Whenever an instance of blatant sexism comes up, an attempt is invariably made to rationalize away the fact that a sexist act has actually occurred. We have had two such attempts made here so far and I expect more. One commentator is attempting to advance the baseless theory that the bully did not care about the sex of his victim. This particular individual even goes so far to say that "the biggest problem" is the alleged misuse of labels related to racism or sexism, as if this could somehow be worse that the discrimination the disenfranchised experience on a day-to-day basis. Another commentator states that it is because of her popularity not her sex. This too is bunk. There are significantly more males in this industry with significantly more popularity. Yet no evidence is presented that these figures also have received this level of harassment.
There is one word for this behavior mentioned above: denial. Unfortunately, there seems to be a part of our community that refuses to call things what they are. This was an instance of sexism that manifested itself in a nasty way.
Halfway through reading this article I had myself really wishing posts like these would just publicly out the perpetrator instead of referring to them anonymously - unfortunately as I finished the article I realized that she hadn't done so because the perpetrator was never found out.
For the cases where there is no question who the perpetrator is - I wonder if it would be beneficial to encourage more public shaming? Part of me knows that if these people are lead to believe their actions are left without consequence they will continue in their wrongdoing. When a blog post tells a story of someone being assaulted, a lot of good people will come to their support but I would be genuinely surprised if a creep is convinced not to be a creep by reading a story in the third person about another anonymous creep.
If we call these people out and kick them out of the community, like when a spouse kicks out a cheating partner, we have more room for responsible, respectable community members.
On the other hand, public shaming at any level _seems_ childish to me, but I can't point out why. Additionally, if someone makes false claims, they can do serious damage very easily. There is probably no easy answer here.
I once criticized Sarah on twitter while agreeing with Robert Hoekman when he wrote a blog post about another person in the UX speaking circuit who did not have a huge amount of work behind them to back up the fact that they are up in front of people, teaching them.
I since regretted my comments on Sarah's success. I believe I apologized on twitter (after being called out). I was embarrassed, but have not contacted her since, I just see her on rosters for speaking at various conferences.
Now, when I read this post of hers my heart sank. Not only because it is utterly sickening someone could do this to another person, but that at one stage I was unkind to her online.
What if she suspected me because of my remarks 2 years ago? What if she called my name out as a suspect. My web development career and reputation would be shattered. Now what if someone decides to play detective and look through twitter history and sees my comments and accuse me publicly. Ruined.
Its not that public shaming is childish, its that that such accusations have huge ramifications if false. It's "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"[0]
This does not mean I hope the person/people involved are not held accountable, it just needs to be handled outside a public internet witch hunt.
I believe that the people who act like this almost always act out in other ways: tell sexist jokes, make light of rape culture, all that stuff.
One way we can make a difference is to refuse to tolerate that kind of thing in our own circles of acquaintances, because otherwise those individuals will take our silence as implicit affirmation of their worldview. Sometimes it's hard to be "that guy", but if you're not prepared to do it, then you're one of the people that's enabling this kind of behaviour. By not speaking out you're telling these people that what they believe is OK: silence is complicity, like it or not.
We shouldn't allow disfunctional individuals to participate in our communities, but I think at the point where you photoshop nudes to damage someone's reputation, a therapist would be more appropriate than a lynch mob. I think that's why it seems childish to you, you know that shaming wouldn't make anyone change, it would just satiate our thirst for revenge.
Are there any high profile women in this industry who haven't been treated like shit in some way such as this? What a nasty bunch of people we are. Are we (developers) the douchey 80s guy of the 21st century?
On Friday I pitched my company to a room of 150 developers, since my company was a hackathon sponsor. I was the only female speaker out of about 15.
Afterwards, a well-known, elite developer asked me if I programmed. When I said yes, he said that made me 50% less attractive. Then he asked me if I cooked and cleaned. To my face.
You don't have to be high profile to deal with this stuff. Just being in a room where you're 1 female out of 15 males is enough to get this kind of attention.
And this is why you need moderated communities, because otherwise the assholes will dominate the discourse in your chosen milieu and drive out anyone they deem unacceptable.
