The big story over the weekend.
The exit of engineer Julie Ann Horvath from programming network GitHub has sparked yet another conversation concerning women in technology and startups. Her claims that she faced a sexist internal culture at GitHub came as a surprise to some, given her former defense of the startup and her internal work at the company to promote women in technology.
We know we have to take action and have begun a full investigation. While that’s ongoing, and effective immediately, the relevant founder has been put on leave, as has the referenced GitHub engineer. The founder’s wife discussed in the media reports has never had hiring or firing power at GitHub and will no longer be permitted in the office.
Sounds like too much drama. Also sounds like the founders wife has no life except the office. Plus, never date a co worker.
reads like some insane office drama.
Some of her “claims” are a wee bit ridiculous though: “The final straw for Horvath came when she saw men gawking at women who were hula-hooping at the office.” Really? You have people hula-hooping at work you get offended and feel (her words) “unsafe” because others are watching it? REALLY? Paranoid much?
Then again, this same woman found the word “Meritocracy” on a rug offensive ( http://www.businessinsider.com/githubs-ceo-ditches-meritocracy-rug-… )… you couldn’t make this stuff up.
If my job was thanks to affirmative action I’d find that rug offensive too!
It’s too bad really, that rug really tied the room together. <ba-dum-tss>
Both hula-hooping and gawking at women in a professional environment sound inappropriate in my opinion.
But you and I (of course) don’t know the whole story.
If hot chicks are going to hula hoop, I’m going to gawk. It’s what I do
Me too.
They would be offended if you don’t
That’s true. However I doubt we’ll ever know the whole picture. You KNOW GitHub is just going to do some PC PR damage control and the rest will be behind closed doors.
The best thing about a GitHub scandal is that all the background information is available online, and you can fork it and add your own details to make it better!
Hoola-hooping is *INTENDED* to be sexy; the undulation reminds of sex. Men like sexy things, it’s not wrong, it is nature! If you don’t want men to gawk at you, you should certainly not do hoola-hooping in their presence, in the office or elsewhere.
If you wear sexy clothes or hoola-hoop and men pinch your ass or talk you dirty unasked, that is harassment. If they only stare in amazement/admiration/disgust, that’s life.
Is it in the corporate dresscode to wear short and tight dress and high heels ? What’s for ? Distingues/separate more easily men from women ?
Kochise
It’s so that we can detect the asshole sociopaths more easily.
Edited 2014-03-18 10:15 UTC
I understand why they found it offensive, do you? Its like Mohammad Ali declaring himself the greatest before he knocked out Sonny Liston. He wasn’t the greatest, it was just a cheap title he gave himself that made him feel better. That’s what the rug was. It was an affirmation based on preserving the egos of everyone who saw it.
It would be okay if it were aspirational, as in “we are building a meritocracy” instead of declarative “We have built a meritocracy”.
“The tech industry isn’t still predominantly white and male because white men are better at their jobs than everyone else, it’s because many white men have had more opportunities to succeed than their minority and female counterparts.”
Can’t believe my eyes, this is completely, utterly insane.
Has USA really come to this?
So yeah… Can’t read the story.
Just remove the last space. Here is a correct link: http://techcrunch.com/2014/03/15/julie-ann-horvath-describes-sexism…
Edited 2014-03-17 19:30 UTC
Thanks… The “boy’s club” stuff seems totally plausible. The rest… well ONE of these two women is crazy.
Let’s wait for more details.
Edited 2014-03-17 19:31 UTC
Well, i got also female co-workers and i kinda hate it.
I dont hate them but i hate it how they think they were treaded badly when they are treaded equal.
When business is on fire and we got loads of work to do and lot of people yell at each other and you can basically smell the nerdy testosterone (IT is still a more male populated sector). When a guy whines about his task the most likely answer he gets is: “Shut the fuck up and get your ass to work.” and that works most of the time. No hard feelings. If the girls get yelled at or are ordered to perform their tasks (And they get it told nicely) they feel mistreaded and whine a whole week how evil everyone is.
Same when there is less work and we guys goof around. The girls are easily offended.. for NOTHING.
