Yes, I defended photography on another part of this thread, as I think it's important to understand its place in society, but that was not an excuse for grovelers and oglers.
It's a sad statement on modern society we have descended so low. At least previously we (as a society) put on a mask of modicum, that mask has vanished greatly. Now, we don't care much about hiding our inhibitions our most base instincts.
Shaming people doesn't hurt (the cause), but it does not help either. I think there is something bigger at play. Moral compass is something so-called conservatives like to toss around, but I do think we have failed the younger generations in ensuring they have a robust understanding of morality --yes, one, while shifting, we should have some basic understanding of injury, remorse and to quote a long dead chief counsel for the army "decency".
30 years ago nobody complained about stuff like this because a)no woman at these events and b)it was absolutely acceptable. And that's without the honey/darling/grope your coworkes time old media tells me about (was that real by the way? I'm from Europe and to young to have had any contact with that )
When? Every generation has assholes. Name me a time when people were more civil than now.
Which is astounding to me.
For what it's worth, though it is convenient to analyze issues under grand models of identity and class warfare (and I've noticed your commenting patterns before as being quite reminiscent to that of a troll, one with far-left tendencies), people ultimately act out of varied individual motives. From my experience "calling people out" thus has a mixed efficacy.
Because jokes justify violence?
I'm pretty sure it's in some MRA troll playbook somewhere.
Especially if there is a social convention for how it is to work.
Of course, the amount of pain would have to be significantly less of an offense than what it is prompting it.
But when pain is sufficiently small, I think the meaning behind the pain is more important than the actual pain.
Calling out the jerks that think this isn't relevant tech material. Bullshit. Tech culture is frequently mentioned. Articles about work-life balance don't get downmodded this much.
First: there are people who flag these kinds of stories, for more than one reason (some people, for instance, just don't want to see ugliness on the front page).
Second: not enough people have upvoted the story to counteract the number of comments on the thread, which is part of the signal HN uses to automatically detect threads with flamewar characteristics.
The fact there would be a flamewar about someones experiences at a tech event says more about the culture of tech than that article about michelin star reviewers that is on the frontpage at the moment.
edit: But I did like that michelin-focused article :D
You are already calling people jerks.
And people get called jerks in those discussions, too.
Is that even possible? I don't see a downmod button available on any articles.
Programmers, engineers, scientists go to tech conferences to talk about work, projects, side interests. They dont want to get sucked into a sales pitch.
I especially dont understand why this would offend the author- the resume on her website implies that she actually is more of a marketing person / copywriter than a technical person.
Most of the sales folks (just look at her resume..) I've worked with 'look' like a non-technical person. They absolutely look like they're trying to sell me something - whether it's through mannerisms, appearance, attitude or way of speaking. I'm going to ask them if they're technical if they're giving non-technical vibes as they try to sell me a complicated piece of software. Why wouldn't I? Why does it suddenly become sexist if she's a woman?
One of the most impressively technically proficient sysadmins I've ever worked with was an extremely attractive, high-energy woman. She's often not taken seriously because she's a woman. How does she prove her gender isn't a factor? She does good fucking work and never, EVER, brings her gender into it because it's not relevant. That's how gender equality gets solved, dammit.
I understand that she's basically being treated as a piece of meat at these places.. But the focus of her article is that she's not being treated seriously as a technical person at a tech conference, despite NOT being a technical person! Fluff and more fluff.
What's more, it's a tragedy to even imply this is what we should do. Our unique life experiences are what we're all supposed to draw on in the startup world to make great products. Yet mysteriously women are supposed to pack most of it in because it's controversial when a man is an ass to them.
We reach "gender equality" when it is not a disadvantage to have any gender. Not by pretending gender doesn't exist and forcing everyone to homogenize.
Gender equality would be solved if more women were doing good work while being silent about gender inequality? I … don't buy it.
Gender equality gets solved by making gender inequality unacceptable. Men are the primary imposers of inequality; it's our responsibility to fix it.
One category of comments are sexual in nature and any respectful person would take a strong stance against these. Everybody understands they are just a few bad people.
