
Lady Lego Pirates or Why My Mom is Awesome - philk10
http://marlenacompton.com/?p=3256
======
RandallBrown
"does anybody seriously wear pink cat eye glasses or carry a pink laptop?"

Comments like this will drive girls away from programming.

I dated a girl in college that was very girly. She loved shoes, shopping,
makeup, and lots of stereotypical girl stuff. After getting to know her
better, I found out she loved legos, video games, and was good at math and
science. I convinced her to take a computer science class.

She eventually decided to be a CS major. She complained about the lack of
girls in the program, but the most interesting complaints were about how the
few other girls made her feel.

She was a girly girl. She wasn't accepted by all of the other girls. They
would take pride in their lack of girliness and shun those who didn't.

And yes... she did carry a pink laptop.

~~~
marlenac
It makes me sad that this is the interpretation you carried away from my post.
I am, for better or worse, not a fan of pink, but aside from taking pot-shots
at Barbie, I favor supporting other women in CS.

It's good to hear that you were so encouraging and FWIW, If your friend had
been sitting next to me in a CS class, I would have been friendly and said
hello or traded notes regardless of the color of her laptop.

Thanks for taking the time to read my post and comment.

------
ojbyrne
When I hear people say girls don’t stick around in math and science because
they are not interested, I’d like to point them to the commercials that play
on Saturday morning cartoons or to the faces they see on the boxes in the toy
aisles. If you have kids, take a minute to look around the next time you are
buying toys. You might find it eye-opening. Although I haven’t seen it, I hear
the documentary “Miss Representation” deals with this topic."

Certainly that was true in 1982. But since then we've had many, many, many
programs promoting Science for girls.

Searching for "STEM girls programs" on Google gets 23.8 million hits. So I'm
curious how many millions of dollars will be spent before the example of the
toy aisles (from the eighties) stops getting trotted out.

Some notable examples: Girl Scouts:
<http://www.girlscouts.org/program/basics/science/>

STEM grants for girls: <http://stemgrants.com/mini-stem-grants-for-girls/>

Techbridge (STEM for girls): <http://www.techbridgegirls.org/>

~~~
jleader
Well, when I started as a professional programmer in 1983, I was hired by a
woman. A year or two later, my boss, my boss's boss, and her boss were all
women (this was in software development at a Fortune 500 computer
manufacturing company). My understanding is that today, there are far fewer
women in software development than there were in the 1980s. It seems to me
that the billions of dollars in toy marketing (and other factors) are beating
the millions in "STEM for girls".

------
prawn
I remember seeing an old ad re-posted on the net, featuring a girl playing
with Lego. It's a little reminiscent of Apple, in a way.

Here it is: [http://cdn.twentytwowords.com/wp-
content/uploads/Awesome-198...](http://cdn.twentytwowords.com/wp-
content/uploads/Awesome-1981-Lego-ad-634x857.jpg)

------
z_
Are Dads awesome too?

~~~
TazeTSchnitzel
Boys find their Dad awesome, girls find their Mum awesome.

Usually.

------
mkramlich
I'm guessing the initial lack of female pirate LEGO minifigs had something to
do with the fact that 99.9999% of actual historical pirates were men. And that
pirate ships were not exactly woman-friendly environments. Just a thought.
Sounds crazy, I know. :)

Back to the neverending gender persecution fest discussion on the web. That
has nothing to do with HN and shouldn't be on HN, please.

ps. I'm personally not happy that every time I go into a haircut shop like
GreatClips that all the haircut folks are women. It makes me feel oppressed. I
want to see men working there, and have men cutting my hair, so I and my sons
have that as a role model. As it is the feminarchy is distorting the
perception of the array of actual career choices available to my sons and
grandsons. ... Have I made my point?

~~~
InclinedPlane
Firstly, the pirate archetype used in fiction and represented in LEGO form is
not one based on history but on fantasy. In truth the vast majority of
"pirates" in the, say, 17th through 18th centuries were privateers operating
under the authority of a government (for example, Captain Morgan).

Secondly, there are many famous examples of female pirates from history and
fiction (Mary Read, Grace O'Malley, Rachel Wall, etc.)

Thirdly, perhaps you should take up your concerns regarding the gender of your
hair stylists with the management of GreatClips.

~~~
mkramlich
> Thirdly, perhaps you should take up your concerns regarding the gender of
> your hair stylists with the management of GreatClips.

No thanks. I'm realistic and don't actually care. It was clearly an
illustrative argument and you should have known that. Also, I personally
accept the often messy and non-philosophically-perfectly-mathematically-ideal
nature of reality when it comes to gender and sexuality. Unlike a lot of
people when it comes to these kinds of topics on the Internet. For example, I
have observed and accept these following truths: That men and women are
different. Girls and boys are different. Homosexual men are different from
heterosexual men. Lesbian women are different than straight women. Well, in
each case there are similarities and differences. But they are not identical
or "equal" in the mathematical sense. Intellectual theories and recent social
ideals are nice but biology is strong. And that's all perfectly _ok._

