I've noticed a very unpleasant trend in some of the complaints (both here and in similar discussions). A couple of examples:
Ruby (and Rails in particular) loves the rock star image...It’s also a significant barrier to adoption for people who aren’t already a part of this culture, and don’t find it appealing.
As a young women in tech, ... I would be extremely uncomfortable in a classroom of thirty young men and me if an instructor used sex as a metaphor for teaching.
In short, "I'm a girl, I don't like the existing culture, it should change to accommodate me."
I could make a similar statement about the culture I'm currently working in:
As a macho libertarian hacker type, I would be extremely uncomfortable in an extreme liberal, PC-gone-wild culture which glorifies east coast pseudointellectual preening. Therefore, the culture of modern universities should change.
Most communities have a preexisting culture, and you are not a good fit for all of them. But demanding that a culture change to be more palatable for you is the height of arrogance. I don't demand that academic culture change, I just fit in as best I can. Sooner or later I'll probably move on to a place where I fit in better.
[edit: I've been refreshing the page, this post seems to be getting a lot of both upmods and downmods. I'd be curious to hear responses.]
Most communities have a preexisting culture, and you are not a good fit for all of them. But demanding that a culture change to be more palatable for you is the height of arrogance.
I grew up in a culture where people of colour were not welcome. Others fought and actually died so that I could write about Ruby and programming and have people include me or argue with me on the basis of my ideas and not my skin colour. In my own lifetime, I have witnesses the exact same struggle over sexual orientation.
If giving one's life to change the world in this manner is "the height of arrogance," I welcome it.
As I already clarified, I'm not defending active discrimination. I'm simply claiming you need a stronger argument than "As an X, I'm offended, so the world should change."
Acting like a rock star != discrimination against women. Women may disproportionately dislike geeks acting like rock stars, but that doesn't make it discrimination.
It is simply wrong to compare actively harming a group of people (segregation) to a group of people disproportionately disliking a certain culture.
I don't know any rock stars. Is objectifying women a necessary component of acting like a rock star? When someone is described as a "Rock Star" developer, does this mean that soft-core porn is an inevitable metaphor for their work?
I don't know how to debate whether acting like a rock star is discriminatory against women, because I don't know what "acting like a rock star" means. I do know that a certain presentation offended a non-trivial number of people and did so in a manner that was entirely unrelated to its technical content.
Asking that this sort of thing be avoided is rather specific and says nothing about rock stars or any random thing that may irk any random person.
Why don't we discuss the specific incident rather that (a) trying to generalize it, and then (b) disputing the argument on the basis of an invalid generalization?
I'm using "rock star behavior" to describe the macho culture found in the RoR community.
Lets talk about the specific incident. Some people were offended by a joke. The joke did not say that women were unwelcome or say anything about women specifically. It did not say or do anything to negatively affect women.
Women may have disproportionately disliked the joke and the culture which it exemplifies. That's all. That's simply a complaint that "I and people like me don't like this, therefore the world should change." I believe my generalization is fair, certainly more fair than your comparison to active legal discrimination.
Lets talk about the specific incident. Some people were offended by a joke. The joke did not say that women were unwelcome or say anything about women specifically. It did not say or do anything to negatively affect women... Women may have disproportionately disliked the joke and the culture which it exemplifies. That's all. That's simply a complaint that "I and people like me don't like this, therefore the world should change." I believe my generalization is fair, certainly more fair than your comparison to active legal discrimination.
You know, your statement pretty much sums up your perspective on the issue and quite frankly, I see no reason to dissect it. I think there is enough in this thread for people to read what you have just written and decide for themselves what to think of your point of view.
It's not rock star behavior. It's frat boy behavior. But it's the information systems management frat that can only get six women to come to the party. And the guys blow it with the only six who show up.
I initially voted you up because I think I know what you mean, but in thinking about it I would change my vote if I could.
Point being, your argument applies just as well to any sort of discrimination, and it basically boils down to "you don't like it? Tough, you're not in charge". At least that's how it sounds to me.
My argument doesn't apply to all discrimination. If women were being actively discriminated against, I'd object.
That isn't the complaint. The complaint is that "ROR culture is tolerant of edgy material I dislike, and they should change to make me more comfortable."
The latter argument is the one I'm claiming is flawed. It's an argument about culture which some people may dislike, not specific actions which directly harm another person.
Change tolerant to encourages and you have a point. Some people are tolerant of edgy material that they find offensive, you see it then you get over it or forget it.
Its when the edgy/offensive material is encouraged that people sit back and take a look at the culture that is causing it.
> As a macho libertarian hacker type, I would be extremely uncomfortable in an extreme liberal, PC-gone-wild culture which glorifies east coast pseudointellectual preening. Therefore, the culture of modern universities should change.
I've heard this sentiment expressed on a couple occasions ^^ There's nothing wrong with trying to change to world, or even just your corner of it. It's important not to be too annoying about it, but that's not really an issue here (you can always just ignore the debate and keep on hacking.)
I don't object if you want to change the world for the better. I object when you want to change the world for your personal benefit.
A good argument: "The number of great female hackers is much larger than the number of macho rockstar hackers. To get more good hackers, we should change our culture."
[edit: I'm not sure if the good argument is true, but imagine it is for the sake of argument.]
A bad argument: "I was offended, the culture should change to accommodate people like me."
I agree with your point in theory, but I don't think that is what is happening in this situation.