The other category of comments come from not-knowing a person in advance. In such case, people generalize and assume things. Calling such conversations sexist is basically taking political-correctness to the extreme. It will make conversations with women-in-tech difficult.
What is lacking is, women-in-tech, like the OP here, not acknowledging the facts before proposing their solutions. Tech industry is male-dominated because more men than women built the industry. Why it was the way is beyond us. We cannot wrong current generation for how the world was before they were born. This is the nature of the world/industry and nobody is at fault.
Instead of calling tech industry sexist and turning everything political-correctness debate, women-in-tech need to give it enough time and teach tech to more women so that things will become gender balanced.
There are many efforts going into positive reinforcement for women entering the tech industry, but this is a problem that can and should be attacked from multiple angles. One of those angles is educating men about the effects of their actions toward the few women who do brave the tech community.
Also, creating assumptions based on gender, race, and other physical qualities has a name: prejudice. While there may be more women in sales roles than technical, assuming that every woman in the tech community is in a sales role until proven (vociferously) otherwise, is sexist.
There's nothing wrong with asking what a persons role is, but there are very simple ways to do that without causing offence. For example "What does your role at company XYZ encompass?" Is much nicer than "Are you actually technical?".
Men and women in tech need to be sensitive to this issue, because it is an issue which detriments the community as a whole. Better acceptance of women, and their diverse skills and opinions, will strengthen the community as a whole, and this is a goal we should work towards.
I'm not sure where it comes from. Personal experience, background must be important factors. But it strikes me as a fairly activist, difficult position to take. I think some of these folks think they are just fitting in by voicing denial and anger about patently obvious forms of sexism. A lot of it comes from political group identification, too.
disagree w/ that statement, in that i'd say it's equally stupefying. but yes, otherwise totally agreed.
But I've known full well that men had a better deal since I was 10.
If you're looking for more stories of difficulties faced by women in tech, a previous colleague of mine wrote this account of her internships and university degree: http://words.samipeachey.com.au/?p=77
The reality is that media from the 50's, 60's, 70's, etc was much more racist/sexist than media today. Society has come a long way. Society is still progressing. Things aren't going to change over night. But the feminists seem to suggest that things are getting worse or are worse now than they've ever been.
Jokes in TV shows are absolutely not what I am referring to. I am referring to situations in which your colleagues — or even your bosses — make value judgments of your person on the basis of gender. I am referring to what the parent article and the article I linked directly confront.
I'd guess that it's because the feminists see the progress, and therefore start having hope that women might not be forever stuck with a worse deal than men. And then, once you have hope, the existing situation seems more intolerable than before. It's not worse than it was, it just feels worse, because you now allow yourself to hope for better.
Hell, I almost incited a screaming match at my last job because one of my coworkers, who is a proud Republican, wouldn't shut up about politics and his only criticism of Hillary Clinton wasn't that her opinions would have negative consequences or her logic was poor, but because "she's got kankles". The only reason it didn't escalate is because he ignored me. It still pisses me off to even recall how stupid this was.
Maybe I've been fortunate enough to know plenty of great people throughout the years, not all of whom were men, that exuded technical knowledge and practical wisdom.
How many infosec folks can, in the subject of cryptography, hold a candle to Dr. Tanja Lange?
How many PHP programmers can hope to even approximate the Herculean efforts of Andrea Faulds to make PHP 7 something great?
We didn't get to where we are today, in terms of technological progress, because sexist ideas or behaviors have any merit.
"Normally, when a woman is dressed like that, I'm paying her to whip me."
(What I was wearing included but was not limited to a leather jacket and black shoes.)
And one of my personal favorites: "So I'm guessing you're in marketing?"
So are older or younger men the worst offenders? I would like to think that older man are worse and the younger generation are more aware and less sexist. But maybe that is not the case.
OP: I'm happy that your good experiences outweigh the bad ones.
But I don't think really compares to the sexism though. Being in a different department means they do not have any actual control over us and we actually make more money than other departments (not including management positions). So I am sure it does not feel as threating and demeaning as the sexism experienced by woman.
