
Coding Horror: Sex, Lies, and Software Development - Anon84
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/archives/001253.html
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jballanc
I wonder if Jeff worked somewhere across the pond if he'd be writing the same
article. I think people underestimate just how puritanical America is compared
to most of the rest of the (non-theocratic) world.

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kingkongrevenge
> how puritanical America is

Heard this lots; never seen much evidence or experienced it in my travels. I
think it's unchallenged BS.

I mean, the sale of rated music CDs to 16 year olds is controlled and enforced
in the UK. There are a bunch of American movies that are close to banned in
Europe, but none of the reverse.

As for "sexual liberation", major US cities and major European cities are no
different.

~~~
biohacker42
I can tell you my personal and entirely unscientific experience.

When I first got of the plane years ago, to go to college in the US, the US
culture struck me as deeply puritanical. I can't put it into exact words, but
there was clearly a big difference compared to Europe.

I spoke with other immigrants and they felt the same thing. The best a
Brazilian friend and I could come up with was that it was like everyone got
stuck in that very awkward phase when you're 12-13 and just switching from
hating the other sex to being uncomfortably attracted to it.

It seemed to us that somehow Americans just never outgrew that uncomfortable
phase, which Europeans and Brazilians outgrow by the time we're 16 at the
latest.

Again, this is just personal and subjective evidence.

And I just remebered something much less subjective. Here's some empircal
evidence.

I remember watching _The Abyss_ on basic cable, this again shortly after I
came to the US. And at one point Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio's character is
out and needs a defibrillator and her boob falls out.

I distinctly remember being genuinely surprised that it was blurred, it was
such a nothing! Not a sexual scene, just one boob and someone went through the
trouble of blurring it, a profoundly silly thing. I did not expect the US to
be _that_ puritanical.

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racetrack
The best way I've heard it described is:

America: Sex, oh god PROTECT THE CHILDREN. Violence, that's cool.

Europe: Sex, it's natural. Violence, oh god PROTECT THE CHILDREN.

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kingkongrevenge
Yes there are these tendencies in the censorship, but they're ultimately
meaningless. The UK is a much more violent society than the US, statistically.
That is real and meaningful. Who gives a crap about the differences in how
movies are rated.

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dinkumthinkum
That's not true. What nonsense statistics are you using? There are dozens of
U.S. cities with higher per capita murder rates than London or any other city
in the UK. How quaint it is to contradict someone with vague and controversial
statistics.

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kingkongrevenge
Murder rates are higher in the US, but murder is a small fraction of violent
crime. All other violent crime is _much_ more common in the UK than in the US.
In my own personal experience it's also much more indiscriminate in the UK.
It's rather easy to avoid trouble in the US, whereas you have high rates of
home invasion in the UK in middle class neighborhoods, for example.

~~~
ZeroGravitas
Do you have a link to these stats? I don't think most people in the UK would
even know what an home invasion is (I know from Ice-T) and Wikipedia claims it
is notoriously hard to get stats this topic since it's not a defined crime in
many jurisdictions.

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Raphael_Amiard
As an european guy, this article sounded very weird, even if very
interresting.

I understand the shortcomings about working in an industry wich is not easily
talked about , even if everyone knows it exists, and a large share of people
in the world are using it's products.

But when Jeff says :

"And I don't expect every programmer to be doing noble, selfless work for the
good of humanity. All the same, it's difficult for me to respect software
engineering in the service of such least common denominator interests."

I just wonder how 95% of the work available in CS and internet is more "good
for humanity" than working for porn sites. It really really doesn't seem clear
to me.

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gaius
Does Atwood have some sort of vendetta running against IMVU? This isn't the
first time he's laid into them.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
Jeff is just an anti-intellectual. He has a vendetta against people who know
things like C and actually program. He is just trying to justify his rude
previous comments. It would be nice if Jeff would stop blogging until
Stackoverflow "cured cancer" as he said.

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lacker
I've noticed recently a lot of the IMVU folks seem to have made a concerted
push into blogging about the technical stuff they do there. Maybe this is a
bit of pushback.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I don't really understand this comment.A push back for blogging abnout
technical work? I'm not sure this passes the "simplest answer is probably the
correct one" test.

~~~
gaius
It's more likely Atwood applied for a job there and they turned him down.

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darkhorse
"I'm no prude"

I'd argue that you are, and you have some extremely revealing hang-ups about
sex and sexuality, as evidenced by your reaction to a freaking cartoon avatar
("make me, personally, uncomfortable about working there, or __talking to
anyone who worked there __") and the "what will we tell our parents?" line.

how about you tell them "hey parents, i'm a grown-ass man capable of making my
own decisions without being afraid of what my PARENTS will think!!"

~~~
dkarl
_I'd argue that you are [a prude], and you have some extremely revealing hang-
ups about sex and sexuality, as evidenced by your reaction to a freaking
cartoon avatar_

Would you say somebody hated finance if they refused to work for a loan shark
who kneecapped people for paying late? The porn industry sells a pretty
disgusting version of sex and a really sad vision of what women are good for.
You can excuse anything by saying they're just roles that some people like to
play, that none of the apparent symbolism in porn actually means anything,
that the only sides that can be taken are for prudery and against it, that
criticism of any portrayal of sex reflects a desire to suppress and control
women's sexuality, that nobody's desires should be stigmatized, but....

But the fact remains that 95% of porn presents a pathological and misogynistic
caricature of sex, and the other 5% is iffy at best. I've watched more than my
share of porn, always with the idea that I was looking for good, sex-positive
porn. Eventually I realized that I would never find it at any mainstream
outlet, like the local adult stores and commercial web sites. (Now I have a
better idea of where I would look for that stuff, but I haven't bothered.)

Porn doesn't _have_ to be bad, not for any reason I know if. It just is (which
suggests that there is some reason I don't know about.) The porn we actually
have -- as distinct from the ideal porn we _could_ have -- is just the flip
side of prudery, a fulfillment of the ignorance, frustration, and sexual
neuroses that prudery creates.

Those cartoon avatars are an excellent example. They can be excused as
exceptions -- just one way some women enjoy sexualizing themselves, just one-
dimensional fantasies that no man would connect with the real world, just a
few characters whose existence leaves plenty of room for other forms of female
sexuality -- but that ignores the fact that they are entirely typical of the
adult industry and freakishly different from the way most women want to dress,
act, and be perceived.

I don't have any problems with individual women whose sexual identity is such
that they enjoy playing the roles depicted in the porn I loath -- no matter
how their sexuality came about -- they are worthy of respect. However,
attempting to celebrate and normalize sexual identities that most women find
degrading, for a variety of selfish reasons but not least _because_ most women
find them degrading, is reprehensible. The adult industry IS scummy, and
anyone working in it should be ashamed, unless they are careful to work only
with the small, practically invisible minority of products that aren't
degrading.