We do expect people to do their job professionally. I dont care if the task is done by a black disabled women with asian and russian parents as long the job is done in a timely and accurate way. Nor will i diffame her in any way because i simply dont give a shit.
But i do get the impression that many women think the job is a pony farm and being treaded equal (With the same respect and paycheck as an equal qualified male worker) means some guy holds the umbrella when shit hits the fan.
Of curse then again there are exceptions, but this is what i see daily for most part of it.
I wonder what horrors must a male worker in a womens domain suffer…
None. I can know.
Hehe,
I also cant think of anyone. Because they are either gay and enjoy it or they dont give a shit (male nature).
Actually when my wife tells me about how they bitchfight at work.. it is stuff i would never ever care about or get worked up about.
You’re describing here possibly one of the least professional environments I’ve heard of.
Sounds like significant harassment and aggression which is entirely inappropriate in a work setting.
It was a bit exaggerated (not much tho) and peaks.
Well, we are working in the IT but we are not keyboard fairies. We are working with masses of hardware and it has a lot of a a warehouse flair (Fixing, Refurbishment, Customer requests). It would be more inappropiate in a more office like enviroment, but with us it is rather casual. Either you can go with such enviroments or you cant, either gender. I dont see issues with professionalism if you have to take out the whip from time to time. This is fairly common in small businesses. I heard this often.
I actually switched my job (because of better payment) and where i go is a complete different enviroment. The people are very distanced and rather calm about everything and it seems like everyone is a stranger to each other. Im really looking forward to see how this works out and where the stress will come from and how the conflicts arise and escalate.
At my old working place the most stress came from time pressure, and you got more pressure with the whip. It was always very reliving and also very celebrated when the job was done. I kinda liked it, because the team was working very well together and we managed to do often what was considered “impossible” by customers.
In Idle times, there was a lot of fun and i will miss my colleagues a lot. We might have yelled a lot, got yelled a lot but we trusted and relied on each other.
Not necessarily. It could have been just a well integrated team that dispensed with bullshit and people knew they could be “frank” with each-other. I think it’s a good environment for small companies although it might be intimidating to an outsider at first.
All I know is I’d take that over a workplace with a PC komissar with a chip on a shoulder around every corner looking for things to get offended about (Adria Richards fiasco anyone?).
Elementary school teachers. First comment.
http://abcnews.go.com/Health/men-teach-elementary-school/story?id=1…
The work culture you described is simply horrible. It’s not a norm by any means.
Nah, what you’ve described is just plain poor or utterly lacking professional conduct. Your anecdote only presents evidence that you work at a shitty place, if anything.
You know what, it’s been several years since I’ve worked with a female colleague in IT. Even if there’s discrimination, it just doesn’t seem like discrimination could possibly account for such a large discrepancy. I don’t think there are many females who are very interested in software engineering to begin with, for whatever reason. Frankly the bulk of the work needed by businesses is rather mundane even if you enjoy software engineering like I do.
Extrapolating from your story…none. They’d be the kind of annoying, privileged minority that you hate so much.
Edited 2014-03-18 05:20 UTC
I understand perfectly: You don’t understand how women work and as a consequence you and your coworkers aren’t getting the best production out of them. You mistakenly think that being equal in dignity means equal in treatment. It doesn’t.
I’d tell you how to change your approach in general, but it really depends on the individuals you work with. I would suggest watching various media ( movies, tv shows, books, ect) that women enjoy that also depict strong female characters. You have to do your research in an egoless way, if you go into it with a strong bias that this is all BS you’d just waste your time.
I used to work as a temping secretary, so I’ve seen this from the other side. Interestingly, the women in whose domain I worked were almost exclusively friendly and welcoming (though intrigued as to how I’d ended up in the typing pool).
The men in the office, though, often found it difficult to know how to cope: I was “one of them”, but working in the low-status female part of the building rather than being with the men in sales or financial advice or whatever. They were often awkward and (interestingly) in one place you could see them treating my female colleagues differently after a bit simply because I’d given the office gender roles a good stirring.
None of which is to say that it can’t be hard the other way around, but my suspicion is that the male->female status hierarchy is the reason why women generally get sexism worse in the workplace (and why complaints about it can cause entitled outrage).
