
Kathy Sierra On The Primer On Sexism Discussion - roguecoder
http://farukat.es/journal/2012/10/669-kathy-sierra-primer-sexism-discussion
======
kevinconroy
I get angry everytime that I think about how a few vile people attacked Kathy
and shut down one of the best blogs to grace the internet, Creating Passionate
Users (<http://headrush.typepad.com/>).

After she stopped blogging, I wrote a program to scrap her TypePad site and
then hand edited down all of her posts into a single, massive book. I printed
a single copy on Lulu for myself which I've marked up with highligher and pen
calling out all of her incredible points.

I don't want to earn any money from her work, so here's a link to download a
free PDF copy of the best of her blog:

[http://www.kevinmconroy.com/pdf/creating_passionate_users.pd...](http://www.kevinmconroy.com/pdf/creating_passionate_users.pdf)

It's print-ready for you to upload to your favorite self publishing book
website (e.g. lulu.com) and print your own copy.

Thank you for continuing to inspiring me Kathy.

~~~
mhartl
I assume you mean _s/scrap/scrape/_.

~~~
kevinconroy
Yes, sorry about that unfortunate typo.

------
shadowmint
It's not directly related to this article, but on the click through (primer
link) there's an idea that really resonated with me:

If you're western/male/white/straight you're playing life on 'very easy' mode.

This probably betrays my 'gamified' lifestyle, and maybe it trivializes the
issue somewhat, but its a much more compelling argument to me than using the
term 'privilege' which is _loaded_ with baggage (hey! I worked hard to get
where I am. I'm not some privileged kid who's parent spent big to send me to a
good college...)

It's really an idea that connects to my demographic, rather than
_disconnecting_ them, which is what a lot of this discourse does.

So you're a great hacker? sweet. You did that on EASY mode.

That guy over there, he's transgender, he's playing on hard and he's where you
are despite that.

Those hackers girls in the corner? They're playing on nightmare difficulty.

Just a little bit of gentle respect for that goes a long way.

It's a really great metaphor to explain these ideas to people I know. Just my
$0.02

~~~
dmm
> If you're western/male/white/straight you're playing life on 'very easy'
> mode.

When I read this, my interpretation is "Your achievements don't count because
you are a white man."

Is that what you were trying to express?

~~~
SwellJoe
Perhaps Louis CK can explain it in a way that makes it make more sense to you:
<https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4f9zR5yzY>

It's not about denigrating anyone's achievements. It's about understanding
that some things make your life easier. Being born straight, white, and male,
in the United States (or other first world countries) provides a tremendous
amount of benefit to you. To deny that benefit is to deny reality.

It doesn't mean when you do something good it doesn't count...it just means
that you probably would have had a harder time had you been born non-white,
non-male, non-straight. No one is saying you're bad for being white, male, or
straight, or that what you accomplish does not count.

Denying you receive privileges for being a straight white male can be
offensive or upsetting to those who don't experience life with those
privileges. It's a complicated issue, of course, and there are plenty of
straight white males who have to overcome significant hurdles; but given the
same circumstances, the straight white male has an easier time getting ahead
in business (especially tech and science), being treated with respect, not
being treated like a child (women are _frequently_ treated like children by
well-meaning men), and not being treated like an outsider.

You're not being blamed for being born lucky. You're just being asked to
acknowledge it.

~~~
dmm
I think the historical narrative that Louis CK has presented in the clip is
wrong. Sure at any point in the past 500 years you could probably point out a
group of white men that are far better off than the majority of society but
those people would always be outliers.

Imagine all the men born in German and Great Britain eighteen years before
WWI. Just as they were graduating secondary school they would have been
drafted and forced to kill each other in some of the most horrible battle
conditions in recorded history. Does lying in a waterlogged trench, dying
slowly over three days of a gut wound sound like a privilege?

Men currently account for 92% of occupational deaths in the US. Imagine what
it was like a century ago, before occupational safety standards. A coal miner
in 1910 had the privilege of being able to vote and to wear pants but his wife
had the privilege of not being crushed to death in a poorly supported tunnel
or dying of black lung.

Men have far higher rates of mental illness and drug addiction. Men are more
likely to attempt suicide and more likely to succeed. Men who are victims of
rape or domestic abuse are often ridiculed. At least one study showed 40% of
domestic abuse victims are men. The majority of US rape victims are men.
Unemployment rates are currently higher among men.

Imagine you're a woman and you really like small children and want to work in
a career with them. That's perfectly acceptable.

A man doing the same thing is constantly viewed with suspicion and often faces
false accusations.

You say men have the advantage of being treated with respect but I think that
is highly dependent on the circumstances.

I will readily admit that the greatest factors that have affected my life are
random. We all play the birth lottery but I don't see your ranking of various
characteristics as justified or useful.

To me it just seems like a way to dismiss people and their achievements
because of things beyond their control.

