Also, I've never seen anything resembling a "grotesque pastiche of misogyny and bullying" in my 17 years of working as a programmer or systems analyst.

Uh, no, he's not saying that. The issue is that women, generally, are already treated differently than their male co-workers, and they shouldn't be. It's about not treating them differently.

Do you actually think they'd report it if they were?

Who here has never been someplace and felt like they didn't belong? Maybe you were the only person of your ethnicity at some event and you stuck out like a sore thumb. Maybe everyone had their inside jokes and familiarities you didn't know about. Maybe occasionally, people made in unambiguously clear that you weren't welcome, by being cold or outright hostile. This is what it feels like for many women in the tech world.

I really feel like this comes down not so much to an inability to comprehend and empathize, but more so to a vested interest of deniers in the status quo. More outsiders means people on the inside have to let go of their insularity, and moreover, compete with an influx of people who bring in diverse skillsets and viewpoints. Our supposedly meritocratic software world is actually anything but. I believe Chris Hayes nails it with his Iron Law of Meritocracy, summarized here [1].

[1] http://letstalkbooksandpolitics.blogspot.com/2012/09/the-iro...

The problem is that this causes a moral decay. Once a firm accepts that this behavior is acceptable, the slippery slope starts. Well, a couple fudged expense reports isn't bad. Oh, what the client doesn't know won't hurt them. No need to be entirely up front with government. Management doesn't get it, don't share anything with them. Criminal complaints from the government, we're just the victim!

> So, you see, I was all too familiar with what my daughter was going through, but I was unprepared for the harassment to start in high school, in her programming class.

Really? High school?

I went to high school, too. I distinctly remember how everyone was calling everyone else whatever they could. I've been called a faggot, a lunatic, a drug-addict, a bitch, a teacher's pet, a limp dick and a long list of other things, and I've been the target of a whole bunch of male stereotypes.

Like, you know, every fucking teenager on the planet. I cracked sexist jokes with other dudes -- hell, I cracked sexist jokes with girls -- and I've been the target of sexist jokes, too. Some of them were mean, some of them were in good spirit. Hell, at one point I was the only dude in a Latin class. Few things are more awesome than having the openly lesbian, short-haired colleague asking you whether you'd like to shine her boots and fetch her paper later (particularly after addressing you with "hey sissy" rather than your name).

But what the hell, that's what you do when you're a teenagers. We were a bunch of stupid fucks whose most important achievement in life was learning how to play the intro to Stairway to Heaven or trying to fuck while dead drunk. We insulted each other with no reason. Our behaviour was definitely unprofessional, because we went to school, not to work.

Seriously, if we're going to get upset and bring out the discrimination pitchforks every time a teenager says something mean to another teenager, we're going to be really busy. People are going to be mean to each other, particularly those who don't have this privilege of sheltered education.

I honestly sympathize with this young girl. Humour and sexist jokes apart, I had my share of insults and bullying because of a somewhat visible physical defect (one of my eyes isn't exactly agile). But being a good parent is not a good way to deal with this, no matter how much we'd like that, because it depends on other people being good parents, too.

My folks were awesome. Both were cultivated fellows, and my father was in the army and taught me how to punch. I got through school without traumas related to these experience using nothing but wits and kickboxing.

Guess what? In High School many of us were quite together and tried our best to have fun while avoiding people like you.

Most everyone has had this problem at one point in time. It seems to me that mom needs to teach her daughter to have a thicker skin...which is the EXACT same lesson I got from my parents.

Children have no tools, and are forced into these situations with no possibility of escape. The thicker skin you describe doesn't exist for the majority of the planet.

My parents tried all they could to shelter me behind regulations, and even they -- a colonel and an elementary school teacher -- failed and eventually admitted I have to stand up for myself if everything else fails. I stood up to (and beaten the crap out of) bullies and even stood up to teachers if I had to.

The people who don't care about the rules are the people against which bullied and harassed teenagers have no one to count on other than themselves.

My parents didn't teach me to run to them or to teachers when stuff like this happens. They taught me how to deal with it myself.

Treating high schoolers like they're helpless kids might be fashionable now, but it might not seam as wise when they're 30 and living at home.

I went to a high school where the two calculus teachers were both female. I also went to a math PhD program where a professor -- specifically George Mackey http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/George_Mackey -- wondered openly as to whether women could do top-level mathematics. In fairness to him, the women in that era were still few and below average, and one even had the temerity to whine about discrimination when the real problem was that she wasn't particularly smart or hardworking.

Moral: Even if you don't see bigotry in YOUR part of a group, don't assume it isn't common elsewhere.