Regardless of the specifics of this case, if you can’t see that the IT industry is in large parts a really annoying, immature boys club you’re in denial.
Edited 2014-03-18 04:54 UTC
Soulbender,
Yes, but what’s the cause? I’m somewhat near to NYC which is supposedly the country’s mixing pot, yet I don’t know any females who are even interested in IT. There were maybe 5-10% in our CS program, in the business world I might guess 1/100. Is that just our culture or genetics? Even as a parent it’s difficult to be certain why kids develop as they do.
I’d have to say culture to a large part. I have a hard time seeing genetics factor into it much. It’s like that old adage “women can’t drive” which every sane person know by now to be bull but at some point a lot of people actually thought it to be true. Women didn’t drive because it was discouraged by society and by the general attitude towards women drivers etc etc but over time more and more started to drive and by now there are as many female drivers as male. There was nothing genetic about it.
But regardless of the cause, the “good old boys club” mentality for sure isn’t helping bringing more women into IT.
Medicine was a “boys only club”. Women were relegated to being nurses but now there are many female doctors? Where is the difference?
The difference is obvious, medicine is no longer as much of a boys club as it used to be (although that may be debatable) while IT is still largely a boys club.
I don’t really see what point you’re trying to make.
It’s not like IT needs any particular physical habilities to carry on patients. Girls are good as boys at school, if not better, so why no much women in the IT ? I mean, it’s almost their dream job where their skills and logic fits perfectly.
Kochise
I am asking why medicine changed and IT didn´t.
Because in some religions, a men, even if he’s the med in charge, cannot touch a woman patient. So there had to be women meds as well.
In IT though, it’s mostly the “better not let women touch a keyboard” mindset that remains
Kochise
In addition to what Kochise said, Medicine is also a much older profession than IT so they’ve had much longer to change. IT is still a new profession with a long way to go.
The good old times when you had to be both chauffeur and mechanic?
Usually female drivers don’t fix or tinker with their vehicles, the few that do end up on the nightly news as the token cute story. The photogenic ones..
The few female hardcore techs I know aren’t girly girls and almost shunned by their own sex for their I don’t give a shit attitude. Nature, nurture or both?
Who’s talking about tinkering? I’m talking about driving. Tinkering and driving are two different things and how good you are at one is does not determine how good you will be at the other.
Yeah, and what does THAT say about our culture?
ummmm….
That we have a standard of beauty – like every other culture I can think of?
Did I win the prize?
no, it’s genetics
you can predict what kind of profession (sozial or technical) someone will pick up by measuring the testosterone-level of the unborn baby
Gattaca ?
Kochise
educate yourselfe:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p5LRdW8xw70
in the wake of it the gender-institute at the university of oslo was closed down
I’ll see that later, thanks for the link.
BTW, educate yourself(X) <- no ‘e’ there
Kochise
Aah, Hjernevask (Brainwash) – Sweden’s national broadcaster even refused to air the show so it has to be good
Soulbender,
Before having kids, I did think that too, now I’m not so sure. My daughter developed stereotypical gender characteristics well before I would have thought she could have been exposed to it. I was a stay at home dad, so she spent most time with me and I certainly didn’t steer her into the princess things she likes, so I cannot explain her preferences. I believe this in general surprises many parents; how children will get personalities so different from their own.
I’ve never heard of this “women can’t dive” adage, but that seems extremely sexist at face value.
I’m not really convinced they’d want to. Whatever discrimination and intimidation there could be in the workforce, I think most will already have an inclination (or not) directly out of school where females do better than males.
http://www.businessinsider.com/why-do-girls-get-better-grades-even-…
http://www.redorbit.com/news/science/1112757027/girls-do-better-in-…
Edited 2014-03-18 14:16 UTC
it does seem sexist, but there is quite some truth in it
i don’t know whats the cause for it, but at least here in austria women have trouble with trafic priority (particularly priority to the right)
frau am steuer, ungeheuer ;p
Maybe it’s because they’re Austrian…
Your point is furthered when you realize all the posters in this thread thus far are males…
The tech sector suffers the dissonance of being an advanced field populated by so many people with definitively retrograde, or ill adjusted, attitudes.
