nerds to claim that they are suffering from a kind of arrested development or other non-normal deficiency, for sure.
> I can understand a displeasure that the association is with something "negative", but that doesn't immediately invalidate the statement.
You're right that it wasn't as much of a statement about it being wrong as it was a statement like this betrays his attitude towards the tech industry. Hint: I didn't ever say that it being an outlandish belief made it wrong, for crying out loud! The mention of 1-2 in a thousand was more of a reference to how it was unlikely, however.
Maybe I'll start to consider the veracity of this claim itself when I see some effort to prove it one way or the other. But I don't have much patience for complacent musings on deficits of a whole group of people.
> I'd be willing to bet that people with higher-than-normal levels of empathy and an outgoing attitude are more inclined to work social jobs than solitary jobs. Would you disagree with that?
But that wasn't the comparison to begin with. The implicit comparison was with people who have a lack of empathy and social inclination due to neurodevelopment disorder, and normal people. Now if we change that comparison to people in general -- on average normal -- who can either be inclined to be people-oriented or not, then this becomes a whole other question. Not even objectionable anymore!
I thought that we were about to move beyond viewing people who choose to, or somehow have less talent for, being social as being underdeveloped in some way[1]. Apparently not. Do we ever hear about extra talkative or otherwise people-oriented people being deficit in some way? No, of course not. Such people are just good, normal people. Apparently people with some kind of high intellect (not that all such people have that) must have traded something else in some way, but people who are people-focused are just well-rounded and overall fantastic. Maybe we should also discuss one of those ridiculous tropes about how some high-powered jobs are "filled"[2] with people who are apparently sociable and outgoing, but really are sociopaths. Right? No one would ever be offended by that.
[1] In the sense of being medically diagnosed with autism.
[2] Again: it's the relative quantity that makes these discussions absurd. Certainly without any extraordinary evidence to back them up.
When I first entered the workplace as a programmer, I was not taken as seriously as I might have been because I was so young. I got my first programming job at 16, and even when I started doing major consulting gigs across the country at 19, I looked really young for my age. One client remarked, upon meeting me, "You don't look old enough to operate a car, much less our computer." It was always a challenge for me to get people to evaluate my ideas based on their merit rather than their source, and to evaluate me based on my work product, rather than where they were at in their career when they were my age.
I have worked for myself for many years now, but if I sought employment elsewhere, I'd probably face some difficulties because I'm much older than the average developer, and people would assume that I'm stuck in old technologies as many professional developers my age are.
But the truth is that unfounded discrimination happens all the time in the workplace, for all kinds of reasons. Almost nowhere is a true meritocracy. At one place I worked, even when I was at the perfect average age for software developers, and white, and male, even then I was cut out of the circle of the key developers. It was because the developers, owner, and key management liked to stop working many days around 10:30am and start drinking heavily, maybe stopping back by the office briefly some time in the afternoon, then go back to drinking steadily the rest of the day until 6 or 7 pm. I didn't really do that with the same kind of endless enthusiasm that they did. I didn't fit in very well.
If you find a group of people that accept you the way you are, and evaluate you based on the work you do, you've found gold. If mere excellence is the currency of the realm, and all they want from you is to be the best you can be, then that's a glorious place to be. But finding such a place is very rare. It's hard to find that in a workplace, a church, a group of friends, or anywhere. And if you're struggling to find that, it's not entirely because of race, gender, age, or sexual orientation-- it's mostly because of people's basic nature.
The author got lucky and doesn't, or can't, feel bad about misogyny. This isn't true for everyone, nor should it be. I agree with the "feminists" that it's counterproductive to say that if more women were like you, misogyny wouldn't matter so much. Talking about "good" experiences as models is only productive when the difference between your experience and others' is the behavior of potential perpetrators, not the behavior of potential victims.
It's really weird when you're not allowed to feel what you feel just because people who share some trait with you have different experiences.
A whole class of people is facing an uphill battle in tech. This is undisputable, and we know that there IS real misogyny, etc. This lady comes along and says, "That's not my experience", which gets instrumentalized by everyone else (viz. this thread) to dismiss the problem.
It's fine to have her experience, but she should realize that by being vocal about it in the way she is, she's actively undermining the struggle of other women who DO face an uphill battle convincing people their struggle is real.
