5 ms·

Just as an opposite anecdote, I find that I run into it all the time. Sometimes, its from people that are outside of the tech industry itself. Sometimes, it is

Just as an opposite anecdote, I find that I run into it all the time. Sometimes, its from people that are outside of the tech industry itself. Sometimes, it is from people that don't realize that they are saying such a thing. Sometimes, its from people of different cultural background (e.g. Chinese developers). I see this in SF, saw it in Chicago, Dallas, Atlanta and in the various countries I've worked in. I also recognized that it has took me a lot of time and a lot of effort to get to a point where I recognize it. 10 years ago, many of the things that would set off the "Hey; that does seem right" alarm bell would be unconsciously ignored and taken at face value. If I may presume, I'm going to suggest that your experience may be because you're more 'attuned' to racism than you are to sexism. For me, at least, it takes effort and willful learning to come to better grips with sexism, racism, ageism, etc. It's hard work!

zxcvcxz 11y ago
Can you give an example of this 'coded' sexism that's hard for regular people to spot?
- mrrrgn 11y ago
  It's pretty mild; but someone sent me a twitter message after finding my GitHub account (hey nice projects, etc....) The left was my profile pic at the time, and the right is their final message. The fellow with a beard is my little brother. :) http://i.imgur.com/UuQMpi2.png http://i.imgur.com/UuQMpi2.png
  - Nadya 11y ago
    In the name of fairness; was your screen name gender neutral or leaning towards masculine at the time? If it's the same as HN (Mr. RRGN, right?) I could see it being a simple parsing error! ;) Although not a certain identifier many people do rely on screen names to discern gender. I ask because if HN had avatars and I had a picture of me and my sister together, with my current nickname, people would likely assume I'm my sister. Even if the photo focused more on me than her (like your profile pic focuses more on you than your little brother). Simply because my username is a female name. Furthermore, without knowing we were family, many people would also assume we were dating. A mistake that actually occurred at school quite frequently from people who didn't know us, since we were nearly always together. I'd understand the mistake. Of course, I'd correct them after. But I wouldn't take offense at the mistake. It's silly to expect people to know everything about you (even if you have a bio! Not everyone actually reads those.) I've been mistaken for a girl even when using a picture of myself and only myself as my profile. The individual who made the mistake actually thought that was a picture of "my boyfriend" and I had a night full of laughter at the mistake (as did they after I corrected them). I've been asked by online friends if I was male or female - months after meeting them - because it never usually gets brought up. I always ask them which they think I am before answering, out of curiosity, and most of them believe me to be female. I guess I need to cut down on my use of emoticons in shorter text forms and work on speaking more manly? I don't know. I have a hard time seeing scenarios like this as sexism rather than honest mistakes that simply happen... E: My real name is a name used by both genders but more predominately by females rather than males. That probably contributes to the confusion over my gender to those who know me long enough to learn my name. I never actually thought about how my name contributes to the confusion until I typed up this post. I can see why people who attribute my name as a feminine name would think I'm female. Enlightening in a small way.
    - jfarmer 11y ago
      You might not realize it, but you're doing a bit of this right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansplaining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansplaining
      - exstudent2 11y ago
        No, he's relaying his anecdote just like everyone else in this thread. Please don't use "mansplaining", it's highly offensive.