At the end of the day, this was a highschool class with comments being made by highschool kids. The one comment specifically detailed in the article is an old internet meme that was largely popular in gaming circles. The teacher, the only one in this entire story that might have some small connection with the tech industry, never made any inappropriate comments or behaved in any way misogynistic at least so far as the details in the article. To call this story an example of misogyny in the tech industry is pure BS, it had absolutely nothing to do with the tech industry in any way.

Edit: More context on the comment the article mentioned: http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/get-back-to-the-kitchen

I agree that it's not necessarily an example of misogyny in tech per se, but it's absolutely a contributing factor in why there are so few women in tech -- many first experiences tend to be as the sole female in classes with socially outcast males.

To begin with the state of tech education in public schools is absolutely abysmal, it takes a dedicated student with a strong interest in tech to tough it out through the school system, rather than being encouraged to go into tech by the school system. The media portrays programmers and other tech industry professionals as a bunch of lonely anti-social misfits who are almost exclusively male and either so exceeding stereotypically nerdy as to practically qualify as autistic, or else overweight and lecherous. These two factors combined mean that the vast majority of students, both male and female, decide to avoid the tech industry at an early age because either they believe the media stereotypes or else they take some tech related classes and are so appalled at the curriculum that they practically run to other professions.

When considering a career in the tech industry, going solely by the state of pre-college and entry level college tech courses, combined with the overwhelming media stereotypes around the tech industry, is it any surprise most women decide to pursue other fields?

Also, I believe it is specifically a tech problem. Medicine and law are approaching gender balanced. Tech, though, has been getting worse over the decades.

To me this sounds like another version of the "you're doing it wrong" anonymous grumbling that the internet provides for pretty much anybody doing anything.

I'm going to keep trying to fix tech the way I think tech should be fixed. Whether or not J. Random Commenter "accepts" my analysis of the problem isn't something I'm worried about. It's a given in pushing for societal change that most people think you're wrong in one way or another; otherwise we would already have made the change.

You keep trying to fix what isn't broken while ignoring what is, just don't go harassing everyone who's trying to get things done, or get upset when everyone else thinks your nuts for tilting at windmills.

I worry, but of course couldn't prove, that the sort of responses you get to proposing the former betray that many people subconsciously believe the latter.

To those of you who don't believe that widespread discrimination in whatever form exists, how do you explain the fact that, from school classes to upper management, there just aren't nearly as many women in the technical sphere?

IMO nerd superiority is the most unbecoming pervasive trait found in the tech industry.

A third alternative is that they are not on average as interested in this kind of profession as the average man. That is a perfectly reasonable theory. But of course that doesn't put you between a rock and a hard place by having to choose between a society-is-sexist or a women-are-inferior theory, so I guess it's not a very fun theory if you want to stirr up a lot of emotions...

No, it's still a theory. It might naturally lead to the next question, "why don't they wanna?", but so does a lot of theories/explanations (just ask Socrates).

> Why wouldn't women be interested in this kind of profession? Do women not like comfortable, creative, high-paying jobs with lots of perks?

I don't know, but there could be a lots of reasons, since there are a lot of things other than comfort and money that people consider when they choose a career. Indeed, money is probably relatively unimportant in a more egalitarian, developed society than a society which is less developed and more (gender) unequal: nations with a higher degree of gender equality tend to have a more gender-segregated labour market. Why don't you explain that 'paradox' (it's not really a paradox), with your initial, limited dichotomy?

Besides, there are several other fields of study and careers that are pretty good at this time. Most of them engineering fields though. And from a pure money-making perspective there are other choices, granted many of which are lotteries; but probably attract a large number of adherents.

I don't owe it to you to give elaborate theories. You had an assertion about how many possible reasons there might be for a given phenomena, and I argued that it was baseless of you to only assume that those two reasons might be the only possible ones. It is baseless since you've hardly argued why there might only be two. Sure, you're arguing that this kind of job gives money and comfort, but again, I've argued that people are after other things than that. And, I've given an example of a widespread phenomena of women choosing careers and jobs that are more associated with having women working in them, when they have the chance. What examples have you given? Oh that's right: none.

I don't know where you live, so I don't know which economy is "this economy", but where I reside people are still able to have some leniency when it comes to choosing a career. It has been my experience that people (men and women) are far from only concerned with money when it comes to employment.

To put it another way, I can see two plausible forces pushing women away from tech jobs: 1) some deficiency on their part, 2) some motive on the part of the system to keep women out.

My argument is that, since many people disagree with 2), many must subconsciously believe 1), which is absurd on its face.