I have to admit, I never imagined the mindblindness of ASD could ever result in a misguided empathy article.
I think her offering her "advice" counterproductive, because not only does it not apply to most women in tech, who do not have the requisite ASD traits, it also makes it seem as if other women in tech who want to be accepted as theirselves are somehow mistaken in not taking her path. Worse, articles like this provide ammo to men who have zero desire to change, since they can now complain, "This woman's happy, why can't you be like her?"
The irony is that both groups of women want to be accepted as themselves, but Meredith is unaware how she already fits in to male tech culture, and how that partially eases her path. Also, given her ASD-ness, she's probably missed out on much subtle discrimination; it's easy to ignore discrimination you don't notice.
Also misogyny is not an act, so it cannot be perpetrated.
My experience with women in tech is that they are smart, strong, foul mouthed, sarcastic, heavy drinkers and awesome dirty joke storytellers. They are the creme de la creme.
In other words, they're "one of the guys."
Which kind of summarizes the whole problem -- women who want careers in tech who aren't naturally "one of the guys" either have to learn to pretend that they are, denying their entire personality in order to fit in, or find another line of work.
How is not being "one of the guys" a result of having been fucked up?
"Or there are a lot more men that can be "accepting of women's perspectives" but their upbringing and the culture imposed on them fucks them up?"
E.g., beliefs in being the sole breadwinner, beliefs that women are less suited for STEM work, that men are (or should be) superior to women, my workplace should be like my frat house, etc.
It's great for women that can be one of the guys (e.g., Meredith), but why is that a requirement to work in software?
Wouldn't a fairer summary of the whole problem include anyone of any gender who isn't naturally "one of the guys"?
NB I don't have the correct language to express this idea. I'm even concerned that I might be flat out misunderstood. Consult my own comment history to know where I stand.
NB I haven't heard of the author before nor read the apparent criticism.
---
The author is a hardcore coder on the autism spectrum and thus fits in well with the "nobody cares about your gender, race, nor creed--show me the code!" meme.
The author asks her critics to cease putting her down to push their own agendas. Okay.
But uh... Back to that meme. Is there any chance that the author is perhaps... A coder first and a person with a gender second? That's what the meme is about, right? In text mode, we're all just text generating entities, idea makers. (It really is beautiful--I grew up on IRC myself.)
But look, the internet isn't just textmode anymore, and it doesn't exist just in cyberspace anymore. Decisions coders make affect the--blah blah you all know this, software is eating.
So, maybe, just maybe, the hardcore-on-the-spectrum-practically-deterministic-themselves folks shouldn't be the only ones with commit-bits, hm?
I'm tired of writing this. To sum up: I'm glad for the author's successful life as a coder and yes folks should stop attacking her, but no, the existence of the author nor a hundred thousand more of her does not solve the "tech needs women" problem. Because--back to the meme--it's not really women we need. It's heart.
Because software is eating the world, "Made with love" needs to more than a marketing slogan. We need more coders that are emotionally brilliant! There is a large technical debt around "how software will alter the course of human history" and frankly it terrifies me that so many emotionally stunted devs are the primary authors.
Annnnnd there go my points. ;P
The best interpretation I can think of is building software which exploits user's emotional responses in order to gain acceptance and widespread usage (e.g. Zynga), but I'm not sure why this is something the world needs more of.
I'm not sure. I myself see the emotional landscape only dimly.
My life got a lot better when two things changed for me.
One: I accepted that some people around me ("that happened to be" female) were remarkably better than I am at understanding my motivations and predicting my behavior than I am. Same for third parties.
A fascinating aside: People (including me) are motivated more powerfully by emotions (like fear) when they aren't aware of them--and many people who don't think they don't experience strong emotions are really quite wrong.
And two: that the goals emotionally intelligent people set are worthwhile, even thought they might sound like complete nonsense at first.
By allowing women into my life (not just the technically apt ones) my life was improved.
Note that I don't ask "how should I achieve X", I ask "what should my goal be in situation Z".
Setting goals? Maybe tactical, rather than strategic, goals. E.g., emotional intelligence may say "exploit tribalism to get users to feel loyalty towards us" (a tactical goal) which would help in achieving the strategic goal of having more users and lower churn.