Very often it's women. I don't know why but either there's a class of developers who feel personally threatened by women in their chosen profession, or it's personal: some individual has believed themselves to be entitled to that woman's attention & when it was not forthcoming begin a cruel campaign of punishment to make up for the perceived insult. Maybe even both?
It's been said that sunlight is the best disinfectant: I know that I'd be completely unaware of this behaviour if some of the women involved weren't brave enough to speak out about it. I don't have any good solutions though: the best I can do is to refuse to tolerate any sexism in my own circles, on the grounds that the people who do this kind of thing take other people's silence (not wanting to be "that guy") as implicit affirmation of their actions.
Are we (developers) the douchey 80s guy of the 21st century?
To paraphrase Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, one problem is guys believing that they're too smart to be sexist.
I also believe that a lot of people involved can't handle the idea that they're being bullies, and so further attempt to rationalise their actions with terrible analogies and arguments that boil down to "I'm a geek - I'm incapable of oppressing someone!"
I'm a man. We (male) developers don't have to be like this, and many of us aren't.
But, I've said it before and I'll say it again: men have even more of a responsibility than women to speak up and combat this kind of sexism. We (men) have the utmost responsibility to make sure that we are fighting to allow women a place in our industry, a place where they feel safe enough so that they can be equal participants without worrying about being looked down upon, harassed or concerned for their safety.
The sad reality is, more than having courageous women speaking up about sexism, men speaking up about sexism convinces other men to treat women respectfully.
Seriously. I roll my eyes at some of the white-knighting that goes when a woman is slighted on the Internet but holy crap I get nervous for my girlfriend who's a talented programmer and about to graduate with a CS degree. Is this kind of bullshit in store for her? Sheesh.
I agree, all the stuff I read it's like going back a century, we are supposed to be on the vanguard of a brave new world, not re-hashing the same dumb ass attitude that has contaminated the past decades. Grow up, get on and be nice.
Why is wondering aloud how sexist/creepy the bulk of male programmers are more acceptable than wondering aloud how untalented the bulk of female programmers are?
I think both behaviors are rather low shaming behaviors.
Look at how women are treated in the Middle East. Listen to stories of the rape culture in Delhi. Pay inequality the world over. A media industry which sees young women as commodities to sell their product. What we're seeing here is the thin end of the wedge; the individual who committed this disgusting act would probably have felt entitled to behave this way even were they working in another industry.
It's ugly, but this is a very large societal problem that we're still really struggling to address. As pleased as I was to see President Obama address gay rights in his inauguration, it was equally significant that he addressed gender equality. We've a long way to go before this is fixed, but rather than indulging in self-pity or recrimination, how about we work to be the change we want to see in the world?
I don't like being compared to some random person (of unknown gender) who attacked a woman in an online forum just because I am a developer, thank you very much!
Sexist misogynistic asshole on a project? Take away his commit access and ban him from all channels of communication, if you have the power and if you don't, don't contribute to the project anymore, make the reason public and create an alternative if possible.
In daily life I don't hang out with those assholes, do you? If not, why the fuck are you doing it online? Just because they have decent skills? How many people do they keep away from your project and from this community who could easily make up for that, who would have better skills and who would bring you project much further?
If you have a project and want to do something against what is currently fashionable in discrimination, stop writing comments, write a code of conduct and let's be honest if you don't, you are not any better than the people you are criticizing.
It's somewhat encouraging to read the comments here and note that for a change they are not already overrun by aggressive apologists for the continuing misogyny in software development.
Hmm. The number of apologists is actually quite small, in my experience. I think the problem here is that most of the people here are men, who have no real idea what being on the receiving end of sexual or sexually-motivated harassment is like, but they also don't see what they can or should do about it. I think it goes something like this: "Stories like the OPs are terrible, I get that, but by saying that 'the tech community' is to blame, you're saying I'm to blame, and I've never been sexist to anyone!". Basically, they feel like something is being done or said in bad faith here. A lot of the people who wind up arguing on these threads aren't actually misogynists[1], they just feel they're being told something that doesn't make sense to them, and in a way they're not entirely wrong. There's not much reason to accept that "the tech community has a problem" if you and your friends are members of the tech community, and none of you are sexists, but you feel like you're being accused anyway. We need to make a clearer distinction between the average member of the tech community and, for want of a better word, the 'asshole contingent' who are the source of the problem.
