I know a number of socially inept people. Some of them are perfectly pleasant, just hopelessly awkward. Others are jerks to everyone. But some are sexist jerks. And there are some people who are perfectly well socialized who are also sexist jerks.
Women were oppressed for millennia. Women in the US haven't had the vote for even 100 years. Men and women didn't have equal college enrollment rates until circa 1990. I just don't buy the thesis that sexism is now suddenly extinct, especially in a male-dominated field.
I'm sorry you've received crap. Due to your gender or anything else. But understand that jumping into a discussion of sexism with "but that happens to me too!" is such a common problem that it's listed in the "Derailing for Dummies" guide: http://www.derailingfordummies.com/menu.html
This guide makes zero rational arguments for why those examples are derailment... It's completely rhetorical.
Intellectually, it's appropriate to discuss female/male oppression in the context of one another since the idea of patriarchy has been replaced with the idea of kyriarchy; A system where everyone oppresses/stratifies everyone else. It's a matrix of relationships that cannot be examined in isolation. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kyriarchy
>Women in the US haven't had the vote for even 100 years. Men and women didn't have equal college enrollment rates until circa 1990. I just don't buy the thesis that sexism is now suddenly extinct, especially in a male-dominated field.
Only ~10% of early Americans were eligible to vote. All white men weren't given the right to vote until the mid 19th century. A generation before women were granted the right.
Very few men benefited from a "patriarchal" social configuration. The fact that a small minority of white men had privilege doesn't negate the social costs externalized on the average man. The only realistic opportunities available to these men were war, working on a farm, working in a coal mine, or working in an industrial era factory. Having the "freedom" to be part of the workforce did not offer you the opportunities it does today...
I agree that patriarchy is bad for pretty much everybody. But the rhetorical effect of "but what about the time a woman was mean to meeeee" isn't to raise awareness of power dynamics so that people see the real issue as patriarchy or kyriarchy and find action even more urgent. It's to devalue the given examples of sexist behavior so that the privileged person can avoid confronting their privilege.
The problem is you made an appeal to authority to "derailing for dummies"...
>It's to devalue the given examples of sexist behavior so that the privileged person can avoid confronting their privilege.
Half of those points could be made by someone who has no intention of derailing. They can be legitimate observations.
As I explained elsewhere in this thread, most people don't intend to derail. What matters isn't the conscious intent of the speaker; it's the effect on the conversation.
That X is a legitimate observation doesn't mean that X is also a valid contribution at any point in any discussion. Watch politicians spin something on a TV show. They can make valid observations all day long that avoid, obfuscate, dodge, color, distract, mislead, and misinform.
If a privileged person jumps into a discussion about injustice in a way that changes the topic from the injustice under discussion to something more comfortable for them, that's derailing. They can do that using a valid observation, an invalid observation, a rhetorical device, or a jack-in-the-box.
Also, Mr. Brand New Anonymous Account: if you aren't going to own your words, expect me to stop responding shortly.
Okay. I maintain that in the tech community, it's horrible social skills that's driving the majority of what appears to be gender bias, sexual harassment, etc. I also maintain that focusing on developing better social skills, empathy, etc. will do far, far more to solve the problem than simply pointing out over and over again the sex-related symptoms.
I just don't buy the thesis that sexism is now suddenly extinct
Who said anything of the sort? Please don't put words in my mouth, I don't like what you're attempting to project onto me.
jumping into a discussion of sexism with "but that happens to me too!"
I made no attempt whatsoever to derail anything. I was providing examples, from the opposite side of the gender fence, of how I saw social ineptitude causing apparent gender bias.
Which I think is exactly the case. Sexism is a millennia-deep, society-wide problem. I think it's absurd to say that the tech community is actually not sexist like the rest of society, but just happens to act the same way for a different reason.
I'm sure you weren't intending to derail. Few do. But speaking as a fellow privileged person, you should be very suspicious when something comes out of your mouth that just happens to reduce or eliminate your responsibility for acknowledging your privilege in a situation.
Like, for example, suggesting that sexism isn't the problem, but rather those poorly socialized nerds.
I said "largely the expression of".
requires that sexism in the tech community has died out
It absolutely does not.
Because otherwise poor social skills would just make the tech community sexism more obvious than mainstream sexism.
And there you go. It's unlikely that misogyny and 'real' sexism exist among the tech community at levels significantly higher than other fields, yet it comes up all the time in the tech community. So, what's the explanation? Horrible socialization.
I think the reason it comes up here is that it's a field that attracts smart, idealistic people who are unlikely to be consciously sexist (but still have a lot of bad behaviors and unconscious attitudes). Another factor is that the low ratio of women makes it easier for sexist and misogynistic subcultures and workplaces to exist.
You aren't getting it.
If our level of sexism and sexist behavior is the same as the rest of society, then social skills are irrelevant.
What? That makes no sense.
If lower social skills magnify existing sexism, then either our level of bad behavior should be much higher or our level of sexism would have to be lower.
Depending on your definition, the level of "bad" behavior in the tech industry is much higher than other industries!
I also disagree with your assertion that sexist behavior is particularly worse in our industry than any other, but if you have evidence on the point I'd love to see it.
Also, "trite"? You're going to talk about argument quality and then reject something because it's trite? Because that's purely a stylistic criticism, which is just the opposite of being concerned about argument quality.
As a community we have to set the norm, the expectation that this just not ok. For people just entering the community, they may have different norms (coming from their fraternity - or what ever) but if the people around them set the proper example they will pick it up soon enough. Stories like this are needed to help us get there.
Sure, but if it's bad social skills call it bad social skills, not misogyny.
Of course not, and I didn't want to give any impression that my statement endorsed the behavior.
Rather, I think that it might be more productive to focus on encouraging people to develop greater social skills rather than framing it around male vs female issues. We tolerate too much elitism, condescension, and dismissal of others' feelings in general, which directly contributes to the sexism problem.
Also, for what it's worth, I've received a lot of crap from women over the course of my working life. In college, I worked in a deli where I was the only male. There was outright sexual harassment, and regular dismissal of me solely because I'm a man. Even in tech roles, I've had problems with female bosses who were horrible, socially incompetent worker bees who got promoted out of what they should have been doing (implementation instead of management).