Examples aren't helpful in this case because your theory doesn't answer the question we're asking. Even if it were true that the mechanism keeping women out of tech was the amending of their preferences rather than forcibly excluding them (by refusing to hire them for example), this would still be the result of either something innate about women themselves or something societal imposing these preferences on them.

So, again, we still are faced with the same question. If women "don't want" to be programmers, why would that be? Because something about their female brains is disinterested in computers? Or because they've been socialized to feel as if tech jobs are not for them?

In my experience, a lot of the difficulty in comprehending/accepting that women experience the industry so differently than men is that many men either A) over-generalize from an exceptional interaction, or B) follow those that have over-generalized. By "A" I mean that men can rely on confirmation bias to cement their impression of the female experience based on a few choice interactions. For example, confirmation bias can allow a random chat with a well-adjusted, confident woman who appears impervious to tech sexism can dispel for many years any notion in that man's mind that sexism exists in the industry. Thereafter, contradictory signals of other women can themselves be dismissed as exceptions, and because of cognitive dissonance, can actually reinforce his misconception.

By "B" I mean that many men have no relevant direct interactions with women (given their low numbers) and may follow the lead of the people with whom they associate, who are by definition men. Any confirmation bias of those men then spreads to them.

In addressing this, what is not often recognized is that individual women do have unique experiences. They are affected to varying degrees and in various ways by prejudism and ostracization. As a male, rather than tip-toe around or ignore the issue with a female colleague, I've found the best hueristic for recognizing your potential participation in a prejudicial environment is to earnestly sense/inquire the nature of her past experience. (You may also share your own experiences of prejudism, if any.) By opening such a dialogue, you establish a common foundation and framework for maximizing the team and progressing the industry.

IMHO, focusing on the direct, open, and individual treatment of interpersonal relationships (and moving away from the one-experience-fits-all mentality, which lacks common sense and is susceptible to confirmation bias) is an important next step for evolving relations between social groups in general.

This is an endemic social problem that prevents girls from even considering sciences.

That, of course, leads to these fields being mostly misogynistic sausage fests, which is also a big problem, but that's one of the symptoms of the culture of education.

... IMO.

So I'll just leave this bingo in case you got bored in this thread: http://bit.ly/16i7WAm

The implication of your parenthetical being that all men have been unconsciously chauvinistic at some point?

But it's far from a fixed problem currently.

This use of "privilege" as a targeted weapon to silence specific demographics has to stop.

Women in the western world have always been among the safest, most privileged people on Earth. This entire thread, in fact, has been a shining example of female privilege.

No one cares that women soundly outnumber men in university admission, and university graduation, and even high school graduation. No one cares that young women without children (i.e. the majority) earn more money their male counterparts. Heck, no one cares that it is men who overwhelmingly make up the bottom of society.

Instead, we're having a collective anxiety attack because a hyper-privileged white woman is upset that her hyper-privileged white daughter might have had her feelings hurt in high school. This is surreal.

The first thing that is crucial to understand is that feminism itself is not the enemy. In fact, intelligent feminists should care about the problems you list. I'm not saying they do, but they should, because feminism isn't anti-men, it's anti gender roles. This means that problems like men being pressured to bury their emotions, or men not getting proper mental health care, or men not being taken seriously when they are raped, are all things that feminism is supposed to be fighting against. The fact that our society often ignores these problems is not because of feminism, it's because of sexism. Feminists, often do ignore problems like this with men, and those feminists are either ignorant or bigoted, because sexist oppression caused by society to men, and sexist oppression caused by society to women, have the same root and are part of the same problem that feminism is trying to fix. This is not a fringe view of feminism. This is the normal view.

The second thing that is crucial to understand is that the caricature of sexist tumblr-warrior "feminists" (that do indeed exist) are a distraction. The fact that people like this are taken seriously probably bothers me as much as it bothers you. However, these people are misrepresenting feminism. They do not say what feminism is supposed to represent. You can think of them as the crazy bigoted Christians or Muslims that are technically part of the same group, but do not represent the whole.

Finally, you have to realize that gender roles and sexism are oppressing men and women. I think the reason so many feminists react badly to men's rights advocates is because they marginalize women's problems while promoting men's. In truth I think this is just a reaction from seeing feminist groups do the reverse. Really, both are a problem. Just because one is a problem doesn't make another problem any more or less important. So instead of saying "This is ridiculous to be worrying about when much worse is happening to men and nobody cares," try saying, "This is an important problem," and separately, "These other things are happening to men and nobody cares."

> ALL of your comments are about men's rights.