~~~
dmm
As soon as I hit reply I felt ill. You're right of course. I recall reading
about the origins of the plate tectonics and the experiences of women trying
to make careers in academic geology in the 1970s. Those women experienced
explicit sexism, being told that women don't have a place in geology
departments. Those women were certainly playing on "hard mode".

But I still can't believe that it's useful to apply this concept to everyone
on a society wide basis. It just seems like too wide a net. The world is more
complicated than that.

~~~
SwellJoe
The points you made in your prior comment are all valid, but don't really
alter the reality of the difference or of the idea of privilege (which
everyone has in some circumstances; as you note, women working in child care
have a massive amount of privilege over men). Interestingly, I know some
radical feminists who view nearly all of it as symptoms of patriarchy.

For example, a side effect of men being grownups, and women being child-like,
is that men suffer consequences in court at a much higher rate than women.
Women are viewed as both weak and incapable of making rational choices, and so
when they commit crimes, including violence against men, they receive child-
like treatment. Where an abusive man might spend time in jail, an abusive
woman gets a slap on the wrist and the man gets snickered at for being too
weak to stand up to the woman. Woman==Weak and Victim, Man==Strong and In
Control.

Similarly, women are seen as safe to be around children because they
effectively _are_ children according to this worldview. Men should be
ambitious and driven, and shouldn't be wasting time playing with kids, and
should be viewed with suspicion if that's how they want to spend their
time...there must be something wrong with them, some ulterior motive. This is
insulting to _both_ men and women; and it just falls out naturally from the
way men and women are currently viewed by our institutions and our society. We
could go on for days talking about ways women and men get treated differently,
and it's not really about who gets treated worse (though, again, most of the
time, us white guys get a hell of a lot of advantages over just about everyone
else as long as our goals align with what we're expected to want out of life).

So, I think it's unfortunate that so much time gets spent trying to pick apart
the idea of privilege without realizing that it's dangerous for everyone for
these kinds of inequalities to exist, but it's generally more oppressive for
non-white, non-male, non-straight folks.

I absolutely concede that it's complicated. I doubt anyone, even the most
militant old school feminist, would argue that it's simple. It's just a matter
of checking your privilege now and then; it's all most folks are asking for
when they talk about privilege, and I think that's entirely fair.

I'll give an example: I'm involved in activism in my local community, and have
found myself talking to media a lot lately. One of my friends noted that all
the people in our activist community who were talking to media with regularity
are white, middle class, able-bodied, straight-looking men, even though plenty
of women, black and brown folks, disabled folks, obviously LGBTQ, etc. people
exist within this community. Media were simply walking into the room, looking
around, and picking the person who looked most like they were in
charge...wouldn't you know, they'd pick the middle class straight white guy to
talk to? It's the way the world is. Changing it means checking that privilege
on a conscious level. The next time I was asked for an interview I redirected
him to a woman in a wheelchair who is probably a much better speaker for our
cause than I am; in a world without this pre-existing bias, she's the person
he would have talked to, because she was heading up the meeting. But, due to
that bias, he came to me. When you start looking for this bias (and you can
call it whatever you like, but this is what people mean when they say
"privilege"), you'll start to see it everywhere.

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is that we can recognize that it's complicated
and that everyone is dealing with shit, while also recognizing trends and
societal bias and favoritism.

~~~
dmm
> For example, a side effect of men being grownups, and women being child-like

Who the hell says this? Where are you getting it from?

You make tons of assertions but what are they based on?

