

Women Had Nothing to Do with the Founding of the Web, Says Mashable - kinlane
http://www.audreywatters.com/2010/07/04/women-had-nothing-to-do-with-the-founding-of-the-web-says-mashable/

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chc
This article is what they used to call "putting the cart before the horse."
She starts out with the assumption that women must have been just as
influential in creating the modern Web, based on that assumption condemns this
other woman (!) for her patriarchal views, and then — still working from her
original assumption — offers a list of women who should have been included.
The fact that none of these women had much to do with creating the Web is
irrelevant, because it's an a priori fact that women deserve to be on the
list.

It's basically an unintentional reductio ad absurdum.

I'm all for giving credit where credit is due. I think Ada Lovelace should be
an inspiration to all hackers. But she had nothing to do with the Web. Trying
to shoehorn women into a list that no woman rightfully belongs on is desperate
at best and patronizing at worst.

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gxti
Every time someone brings up "exclusionary language" or calls a word sexist, I
roll my eyes and long for feminists to collectively declare victory and leave
the field so humanity as a whole can move on.

Young women aren't put off by the phrase "founding fathers", not even the
tiniest bit. Maybe the root cause of the gender imbalance is biological or
maybe it's political, but the one thing I'm certain of is that pieces like
this only serve to reinforce perceptions of inequality. Do something positive
instead -- get kids involved in engineering and computer science.

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benwr
Someone kick me if this isn't progressive enough, but I don't think any of the
women listed really should have been on the list. The others are figureheads
for web-focused projects. None of the women listed (with the exception of
Sally Floyd, whom I've never heard of. I might just be ignorant) were really
at all involved directly with the web. Even Java isn't primarily a web
platform.

I'm more disturbed that those are the best examples the poster can come up
with. Are there other women who really should have been listed in the article?
If so, terrific. If not, why not? Is there an underlying problem with the
hacker image that should be fixed?

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ojbyrne
It's a pathetic list, and proves the opposite of what it intended to.
Basically women aren't generally willing to devote their lives to the kind of
intellectual pursuits that 90% of the time end up with you being poor,
downtrodden, old and alone. They just play the odds better. They give up the
top 10% to avoid the bottom 10%. And then they write articles about how
they're excluded from the top 10% because of their gender.

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M_Sanger
"Basically women aren't generally willing to devote their lives to the kind of
intellectual pursuits that 90% of the time poor, downtrodden, old and alone."

But women are totally willing to devote their lives to the kind of pursuits
like caring for the children, sick, and elderly in their family that 90% of
the time result in them being poor, downtrodden, old, and alone. They just
play the odds better by doing work and not getting paid for it. And then on
top of that, they write articles about how it sucks. These women are getting
out of control!

I think the list was right to include only men. But your idea that women
aren't willing to devote their lives to intellectual pursuits 90% of the time
is disgusting. Most people only paid for their sons to be educated. What kind
of intellectual pursuits from 90% of women would you expect to magically
appear from that scenario? Now that it's acceptable for women to be educated.
They make up 55% of college students, so we can probably expect more
contributions in the future. Sure computer science and engineering are
severely lagging, and it will take some time and effort to introduce that
field to more women, but it's not because "women aren't willing to devote
their lives to those kinds of intellectual pursuits"

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tzs
That was pretty dumb. She finds most troubling the omission of the woman who
was project manager for Java. If Java were to be represented on the list, in
what universe would the project manager be the person to represent it, as
opposed to say someone like Gosling?

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jgrahamc
Strange article. She appears to argue for her own title and against the notion
that women were involved in founding the web by presenting a lame and
irrelevant list of geek ladies.

Given that the mashable list included the LiveJournal founder she'd have been
safer suggesting Caterina Fake than Kim Polese.

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grasshoper
Her list is ridiculous. The male equivalent would be Alan Turing, Dennis
Ritchie, Steve Wozniak, a guy who worked on TCP, and, I dunno, Guido Van
Rossum's boss or something. The true founders of the internet.

The original list is kinda silly too. Three spots for PHP? Really? PHP is
important, but not _that_ important and shouldn't even be above JavaScript
anyways.

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lleger
This article is indicative of a culture that has become far too focused on
being "politically correct" and less focused on everything else. Seriously?
This is ridiculous. "Founding fathers" is neither elitist nor sexist. It's a
phrase that doesn't evoke any sex at all — it simply means a person who helped
start something. Please, just grow up.

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jkmcf
Ironically, the Mashable article is written by a woman, though who knows how
much control she had over the list and title.