In another reply, you suggest: "products need to be less harmful --> ... --> putting more emotionally competent people in the industry", but it's far from clear to me how the latter gets to the former. If anything, I'd suspect that emotionally competent people are better at building harmful products and exploiting flaws in the brain.
So, maybe, just maybe, the hardcore-on-the-spectrum-practically-deterministic-themselves folks shouldn't be the only ones with commit-bits, hm? [...] Because software is eating the world, "Made with love" needs to more than a marketing slogan.
If that is the way you want to frame this, I think your goals are tangential if not orthogonal to the conversation this blog speaks to. You're talking about products, most of the social topics rolling through social media and the tech news are about social interaction in and around development.
Obviously the developers are in a place to put their mark on a product, but that's quite different. They're generally not the decision makers on the product goals and feature set. And to the extent that they can influence the product, that topic has gone entirely unaddressed. Conversation has focused around about software team interaction.
But I don't see how that adds up to building a product "with heart." Some of the grossest software business models and anti-consumer practices come out of NorCal, the epicenter of the brand of progressive politics popular in these discussions.
A comically apt anecdote is of a Facebook employee. The name Facebook let a transgender individual use as their workplace ID was not good enough for Facebook's real name policy for end users. Of course Facebook fell all over themselves to fix it when they got bad press. But if any of the political movements in tech were even tangentially about the products getting built, it would have never been an issue. The business rule that developers were tasked with implementing would have never been commited, or never thought up in the first place.
Er, sorry. My train of thought was: products need to be less harmful --> the aggregate character of the the industry needs to change --> putting more emotionally competent people in the industry --> overcoming the gender-related conflict in the industry. Which, I think is the conversation.
As to developers cf. management... What sort of developer fails to think about the possible consequences a given product might have on the lives of people they will never meet? #cough#
Any developer on a project that doesn't have a formal analysis system for feeding thoughts about the lives of users into the product spec. And I mean beyond the "will it sell" sorts of analysis. So to answer your question: most.
I have worked on safety-critical systems, my train of thought goes: products need to be less harmful --> FMEA.
I actually look at it a bit like the way computer security can go overlooked. You can actively employ as many netsec hobbyists that spend their evenings hunting vulnerabilities, reading research and messing with security software as you want. And they might marginally increase the security of the software and systems, but the business has to decide to invest in security before they're allowed to focus on securing the system. Once the business has bought in, then you really don't need a huge cultural change towards security, just get enough guys to set up the quality systems, and then keep up with security analysis and reviews.
Edit: From a purely reductive standpoint, developers can tailor product to overseas markets with different cultures. As long as the business cares, and spends the effort to determining how to target a culture, the developers don't really matter.
edit: Downvotes again. I'm tired of trying to bring different viewpoints to these conversations. When you look around and find that everybody agrees with you don't assume it's because you've found the truth, it's simply because you've driven away everybody who disagrees with you.
Empathy is about seeing it both sides. It's not about everyone else making you feel welcome and comfortable.
* "...posted an idea for a new feature to the developers’ mailing list for an open-source project...[but on list she had no access to, it was] dismissed the idea out of hand because a woman had proposed it." The feature only became available because she had the opportunity to implement it in such a way that it became a "rousing success". (I should stop right here because that's about as damning an incident as I can come up with.)
* "...called the police in a foreign country to report an attempted rape at a conference, and argued with them when they told my friend that nobody would consider it assault since they’d both been drinking."
* "...thwarted a wannabe PUA at a conference completely by accident" by "a blazingly single-minded focus on whatever topic I happen to be perseverating on at the moment".
Now, I don't want to seem to be saying that she's wrong to feel as she does, or that her experiences are somehow invalid, or that she's in "denial" as some idiot put it. I'm not. Really. It works for her and others, and I think she would admit it doesn't work for everyone.
On the other hand, I don't think her suggestion of, "What I’ve got, and what I wish the rest of the 'women in tech' community who rage against the misogyny they see everywhere they look could also have, is a blazingly single-minded focus on whatever topic I happen to be perseverating on at the moment," is a workable approach.
Most of the people I know can't ignore those sorts of things and can't be satisfied "...literally [doubling] over laughing at how nonplussed he must have been to see it not only implemented, but implemented to rousing success." Most of the people I know don't want to.
