
The Code-Breaking Women Who Unmasked Soviet Spies - axiomdata316
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/history/women-code-breakers-unmasked-soviet-spies-180970034/?no-ist
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DoctorOetker
>Into the 1970s, certain key Soviet wartime agents remained unidentified; even
then, only selected portions of nearly 3,000 messages had been read. Customer
agencies—the CIA, the FBI and agencies in the U.K.—wanted the messages mined
as long as they might yield something, but in 1978, the NSA evaluated the
likelihood of any more matches and decided to phase out the program within two
years.

If it's declassified, are the raw cipher publically available (the decoded and
nondecoded ones)?

~~~
belorn
A common practice after the second world was that everything got burned in
order to prevent war from accidentally reigniting. Would be interesting to
know how much of that practice was used after the cold war.

~~~
DoctorOetker
it's often depicted in movies (hastily burning paperwork when the area is
being invaded), but I always thought this was to destroy evidence of any war
crimes.

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dingaling
Headline should read 'The female cypher-breakers who...'

I do hate such abuse of language. Would the Smithsonian have written 'a man
mathematician'? Of course not.

~~~
chongli
This has started to crop up because the term female has taken on negative
connotations. Similarly for girl. Thus woman is becoming the all-encompassing
word in a way that does not parallel the male terms.

~~~
oytis
Just curious: what are negative connotations of "female"? I'm not a native
speaker.

~~~
chongli
It's very subtle. "Females" is a term used for women in some of the seedier
corners of the internet. It implies grouping women with female animals rather
than grouping them together with men as human beings.

~~~
enriquto
I have read your comment several times and still fail to find any meaning to
it. Is it some sort of joke/sarcasm ?

~~~
chongli
It's completely sincere. I have seen it happen plenty of times. A quick search
and perusal of the headlines backs me up. [1]

[1]
[https://duckduckgo.com/?q=referring+to+women+as+females&t=ip...](https://duckduckgo.com/?q=referring+to+women+as+females&t=iphone&ia=web)

~~~
leereeves
Seems to be an extreme fringe position supported by a few articles from
Buzzfeed, Jezebel, The Root, Reset Era, a YouTube video, and a reddit post
with 7 votes. The rest of the results are about calling women "girls" which
can be offensive for obvious reasons.

Perhaps you could point to a specific example where "it implies grouping women
with female animals rather than grouping them together with men as human
beings."

~~~
chongli
It's generally the extreme fringe misogynist groups that use the term females
almost entirely to the exclusion of "women."

I'm rather surprised I'm getting so much pushback on this here, of all places.
I thought it would be pretty obvious to most of the English as first language
population here.

~~~
enriquto
English is not my first language, but if I understand correctly, "woman" is
often a noun and "female" is often an adjective; but the usage can be
interchanged.

The articles that you link say that using "female" as a noun is somewhat
demeaning. OK, I can agree with that.

What I don't get is how using "female" as an adjective can be demeaning at
all? This is a different question that seems very surprising as a non-native
speaker. Using the noun "woman" as an adjective (in apposition) is maybe
grammatically correct, but sounds very strange to me.

~~~
waterhouse
There are people who argue that all kinds of things are demeaning or
offensive. For example, some have argued that "person with disabilities"
should be preferred over "disabled person" because using the word "person"
first emphasizes their humanity. I heard someone claim that saying "I'm going
to go home and sleep to recharge my batteries" is demeaning (to yourself!)
because you're talking about yourself like a machine.

As far as I know, these notions do not usually come from (a) studies showing
e.g. that, if you have people read text using one phrase or the other, and
then give them questions designed to evaluate their opinions of disabled
people, you see an actual effect; or from (b) a statistically significant
sample of actual disabled people saying they really would prefer one phrase
over the other; but usually from (c) an academic thinking something up and
writing about it, and other people reading about it and adopting the new
phraseology so as to avoid the chance of being called "insensitive". Sometimes
it makes it out of academia and we end up hearing about it.

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funkythings
Why does the gender matter? I hate headlines like this

~~~
denzil_correa
> The story of Venona’s female code breakers has never been publicly told in
> full. Benson interviewed some of them for a classified internal history of
> Venona, only portions of which have been declassified and released online.
> More important, while the exploits of Gardner and other men have been the
> focus of entire books, the women themselves did not talk about their
> work—not to their friends, not to their families, hardly to each other. Most
> took the secret to their graves.

Can you see why gender matters?

~~~
mbrumlow
That maybe the books focus on some of the topics. But maybe it would have been
a better book had it just focused on the code breakers and how imoortnant they
were.

Society has changed alot. And all this setting the score right stuff is going
to rip us apart. So every time we have to point out how bad somebody had it
and who their operrssors _were_ it is going just casue more division.

And in this case I think pointing anyof that out when telling this story is
just a distraction from a real story that everybody could enjoy; that we had
awesome people who did awesome shit that helped win a war.

I am not saying that the stories of oppression or injustice can't be told.
Just when they are please don't try and hitch it to the far better time proof
story. Eg if you want to wrtie a book about how _some_ men did bad things and
focus on on vile _some_ men are you can do that. But at least advertise it as
a book with intent to spread hate to parties not actually involved. That way
when you write about "code breakers" without a gender being the main focus
people can enjoy it without being distracted on either end of the spectrum.

It will come on off much more natural and powerful if when women were written
about if they were done so in the same manner as men. Simply write the story
"The code breakers ..." and readers will happily discover the identity of the
actors in the book.

But then again people who like to point gender out often have other ajendas
than simply waiting about something that could universally interest people.

(Typing from phone while holding baby. Sorry for spelling or grammar issues ).

~~~
denzil_correa
> It will come on off much more natural and powerful if when women were
> written about if they were done so in the same manner as men. Simply write
> the story "The code breakers ..." and readers will happily discover the
> identity of the actors in the book.

Both are not mutually exclusive - you can do both.

~~~
mbrumlow
You can but at the risk of deviding people. And most definitely alienating
some people.

The the entire men vs women is toxic. Every man can't be held responsible for
for what some man did in the past. We are different people and not identified
by our gender. The same holds tire doe women. What a man or woman does
mentally really should not even be a topic. Making it one will only create
sides that people are forced to join. It also brings up a bunch of questions
that str not productive to society. Like which group is better ? If you answer
either group you now become sexiest. It is just as bad to say women code
better than men vs men code better than women. That is where every one of
these gender separations of groups lead too. It is toxic and vile. And nobody
should support it.

~~~
denzil_correa
Honestly, I can't see your point. The article merely highlights role of women
in code breaking which wasn't known in the past. They don't say women were
better than men. I don't see anything in the article as men vs women.

~~~
mbrumlow
I am not talking about th book directly but the notions brought up by parrent
post.

I am purly talking about about always grndeting the person ehoadr the
achivment.

I also may have gone off topic a bit.

Edit. I am out and about. I probably should not try to convey this stuff from
a phone while distracted. My arguments are not directe at the book. But it
there was a bullseye it would still be on the board.

