Horror Stories From Women in Tech

Re:Horror Stories From Women in Tech by sp332 on Monday March 14, 2011 @11:23PM (#2325699)

There are "groups" of people. You don't talk to your family the same way you talk to your friends. You don't talk to older people the same way you talk to younger people. I'm not even talking about the conscious stuff, like maybe trying to watch your language around certain groups. People unconsciously talk louder to older people. It's not because people consciously believe that all older people have hearing problems, it's just a pattern that they picked up by watching other people. Certain things get absorbed unconsciously. There are lots of ways of saying "I'm interested in your project". Sometimes, a person will only mean to say just that, but they will unwittingly couch it in a sexist form that they learned from other people. They don't mean to be sexist, but certain attitudes, vocabulary, phrases, etc can simply be copied from other people without understanding exactly how they affect the listener.

This isn't easy to fix. If we treat women like men, many of them will be put off. But apparently a lot of people (possibly including women?) in our "geek" culture don't know how to "be friendly to women", even when they want to be (because they've learned bad habits from other people). We can only fix this if women point out good role models for the rest of us to follow, or give us an itemized list of things that make them feel welcome. Pointing out bad stuff strikes me as ineffective.

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Re:Horror Stories From Women in Tech by erikpukinskis on Tuesday March 15, 2011 @02:24AM (#2326291)

First of all, _recognizing_ the bad stuff IS a good thing that (many) women like. If you're with a man and a woman and the man tells a sexist joke, and you and the woman recognize that and don't laugh, then she feels like she's in the in-crowd and he feels like the odd man out. Congratulations, you just made a woman feel more comfortable. The reason we talk about the bad stuff is so we can practice in our head steering clear of it.

Actually, I think that's about it! Be helpful and friendly just like you would to a male developer and Don't Do Sexist Shit, and you'll be in good shape. Tech is fun. Women are innately drawn to nerding out the same way that men are. If they can do that without having sexism shoved in their faces every five minutes, then that's a pretty welcoming space. The positive is the absence of the negative.

As for a list... to some extent, it's not fair to ask women to not only deal with the assholes, but spend even more time teaching the earnestly "want-to-learn" guys what to do. Teach yourself. The internet is full of feminist advice.

A good place to start is just to subscribe to the Geek Feminism blog (http://geekfeminism.org) and read it with an open mind. If you want to go all out, dig through the archives. Feministing (http://feministing.com) is a great all-purpose feminist primer too.

And know that the folks who run those blogs generally Know Their Shit. They've been doing it for a while, and their analysis is mostly spot on, so if you find yourself thinking "this is insanity" just spend some time trying to really dig into their perspective before you go running into the fray with guns blazing.

And high five for wanting to learn. That's awesome, I respect that.

[ Parent | on HN ]

Re:Horror Stories From Women in Tech by sp332 on Tuesday March 15, 2011 @09:39AM (#2327372)

Yeah, the list-making thing was kind of a despairing joke, because people have actually tried it. I realize it's not really fair to ask for that kind of list, but if you're going to make one, make it a list of positive things people should do, not just negativity. If someone only knows how to express themselves in a sexist way, then telling them not to do that makes them feel like they're not allowed to talk to women anymore. Giving them something acceptable to do instead leaves them with some options.

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