[1] That some people arguing on the 'wrong' side here are not doing so for misogynistic reasons doesn't mean that nobody is; part of the problem is that you can't easily tell the difference.
I was just about to write the same thing, before I saw your comment. HN is a cesspool in these cases usually, but I'm genuinely happy that it's different this time around.
It does sicken me sometimes, the attitudes towards women of some of the tech folks I've run into. Not usually out and out misogyny, but stupid jokes and inappropriate comments. Most often made/said when there are no women around, they show how some of my fellow developers still think and it honestly feels to me like I'm working with neanderthals.
On the minor-but-still-horrible end of the scale, female colleagues have complained in the past that their ideas are often not taken seriously until repeated by a man. I hope I'm not guilty of this one (being the repeater or the listener) but I'm not entirely sure.
There have also been incidents where female friends and colleagues have been verbally and physically harassed in the workplace or in learning establishments, and they face an uphill struggle to get anyone to take their claims in the least bit seriously, with witnesses dropping out and the accused making all sorts of bizarre claims.
So no, sat here in the enlightened 21st century, amongst the people at the cutting edge of technology, the people who like to think themselves the vanguard of the new knowledge and tech based society... we're not the vanguard of social enlightenment, we don't operate as the fabled meritocracy, and we need to watch out for this behaviour and encourage women to speak up about it as much as possible.
If nothing else I have no desire to spend my days around sexist arseholes.
Who are these people? I mean, really, what the fuck?
It seems hardly a week goes by without someone bringing forward a genuinely awful case of harassment, abuse, or worse, and that's only the stories horrible enough to make the front page of HN. So, who the fuck is doing this and how do we make them fuck the fuck off?
I kinda understand why some people's response is to doubt that this could really be happening, because it is pretty fucking unbelievable. But it seems that it really is happening, and it's undermining some pretty central notions of the meritocratic, no-bullshit character of the community. This kind of thing is pretty outrageous bullshit.
OK, to a certain extent we must accept that there will always be assholes, and the kind of spite and vindictiveness the OP relates sounds like the behaviour of a disturbed, obsessive individual, but there must be a way of deterring such behaviour. What more can we do here?
When I speak at conferences, it's not unusual for me to receive heckles. It's part of a thing where a lot of people who know me know that I'm pretty good with banter and will usually respond with a put down or your mum joke in good nature. It's mainly because I grew into conference speaking in a hostile conference environment, and also I've done a bit of stand-up now and again so you get used to it.
The problem with all of this that I've realised is that other people in the audience will see me being heckled and will think it's perfectly fine to heckle speakers, and that other people will see me being heckled and might be discouraged from speaking. It's got me thinking quite a bit about this. Any ideas what I should do about it?
Here's one: Instead of engaging them as a standup comic, willing to cross swords with a heckler (which likely encourages them), make up a three line response about how "this is a tech talk at a conference, please don't heckle, it just wrecks things for everyone." In other words, deflate the situation by being bland in your reply, and only bland.
What do we do about less overt sexism? For instance, there's a popular developer who writes useful plugins named after genitalia and sex acts. I find his code useful, and I've asked him publicly and privately to choose nonsexual names for his code, but he and his users see nothing wrong with this. Even consider the "weinre" project that's on the frontpage right now. "Get your weinre out"?!
His assertion is that it's not sexist if his projects are called "testicle" or "foreplay", since those words aren't intrinsically sexist. How do we, as a community, emphasize that sexuality and development can't mix if we want women to feel comfortable, given that they're currently a minority?
> it’s about finding female speakers who have enough of a thick skin to want to stand up infront of an audience of twitter-trigger-happy males and public speak
Was this awful incident a one off or is attacking female speakers at tech conferences a thing? I've not noticed it until now. I don't get it, why would you? To what end?