As far as I can tell you made an absolute statement "White men have privileges
that nullify their achievements. Women are not privileged so their
achievements count.". I pointed out several cases where men were disadvantaged
as compared to women and you start throwing up a bunch of bullshit.

~~~
SwellJoe
"White men have privileges that nullify their achievements. Women are not
privileged so their achievements count."

That is not a quote from anything I have written, and is not what I've said or
implied. You're taking this in a far more argumentative direction than I had
any desire to go in. Perhaps I've struck a nerve?

~~~
dmm
> You're taking this in a far more argumentative direction than I had any
> desire to go in. Perhaps I've struck a nerve?

Arguments are fun. No harm done.

------
Tichy
"You are wrong because of things you cannot know" - impossible to argue with,
not very useful. (Disclaimer: I don't know Kathy Sierra, or rather, the first
time I heard about her was when she quit blogging, I think, because of that
vile stream of hate spam. I have nothing against her, in fact I believe what
people said at the time, that she made great contributions before leaving).

~~~
KSierra
What I actually said was that _I_ was wrong, and that "just because you don't
perceive it doesn't mean it isn't there." That's not quite the same as saying
"you were wrong."

And I also didn't say "because of things you cannot know." Yes, there WERE
things that I -- and perhaps others -- cannot know, but I also had plenty of
evidence I was ignoring because it didn't fit my personal experience. There
were studies, stats, research, and yes -- an overwhelming number of personal
anecdotes from too many credible women for me to have ignored the possibility
for that long.

I still do not know how pervasive or deep the problems of sexism are -- this
is not a domain I have studied. But I was wrong to have used my sole personal
experience as evidence that there wasn't really a problem.

~~~
Tichy
It seems to me you drew analogies between her and you, from the initial state
of "seeing no problem at all", and then you realizing that you simply didn't
see it. That to me sounds as if you were implying that just like you, she
simply doesn't see it and there she is wrong, analogous to the way you were
wrong.

Also her article doesn't sound to me as if she claims that there is no
problem, just that it is obviously not a problem for every woman.

~~~
KSierra
Yes, I suppose I was. Her post reminded me of the posts I used to make, and so
yes, I guess I was implying that she, too, was wrong. I agree with you; it was
not useful. I have nothing more to add.

~~~
stan_rogers
[insert expletive here], Kathy, don't quietly slink away. It matters not a
whit that not _everybody_ is listening; many are. Whether we are enough or
not, I can't say.

The worst of all possible outcomes is that one day Laura (and others like her)
should awaken into the same harsh reality that blindsided you. And _that will
happen_ unless we, as a community, seriously address the tolerance we have for
behaviour that simply should not be tolerated. We _need_ to be reminded that
it exists, and that while the behaviour might not be universally pervasive, a
sort of tolerance of it, whether with a grudge or a giggle, is nearly so.

I truly hope that Laura never has her eyes opened in the way yours were, but
that hope hinges largely on the scenery changing in the meantime. "Make your
users awesome" was a message we needed to hear, and that cry was silenced not
merely by direct action, but by tolerance as well. This message, if anything,
is more important. Let those who have ears, at least, hear it.

------
gavanwoolery
I am going to say this knowing that I am venturing into "downvote"
territory...but...for every woman that _really_ experiences sexism, there are
two that exaggerate their circumstances (and to be fair, this is not at all
exclusive to women, it applies to other "isms" as well). I remember one woman
at a place I worked at filed a complaint about sexism because a coworker
(kindly) asked her out. Maybe its not appropriate to ask a coworker out, but
it certainly is not sexist (read the definition of sexism if you disagree with
me). A good deal of it actually winds down to the fact that people do not
understand the definition of sexism. Being hit on is not sexism. Even being
sexually harassed does not qualify as sexism -- although it is clearly another
type of bad thing. Sexism is the act of favoring one sex over another. There
are women who do experience sexism, but I would say tech has more "reverse
discrimination" than anything else. Objectively, I have seen some very average
women programmers get hired into high positions just to fill diversity quotas
(and yes, I do know of a few very smart female programmers as well).

~~~
jessedhillon
Oh jesus. Before anyone considers responding to Gavan, take a look at his
comment history. He has a habit of posting completely unsubstantiated
opinions, presented in the most odious manner he can manage. He relates to his
confabulations as if they were fact and expects you to do the same.

Edit: I am only talking about your history on social issue threads. You appear
to be quite talented otherwise, apparently you wrote Genesis 3D which was
pretty awesome. Still, you present yourself on social questions in a way that
is pretty much indistinguishable from trolling.