Yes, most of my comments are about gender issues. And interestingly, despite the vast majority of comments in any given thread disagreeing with my own, my median comment score when discussing those issues is around 10 to 20.

Clearly, there are quite a few people here who don't feel comfortable speaking out, and for good reason! They don't want to be bullied for weeks, having their names permanently dragged through the mud: http://acko.net/blog/storms-and-teacups/

I don't want like-minded visitors to this site feeling like they're not welcome to speak their mind.

> [T]he caricature of sexist tumblr-warrior "feminists" (that do indeed exist) are a distraction. The fact that people like this are taken seriously probably bothers me as much as it bothers you. However, these people are misrepresenting feminism.

Let's ignore the social justice bullies on Tumblr. The top (western) feminist websites are probably Jezebel, Feministe, and Geek Feminism. All three of those are notoriously bigoted against men. Yes, those three websites lack the "I want to watch men burn to death" comments, but that's not saying much.

Every time I hear someone claim that real feminists aren't like that, I must ask: Where are the real feminists?

Where, exactly, did you find this quote? Because I can't find it in the OP, or the post you are replying to. I'd hate to think you might have pulled a strawman so blatantly out of thin air . . .

Oh, and thanks for demonstrating exactly the points the GP was trying to make.

The straw man of "protect the fairer sex" is so frustrating. No one is saying to treat women like brittle creatures who cannot fend for themselves.

It hasn't even been 100 years since women were given the right to vote in America, and the amendment was filibustered before it was ratified. It's shocking that there were politicians who believed so strongly that women should be second class citizens that they filibustered the bill.

But now they are graduating from college at a high clip, and making a decent living, so it's okay to tell them to "get back in the kitchen and make a sandwich"?

It's especially frustrating that the younger generation feels like this kind of comment is OK. It shows, at best, a cultural acceptance of, and at worst a promotion of, oppressive gender roles, in which females are subservient to males.

How anyone can defend the promotion of such a hostile environment is beyond me. To you it may seem like a harmless joke, in which the woman just needs "thicker skin" to "joke around with the boys." But that's not your call to make. If it makes someone feel noticeably uncomfortable, we should be smart enough and kind enough to respect that. No one likes bullies, and every bully claims to be "just joking around mannnnn, don't be such a baby."

That doesn't mean treat people with baby gloves when it comes to everything. It's not about maintaing a lovey work environment where everyone hugs and sings together. If someone is doing bad work, call them out. That doesn't require making sexist quips.

Also want to note: being the safest, and most privileged relative to other places on earth != safe and treated equally. We shouldn't be happy with being the best on a relative scale that stacks us against cultures where women are stoned for getting raped, we still have a long way to go in the fight for equality.

So how do you feel about all the women who opposed it? You do realize that men didn't have the right to vote either right? The right to vote was tied to military service.

>oppressive gender roles, in which females are subservient to males.

That is an opinion, not reality. You could describe men's "oppressive gender role" as being subservient to women. Being forced to work your life away to provide for a woman is no more wonderful than being forced to cook and clean for a man.

>Also want to note: being the safest, and most privileged relative to other places on earth != safe and treated equally

But the discussion is framed as "we have things bad, you men need to fix it", but the "you men" in question are less safe than women, and are also not treated equally.

It's unfortunate they felt that way. It's really easy not to take advantage of a right if one chooses, but to actively prevent others from having it is strange to me. Maybe you feel differently?

>You do realize that men didn't have the right to vote either right? The right to vote was tied to military service.

What are you talking about? When our country (referring the US) was founded, the requirements were being white and owning land, or having enough wealth to be taxed. (Which is also outrageous.) Non-whites were given the right in 1870, women in 1920, with the enactment of the 19th Amendment. "The right of citizens of the United States to vote shall not be denied or abridged by the United States or by any State on account of sex."

Maybe you know something I don't about military service requirements for voting?

>That is an opinion, not reality. You could describe men's "oppressive gender role" as being subservient to women. Being forced to work your life away to provide for a woman is no more wonderful than being forced to cook and clean for a man.

"Get in the kitchen and make me a sandwich" isn't supporting oppressive gender roles wherein women are subservient to men? Really?

Of course the patriarchy has its negative effects on men, but that's a result of patriarchy's existence, which is exactly what feminism is trying to correct. The man is "being forced to provide for a woman" because men want to keep women "in the kitchen to make sandwiches." It's two sides of the same problem.

And before you try to argue that men don't actually want to keep women in the kitchen... I'm using that to refer to a larger cultural psyche. How much time do men get off for paternity leave in the US? Generally none. That right there reinforces the "woman as homemaker." The woman has to stay home, the man has to bring home the money, thanks to the patriarchy.