Please, tell me, how would comments look if someone did the same thing, but for the guy?
The sight of a bunch of guys rushing to fight sexism (often without even understanding what sexism is) and solve women's issues for them is amusing.
This is not to say, that there are no problems. But the biggest problem I see is a knee-jerk reaction to anything involving gender or race. Sometimes assholes are just assholes and couldn't care less if their victim is women or black person, or whatever. The bunch of self proclaimed righteous knights however fails to see that and then everything becomes sexims and/or rasism thus diluting real problems.
> Please, tell me, how would comments look if someone did the same thing, but for the guy?
HN is getting better at being less aggressive and at being more constructive with criticism.
Perhaps you can find an example where a male dev had pictures of his face, and pictures of another man's penis, posted to a website with his name and email address. And, when you find it, HN will be supportive of that man and will condemn the anon attacker.
It's interesting that you say "couldn't care less if their victim is a women or black person, or whatever".
Can you come up with a good example of this kind of extreme attacking of a white man? You say "How would this look for a guy", I honestly can't think of any examples where people go anywhere near as far trolling and harassing white men. I may of course just be forgetting some obvious cases.
yep, equality sucks, especially when you're attacked as an equal. The thing is, these idiots that do stuff like this are targeting the woman's sexual attributes, and not her intelligence or skills.
As for the guy that said he learned better from other men - maybe he does, give him the benefit of the doubt - it's not ALL about you.
Is there becoming a general consensus on what to do about a problem we are becoming aware is worse than most of us thought?
I glean the following from a few of these threads
1. Conferences, conventions, hackathons all should have published "acceptable behaviour" statements, and possibly a red / orange / green card system that everyone understands
2. online examples get red / orange carded though a bitly link posted on a red card site (did I read that?)
3. conferences share blacklists
4. we accept that this shit will continue and get worse in an anonymous internet and that we accept that as a price of freedom and try to mitigate it for those who actually pay that price.
Conferences are a problematic area even if one ignore what kind of community it is. (be that IT, gardening, Sci-Fy, trucks, manufacturing, or furries). The math is not giving out pretty numbers.
Lets compare two conferences. One is 5% females participation, and a other is 50%. We can directly say that the risk of getting sexually assaulted is minimum 20x larger at the 5% conference than the 50%. there is also a number of additional considerations one can add to the risk assessment like age, marital status of people in the conference, and access to alcohol.
What's always very frustrating, some guy may hold a grudge or be sexist... but why does he always find so many supporters, like those who visited his web site and sent this woman emails? People who shouldn't have anything against this woman but just can't keep themselves from attacking her. Frat house? Too many people in this industry don't seem to ever graduate from it.
I constantly wonder if the era of self-centered, socially-awkward developers is coming to an end (hopeful). More often that not the younger developers I see tend to be bucking that trend which should go a long way towards addressing this problem - unless of course they are the primary offenders. Are these instances centered around older or younger developers, I wonder? If younger then perhaps this entire assumption is baseless, in which case the path developers are on in general is indeed alarmingly derailed.
How would you combat this scenario, though? If the person who is doing this has not been caught, then is it really a good idea to publicly state how much of an annoyance he or she is being? (I say she, because seriously, it could be another woman as well. Everybody is assuming it's probably a guy. We've all seen how mean women can be to other women, though. I grew up with 2 sisters and their friends ... I've seen a lot of that.) But, if this person is still anonymous then I'd think this would just fuel the fire and make them go even more full throttle, now. I don't think staying quiet helps either, but this is just that typical internet scenario where somebody is hiding behind anonymity and is enjoying the attention and drama that their actions are creating. I really don't know how I'd combat this, if it were happening to me.
This is nothing against the author of the article, this is just me some what brainstorming out loud about how to combat this scenario. Without trying to take action, and with the antagonist still unknown, what does the author want everybody to do, though? What is the call to action here?
Before I say anything, let me say clearly I am not sexist; I am a strong advocate of equal rights (key word: equal).