It's not that women (or people in ethnic minorities, or older workers, or demonstratively observant religious people) experience flak from peers at conferences or in their workplace.
It's that they experience that flak while being a member of a tiny minority. It's the power imbalance that makes this toxic.
Also: "are you this socially awkward in every situation?" and "do you shower daily?" cracks would be infractions in a lot of workplaces. If you did it repeatedly after being warned, you could get kicked off a team. It is absolutely not as if guys just hear this stuff all the time and deal with it. Probably nobody who believes that has ever managed a large team.
The framing it as “hey tech, we have a sexist problem” is making it sounds like there's no sexist problem in other industry.
I'm not supportive of sexism in the industry, but when it is framed that way, a part of me just couldn't bring myself to align with it.
We can say, hey sexism is a society issue but we tech industry can do better than others. We proud ourselves as the progressive front runner of civilization, so let's make sure we show it.
If you remove [tech] from the title, this article will still make sense, doesn't it?
In public spaces there are few restrictions against this (ex. military zones). In private spaces this can be regulated by the organizer, I believe, but that prohibition must be posted. This is how the "street photography" gender of photography can exist.
Now, to be fair, there are regulations against commercial use of photos from "street photography" without permission. There you can sue for compensation if your likeness was used to advertise and sell (selling a book with street photographs does not require permission, as that is not "commercial use", that's to say, it's "art")
It becomes an issue if the photographer videographer follows you and thus engages in harassment (in some jurisdictions).
Remember that videographer who taunted people at an outdoor restaurant. They had little recourse against him.
As to norms, there is a big difference between someone appearing in a crowd shot or background, and someone being the sole focus of the picture.
Certainly it can feel rude to us, but the law allows it and moreover the feeling of rudeness comes more from believing we "own" our likelinesses in public spaces, which we do not. So, yes, I could feel intruded upon by a documentary or street photographer, no question, but at the same time, they have the right to take my picture, no question.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nussenzweig_v._DiCorcia
[2]https://wmuphoto.wordpress.com/2014/02/07/nussenzweig-v-dico...
If you disagree with the position, post a link to law which states otherwise. There is lots of case law asserting the right of photographers to take pictures unimpeded in public spaces.
I would expect us to behave better considering we actually
give it a voice and properly label it as negative behavior.
I'm not condoning the behavior, but we're all animals and
sex is a thing - it gets the best of many of us and we end
up acting like baboons
edit: this is a good example of unintentional sexism - when talking about negative sexual behavior, people assume it's a guy. This needs to stop just as much as any other negative behavior. If we setup expectations for guys to behave badly, don't be surprised when they do.
We're primates with a large cerebral cortex. We can think about morality and altruism, and how not to hurt each other, in spite of what our animal minds might be signaling.
Stop making excuses for you or your group's inability to exercise self-control. By hinting that the situation -- making another human uncomfortable -- is somehow natural, you are implicitly condoning the behavior.
There will always be sexual differences, and that's fine and healthy, but we should be aiming to treat women as people first in a professional setting.
Depending on what was meant by "tone", this could be due to very deeply-ingrained learned sociolinguistic customs. I don't mean that justifies it, but it could be very subconscious, is not specific to "tech", and seems much less offensive than some of the other examples.
To whatever extent men adopt a different tone when talking to women, it would probably take quite a lot of conscious concentration to control, and generations to eradicate (possibly never, if they can be picked up again by watching our contemporary media.) So, I guess it's something to keep an eye on and fix where you can, but not so simple as eliminating stuff like "They only let you work here ’cause you’re hot."
Edit: tl/dr: If "tone" meant treating her like an idiot/non-technical, bad. If it meant different pitch of voice and body language, not good per se but not that bad either.
P.S. Actually, maintaining gender-based differences might be desirable. Women probably don't want to be treated exactly like "one of the guys", right? Modifying your message and presentation based on your audience is a part of effective communication. If it's offending your audience, change that, but maybe it's not a bad starting position.