>But the discussion is framed as "we have things bad, you men need to fix it", but the "you men" in question are less safe than women, and are also not treated equally.

It's not about "you men" fixing it. It's about assholes not being assholes. In many cases it happens to be men, sometimes its women too. Also, what are you talking about? How are the men less safe? Do I even want to know what your logic is behind that?

Maybe you're just trolling, but the problem I see in a lot of you "men's rights" people, is an unfortunate lack of the capacity for altruism. "Why should they get that if I don't get anything?! What about ME?!" They should get that because we're intelligent and evolved creatures who are capable of giving up some of our privilege and comfort to achieve a happier overall society, even if we get nothing personally in return.

If you can't see this story as indicative of a much larger problem, you're being intentionally dense.

If you can respond without completely ridiculous strawmen, then you are being intentionally dishonest.

Now don't get me wrong, I'm not one of those people that sees that female representation in tech isn't 50% therefore men must be at fault. But here is a clear example of horrible sex discrimination and here you come trotting out the "get over it--you already have it good" arguments.

> This use of "privilege" as a targeted weapon to silence specific demographics has to stop.

Sorry, no specific demographic is being "silenced" here. If you think that men are being silenced, well, why are you able to speak?

> Women in the western world have always been among the safest, most privileged people on Earth.

Always been, hm? So they were privileged when they were denied suffrage until less than 100 years ago? They were privileged when they were denied admission to some of the country's top universities until just 30 years ago?

> This entire thread, in fact, has been a shining example of female privilege.

What, exactly, do you see as female privilege? What do you see women being allowed to do, that men are not allowed to, that men are harassed for doing, that men are driven out of the industry for doing due to attacks? And if you do see any such behavior, perhaps someone being harassed for being a dancer, or into musicals, or the like, please note whether it's women doing those attacks, or other men.

> No one cares that women soundly outnumber men in university admission, and university graduation, and even high school graduation.

Awful generous of you to round down to "no one." If no one cares, why have you heard about it? Wouldn't people who don't care not be writing articles about it? There are plenty of people who care, who are concerned about this, who write about it and worry about it. That's not "no one" caring.

However, despite all of that, there are many fewer women in technology, and fewer still are programmers. Just because there might be other biases in other fields, doesn't mean that we shouldn't worry about biases and harassment in our own.

> Instead, we're having a collective anxiety attack because a hyper-privileged white woman is upset that her hyper-privileged white daughter might have had her feelings hurt in high school. This is surreal.

I'm not really clear on what you mean by "hyper-privileged". Is it a privilege to be bullied and told to get into the kitchen? That doesn't really sound like the definition of "privileged" to me.

Yes, there may be ways in which she is privileged compared to others. There are other problems out there. But that doesn't mean that we shouldn't try to address this one.

It is a problem when women don't enter a career due to harassment, and indifference from others in face of said harassment. Can we have a realistic discussion if a casual dirty joke counts as harassment? Sure. But there's a difference between a casual dirty joke told by one conference attendee to another, and several kids harassing another and telling her to get into the kitchen while the teacher does nothing about it.

You sound fairly threatened and insecure; it sounds like you're worried that women might do better than you at technology, and then the one way you use to make yourself feel secure in yourself may fall away. You seem to have caught on to the power of being a victim and having other people come out to defend you, so you're trying to apply that tactic to defend yourself from women who threaten your sense of technological superiority. It's not a very attractive tactic, however; it makes you look defensive and reactionary. I'd recommend trying to find other ways to feel good about yourself; for instance, by being supportive and welcoming of new people, and making programming a skill and trade that is accessible to all.

Why do you have to make your points while simultaneously being a complete douche about them? Personal attacks on HN, on purpose?

I tried to find some reason to explain why someone would do something like that, and that's the best I could come up with. I was also trying to point out how ridiculous an argument of "stop playing the victim card, look how much of a victim I am" is. Perhaps I went a little beyond what I should have when trying to point out how ridiculous it is, but I'm not really sure how to point that out much more gently.

Perhaps you have a better suggestion for how to deal with such ridiculous, hysterical, off-topic arguments? Perhaps one that doesn't involve calling someone a "complete douche" in the same breath as criticizing personal attacks?

If we're doing this, it's privilege to not be starving on the streets of Calcutta, it's privilege to know how to read, and it is damn sure privilege to be so surrounded by functioning computers that learning how to use them sounds like a real option instead of fairy tales and bullshit.

So, yeah, if you really want to double-down on the privilege concept, we'll go into how privileged the subject of this article actually is.