Is that a bad thing though? This “immature boys club” gets shit done all the time after all. I’m not a big fan of this “we need more women in IT because we need more women in IT” mantra. If they have the skill they’ll find their place just fine. The problems start when you have these token diversity officers/professional victims like Adria Richards doing nothing but stirring shit up over jokes.
Yes, because it prevents people with valuable skills and new ideas from entering the IT sector.
Ever been on an IT project? Yeah, lets not get into how “efficient” the IT sector is….
That’s a rather naive outlook. People tend to avoid working in places that makes them uncomfortable, especially when it is because of their sex or race.
It’s also a problem when a bunch of sexist, immature assholes ruins an industry.
These days? I don’t buy that. In startup companies? You have new ideas? Start working on them! That’s what startups are. What’s the issue here?
The big corporations already one-up each other on how “diverse” they are. Being a woman or minority opens lots and lots of doors to scholarships and internships that those “evil privileged white males” don’t get.
I’d say it’s efficient enough, but let’s say it’s not – how is “more women in IT” going to solve that problem?
Like the dongle joke guys? Man, how will IT ever recover from that? It’s ruined, let’s go home.
Just because you can spell a word correctly it does not necessarily mean you comprehend the concept said word represents…
Remins me of http://www.osnews.com/story/26877/How_dongle_jokes_got_two_people_f…
Should we really gets this served once a year ? “Meritocracy” is an issue ? Come on…
Why so much fuzz for ‘feeling’ offended ? Do like men do : “Yo man, whatzup with you, wanna fight ? So STFU !” and… its done.
Kochise
Edited 2014-03-18 07:41 UTC
I am seeing a very public push back from such retrograde thinking even in professional sports like football.
When the founder’s wife has to be banned from the office because her harassment of women in the office has become so toxic management has no choice, you know that things have spun out of control.
Medicine is also a much older profession than IT
Did anyone else think “the oldest profession” which seems to be dominatrixed by women?
Medicine became industrialized.
IT and other things require a form of aggressiveness which Testosterone helps with. When disease was a literal battle for the life of the patient, it required a different disposition. Oh, and women can drive – my mother was of the era when it wasn’t expected, but she was in the red cross for WW2 so knew how to do basic maintenance. But changing a tire in the rain would make the most ardent feminist play the role of the poor weak woman rather than get dirty and muddy and have to fidget with the nether region of the car’s trunk.
Personally, I’d love to leave sex entirely out of IT, computers, and engineering. But that means the LGBTQ crowd would have to cease screeching and waving rainbow flags in my face. (I’m libertarian, live and let live, but that isn’t enough for many). Dress according to the level and leave your personal life for the hours you are not working.
As to women, or men for that matter, go to codility.com or similar site and get certified, and I will respect your demonstrated ability.
tomz,
I went there out of curiosity, I filled the form with bogus values (I feel entitled to do so when a site doesn’t let you learn what it’s about BEFORE registering, grr). However, I came upon this screen, note that the registration form lacks a submit button after an error. Hitting Enter doesn’t work either.
http://i.imgur.com/NtfUzu6.png
Oops! I find it hilariously ironic that a service intending to test a candidate’s coding aptitude has such a basic bug. I presume I could clear my cookies and start over again, but I’ve suddenly lost interest. It doesn’t instill much confidence in their own ability to select quality candidates…
Edit: Or perhaps the joke is on me, and the test is figuring out how to register, which would be a funny test
Edited 2014-03-19 02:34 UTC
Yes, y’all (with a few exceptions) are a fine example of why women aren’t welcome in the tech industry. The most sexist remarks get the most upvotes, noone seems to understand the real issue, and given the self described behaviour quite a lot of you are a bunch of asshole douchebags. I bet y’all think @everydaysexism is a load of bullocks as well. Sad. Deeply, deeply sad.
Hello jal_, regarding our past conversation ( http://www.osnews.com/thread?556695 ) regarding misogynist behaviors, I searched the web for more occurrence. While I sure do sound “miso”, I’ve been raised by my mostly feminist mother in between my two older and younger sisters.