(Ok, here's an internet-reasoning hypothetical for you: I know a lot of geeks who use the term "sportsball"; I believe many of them have this sort of antipathy because they faced some kind of abuse from the sportsball players of the world. Would you, assuming you're one of such, be willing to ignore that abuse because you were passionately interested in baseball or (American) football---both of which have fascinating statistical stories to tell, by the way?)
Now, me, I'm a right cranky, misanthropic rat-bastard and I can certainly single-mindedly focus on whatever interests me at the moment (early Mesopotamian and Near Eastern history, abstract algebra and programming languages, and natural language processing at the moment, fwiw), but I don't want to hang around a community that is casually abusive to anyone, even if it isn't me. And, damn it, maybe I want the goddamn feature that didn't get implemented because the idea was dismissed because of who suggested it.
I notice from some of the other comments that there are those who believe that the single-minded focus is the royal road to success in tech. It's not. How many people do you know who have the focus but aren't successful? (This isn't really an example because he is successful enough that you know his name, but has anyone read Chuck Moore's blog lately?) And how many people do you know who are successful but aren't especially focused---maybe because they didn't have to swim upstream against incidents like Patterson's? (Anyone remember the old Ruby community?) Further, by the way for those of you in the startup community, you probably don't want total focus on tech to be the ultimate. People like that are very easy to take advantage of.
I don't necessarily agree, but she may not be wrong.
But that hardly seems optimal.
Her and I could be friends.
Now that's a woman I respect. Instead of whining around, she just implements it. Suckerpunched the misogynist.
You will see how much easier your life becomes if you stop complaining and start doing. That's also how you earn respect.
You don't even know your "stop complaining and start doing" solution will work. Since the anti-female bias isn't rationally based on women's ideas/work to begin with, what makes you think it will be any more rational when she produces better ideas/work? Some men may accept her, but grudgingly. Others may find their ego threatened and react even worse.
Weird.
In the real world, the subconscious belief that women aren't as good at tech is widespread, and access to studies demonstrating a lack of gender-based differences in ability is not. In such a world, managers with unexamined biases believe they are justified in paying women less and down-weighting their ideas and work. Plus, until the spread of the bias decreases, no company is at a relative disadvantage for having it.
'citation needed'
When I work with females who do the work, and don't turn into weird drama queens, they get equivalent respect and reward as the guys.
People sometimes get afraid that a female will not be normal at work, and instead reveal herself as some kind of angry, complaining, entitled SJW who believes she is entitled to unearned respect or accolades. (To be fair, guys can show this too, but usually they are shut down faster and harder, because they don't have the "but I'm a girl" card.)
Way to diss the authors' intelligence.
She self-identifies as ASD, and the problems of ASD people with emotional perception/empathy/mindblindness/etc are very well-documented.
Would you rather take coding advice from the person who wrote a ball of mud in PHP, or John Carmack?
Depends on what I'm doing. Maybe I'm indeed going to write some ball of mud (unmaintainable, one-off, but perhaps faster to write) PHP code? I reject your hero worship.
I know a couple of women who did the same thing. They were totally awkward nerds during their childhood and teen years, but as adults, they are highly respected software engineers.
If you don't enjoy programming and you start with the premise of thinking of it as "work", and you are so worried about what other people think of you, and you are worried about how much more work you are going to have to do compared to your peers or blah blah blah, you won't go far in the field.
Software engineering isn't a field where you can "complain your way to the top". Your work will speak for itself, and your peers will judge you by that work. Sure, there might be a couple of bad apples spoiling the bunch, but that hasn't been my personal experience. Every competent female programmer I've met has been idolized and welcomed into the community like a rare and extremely valuable unicorn.
There isn't an above-baseline sexism among long-term professional programmers. Sure, there are bad apples, but the culture that you'll find at a gray-haired research lab or even a more traditional, supposedly conservative, enterprise shop is not nearly as exclusionary as the supposedly progressive and new Silicon Valley culture.
By stereotype, you'd expect 60-year-old men writing elevator controllers in Indiana to be far more sexist and exclusionary than 25-year-olds in California. It ain't true. First of all, someone who's 60 now was born in 1955 and has no meaningful memories of the bad old days; by the time he or she was starting a career, women were already in the workforce and it was accepted by many as a good thing. Second, if you control for education, the age vs. exclusionary behavior correlation goes away. Third, most people actually get more mature with age, and while there are some who mature at a lesser rate than society advances and become the "racist grandparent" trope, I don't think that it's the norm. (Also, American society's rate of advancement has slowed in the past 30 years compared to the 30 before that, but that's another topic.) Fourth, anyone who thinks the dominant Silicon Valley culture is still liberal has been asleep for 20 years.
