
Sexism - SeoxyS
http://kswizz.com/post/21280005474/sexism
======
drewwwwww
It's very depressing to see very intelligent people knowingly ignore their
received benefit from serious, dehumanizing and alienating structural
problems.

Nobody thinks the artificial equalization provided by things like affirmative
action actually is equality - the hope is that by putting a finger on the
scale in favor of equality of opportunity, eventually society (after several
generations of induced equity) will actually become equitable because the
society itself has been altered.

to suggest that this is not a worthwhile goal essentially means that you think
the status quo is fine because it affords you certain advantages that you did
nothing to achieve. if you think that demanding people "lighten up" or accept
that they shouldn't be a part of things because they can't hack it is actually
an objectivist or libertarian ideal, you just don't understand the unfair
advantages you have actually already been afforded by birthright.

~~~
skylan_q
"Nobody thinks the artificial equalization provided by things like affirmative
action actually is equality"

Do you really think that if women dominated tech, people would be clamoring
for more men in it? The few nurses I know have no trouble with the lack of men
in their profession. Maybe they're just sexist?

~~~
DanBC
I know a few people who are concerned about the lack of men in primary
education (UK - ages 4 to 11) or in nursing and other work.

~~~
sliverstorm
In education at least, this is usually due to the desire to include strong
male role models in childrens' lives, not in a mission for equality.

------
icandoitbetter
This person is ostensibly is in favor of gender equality, but he believes that
the problem has been overstated and it will simply solve itself. He believes
that the world has become more gender-equal in the past decades not because of
the relentless struggle of radical feminists, but because somehow men decided
to become more civilized. Power struggles are a concept that's alien to him.
He's too young to know about a society just a few decades ago in which women
weren't able to go to the banks and receive loans without their husbands'
permission. He doesn't realize that Mad Men _really_ takes place in _our_ 60s,
that is, two generations ago. He hasn't spent enough time trying to picture
how it'd be like to be 1 woman in the company of 10 "brogrammers". He doesn't
understand that the "brogrammers" are more likely to hire more "brogrammers"
until some exogenous force (like Etsy's initiative) fights against that.

In the end, I think that he doesn't believe that women's oppression is _real_.
It reminds me of that Kurt Vonnegut letter that was in the front page a few
weeks ago. And also of the following (taken from a talk by David Graeber):

"Women are always expected to imagine what things look like from a male point
of view. Men are almost never expected to reciprocate. So deeply internalized
is this pattern of behavior that many men react to the suggestion that they
might do otherwise as if it were an act of violence in itself. A popular
exercise among High School creative writing teachers in America, for example,
is to ask students to imagining they have been transformed, for a day, into
someone of the opposite sex, and describe what that day might be like. The
results, apparently, are uncannily uniform. The girls all write long and
detailed essays that clearly show they have spent a great deal of time
thinking about the subject. Half of the boys usually refuse to write the essay
entirely. Those who do make it clear they have not the slightest conception
what being a teenage girl might be like, and deeply resent having to think
about it."

~~~
Zikes
I agree on all points except the endorsement of Etsy's initiative. I
understand that affirmative action-type efforts can lead to changes which are
favorable to the oppressed class, however they are still inherently
hypocritical in that they shift that oppression to the opposing class. The
popular argument is that once this has been done enough times, the two classes
will end up on relatively equal footing and society will in the process
undergo a fundamental change which supports this equality going forward.

I have to believe there is an alternative method for creating that change in
society, though I unfortunately cannot think of one.

~~~
mwcremer
I have struggled with this dichotomy for many years. I still feel that
"affirmative action" is inherently discriminatory. But I too can offer no
alternative to foster change. Considering the circumstances
[http://www.samefacts.com/2012/04/msm-mainstream-
media/womens...](http://www.samefacts.com/2012/04/msm-mainstream-media/womens-
worth-womens-bodies/) I reluctantly accept that the end justifies the means.

~~~
KuraFire
Affirmative Action[1] is not discriminatory, but it is inherently
_exclusionary_.

Discrimination:

> the unjust or prejudicial treatment of different categories of people or
> things, esp. on the grounds of race, age, or sex

Is Affirmative Action unjust? No, it is justified by the vast wealth of
research backing it and pointing to its success in changing the status quo
towards a more equal environment. Is AA prejudiced? No, because prejudice is
about _not_ being based on reason or actual experience, and AA is very
specifically based on both reason and past experiences.

Being left out of a group that is openly being exclusive may not feel right or
sit well on your mind, but that doesn’t inherently make it a case of
discrimination. AA can be an exclusive treatment based on gender, but it is
neither unjust nor prejudicial, thus it is not discriminatory.

Hope that helps clear up the distinction for you! :)

[1] This is partly why it is no longer called “Positive
Discrimination”—because that term is inherently oxymoronic—and instead is
known as "Positive Action" elsewhere.