That doesn't change the fact that in America, in high-tech industries, there are many privileges that men enjoy that women do not.

It's a derailing tactic to say "you're privileged relative to some extremely impoverished, down on their luck person over there, so you shouldn't ever complain." Just because I don't have the worst boss in the world doesn't mean I shouldn't ever complain about my boss. Just because the US may not spy on its citizens as much as China does doesn't mean we shouldn't be complaining about the US spying on its citizens.

That's what I mean when I don't understand what he means by hyper-privileged. If he's referring to relative to some hungry orphan on the streets of Calcutta, that's just not relevant. If he means relative to the other people in the class, which is the comparison that actually matters for this discussion, then I'm not sure what he means as she obviously is not privileged relative to them, as they were able to harass her into deciding not to continue that course of study.

The verb "silence" is not restricted to scenarios in which someone is rendered literally incapable of speech. It never has been.

> Always been, hm? So they were privileged when they were denied suffrage until less than 100 years ago? They were privileged when they were denied admission to some of the country's top universities until just 30 years ago?

Definitely. The members of the anti-suffrage movement, both men and women, pointed to those female privileges as the primary reason women shouldn't be allowed an equal say in setting the course of government.

> Awful generous of you to round down to "no one." If no one cares, why have you heard about it? Wouldn't people who don't care not be writing articles about it? There are plenty of people who care, who are concerned about this, who write about it and worry about it. That's not "no one" caring.

You got me. There aren't literally zero people who care about the myriad of ways men are disadvantaged to women. Unfortunately, there are close to literally zero people with power who seem care about men's issues, which is why society allocates an outrageously disproportionate amount of attention, money, time, and energy toward women's issues.

> However, despite all of that, there are many fewer women in technology, and fewer still are programmers. Just because there might be other biases in other fields, doesn't mean that we shouldn't worry about biases and harassment in our own.

Agreed, but we need to realize that attention, money, time, and energy aren't limitless.

> You sound fairly threatened and insecure; it sounds like you're worried that women might do better than you at technology

Cut it out.

I'm not worried about myself at all. Like many of us, from a young age, I make more money than I'll ever know what do with. I have a growing a set of skills that are almost guaranteed provide me with gainful employment for my entire life.

I'm worried about the men at the bottom of society who are always marginalized by feminist policing and hand-wringing.

Feminists always point to the top of society, notice that there are more men than woman, then use that as evidence that men are more privileged.

However, they never point to the bottom of society, notice that there are more men than women, then use that as evidence that women are more privileged.

Never, never, never.

That's because they have a particular agenda. And that's fine. But it's also fine for people like me to point out that we are allocating an outrageously disproportionately amount of attention, money, time, and energy to women's issues.

Please clarify, then, about who exactly is being "silenced" and how, and what you mean by "silenced" if it doesn't mean that the person is unable to speak publicly about the topic.

> Definitely. The members of the anti-suffrage movement, both men and women, pointed to those female privileges as the primary reason women shouldn't be allowed an equal say in setting the course of government.

Wait a minute. Are you actually aligning yourself with the anti-suffrage movement? Are you serious?

> Feminists always point to the top of society, notice that there are more men than woman, then use that as evidence that men are more privileged.

> However, they never point to the bottom of society, notice that there are more men than women, then use that as evidence that women are more privileged.

Wait a second. There can't be more men than women on both the top and bottom of society, as there are more women than men in general.

So, let's look at actual numbers from the Census Bureau: http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/historical/peopl...

In the Poverty by Sex chart, in 2011, we see 151 million men, of whom 21 million, or 13.6% are below the poverty line. There are 157 million women, of whom 26 million, or 16.3%, are below the poverty line.

Looks to me like in both absolute numbers and percentages, there are more women than men at the "bottom of society".

> That's because they have a particular agenda. And that's fine. But it's also fine for people like me to point out that we are allocating an outrageously disproportionately amount of attention, money, time, and energy to women's issues.

We spend a lot of time and effort on women's issues because, historically, they have been discriminated against and prevented from holding positions of power, they still make less money for the same work as men, and they are overwhelmingly the victims of domestic violence.

There are very few instances of problems that men face specifically, which women don't (or face at much lower proportion), which are not self-imposed (more men in jails is, overwhelmingly, due to more men being violent criminals). You might argue about the draft or issues of being able to be in combat in the military, and there I agree, that should be equal opportunity. However, there hasn't been a draft in 40 years, so unless something big comes up, that's more of a theoretical issue than a practical one.

No. (?) All adults should have the right to vote.

> Looks to me like in both absolute numbers and percentages, there are more women than men at the "bottom of society".