Some of your attacks can definitely be attributed to sex, but it's bad propaganda just to throw them all in the sexism bucket, or treat sexism like it is the norm. I know several females in the industry who are not afraid of anything, and have never been attacked on the basis of their sex (or even been attacked otherwise). Sometimes people attack just because they don't like the cut of your jib. In other words, it can be tempting to project your experiences on the rest of the industry, but I think as a whole the majority of men are "good guys".
The simple truth is the more you open yourself to the public, the more you open yourself for attack, regardless of sex. You have almost 30,000 followers, so statistically speaking at least a few of them are probably psychopaths and/or sexist. Some of the highest profile tweeters, like Notch, get attacks daily (mostly by angry 13 year olds). My $0.02...
This post is just so sick. I'm sorry that anyone would have to go through all of that. While I think that calling people sexist or racist when it isn't founded is terrible, this is an extremely obvious case of harassment and those involved should be punished. I hope my daughters don't have to deal with this crap when they grow up.
[+] [-] timsally|13 years ago|reply
There is one word for this behavior mentioned above: denial. Unfortunately, there seems to be a part of our community that refuses to call things what they are. This was an instance of sexism that manifested itself in a nasty way.
[+] [-] newhouseb|13 years ago|reply
For the cases where there is no question who the perpetrator is - I wonder if it would be beneficial to encourage more public shaming? Part of me knows that if these people are lead to believe their actions are left without consequence they will continue in their wrongdoing. When a blog post tells a story of someone being assaulted, a lot of good people will come to their support but I would be genuinely surprised if a creep is convinced not to be a creep by reading a story in the third person about another anonymous creep.
If we call these people out and kick them out of the community, like when a spouse kicks out a cheating partner, we have more room for responsible, respectable community members.
On the other hand, public shaming at any level _seems_ childish to me, but I can't point out why. Additionally, if someone makes false claims, they can do serious damage very easily. There is probably no easy answer here.
[+] [-] lukeholder|13 years ago|reply
I since regretted my comments on Sarah's success. I believe I apologized on twitter (after being called out). I was embarrassed, but have not contacted her since, I just see her on rosters for speaking at various conferences.
Now, when I read this post of hers my heart sank. Not only because it is utterly sickening someone could do this to another person, but that at one stage I was unkind to her online.
What if she suspected me because of my remarks 2 years ago? What if she called my name out as a suspect. My web development career and reputation would be shattered. Now what if someone decides to play detective and look through twitter history and sees my comments and accuse me publicly. Ruined.
Its not that public shaming is childish, its that that such accusations have huge ramifications if false. It's "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"[0]
This does not mean I hope the person/people involved are not held accountable, it just needs to be handled outside a public internet witch hunt.
[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstones_formulation
edit: grammar
[+] [-] pja|13 years ago|reply
One way we can make a difference is to refuse to tolerate that kind of thing in our own circles of acquaintances, because otherwise those individuals will take our silence as implicit affirmation of their worldview. Sometimes it's hard to be "that guy", but if you're not prepared to do it, then you're one of the people that's enabling this kind of behaviour. By not speaking out you're telling these people that what they believe is OK: silence is complicity, like it or not.
[+] [-] krickle|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifebar|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] h2s|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mwetzler|13 years ago|reply
Afterwards, a well-known, elite developer asked me if I programmed. When I said yes, he said that made me 50% less attractive. Then he asked me if I cooked and cleaned. To my face.
You don't have to be high profile to deal with this stuff. Just being in a room where you're 1 female out of 15 males is enough to get this kind of attention.
[+] [-] pja|13 years ago|reply
Very often it's women. I don't know why but either there's a class of developers who feel personally threatened by women in their chosen profession, or it's personal: some individual has believed themselves to be entitled to that woman's attention & when it was not forthcoming begin a cruel campaign of punishment to make up for the perceived insult. Maybe even both?
It's been said that sunlight is the best disinfectant: I know that I'd be completely unaware of this behaviour if some of the women involved weren't brave enough to speak out about it. I don't have any good solutions though: the best I can do is to refuse to tolerate any sexism in my own circles, on the grounds that the people who do this kind of thing take other people's silence (not wanting to be "that guy") as implicit affirmation of their actions.