------
michaelbuckbee
If you follow the "forced to rename his opensource project" link[1] you'll
find that the developer wasn't forced to rename anything.

He had an IM conversation with a female developer friend and concluded: "The
truth is that I really do want to encourage women in tech, and a project like
testosterone does not do that."

[1] -
[https://github.com/whit537/assertEquals/blob/master/ANNOUNCE...](https://github.com/whit537/assertEquals/blob/master/ANNOUNCEMENT.rst#readme)

~~~
hej
Why are those free speech cheerleaders always to opposed to people freely
talking to each other, telling each other why they think something is or isn’t
a bad idea?

------
unit3
Yep, that's sexism in action, alright. He's exactly part of the problem, and
the fact that he's resistant to changing it just shows how pervasive it is.

~~~
effigies
To mangle a famous quote, "The greatest trick privilege ever pulled was to
convince the privileged it didn't exist."

One of the toughest problems with structural inequalities is that they hide
themselves from those who are benefited, largely because they are not directly
and adversely affected by the inequality. This is exacerbated by the fact that
on the whole, privileged people are not bad people, and coming to grips with
how much the system favors you by virtue of being born into the right family
can certainly make you feel like an undeserving wretch, profiting off of the
misery of countless others. It is vastly more comfortable not to think about
these things, particularly when thinking about them often makes you feel even
worse when you realize there's no easy way to correct them.

But that discomfort is one price we, as privileged people, _should_ pay. We
should live in a shameful awareness of how we benefit from a system that
undervalues and exploits people to greater and lesser degrees. We should
recognize that denigration of things through sexist, ablist, racist or
heteronormative language is an expression of indifference to the suffering of
people. We should live our shame because it cannot match what we collectively
allow to happen to other people, because otherwise we are passive participants
in the continued oppression of other people, and because maybe being painfully
aware of what we are doing to them will also make us aware of steps we can
take to end the structural oppression.

------
wtracy
"If somebody cannot handle some crudeness, I’d postulate that he or she does
not belong at a startup, regardless of gender. Because, when shit hits the
fan, as it invariably does, we need people who can take it."

What does crude language have to do with ability to handle startup situations
where "shit hits the fan"? Someone who dislikes offensive language is somehow
unable to handle fast-paced or stressful situations on the job?

~~~
sliverstorm
He's using it as a litmus test. When people are in fast-paced or stressful
situations on the job, the mental "PC filter" can begin to break down, and
people may say things they wouldn't have. You can condemn this, but it can
happen to the best of us. When it does, it's nice to have a group of people
whom the occasional uncouth or unthinking comment rolls off their back like
water on ducks.

~~~
aqme28
Alternatively, it's good to have people who won't resort to being offensive in
tough situations.

I can't think I've ever been so stressed out I started using racial or sexist
slurs.

~~~
sliverstorm
I agree. However what I'm talking about is when you say something well-
intentioned, not realizing that it can/will be taken in an offensive way. This
tends to happen more often as you lose sleep and crank up the stress. My
impression is that the author is using people's reaction to slurs and the like
as a proxy for how they will react to the unintended offenses I mention.

------
aqme28
Did he read the "Lighten Up" article that he himself linked to? Because it
does a great job explaining _why_ "lighten up" is an awful and often offensive
response to sexism in the workplace.

We should always strive to remove sexism/racism/whatever-ism from our lives.
Even if it's a little bothersome that you shouldn't be calling people
"retarded" (or "gay" or "n-----").

------
tthomas48
It's all very simple. All we have to do is go back to the beginning of time
and remove the systematic oppression of women. Then viola - Equal playing
field!

------
DanBC
> _A startup is an intensely stressful environment, and staying sane is
> crucial._

Imagine that you had been denied access to work purely because of your sex. Or
your eye colour. Or something else trivial but outside your control.

Imagine that people said your code was shoddy because of this thing. Imagine
that every hour of every day someone made some comment or joke about this
thing.

Eventually you'd get a bit pissed off.

You may write a calm blog post pointing out the problems caused by the
attitudes of people who don't like brown eyes.

And you get a bunch of people calling you weak and dumb and up-tight. So those
people can say what they like, all day every day, and you just have to lighten
up, and if you ever say anything (no matter how calmly you say it) they mock
you.

You can see how annoying that would be.

> _A startup is an intensely stressful environment_

That's no reason to accept unacceptable behaviour. We should be working to
make things better for everyone. We should be helping people who have good
contributions. Saying that startups are stressful becomes a self-fulfilling
prophecy.

~~~
cobrausn
> That's no reason to accept unacceptable behaviour. We should be working to
> make things better for everyone. We should be helping people who have good
> contributions. Saying that startups are stressful becomes a self-fulfilling
> prophecy.

What is unacceptable to you is likely completely acceptable to a different
group of people, especially when we are talking about workplace environments.