Until then, if you think the world would be better off with more woman in tech, help get young people excited about technology and entrepreneurship. The ecosystem is primarily men who started companies internet companies in the early days, which have splintered into tons of new ventures and startups largely comprised of people from those companies.
The list below are great companies (well, a couple have rough patches but what doesn't) and there doesn't need to be a qualifier like "woman" founded. Get out there and kill it, and if you are out there be civil and rational in your appraisal of others.
* Theranos, $9B Biotech
* Y COmbinator, >$4B VC/Tech
* Fanduel, ? Skill Based Wagers
* 23 & Me, ? Genetics
* Kabam, ~$1B Gaming
* CloudFlare, ~$1B Cloud/CDN
* NastyGal, ? Clothing
Let's assume for a moment that both men and women are assholes in equal proportion, that say 10% of the population of either gender are assholes.
For a 50 person company, 80% male: 40 men total 4 male assholes 10 women 1 woman asshole
Take that ratio up to 90% male as many tech conferences are: 45 men of those 45 men, 5 will be assholes, rounding up 5 women 1 woman asshole
In that scenario there actually the same number of male assholes as ALL of the women.
This is why changing the ratio of male and female matters.
Say we make a huge effort and halve the rate of such harassment. That's a change from 99% good to 99.5% good. Will you notice the difference? Maybe, but it's likely you won't. You're still guaranteed to have bad experiences at regular intervals if you go to tech events.
One step at a time.
Sexual harassment happens everywhere, but we care about about it in this field in particular because we are still trying to figure out and repair the imbalance. And, in addition, because sexual harassment of women in a male-dominated field is particularly toxic, due to the power imbalance.
I remember in my first job out of uni (early 90s) our team was having lunch. I don’t remember the discussion that lead up to it, but one of my fellow male colleagues said there was no such thing as rape, because a women enjoy the sex anyway. The only woman at the table just got up and walked away.
I must admit I just completely froze. I was just stunned that someone said something so insanely ignorant. Being a shy young man at the time I really just didn’t know how to react. Afterwards I did go check that my female colleague was okay and express my disbelief at what happened.
That incident pretty much made me ready to believe any terrible story about male behaviour.
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At a software vendor’s offices for two days of training on their product. Walking out of the training area, through the cubicle farm to use the washroom facilities up the back, and seeing explicit pornographic images being used as desktop wallpapers on employees’ computers.
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One office I worked in, a female colleague had a beefcake photo as her desktop wallpaper. Although I felt this was as inappropriate as say, a male employee using a swimsuit photo, nothing was said, by me or anyone else.
§
At a conference, out getting coffee on a warm day and chatting with another attendee. Four young women in smart business attire, including reasonably tight skirts, walk past. This guy’s focus was completely lossed on the conversation, coffee, sunlight, or me smacking him in the back of the head, while he stared unblinkingly at these women until they went around the corner. Ugh. [1]
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Another job working in the city, the building across the alleyway from us was an apartment building, and it appears several of the residents were young, nubile, not fully clothed and forget to close their curtains.
Was not uncommon to look up from my desk and see two or three guys standing at the window staring across. They were not actually licking the glass or otherwise being a nuisance, and being a visually oriented young man myself I understood the distraction it was. Still, I’ve always seem to have had more self control then my contemporaries. Perhaps I just have enough blood in my circulatory system to be able to power both brains at the same time.
§
Same job, Lotus Notes was used for email for the company. This had the feature of replication for offline access and such. Male colleague, who was sharing use of a loptop for email access with a female colleague when they were off-site at the customer’s office, turns to her and asks, “Do you want me to replicate your box?”
Absolutely innocent, but a contagious fit of uncontrolled giggles spread around those within earshot. Aside from an observation or two that the enquiry should probably have been phrased differently, nobody made any stupid follow-up comments, and everyone took it in good humour for the unintentional faux pas it was.
§
Last one, and my favourite. Dropping my librarian wife off at her workplace at the start of the day. The library had just opened and about ten or so people were drifting in. One of her colleagues was clearing the overnight returns chute when she exclaims at the top of her voice, “‘Fantastic Sex,’ I was looking for that last night!”