[+] [-] mootothemax|13 years ago|reply
To paraphrase Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, one problem is guys believing that they're too smart to be sexist.
I also believe that a lot of people involved can't handle the idea that they're being bullies, and so further attempt to rationalise their actions with terrible analogies and arguments that boil down to "I'm a geek - I'm incapable of oppressing someone!"
[+] [-] ddellacosta|13 years ago|reply
But, I've said it before and I'll say it again: men have even more of a responsibility than women to speak up and combat this kind of sexism. We (men) have the utmost responsibility to make sure that we are fighting to allow women a place in our industry, a place where they feel safe enough so that they can be equal participants without worrying about being looked down upon, harassed or concerned for their safety.
The sad reality is, more than having courageous women speaking up about sexism, men speaking up about sexism convinces other men to treat women respectfully.
[+] [-] mattdeboard|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Aaronontheweb|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tudorw|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hopeless_case|13 years ago|reply
Why is wondering aloud how sexist/creepy the bulk of male programmers are more acceptable than wondering aloud how untalented the bulk of female programmers are?
I think both behaviors are rather low shaming behaviors.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] kapowaz|13 years ago|reply
Look at how women are treated in the Middle East. Listen to stories of the rape culture in Delhi. Pay inequality the world over. A media industry which sees young women as commodities to sell their product. What we're seeing here is the thin end of the wedge; the individual who committed this disgusting act would probably have felt entitled to behave this way even were they working in another industry.
It's ugly, but this is a very large societal problem that we're still really struggling to address. As pleased as I was to see President Obama address gay rights in his inauguration, it was equally significant that he addressed gender equality. We've a long way to go before this is fixed, but rather than indulging in self-pity or recrimination, how about we work to be the change we want to see in the world?
[+] [-] Tichy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] DasIch|13 years ago|reply
In daily life I don't hang out with those assholes, do you? If not, why the fuck are you doing it online? Just because they have decent skills? How many people do they keep away from your project and from this community who could easily make up for that, who would have better skills and who would bring you project much further?
If you have a project and want to do something against what is currently fashionable in discrimination, stop writing comments, write a code of conduct and let's be honest if you don't, you are not any better than the people you are criticizing.
[+] [-] cllns|13 years ago|reply
I think the more privilege you have, the less courage it takes.
[+] [-] RyanMcGreal|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rjknight|13 years ago|reply
[1] That some people arguing on the 'wrong' side here are not doing so for misogynistic reasons doesn't mean that nobody is; part of the problem is that you can't easily tell the difference.
[+] [-] kmfrk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] steveklabnik|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nursie|13 years ago|reply
On the minor-but-still-horrible end of the scale, female colleagues have complained in the past that their ideas are often not taken seriously until repeated by a man. I hope I'm not guilty of this one (being the repeater or the listener) but I'm not entirely sure.
There have also been incidents where female friends and colleagues have been verbally and physically harassed in the workplace or in learning establishments, and they face an uphill struggle to get anyone to take their claims in the least bit seriously, with witnesses dropping out and the accused making all sorts of bizarre claims.
So no, sat here in the enlightened 21st century, amongst the people at the cutting edge of technology, the people who like to think themselves the vanguard of the new knowledge and tech based society... we're not the vanguard of social enlightenment, we don't operate as the fabled meritocracy, and we need to watch out for this behaviour and encourage women to speak up about it as much as possible.
If nothing else I have no desire to spend my days around sexist arseholes.
[+] [-] rjknight|13 years ago|reply
It seems hardly a week goes by without someone bringing forward a genuinely awful case of harassment, abuse, or worse, and that's only the stories horrible enough to make the front page of HN. So, who the fuck is doing this and how do we make them fuck the fuck off?
I kinda understand why some people's response is to doubt that this could really be happening, because it is pretty fucking unbelievable. But it seems that it really is happening, and it's undermining some pretty central notions of the meritocratic, no-bullshit character of the community. This kind of thing is pretty outrageous bullshit.
OK, to a certain extent we must accept that there will always be assholes, and the kind of spite and vindictiveness the OP relates sounds like the behaviour of a disturbed, obsessive individual, but there must be a way of deterring such behaviour. What more can we do here?