That's not to say that private sector tech doesn't have a sexist, exclusionary culture. It does. It doesn't come from the programmers (although there are individual programmers who are assholes and keep it going). Rather, it comes from the mainstream business culture (MBA culture) that colonized us. In fact, the sexism of the Damasos (see: https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/vc-istan-8-t... ) who are sent West to boss nerds around is a lot more severe than that of the mainstream MBA culture. Banks might make it harder for women to advance; venture capitalists, on the other hand, will outright hit on them and threaten to "pick up a phone" and make them unfundable if they don't acquiesce.
You know how when a criminal gang kicks out some of its underperforming members and they form a new gang, the upstart young gang is typically more violent than the one it splintered off from? The sexism of the VC bros and the Spiegel types they fund is analogous. The demigods of the Valley are people who got kicked out of mainstream business culture because they weren't smart enough to do statistical arbitrage at hedge funds, so they were sent West to man this colonial outpost (from the MBA-culture perspective) called Silicon Valley. As MBA-culture failures, it's not surprising that they amplify some of that culture's worst traits, and that they've created a dominant culture in Silicon Valley that is (a) very negative and (b) far worse than the more superficially conservative (no sandals at work) but generally professional culture you see in more traditional companies, including the ones doing (say) hardware work and low-level programming, the latter of which seems to be the OP's interest.
She had a positive experience because she was hanging around Real Technologists, who aren't nearly as sexist as the Silicon Valley wunderkinder. The Shanleys of the world aren't complaining about 55-year-old men who still say "Oriental" (meaning no harm, and not holding racist views) but are generally professional and not very sexist (many are married and have daughters). They're complaining about 22-year-olds who get funded to the gills because they were in the same rape frat as a leading VC, and who go on to create horrible work cultures.
My point is that programmers and technologists, as a group, aren't inclined to be worse than the general population. (Most programmers are pretty damn supportive of women getting into the industry and being treated as well as men.) However, the dominant culture is Silicon Valley isn't set by programmers ("nerds") but by the people sent West by the mainstream business culture to boss nerds around. That particular set of people (the colonial overseers) is across-the-board awful, and they've taken the waning casual sexism of the MBA-culture world (meeting a client, or celebrating a good day at the trading desk, at a strip club) and leveled it up into something a lot worse, and that's what we see in the Valley. It's authentic misogyny but it comes from the top. Your typical young engineer is just an average nerd; not a misogynist.
Sad that you're downvoted. I don't have much perspective to judge the veracity of your interpretation, but it seems perfectly plausible. I wonder which invisible boundaries of narrative you've been punished for crossing.
How many women who were working in the 70s and 80s have you talked to about this.
The generations that were most aggressive about pushing women out of the workforce were past peak by 1980 and have all but vanished today. That doesn't mean that there isn't sexism and that there aren't rotten individuals, as in every generation; but my point is that even the people we consider old for full-time work (65-70) are Baby Boomers who came later and who were either very early in their careers or still in school during the bad old days when "woman" meant "secretary".
Is there sexism in tech? Yes. Is it condoned by the majority? No. Is it generally called out when it happens? Yes.
These people don't need to be derided, ignored, or educated. It wont work. They need healing.
>[ ... ] much of the backlash from weird nerds against “brogrammers” and “geek feminists” alike. (If you thought the conflict was only between those two groups, or that someone who criticises one group must necessarily be a member of the other, then you haven’t been paying close enough attention.) Both groups are latecomers barging in on a cultural space that was once a respite for us, and we don’t appreciate either group bringing its cultural conflicts into our space in a way that demands we choose one side or the other. That’s a false dichotomy, and false dichotomies make us want to tear our hair out.
Also, I'm not sure I'm seeing the "predictable comments" that you are.
I caught that as well. The ritualized combat the GP assumed was there actually isn't.
GP basically burst into the AV club and shouted a rejoinder to an insult that wasn't given. Debate club is just down the hall. Go bother those people, GP.