
I've never experienced sexual harassment in the tech industry - julien421
https://medium.com/p/ive-never-experienced-sexual-harassment-in-the-tech-industry-105905d663
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pjc50
> What if this reliance on rationalism and this idea of exceptionalism makes
> it easy to dismiss what you don’t experience first-hand?

Indeed. It's amazing how many self-described rational people fall back on
"I've never seen it, therefore it doesn't exist and you are lying" when it
comes to uncomfortable or challenging questions. It's very easy to end up
performing a kind of rationalism identity politics, especially when men end up
defending "rational" men from "irrational" women.

> "being unbiased is a vital part of being smart"

(From a quote within the article)

I disagree, having known a lot of smart people. There's definitely a _skill_
of being able to step back from a situation and look at it from other angles.
That doesn't mean people apply it by default to themselves. Nobody likes
rationally evaluating their own flaws. Some of the smartest people I knew had
chaotic personal lives because of this.

~~~
tnone
You can flip this around just the same. These "women in tech" have never heard
of men being treated awfully, while women complain loudly and get easy
attention when they do, so it _must_ be much worse for them.

This too is a bias, that coverage is proportional to incidence.

When men get shit treatment, they can't play the gender card, so they don't.
It's not going to get a sympathetic ear, damseling and crying makes them look
pathetic, and you're a loner creepy neckbeard unless proven otherwise. So men
are out to prove themselves by default, and women who are not used to this see
it as discrimination in an industry where "put up or shut up" is the norm to
cover up bad management and shitty work loads.

This is a logical consequence of applying privilege theory back onto tech
feminism, and it's a truth they refuse to face, instead dismissing it with the
same sort of gendered epiteths and generalizations they shriek at when on the
receiving end.

~~~
pjc50
Do men get badly treated in tech _simply for being men_? Or is it the generic
bad treatment of employees?

~~~
braveo
I once had the CEO of a company roll his eyes at me in the middle of a meeting
and say roughly "you tech people are all the same".

Did I scream discrimination or did I pass it off as the powerplay of an
asshole?

I passed it off as the powerplay of an asshole.

The thing about assholes is that they're assholes. It's a part of being in the
workplace and when it happens you have to think about whether or not it's
worth it for you.

But when you look at everything through the lense of feminism, then he's
suddenly not an asshole, but is instead a misogynist.

I once saw a woman complain that she was on a mailing list and someone said
something mean to her and no one spoke up to defend her. She felt like that
meant the mailing list itself was sexist.

I read her account and my thought was "if it were a male, would you expect
others to defend him, or would you expect him to defend himself?".

I could go on and on, ALL OF US who have been in the workforce for any length
of time have dealt with pricks. We've dealt with them as co-workers, we've
dealt with them as managers, and sometimes we deal with them as subordinates,
but we've all dealt with them.

That's the point the poster you were responding to was making.

men deal with a lot of bullshit in the workplace too, but when we come across
it, we can't call it gender discrimination, or whatever else. We have to
decide if, when, and how to defend ourselves from it.

That's the reality of the workplace, and it's the reality of women in the
workplaces as well. But that doesn't make it sexist.

~~~
tptacek
What kind of discrimination can't you dismiss with logic like this? "That's
not a racist! That's just a prick! That's not an antisemite! That's just a
prick, like the kinds all of us deal with!"

~~~
braveo
No, hey, you're right, that CEO was probably sexist against men.

Or was he racist against minorities? I sometimes can't figure out which thing
I'm supposed to be offended about, there's so many to choose from.

~~~
tptacek
I'm sorry, I understand and empathize with the emotions you're trying to
convey here, but I have to point out that you've in no way responded to the
actual question I posed.

~~~
braveo
It's a technique known as Reductio Ad Absurdum, and it's absolutely a valid
way to point out the flaw in someone's argument.

Your issue is that you're too entrenched in your way of thinking to accept it,
which is not the same as your claim that I've somehow avoided responding to
the point.

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andriesm
Amazingly how much emphasis is placed on stories (anecdote) and 'I _feel_
that' when this person has no personal experience with the subject.

It looks like it has become too popular to write stories about how women are
oppressed. I'd much rather see articles mention specific case studies with
FACTS describing exactly what actions those perpetrators took in order to
discriminate.

Without knowing the most common discretely identifiable actions (hopefully
with statistics to back them up!) how can we decide where to target resources
at?

~~~
tomlock
The article addresses at least some of these points.

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k__
I never experienced direct harassment, but I see chauvinism all the time.

People not hiring Chinese, because they will steal their IP.

Recruiters who wanna check the "assets" of female applicants.

People who hate on women, because they aren't dressed properly.

Managers watching pornography for all to see at the workplace.

All the talks about the guys, dudes and bros.

The only thing female co-workers did that bothered me, was being too touchy.

~~~
flukus
I've never seen any of that, I've only ever seen outright discrimination
against Indians.

> People not hiring Chinese, because they will steal their IP.

At what point does this become a legitimate concern? We know that the Chinese
government and corporations are stealing a lot of IP.

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sumedh
This is a pure clickbait title from someone who has just been in the industry
for a few months.