[+] [-] _b8r0|13 years ago|reply
The problem with all of this that I've realised is that other people in the audience will see me being heckled and will think it's perfectly fine to heckle speakers, and that other people will see me being heckled and might be discouraged from speaking. It's got me thinking quite a bit about this. Any ideas what I should do about it?
[+] [-] fatbird|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dgrnbrg|13 years ago|reply
His assertion is that it's not sexist if his projects are called "testicle" or "foreplay", since those words aren't intrinsically sexist. How do we, as a community, emphasize that sexuality and development can't mix if we want women to feel comfortable, given that they're currently a minority?
[+] [-] d4nt|13 years ago|reply
Was this awful incident a one off or is attacking female speakers at tech conferences a thing? I've not noticed it until now. I don't get it, why would you? To what end?
[+] [-] rimantas|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] DanBC|13 years ago|reply
HN is getting better at being less aggressive and at being more constructive with criticism.
Perhaps you can find an example where a male dev had pictures of his face, and pictures of another man's penis, posted to a website with his name and email address. And, when you find it, HN will be supportive of that man and will condemn the anon attacker.
[+] [-] CJefferson|13 years ago|reply
Can you come up with a good example of this kind of extreme attacking of a white man? You say "How would this look for a guy", I honestly can't think of any examples where people go anywhere near as far trolling and harassing white men. I may of course just be forgetting some obvious cases.
[+] [-] lukehorvat|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Nursie|13 years ago|reply
Good, lets out them and get rid of them whatever their issue is, so the rest of us can get on with our lives.
[+] [-] AutoCorrect|13 years ago|reply
As for the guy that said he learned better from other men - maybe he does, give him the benefit of the doubt - it's not ALL about you.
[+] [-] unknown|13 years ago|reply
[deleted]
[+] [-] bobx11|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lifeisstillgood|13 years ago|reply
I glean the following from a few of these threads
1. Conferences, conventions, hackathons all should have published "acceptable behaviour" statements, and possibly a red / orange / green card system that everyone understands
2. online examples get red / orange carded though a bitly link posted on a red card site (did I read that?)
3. conferences share blacklists
4. we accept that this shit will continue and get worse in an anonymous internet and that we accept that as a price of freedom and try to mitigate it for those who actually pay that price.
[+] [-] belorn|13 years ago|reply
Lets compare two conferences. One is 5% females participation, and a other is 50%. We can directly say that the risk of getting sexually assaulted is minimum 20x larger at the 5% conference than the 50%. there is also a number of additional considerations one can add to the risk assessment like age, marital status of people in the conference, and access to alcohol.
[+] [-] pekk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] enemtin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] whiterabbit2|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] methodin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Skywing|13 years ago|reply
This is nothing against the author of the article, this is just me some what brainstorming out loud about how to combat this scenario. Without trying to take action, and with the antagonist still unknown, what does the author want everybody to do, though? What is the call to action here?
[+] [-] rada|13 years ago|reply
Thanks for contributing your "all women are bitches" opinion to a discussion on sexism. Classy.
[+] [-] gavanwoolery|13 years ago|reply
(And here I go into down-vote territory... :D)
Before I say anything, let me say clearly I am not sexist; I am a strong advocate of equal rights (key word: equal).
Some of your attacks can definitely be attributed to sex, but it's bad propaganda just to throw them all in the sexism bucket, or treat sexism like it is the norm. I know several females in the industry who are not afraid of anything, and have never been attacked on the basis of their sex (or even been attacked otherwise). Sometimes people attack just because they don't like the cut of your jib. In other words, it can be tempting to project your experiences on the rest of the industry, but I think as a whole the majority of men are "good guys".
The simple truth is the more you open yourself to the public, the more you open yourself for attack, regardless of sex. You have almost 30,000 followers, so statistically speaking at least a few of them are probably psychopaths and/or sexist. Some of the highest profile tweeters, like Notch, get attacks daily (mostly by angry 13 year olds). My $0.02...
[+] [-] hakaaaaak|13 years ago|reply