I found this :
http://www.feministfrequency.com/2012/07/image-based-harassment-and…
http://cafaitgenre.org/2013/03/16/sexisme-chez-les-geeks-pourquoi-n…
There is obviously several other examples, compulsory of the 4chan attitude that I condemn.
I’d like to add this :
It is said, amongst men, that “a hole is a hole, a dick has no eye” to say that even an ugly woman can be served to men. This! is a sexist joke, far beyon the “dongle” comment that infuriated Aria. To this the guys would have deserved the ban, but not with a silly dongle joke. There is a level of measure to be taken, and the red button is not one of them.
Aria was not threatened the way Anita Sarkeesian was.
So, that leads to what I wanted to explore with you. As a coder, I had to work with coder… girls, that were even better at coding logic than I was. I had them in great respect, relating to them as very competent colleague, sexually unrelated. They were very few, but very efficient. They can only work with smart people that elude the sexual tension and recognize them as coworkers.
Unfortunately, it’s not a common conception, and men overall prefer to follow the Christian stereotype to put the woman at raising kids and cooking the meals. If I recall correctly, at school the top level students were mostly girls, so that’s maybe a hint. Keeping women at house is perhaps a subconscious strategy to avoid to face competent and effective female coworkers that might put them to shame.
Now the conclusion : like it is said that “penis has no eye”, it is also said that “money has no odor”. The final consumer is unaware if the product was conceived, produced, manufactured and sold by men, women or even kids (Nike shoes). Soooooo…
What if a company is settled up entirely from female workers and coworkers, create so much successful products that put to shame the (male based) competition ? That would be a significant proof.
It reminds me a bit the way some firms are rotten with unions. I’m not against unions, I’m unionized myself, but some unions or unionized workers are beyond logic and/or reasonable : they want everything for nothing (French plague). When an union works for the comfort of the workers without causing trouble to the firm, that’s cooperative work, and Chuck Norris approves that.
So, maybe to make laws to favor some undeserved positions to women, I just say : STOP ! If a woman is more competent than a man at the same position, the logic would be to chose the woman, isn’t it ? True, reality ain’t always drove by logic.
Women should take a realistic stance instead to try to occupy positions amongst men. Beside irritating everyone with their (often valid) claims they should just play with the (tricky) system and just show they have… balls, if not favor female positions in their company, since there is no law to specifically favor mens.
That’s my two euro cents.
Kochise
Actually, what Sarkeesian did was trollbait 4chan, pulled a “damsel in distress” (help me internets! t3h 4chans are saying mean things!), setup a kickstarter and laughed all the way to the bank.
Edited 2014-03-19 12:26 UTC
Thank you for exemplifying the problem, once again.
I know, having an opinion not in line with PC hivemind is probably “deeply problematic”. Also, anything other than high praise about any woman ever is “sexism” and “misogyny”, also rape.
Go take your MRA drivel somewhere else, please.
While I’ll reply more indepth later, do you know this video by any chance? https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=V4UWxlVvT1A
Quite powerful, imho
Will see that later, but I don’t always believes in video propaganda. If they are the “majority”, they can make them heard another way. I can understand that you are protective toward your daughter, but don’t be biased.
When women are as competent as, if no more than men, no one dare to challenge them. Call this respect, submissiveness, cowardice, these kind of women inherently shadows the fact that they are females in the first place. They talk on a equal ground with their men collegues, customers, bosses…
Don’t worry, a lame man can also be the victim of quip, from men and also from those “fragile” women. Ever seen geek/nerd guys having hard time with (a) girl(s) ? Ooohh, suddenly those girls aren’t the poor little victims anymore and can play quite a harsh game with men.
Don’t get me wrong, on either side, stupidity can breaks records…
Kochise
Edited 2014-03-19 13:43 UTC
Please watch it. It’s French, and very good. It pictures a world where men are treated like women are in the real world, and vice versa. It’s food for thought.
And get sexist remarkt, aren’t taken seriously even if they are competent, have their (male) boss make inappropriate remarks, and so on and so forth.
