
The Cool Girl Trap: Or, Why Sexism in Tech Isn’t Going Away - subnaught
https://medium.com/@superbitchcomic/the-cool-girl-trap-or-why-sexism-in-tech-isn-t-going-away-825b9a7642f5
======
nness
If this article ever hits the front of HN, which I would hope it does as it
highlights some toxic behaviours that we should know better than to ignore and
let flourish in a professional or personal environment, there are predictably
going to be a number of comments that go something like this:

"You didn't need to play the game," or "you should have fought back in kind,"
or "why didn't you leave sooner," or "women can be just as meant to each-
other," or "maybe the author was just a difficult person to work with," or
"that doesn't sound like sexism to me," or "that's just what happens in a
male-dominated industry," or some combination of the above.

What each of these comments are is "victim blaming," and dismiss the
experience of the victims in lieu of your own personal experience. When we
face a reality that we do not agree with or we do not want to acknowledge
exists we instinctively try and explain it away, but I'd ask you to trust for
a moment that the author's experiences were real and be empathetic to what
that experience was like. Then imagine that experience affecting more than
half of all women in the workforce, women you work with or women you know.
Then imagine that you are commenting on a HN article post and blaming the
woman for not doing more. What benefit, if any, does that have for our
society?

------
coldtea
> _What exactly do you do in this situation? These two guys, along with the
> producer, were about the only people in the office that bothered to talk to
> me. If I stopped associating with them, I’d be completely alone in the
> place. If I asked them to stop, then I’d have shown weakness and they’d just
> have one more thing to dogpile on me for. If I put my foot down, I’d lose my
> Cool Girl status._

And why do you care about the "Cool Girl Status" anyway?

Either you really like those things you mentioned describing the "cool girl",
in which case it's not some status, those things are indeed what you are and
like, or you don't, in which case you shouldn't care about losing some BS
title.

Besides, who said putting your foot down makes you uncool? It might make you
even cooler.

The issue is seeing it as two camps (collective entities), males and females,
and some kind of cultural war between them.

What is really is is a few guys being jerks.

I also think it usually is not like they are "sexist" as some special
attribute -- they mention stuff related to a colleague being a woman just
because those are attributes they can use (to make fun, gossip about, etc). If
a male colleague was bad at sports, goofy, bald, big-nosed, some minority
ethinicity, or whatever, they'd make fun of that too at some point or another.

And you know what? Women working at an office would too -- at another male
collegue, but easily at another woman too. Women can also be (and are, as
often as men) jerks to men colleagues and women colleages alike.

Just because we have a separate word at it as "sexism" we tend to think it's
something extra special. But it's mostly another way of being a jerk (and/or
being social/bonding/having fun in an aggressive way -- as men and women alike
seldom think twice about it when they do it to others).

~~~
marcus_holmes
I'd agree with you, except that the author's is similar to the experience of a
lot of women in the industry (as she points out, not many of them report
incidents so we don't know).

So yes, this is individuals behaving like dicks. And both men and women behave
like dicks. But when an entire industry (or community in the case of the
gaming community) behave like dicks, with the result that women generally feel
uncomfortable working in the industry, we can't just brush it off as
individual behaviour.

I agree though - women can behave in similarly uncaring manners. And if we
were dealing with an entire industry where that kind of situation and
behaviour were normal to the point where men were effectively incapable of
working in that industry, then we'd be probably be seeing some blog posts like
this.

~~~
coldtea
> _So yes, this is individuals behaving like dicks. And both men and women
> behave like dicks. But when an entire industry (or community in the case of
> the gaming community) behave like dicks, with the result that women
> generally feel uncomfortable working in the industry, we can 't just brush
> it off as individual behaviour._

Oh, I don't brush it off as individual behavior.

If anything I sort of brush it off as what humans in general do. We are often
mean or jerks to one another.

The problem with women is not that those men are especially mean towards them,
but that they are fewer working in the industry -- and thus form a kind of
minority group which is an easier target (add the curiosity factor, and that
people inevitably bring their sexuality issues -- separate from sexism -- into
the workplace, because it's something inherently important to them).

------
eimai134
This was never what being a "cool girl" meant to me and my friends. Where I am
from, the term is used to describe someone who doesn't flip out and act
psychotic or text her boyfriend constantly if he's having a guys night out.

------
throwawaygeu
"In 2014, 83% of the 6,862 sexual harassment complaints made to the EEOC were
from women."

And how many complains came from men that were ignored? Because you know,
women don't harass? But who cares about that. What I care is standard - "women
experience this more so they should be helped, men experience this more so
women should be helped (work related deths, violent crimes, homelessnes...)".
Why progresives can't help everyone or at least by how much someone is afected
rather than "we first fix all problems of A while ignoring B, and then we
might help B"?

" And yet, more than half of women have experienced harassment at work,
according to one of the biggest-ever studies of women in the workplace."

If it's self report then to the trash it goes. If it has no strict definition
of harasement - to the trash it goes. (Remember self report that lead to 1 in
4 women get raped in universities?) Seriuosly, personal anecdote, knew woman
who claimed man A is sexist because he doesn't say hello to her (he didn't say
hello to anyone) and man B was sexist because he was saying hello in maner she
felt to be "sexist".

~~~
eimai134
I've heard a lot of comments about men that would be defined as "harassment"
if they came from a woman. No one really listens to men. I told my husband
that I thought his last boss was sexually harassing him because when she drunk
she would throw her arms around some of the men - probably to make their wives
upset. But would a man be taken seriously if he said something like this made
him uncomfortable, especially if it was his very popular boss? Men have become
the silent victims of today.