She looks up into the sudden silence were you could hear a pin drop, then goes, “The book! The book! Someone wanted the book!” while waving the titular tome.
§
[1] That conference was about the same time the “Shit people say to XXX” meme was doing the rounds of the internet. At the time I thought it would be funny to do a “Shit people say to programmers” version where every forth or fifth one was, “Can you fix my computer?”
I also thought one on “Shit programmers say to women” where it would just be five minutes of awkward guys staring at womens’ chests would be too distressingly realistic. Apropos?
I also don't understand why feminists rarely attack mass media like the shows they have on Fox and Comedy Central, which are probably much closer to the root cause of "sexism" seeing as they make it seem like casual sexism is okay.
It's very hard to take the feminist seriously when their biggest enemy seems to be the 2% of pasty awkward nerds who happen to make a cultural faux pas. They weren't born sexist. They're victims of society. Blaming them is blaming the victim. Most of them probably have not had much interaction with the opposite sex and don't even know how to initiate conversation.
Because that's the industry that the author (and presumably, most of us readers) are in.
> If this were an automotive convention it would probably be worse.
Probably, but like... do you go to automotive conventions? I don't, so what goes on in them is really outside of anything I know about or can change. So... I'm not sure the relevance.
> Most of them probably have not had much interaction with the opposite sex and don't even know how to initiate conversation.
Well, hopefully some of them will read this article and find out some things not to do.
I'm not handsome, and I don't get "ogled" a lot, but when I do, it NEVER has this slimy, condescending air it too often has when men hit on women. It's either friendly sympathy or friendly lust, and I would assume if I was super handsome, there would be more friendliness, not less. The closest to getting uncomfortable is when someone is into me whom I find very uninteresting; that's just "awkward", and so extremely tame compared to having to wonder whether she is just a bit creepy or maybe capable of rape. When women invite me to somewhere or strike up a conversation, I can just be relaxed without having to keep one eye on the exit. I consider that normal but it's, sorry for saying it, a privilege. It really is.
My point is, it's not the "being considered attractive" by itself that offends and hurts people. I dare say everybody likes that, if it's respectful and unassuming, like a genuine compliment without expecting reciprocation or any other rewards. The problem is when it's not.
Because that's the indsutry that is the major growth sector for the US economy, and a category that is threatening to swallow or change literally every other aspect of the economy.
Our community receives added scrutiny because we're where people desperately want to (and arguably, need to) be in order to thrive. And yet we have constructed a giant edifice that turns people away in droves. Those few that run the myth-laden, idolized, unscientific gauntlet called "the interview process" are then subject to "cultural forces" that are generally just elaborate power structures identical to every other industry.
Only we are the gatekeepers of one of the very few industries that is considered accessible to young people AND that is growing AND that can be entered without a 4 year college degree.
Are you truly so surprised that you need to ask this question?
Reasons why this might not be a terrible idea:
1) It's a public place and you are interacting, often times, with complete strangers. While I can't speak for everyone, these social events make me be on my best behavior, which is conveniently the same behavior I would have if I were on camera.
2) By virtue of being handled by the conference organizers, one company won't be singled out. One company recording people is strange, but an accepted practice by a third party would be far more forgivable.
The community/work atmosphere around tech, and the implications that atmosphere has on acceptance within the tech community, has direct implications for the future of education and work within the field.
It's absolutely vital that people (especially women) have a relevant place to discuss these things, so that people who read tech news are not ignorant to the ongoing discrimination and oppression within the industry.
This.
One's freedom ends where another's freedom ends. I don't see anything wrong with asking a member of the opposite gender out for dinner - in fact, going to dinner is a far better socializing experience than at a crammed event - but outright sexual harrassment is totally not cool.
edit: yeah, I know it's against the rules to complain on downvoting, but seriously? Up, down, up down. And shit, no one tries to explain why he/she tried to downvote me into oblivion. Where has the discussion culture gone?