~~~
gavanwoolery
Troll Level: Master ;) Yes, I am definitely political-correctness-challenged
(to put it in politically correct terms). I intend no harm, but I do like to
challenge social norms. I used to think identically to those who think the
opposite of me, so I understand where everyone else is coming from.

~~~
nehan
Challenging social norms just for the sake of challenging them is not
something to be lauded.

You would be taken more seriously if you provided a well-reasoned response
based on facts rather than throwing out opinions like "for every woman that
really experiences sexism, there are two that exaggerate their circumstances".

You are setting up a simplistic straw man and arguing that because you believe
you have "seen some very average women programmers get hired into high
positions just to fill diversity quotas" (how do you KNOW this, btw?) that
reverse-sexism is rampant. You do not acknowledge that your understanding of
their promotions could be limited, that they might have other skills besides
simply programming, or what the position actually required.

Because of these things it's very hard to take you seriously, and if you have
a habit of doing these things, I understand why someone would dismiss you as a
troll.

It would be more interesting if you argued in a reasoned matter acknowledging
the variety of experiences in the real world, instead of drawing
generalizations from a few things you have seen.

~~~
gavanwoolery
I can only argue from what I have seen, heard of, etc; The glass I look
through might not represent the world. Needless to say, I have acknowledged
that sexism does exist, it is only my perception that many people tend to
complain about trivial cases, whereas serious cases are usually handled with
silence (could be wrong here as well). I personally know recruiters at
Microsoft, AOL, and Google, so they have provided me with some of my insight
(note that each of these companies has very different hiring policies though),
other things I get from news stories, comments (like or unlike my own!), so
like any propaganda take it with a grain of salt. From the instances I have
seen, women are not only treated fairly (doing otherwise would be grounds for
a lawsuit), but they are given special attention (I have seen more women
greeted into tech with open arms than otherwise...males tend to _want_ females
in their male-dominated workplaces). Again, just pointing out what I observe,
not claiming to be the Oracle of Truth. And actually, challenging social norms
is a good thing. We tend to think like sheep, which is a good reason we only
have two significant political parties in the US. It took somebody challenging
my views for them to change (I hope for the better).

------
sltkr
It's not entirely clear to me what prompted the “Mack truck’s worth of vile,
misogynistic, sexist comments and pictures” that caused Sierra to change her
point of view (after twenty years of positive experience!) and how exactly it
relates to the Tech industry?

I can appreciate the argument that just because you haven't personally
experienced sexism that doesn't mean it doesn't occur, but the logical
equivalent of that is that you can't point to a few people's (subjective
interpretation of their) experiences to conclude that sexism is prevalent in
the tech industry.

~~~
autarch
<http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/technology/6499095.stm> is one article on what
happened to her. It was pretty awful.

~~~
Tichy
That sounds as if it was several people attacking her? I would have thought it
was just a disturbed individual? Also how come "prominent bloggers" were
hosting the attacks - presumably she means comments on blogs that were not
removed in a timely manner?

~~~
drumdance
As I recall a couple of the bloggers themselves were attacking her, not just
commenters.

~~~
Tichy
Wow, that's pretty extreme. I'll look into that. But I don't think the
bloggers were doing stuff like the picture with the noose? I can imagine some
gave stupid comments to the situation, though. Anyway, this actually makes me
curious.

------
tmsh
All I know is Kathy Sierra's book on Java was pretty much my first intro into
programming (SCJP Sun Certified Programmer for Java 5 Study Guide). I've gone
on to become a software engineer for 7-8 years now. But I still swear by that
seemingly simple book because it was so well-written.

And as Jeff Atwood and many others have written, I know whatever she writes
about on this or any other subject is a lot more correct than people realize.
Just thought I'd register that.

