
Hacking the Hacker Stereotypes - yan
http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2010/12/hacking-the-hacker-stereotypes/
======
Jun8
"loose 22-year-old group of women within the club called the Haecksen (a pun
on the German word for witch)."

In case you're wondering, the German word for witch is _Hexe_ so the name
sounds like _witches_. It's interesting with all the language PC in the US
(e.g. a lot of articles and books on hackers will use the pronoun _she_
although women in this field, by everybody's admission, are rare) Germans are
quite OK with the fact that the word for hacker is masculine. Indeed I think a
lot of people would be surprised if there was a movement to change it to _die
Hacker_. There's, of course, _die Hackerin_ but a lot of people here would
object to that even more, since it's derived from a "male" form of the word.

Similar situation in French, although, as it predicated by their angst over
their language, things are not so easy
(<http://www.nakedtranslations.com/en/2004/hacker>).

On a different note, this word for witch is why those weird signs are called
"Hex Signs" (<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hex_sign>).

------
wccrawford
Forced to? No, they chose to.

Hackers respect skill. If they have it, they get respect. If they don't, they
don't. Standing in a group of hackers and saying 'You should respect me' will
get nothing but sneers and laughter. Starting a group to say the same will
have the same result.

Do they have skill? We don't know, because the article focused on them being
women and NOT on their skill.

Yes, that's right: The article is exactly the opposite of what they are trying
to do. It's perpetuating the myth that women can't be true hackers and can
only claim to be.

~~~
jdp23
Nonsense. While many hackers treat women equally, there are also a lot who
apply double standards. Women (and feminist guys) working together to
highlight this will lead to less sexism and increased respect.

And the article is the exact opposite of perpetuating the myth -- it's
highlighting women hackers.

~~~
yummyfajitas
No, it's highlighting a group of women who get together and talk while
claiming to be hackers. You can find similar groups

An article which actually does highlight a female hacker. Note that the focus
is on her hacks, not on her gender (which only comes up tangentially):
<http://pastebin.com/8ZN3BVTJ>

~~~
jdp23
You appear to have a very narrow definition of hacker. hh66 is one and so are
the women in the Wired article.

~~~
yummyfajitas
The point of the article I linked to is not that she is a virus writer, the
point is that the article is about her hacks. If the article were about a girl
who wrote an information retrieval system, a video game or a database, it
would similarly highlight a female hacker.

This wired article is about a bunch of girls who get together and whine about
men asking them what distro they run.

~~~
prodigal_erik
Yeah, I'd be disappointed if Wired ran my picture but omitted links to any of
my projects. If this article were about men, we'd be ignoring it.

------
sudont
_Zirn says that when meeting new male hacker acquaintances, an intense
interview-style process often follows. "It’s like they don’t believe you, they
have all these questions, they want to know what Linux distribution you use."_

I'm not sure^, this is typical of guys in _any_ field. Men tend to argue more
about the mechanics of any given field more than women. There's a definite
sub-population of guys being all about "the gear" that doesn't exist in the
same technical population of women. It's quite similar to photography, where
there are a lot of both men and women practicing, but really only men get nuts
over the hardware.

Besides, when I meet new hackers, an easy conversation entry point is on
operating systems and opinions of tech to get a feel for the other person.

Maybe it's more of a body language thing that isn't getting conveyed through
the article's text.

^edit from _I don't agree with this_

~~~
jdp23
When you say "I don't agree with this," are you saying that she is not
reporting her experiences accurately? Most of the technical women I know say
the same thing as she does. Body language and tone are a big part of it. Next
time you're at a conference, look at how guys interact with your women friends
-- and compare notes afterwards to see what you noticed and what you didn't.

~~~
sudont
You're right about that not being clear. I meant that it's traditional for
guys to interact in that way, regardless of gender. Their emotional language
may be patronizing, but the content is the exact same as if they were meeting
a male hacker for the first time.

I'm more of a design-world person, so I generally don't see the explicit
sexism, since women designers are equally respected.