Phrased another way, why should a small, committed group of people who get
along very well with a particular workplace culture be forced to change it and
shunned by 'the community', not because they are actually doing anything
illegal or actively putting up barriers to entry for a certain group of
people, but because someone, somewhere, in some sort of underrepresented group
might not like the culture?

------
skylan_q
Great post. The focus should be on the work and getting things done.
Gender/race/(other group qualifier) ratios are a matter of fact, not value.
Focus shouldn't be on political correctness for the sake of protecting
feelings. It doesn't take a Nazi to see that.

People have become over-sensitive, and it's left me asking: Where have all the
grown-ups gone?

------
okhan
<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jGAOCVwLrXo>

------
koeselitz
I really have to say I strongly disagree with Kenneth Ballenegger's
characterization at the beginning of the second paragraph of the developer who
was "forced to rename his open source project." Clicking on the link provided,
that's clearly not what happened, unless you call him having a chat over
Twitter with a friend of his "being forced." Reading over the guy's account,
he was _glad_ to do it, and felt like it was a great step to take. Talking as
though it was some sort of situation where people ganged up on him to force
him to take down something he worked hard on is more than a little misleading.
Here, read it yourself and let me know if you think it sounds like he was
"forced":

[https://github.com/whit537/assertEquals/blob/master/ANNOUNCE...](https://github.com/whit537/assertEquals/blob/master/ANNOUNCEMENT.rst#readme)

That mischaracterization aside, though:

I disagree with almost everything in this article, although I think I see
where he's coming from. Yes, for us guys in tech, it can sometimes seem a bit
scary watching how much damage it can do when a company gets hammered for
sexism on Twitter. I think a lot of us get a sort of fear of that happening to
us, and can get a bit defensive when we're told that we've done or said
something sexist, racist, or otherwise bigoted. And because we are generally
blind to the ways our privilege assists us every day, we tend to feel as
though _we're_ the ones being attacked, completely missing the fact that
sexism still hurts women and holds them back.

>>We cannot beat sexism until gender is no longer an issue.

This point doesn't make much sense to me at all. I think this is supposed to
mean that sexism is a problem when and only when people 'make gender an issue'
- and to imply that discussing sexism makes everything worse because it
naturally 'makes gender an issue.' The question here is natural - an 'issue'
to whom? The whole _point_ is supposed to be that sexism is an issue women in
tech have to face even if we men have the privilege of completely ignoring it
if we want. It wasn't an 'issue' in 1950 that women were forbidden from
holding any authority in the office; it was just a fact of life.

What really bothers me about this standard of victory over sexism - 'when
gender is no longer an issue' - is that it sounds distinctly like a request
that people please shut up about it already. Particularly when coupled with
the next sentence...

>>Keeping up the current level of discourse is making things worse.

... which, by the way, seems demonstrably wrong to me. Does anybody care to
cite any statistics about women in tech right now? Women in business? I wonder
if there's _any_ metric by which the current discourse is actually making
things worse. Sure, it's not fun to have to confront privilege and deal with
inequality; but it makes us all better human beings, and that's the point.

------
dongle
Who's going to write 'Privilege 101' for HN?

 _touches nose_

[don't make me do it, 'cause I'll do it if you make me.]

~~~
ckolderup
(makes you do it)

------
jsprinkles
> If I call something “retarded,” it should be obvious that it has nothing to
> do with people afflicted with down syndrome.

And it should be obvious that I'll no longer do business with you, because
you're horrifyingly inconsiderate of people around you. Sure, _you_ are not
offended; that doesn't mean the person with mental disability they can hide
from you won't be, if they overhear you.

This is a pretty bad example for the rest of the article, which I happen to
agree with in a couple places. I resist calling things "retarded" as much as I
do calling things "gay", and I think the sentiment reflects _really_
negatively upon the rest of the article _and_ the person.

(Edit: Oh look, he's live editing it now that I've called him out.)

~~~
Adrock
Or your coworker with a child with Down's or a customer with a sibling with
Down's.

------
hej
What an ignorant fool.

This article doesn’t say much (except that sexism is super awesome which I
don’t think deserves a response) but the one he linked to (about hypocrisy) is
incredibly bad (<http://kswizz.com/post/8275502957/hypocrisy>).

Facebook has very liberal fields for all kinds of stuff. It’s no problem to
say that you believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster (9,573 fans) or Russel’s
Teapot (86 fans). Like Jedis? Facebook’s got your back (2,829)! If you can’t
find your religion you can enter your own, even with a description.

Why then is the gender so locked down? There are two choices. It’s not even
possible to just say nothing. I mean, what the hell? That’s a serious
indicator that Facebook hasn’t done much thinking about gender. That’s just
awful for a huge social network with nearly a billion users.

(Also, is he seriously defending saying “retarded” to people? What the hell?)

~~~
Svirfneblin
Actually, it is possible to remove the field entirely, which I'm grateful for
as a non-gendered individual.

But yeah, I do wish you didn't have to even select anything.