You're not looking low enough.

Look at the homeless. Look at homicide victims. Look at workplace deaths (including and excluding the military). Look at high-school dropouts. Look at suicide victims. Look at prisons (both violent and non-violent offenses). It's possible that men are biologically predisposed to violence, but they also live in a culture that coddles women to the detriment of men in need.

> We spend a lot of time and effort on women's issues because, historically, they have been discriminated against and prevented from holding positions of power,

Historically, almost everyone has been prevented from holding positions of power. The tiny circle of powerful people in each country had penises, but that doesn't mean the lives other penis owners were cushy.

Historically, men received significantly more severe punishments for the exact same crimes (still the case), women were given priority over men when provisioning protection and aid (still the case), and men were expected and often forced to perform significantly more brutal and dangerous labor on a daily basis (still the case, though to a lesser extent). As a result, men lived significantly shorter lives, even taking deaths from childbirth into account (still the case, though to a lesser extent).

Interestingly, the fact that men live shorter lives doesn't matter to most people. In fact, it's become the expectation: http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/04/life-expecta...

Here's a direct quote:

> In the U.S., women live longer—81 years on average, 76 for men—but a recent study by the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation reveals a troubling trend. Though men's life spans have increased by 4.6 years since 1989, women have gained only 2.7 years

"Surreal" is again the most fitting word.

> they still make less money for the same work as men,

False: http://www.slate.com/articles/double_x/doublex/2013/08/gende... and http://www.npr.org/blogs/money/2013/09/11/220748057/why-wome... and http://www.politifact.com/virginia/statements/2013/jul/15/te...

> and they are overwhelmingly the victims of domestic violence.

False, and we've known this for some time: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domestic_violence#Violence_agai...

However, women are overwhelmingly victims of serious injury from domestic violence, as that source does indicate.

Women and men violently attack each other equally; men simply hurt the women more when they do so.

> Please clarify, then, about who exactly is being "silenced"

"Check your privilege!" and "stop mansplaining!" are almost exclusively hurled at men discussing gender, not at women discussing gender, though it is equally applicable to both. Hence my phrase "targeted weapon".

Of course, the notion of "privilege" could be useful. It could be useful to discuss the specific advantages different people have in specific situations, such as female privileges at universities vs male privileges at universities.

Unfortunately, it's almost exclusively employed to bully men into feeling that their objections are automatically invalid and unwelcome unless they conform to specific set of views.

> and what you mean by "silenced" if it doesn't mean that the person is unable to speak publicly about the topic.

Bullying is silencing -- it's one of the reasons that the bullying of the girl in the linked article is a problem.

Bullies don't have to literally sew anyone's mouth shut to dissuade their victims from wanting to speak out again.

Haha, good lord. You're making fun of "hyperprivileged" white women while complaining that the white neckbeard bloc is being unjustly silenced? That must be really terrible for you, the jorts ceiling is truly an institution that must be smashed.

Also where'd you get that quote from?

Your concerns, such as they are, have been discussed here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6354789, and here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6353402

With a longer piece on the topic here https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6354336 and on the topic of criticism as "silencing" here http://www.popehat.com/2013/09/10/speech-and-consequences/

Use "different perspective" if that's what you're trying to put across, and if it's not and you really believe the whole privilege meme as something more than that, that's exactly why I write you off.

Either way it means either you couldn't be bothered to figure out an effective way to convey a simple core idea without being horrendously offensive, or you actually don't have a clue what you are talking about.

This article was mostly excellent because it primarily avoided the classic persecution complexes that are almost par for the course in such things, to have the top comment here raving about privilege does the article an enormous disservice.

Would you say that black people in America have it harder than white people, perhaps in some places more so than others? If so you accept that people are treated differently based on externalities. People are treated unfairly. People are mocked, hurt, threatened, and that's just the tip of the iceberg.

And you want to tell me that it offends you when they say some people have privilege?

Black people and women being discriminated against is just that - discrimination, and that is horrible. But that doesn't (in my mind) make a white male privileged.

Is a white woman more privileged than a black man? Who has more privilege between a black man and a black woman? What about a homeless white man vs a successful white woman?

When someone suffers discrimination it should be called out, addressed, and made right. But it's unfair to paint the rest of the planet as an enemy for not suffering the same abuse.

> 1. a right, immunity, or benefit enjoyed only by a person beyond the advantages of most

Regardless, even if I and others called it "cronut", that doesn't invalidate the concept. So yours and Tycho's argument-from-terminology is just a distraction, and fails to even address the substance of my complaint.