This is not a single person with a megaphone taking issue with something and insisting that the world accommodate their needs, it's a group of people (men and women) taking issue with the decisions a person made and the way a community reacted to that decision. These people who are objecting are not outsiders, these are people within the community and if they can make good arguments as to why the community did something wrong, I don't see any reason why the community shouldn't change. A "tough luck, throw your own party" argument really doesn't apply here.
You're assuming the worst from couple of quotes which aren't clearly one or the other of these statements. From my personal interactions with women in programming (including, btw, the author of one of those quotes), most of them seem to be much more aligned with your "good" argument than the "bad" one. They are concerned that there are lots of women who could be valuable contributors to this community, but who choose to go elsewhere because the culture makes them feel unwelcome and unvalued.
Most people go out to change the world to improve their own situation, it just so happens usually that helping their ownsituation also benefits the rest of society.
Try telling Kate Sheppard, Myra Bradwell or Jeannette Rankin that the culture shouldn't change to accommodate them
Do you intend to imply that women shouldn't feel welcome as Ruby/RoR hackers?
Because all this time, I just thought Ruby and RoR were about hacking in a powerful yet carefree interpreted language. I didn't realize it had anything to do with excluding women.
I'm claiming that the argument "As an X, I dislike the culture surrounding Y, therefore it should change" is arrogant and flawed. I then illustrated with a non-gendered example of a culture in which I fit poorly.
There are many valid criticisms one can make about either ROR culture (see Zed's rant) or academic culture. But "As an X, I don't like the culture surrounding Y" is not a valid criticism. That's just a selfish demand that the world change to make your life easier.
And I think you're doing a very good job of missing the point, because the issue here is gender. What the hell else would it be?
"As a woman, I feel unwelcome in the Ruby community" is the gist of the criticism. If you don't read it that way, fair enough. But I did, and in that context, your response came across as, "It's selfish of you to expect the Ruby community to be welcoming of women."
I shouldn't have to explain to you why that's just plain wrong, and not at all analogous to your experience in academia.
I understand the criticism. I don't agree with it. The template for criticism is this: "As an {{X}}, I feel unwelcome in the {{Y}} community."
The case under discussion here is "X=women, Y=ROR". I gave another example witha "X=macho hackers, Y=academia". In all cases, I feel it is selfish to expect a community to change just because of your feelings.
Could you explain why things are different in the special case of "X=women"?
"Selfish" implies that it's a personal problem. Making half the human race feel unwelcome just because they happen to have been born female rises above the level of a personal problem.
As a "macho hacker", you've probably adopted some beliefs and values that are a misfit to what you perceive to be the beliefs and values of the academia. There are no such beliefs and values endemic to being a woman. When a community starts to exclude people, not for having incompatible values and beliefs, but for having vaginas, I'd say there's a serious problem.
No one excluded women or made them feel unwelcome. The slides said nothing offensive about women. Women may have been disproportionately offended by them, but that is not the same thing. Anyone who is offended by the presentation is offended because they have adopted beliefs and values which lead them to be offended.
If the community is actively excluding women (e.g., not allowing them to participate or treating them badly when they do), that's a completely different matter.
They portrayed women as sex objects rather than living persons with minds of their own. They say to women, "we're more interested in your tits and ass than in any code you might have to write." You didn't get the message, and it may not have even been intended by the presenter, but the message was there, loud and clear.
Those of us who are interested in precise communication (which, in my experience, usually includes hackers) are usually more than willing to criticize someone for miscommunicating. If I go around saying "functional programming" when I really mean "procedural programming", somebody is going to stop me and correct my usage. And if I refuse to listen, the fault is my own. This is no different. If you don't want to broadcast misogynistic messages, don't use misogynistic visual language.
No, the talk portrayed porn stars as sex objects. The comparison was explicitly "bad database" == "ugly porn star", "good database" == "pretty porn star". You can't demand precise communication in one paragraph and then drastically read hidden meanings into things in another paragraph.
Besides, you would never demand the same level of precision in visual aids if he used lolcats rather than porn stars. I think that precise communication is simply a posthoc justification for your gut reaction.
Come to think of it, it's not necessarily a matter of precise communication. The fact is, the vast majority of women who saw that presentation got the sense of being unwelcome and objectified. I think you can measure just about any attempt at communication by the message that actually gets across to people, and the message that actually got across to women was what it was. That's the point of the whole article.
Why did the women in the article perceive it differently from you? Maybe because when you're a victim of systemic sexism every day of your life you're better at recognizing it, and when you're the beneficiary of systemic sexism every day of your life, you're better at ignoring it. That's the standard explanation at least, and there's merit to it.
Ruby (and Rails in particular) loves the rock star image...It’s also a significant barrier to adoption for people who aren’t already a part of this culture, and don’t find it appealing.
As a young women in tech, ... I would be extremely uncomfortable in a classroom of thirty young men and me if an instructor used sex as a metaphor for teaching.
In short, "I'm a girl, I don't like the existing culture, it should change to accommodate me."
I could make a similar statement about the culture I'm currently working in:
As a macho libertarian hacker type, I would be extremely uncomfortable in an extreme liberal, PC-gone-wild culture which glorifies east coast pseudointellectual preening. Therefore, the culture of modern universities should change.
Most communities have a preexisting culture, and you are not a good fit for all of them. But demanding that a culture change to be more palatable for you is the height of arrogance. I don't demand that academic culture change, I just fit in as best I can. Sooner or later I'll probably move on to a place where I fit in better.
[edit: I've been refreshing the page, this post seems to be getting a lot of both upmods and downmods. I'd be curious to hear responses.]