        MBCook 11y ago
        Highly offensive? I haven't heard that before. It seems like a pretty good term for what it describes. Is this a case of people not liking a term that is used to call them out for poor behavior? Such as saying bigoted things and then objecting to being called racist? I haven't run across someone calling it 'highly offensive' in the time since I learned it.
        exstudent2 11y ago
        Its use in this case demonstrates why it's highly offensive. It's being used to label someone's opinion as negative and discount it for no good reason. Attaching words with negative connotation to a specific gender is highly offensive.
        MBCook 11y ago
        Ok, so what term would you suggest for discussion when a man talks down to a woman to explain something they already know (possibly better than the man) while trying to be 'helpful'?
        exstudent2 11y ago
        Nothing. Since that's a fabricated situation being used to justify the existence of the word. Two people have a conversation. Sometimes one knows more than the other, sometimes the person that knows less is unaware of that. I don't think that needs its own term and if it did have a term it absolutely doesn't need to be a gender based insult.
  - throwaway999666 11y ago
    Seems to be more about premature stereotyping than sexism, if sexism is supposed to mean something like "the belief in the superiority of one of the sexes". There is nothing inherently superior, or good, about being a programmer on GitHub. Some people have other goals, hopes and aspirations, without that making them "bad" people.
byerley 11y ago
Can you elaborate on why spending time and effort to find offensiveness in things makes sense to you? The concept seems so outlandish to me that I'm not sure how to word the question more politely, sorry.
- erikpukinskis 11y ago
  For me it was just that I had a bunch of experiences where I hurt people and had no idea, only much later finding out, by essentially hearing from a third party about a fourth party doing exactly the same thing I did. And it was clear that I wouldn't have heard those stories unless I had gone out of my way to understand what the "angry" people were mad about, and waded through quite a lot of background material. It was clear that no one would've trusted me with that kind of story until after I demonstrated that I had done some work to learn the basics of "offensiveness". Which, I had honestly only really done because I was in love with this girl who was into it. Kind of ironic really. I think that's how a lot of how this stuff grows though, you're a homophobe until someone you love turns out to be gay and then all of the sudden you figure it out. Anyway after hearing enough stories about people like me carelessly, unknowingly fucking up other peoples' days, it clicked that I could never really know how many people I was hurting. And that knowledge just bugs me. I don't just want the illusion I'm being good to the people around me, I really want to feel secure that I'm doing a good job of that. It's how my Dad felt, not that he (or I) are necessarily the best at it. It's just my personality. And that provides the motivation to slow down and try to understand train wrecks that I could easily scoot on right by.
- candu 11y ago
  In a strict game-theory sense: if you're aware of what might cause offense to others, you'll inadvertently offend others less frequently, and your conversations/negotiations/etc. will have higher average outcomes. Of course, I wouldn't usually phrase it in such a coldly logical way, so here's a practical example: when I meet someone in a professional context, I usually ask about background/expertise early on. This way, I avoid making unconscious assumptions like "she probably isn't an engineer" or "these people will all grok the super-technical explanation I'm about to launch into". Another example: some of my relatives are more religious/traditional, so I avoid topics and words that wouldn't go over well when around them. Or: I'm in Greece, so I don't ask for Turkish coffee. And so on.