Yes, humans suck. But that’s not the issue at hand. The specific issue is that the tech industry is male dominated and has a very high ratio of nasty men, making it very unwelcome for women.
Don’t make a specification for IT, men are nasty toward women not just in IT.
The french short was nice, but we see that the behavioral of the man doesn’t fits him. So do girls’ depicted behavioral. So in fact this is an evidence there are differences.
What’s your option to get everyone working hand-in-hand ?
Kochise
Absolutely true. It’s a problem everywhere. But IT seems to be an especially vicious place, somehow.
Well, “doesn’t fit him” is compared to current cultural stereotype. If we brought up our sons like our daughters, and vice-versa, I’m not sure you wouldn’t end up with something like that.
Cultural change. We must stop dividing the conceptual space into men and women, boys and girls. There’s too much overlap to justify that. Also, make men aware what they are doing when they tell a sexist joke they know can be overheard by a female collegue, or make advances towards a female co-worker. Similar to the campaign in Canada, that told men what is rape, and what is consent, and had rape numbers drop. Thus we can also educate men to stop being assholes, and eventually with a different mindset we can call out the truely vile mysoginists. But these will be slow changes. But we must start somewhere.
Gender theory applied ?
Kochise
There’s always worse. Always. But we don’t say to a brutally raped and beat-up woman “Remember that girl in India that was gangraped and her intestins poked out by an iron bar? So stop whining.” The dongle joke was a crude one, and not the worst. However, you can’t see that joke and the reaction free from context. Without context, it may be innocent. But in an environment where sexism seems to be the norm, it may be the last straw. Follow @everydaysexism on Twitter, even just for a few days, and see what women have to endure, day in, day out, every day. Then add to that a working enironment known for its sexism.
I’m against most forms of positive discrimination. But remember that when all things are equal, it wouldn’t be necessary. The tech industry proves time and time again to be very unwelcoming to women, because of the rampant sexism that even plagues this forum.
The system is fully and completely designed by, and for, men. It’s a male system. A menz system. A system where women are at a disadvantage from the start. Read for example this: https://medium.com/thoughts-on-society/a1345b36b91b for a very good metaphore. And worse, not only is it a system that disfavours women, it’s also a system that treats women like objects designed for male pleasure. And if you are a women, working in tech, fighting the misconceptions and the men favouring working conditions, *and* have to deal with co-workers making sexist jokes, sexual advances or even rape, and on top of it all you get rape threats for speaking out about it, I can only say we live in a rotten, rotten world.
I don’t follow you quite fully on this path. Do you think Angela Merkel is at her position for just being a woman ? Christine Lagarde for the IMF ? Hilary Clintown just because spouse of a former USA president ?
Nope, these girls have competences. I’ve told you, women can create their own network and business to show proofs, and label them “Made by women” to get almost automatic support by half the population.
Kochise
jal_,
From my experience, the low numbers of women in tech occupations seems to follow from low enrollment in IT/CS degrees, which seems to stem from low interest even in high school. One writer thinks sexism starts in the early school years.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ira-pramanick/why-girls-dont-like-tec…
An Australian study suggests self-segregation is at play causing females to dismiss CS careers up front:
http://acec2010.acce.edu.au/sites/acec2010.info/files/proposal/452/…
I have a bone to pick with the use of “misconception” here though. If anything I think Hollywood stereotypes CS as more glamorous than it is. The perception of CS as a “long hours on a computer, little social interaction, boring programming tasks” is actually true for many of us. We end up in dull cubical farms rather than the fancy windowed offices we aspire to. Consider this: I’ve never been to an office where the secretaries didn’t have a better office/surroundings than IT. Quite often the secretaries are stationed at well furnished entrances near the executive offices, meanwhile the lower ranks of IT workers almost always end up deep within the building’s dungeons, just because. I should not overgeneralize, some companies might splurge on fancy offices for their CS staff, but in my experience in the past 10 years that is the exception. So I couldn’t in good faith recommend CS as a career to anyone who fears the boring cubical farms.
In any case, regardless of whether the perception is true or not, I’m left to wonder why this perception of CS would affect prospective women differently than prospective men? In other words, why do men go into CS in spite of this perception, while women do not?