zxcvcxz 11y ago

Can you give an example of this 'coded' sexism that's hard for regular people to spot?

mrrrgn 11y ago
It's pretty mild; but someone sent me a twitter message after finding my GitHub account (hey nice projects, etc....) The left was my profile pic at the time, and the right is their final message. The fellow with a beard is my little brother. :) http://i.imgur.com/UuQMpi2.png http://i.imgur.com/UuQMpi2.png
- Nadya 11y ago
  In the name of fairness; was your screen name gender neutral or leaning towards masculine at the time? If it's the same as HN (Mr. RRGN, right?) I could see it being a simple parsing error! ;) Although not a certain identifier many people do rely on screen names to discern gender. I ask because if HN had avatars and I had a picture of me and my sister together, with my current nickname, people would likely assume I'm my sister. Even if the photo focused more on me than her (like your profile pic focuses more on you than your little brother). Simply because my username is a female name. Furthermore, without knowing we were family, many people would also assume we were dating. A mistake that actually occurred at school quite frequently from people who didn't know us, since we were nearly always together. I'd understand the mistake. Of course, I'd correct them after. But I wouldn't take offense at the mistake. It's silly to expect people to know everything about you (even if you have a bio! Not everyone actually reads those.) I've been mistaken for a girl even when using a picture of myself and only myself as my profile. The individual who made the mistake actually thought that was a picture of "my boyfriend" and I had a night full of laughter at the mistake (as did they after I corrected them). I've been asked by online friends if I was male or female - months after meeting them - because it never usually gets brought up. I always ask them which they think I am before answering, out of curiosity, and most of them believe me to be female. I guess I need to cut down on my use of emoticons in shorter text forms and work on speaking more manly? I don't know. I have a hard time seeing scenarios like this as sexism rather than honest mistakes that simply happen... E: My real name is a name used by both genders but more predominately by females rather than males. That probably contributes to the confusion over my gender to those who know me long enough to learn my name. I never actually thought about how my name contributes to the confusion until I typed up this post. I can see why people who attribute my name as a feminine name would think I'm female. Enlightening in a small way.
  - jfarmer 11y ago
    You might not realize it, but you're doing a bit of this right now: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansplaining https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mansplaining
    - exstudent2 11y ago
      No, he's relaying his anecdote just like everyone else in this thread. Please don't use "mansplaining", it's highly offensive.
      - MBCook 11y ago
        Highly offensive? I haven't heard that before. It seems like a pretty good term for what it describes. Is this a case of people not liking a term that is used to call them out for poor behavior? Such as saying bigoted things and then objecting to being called racist? I haven't run across someone calling it 'highly offensive' in the time since I learned it.
        exstudent2 11y ago
        Its use in this case demonstrates why it's highly offensive. It's being used to label someone's opinion as negative and discount it for no good reason. Attaching words with negative connotation to a specific gender is highly offensive.
        MBCook 11y ago
        Ok, so what term would you suggest for discussion when a man talks down to a woman to explain something they already know (possibly better than the man) while trying to be 'helpful'?
        exstudent2 11y ago
        Nothing. Since that's a fabricated situation being used to justify the existence of the word. Two people have a conversation. Sometimes one knows more than the other, sometimes the person that knows less is unaware of that. I don't think that needs its own term and if it did have a term it absolutely doesn't need to be a gender based insult.
- throwaway999666 11y ago
  Seems to be more about premature stereotyping than sexism, if sexism is supposed to mean something like "the belief in the superiority of one of the sexes". There is nothing inherently superior, or good, about being a programmer on GitHub. Some people have other goals, hopes and aspirations, without that making them "bad" people.

byerley 11y ago

Can you elaborate on why spending time and effort to find offensiveness in things makes sense to you? The concept seems so outlandish to me that I'm not sure how to word the question more politely, sorry.

erikpukinskis 11y ago
For me it was just that I had a bunch of experiences where I hurt people and had no idea, only much later finding out, by essentially hearing from a third party about a fourth party doing exactly the same thing I did. And it was clear that I wouldn't have heard those stories unless I had gone out of my way to understand what the "angry" people were mad about, and waded through quite a lot of background material. It was clear that no one would've trusted me with that kind of story until after I demonstrated that I had done some work to learn the basics of "offensiveness". Which, I had honestly only really done because I was in love with this girl who was into it. Kind of ironic really. I think that's how a lot of how this stuff grows though, you're a homophobe until someone you love turns out to be gay and then all of the sudden you figure it out. Anyway after hearing enough stories about people like me carelessly, unknowingly fucking up other peoples' days, it clicked that I could never really know how many people I was hurting. And that knowledge just bugs me. I don't just want the illusion I'm being good to the people around me, I really want to feel secure that I'm doing a good job of that. It's how my Dad felt, not that he (or I) are necessarily the best at it. It's just my personality. And that provides the motivation to slow down and try to understand train wrecks that I could easily scoot on right by.
candu 11y ago
In a strict game-theory sense: if you're aware of what might cause offense to others, you'll inadvertently offend others less frequently, and your conversations/negotiations/etc. will have higher average outcomes. Of course, I wouldn't usually phrase it in such a coldly logical way, so here's a practical example: when I meet someone in a professional context, I usually ask about background/expertise early on. This way, I avoid making unconscious assumptions like "she probably isn't an engineer" or "these people will all grok the super-technical explanation I'm about to launch into". Another example: some of my relatives are more religious/traditional, so I avoid topics and words that wouldn't go over well when around them. Or: I'm in Greece, so I don't ask for Turkish coffee. And so on.