Well, sexism starts early, with toy store brochures labeling dolls and house cleaning equipment “for girls” and chemistry sets and telescopes “for boys”. Even LEGO has succumbed, see e.g. http://thesocietypages.org/socimages/2012/05/08/part-i-historical-p… (and part 2 linked from there). We can’t see interest in certain topics apart from the culture we live in. Remember that e.g. in India, there’s a 1:1 ratio in IT.
It starts way earlier, depending on the culture you live in. It’s way worth now than it used to be. In earlier times, all children were treated more or less equal. See e.g. this endearing photo of a US president: http://www.smithsonianmag.com/arts-culture/when-did-girls-start-wea…
That depends a lot on the country you work in, I guess. Here in the Netherlands, it’s unusual to find yourself in a Dilbert situation.
Culture. Cultural expectations, peer preasure, etc. But once the decision is made, women face a very hostile environment. And that’s bad.
jal_,
India? Maybe I’m completely misinformed, but don’t they have a reputation for violence towards women?
“The Abusive Men of India : The Most Violent and Sexist Society in the World”
https://talktank.wordpress.com/2011/03/08/the-abusive-men-of-india-t…
I recognize there’s a problem and I don’t wish to demean women’s equality. However I believe you are casting the net too far, and it snares those who would otherwise be allies in the fight for women’s rights.
Not to be insulting, but sometimes equality gets mistaken for sexism. Consider that some males regularly make fun of each other and sometimes get into rivalries that obviously have nothing to do with “sexism”, yet this identical male behavior directed towards a female suddenly becomes a sexist issue. Sometimes men have to treat women differently in order to not be sexist. It’s somewhat of a conflicting message.
I’m curious whether you see the goal as merely ending unequal treatment between sexes, or is to to fight male lewdness in general such that men would treat other men the way women want to be treated?
Edited 2014-03-20 20:12 UTC
Yes, it does. I’m not saying we should hold India as a lighting example of what we should do. But it shows that culture is an important factor for the attitude of women towards tech. (As for the attitude towards women in general in India, that’s very complicated because of caste, different cultures within India, the huge gap between city and country side, the elite and the poor, and so on.)
Perhaps. But don’t forget that the biggest problem with any type of “bad” behaviour (whether sexism, racism etc.) is the by-standers, those that smile or even laugh while someone cracks a sexist joke, those that look the other way when a guy inappropriatly hits on another woman – even though they wouldn’t do al that themselves, and even disapprove of it. That creates a culture where the few that misbehave set the tone and most people just go along. Calling that behaviour out, demonstrating how wrong it is (“no, it’s not funny to pinch a woman’s bottom to make her squeal, that’s sexual assault”), is the only way to change that culture. Every guy saying that women should “adapt” to sexism or “toughen up”, every guy that says a women “had it coming” “dressing like that”, every guy that looks the other way, is an accomplice in sustaining that culture, even if they would never engage in active sexism or misogyny.
Yes, of course! For exactly the same reason a black guy can call his pear a “nigger”, but you can’t (assuming you’re white). Guys can be assholes towards each other, but they are not using that to sytematically create an unwelcome atmosphere of sexual harassment. Again, you can’t see that apart from the current culture.
That depends. There is a baseline of normal, decent behaviour. If you know your collegue(s) well, you may cross that line, by making a joke or making fun of them. But that doesn’t mean you can always cross that line, or cross it the same way with all people. Knowing when to apply what social behaviour is difficult, but most people (those with ASD excluded) find that it comes largely natural.
Equal treatment. I’m not sure what culture you live in (apart from it being apparently in France), but I never have to deal with male lewdness, luckily.
In other words, “Geekophobia.”
http://arachnoid.com/evolution/#A_Modest_Proposal
But that would contradict the self-serving mythologies that prop up modern pop feminism, because it would mean that negative social pressures on women can come from other women – and not just from men. And we can’t have that!
I guess you mean that sarcastically, but don’t forget that e.g. FGM is mostly carried out by women, even though it’s the result of a heavily mysoginist male dominated culture.