Regardless of all that I wasn't actually attempting to address your argument at all and my comment wasn't aimed at you. I was simply stating that it annoys me the way privilege has been subverted from its actual meaning by a minority with a particular political motivation. Similarly I'm also annoyed with the way the term organic has been subverted to mean food grown without pesticide even though the actual meaning of the word has absolutely nothing to do with that.

The difference between advantage and privilege is that a privilege is an advantage that is given by an outside force and ceases to exist without the influence of that external force. A person may be provided, given, or granted a privilege, it is not something they innately have. Similarly a privilege may be taken away at any time. An advantage on the other hand typically can not be taken unless it's some item or information that is providing that advantage and not some inherent capability. This is where the concept of a handicap comes from, it's a penalty applied to someone in order to balance a advantage they have. Contrast with a privilege which requires nothing to be added, merely the privilege to be removed. There is similarly no equivalent of handicap with regard to privilege as it makes no sense to add anything to attempt to balance a privilege when simply removing the privilege is far simpler.

As for objective basis of my opinion, that's the easiest thing in the world, there's several hundred years of English literature to back me up.

As for the abuse of the word privilege in this context, you could say being male provides someone with an advantage, or being female provides a disadvantage, but you can not say that someone has a male privilege, as that implies someones male-ness can be taken away.

Yeah, sure, whatever.

it's not a case of not liking the words, it's a case of not liking underhand word games in serious debates

Are you claiming that the original authors daughter was imagining her classmates bullying her?

Are you saying that I'm imagining the fact that there are far more men than women in the programming profession?

These aren't "imaginary problems". These are very real problems. Now, there may be some debate about exactly which behavior is problematic; some people have different standards. But you're not going to tell me that bullying someone and telling them to get into the kitchen is not a problem.

> You are making the field off-putting to her, not the evil chauvinist boogeymen she has never seen.

I'm sorry, are you saying that someone who's saying it's bad to push women out of the profession is more off-putting than someone in her class telling her to get into the kitchen and make them a sandwich?

These are not "evil chauvinish boogeymen she has never seen", they are actual bullies in her actual class.

No, I am claiming that the problems the post I replied to was putting forth are imaginary. I am quite aware that bullying is a real problem.

>Are you saying that I'm imagining the fact that there are far more men than women in the programming profession?

No, I am saying that is not an indication of a problem, much less systemic oppression. There is a strong correlation between increased freedom to choose "non-traditional" professions and fewer people choosing them. More women worked "men's jobs" when they were told they were men's jobs than they do now that they are encouraged to seek those jobs.

>But you're not going to tell me that bullying someone and telling them to get into the kitchen is not a problem.

Stop presenting such a ridiculous strawman. You can read the post I replied to. You can see that it is clearly not the article. Your entire response is predicated on ignoring the context of the conversation and repositioning my post as being a response to something completely different.

Anecdotes like the original article, as well as many others that have come before, demonstrate that there is a real problem. There is some seriously problematic behavior out there. Now, how much of the gender disparity in tech is due to these kinds of problems, and how much is due to simple self-selection? That's hard to say; there may be arguments either way. But that doesn't really matter; even if the entire gender disparity can't be explained by odious behavior, at least some of it can, because there are very clearly women who are being off-put by very obnoxious, sexist behavior.

And furthermore, people are offput by defensive behavior, where tons of people come out of the woodwork and deny that there is any problem whatsoever. If you mention that some behavior makes you uncomfortable, and then a lot of people come out saying "there's no problem. It shouldn't make you uncomfortable. You just aren't all that into tech, you don't have thick enough skin" is that going to make you feel welcome and safe?

He's saying that we need to stop being defensive about it, stop trying to deny that problem, and start taking responsibility for hostile and off-putting behavior. Taking responsibility can include not doing it ourselves, and can also include not treating it as if it's acceptable behavior, not turning a blind eye to it, and not denying that that it actually exists.

So by telling him that he was discussing imaginary problems, you were doing exactly that. You were ignoring the actual, real, live example of the problem in the original post, and saying that what he was talking about is imaginary. That's why I brought up the original post; in order to claim that RyanMcGreal's problems were imaginary, you must be claiming that the original post is imaginary.

Now, in other posts, you seem to be trying to make the distinction between bullying and sexism, brushing this off as mere bullying. What you've missed is that it can be both. There is racist bullying. There is homophobic bullying. There is sexist bullying. There is bullying just for the sake of bullying. Just because it's also bullying, doesn't mean that it's not sexist, and part of the pattern of behavior that drives some women from the field.

Taking responsibility does not mean saying "oh, I'm an oppressor, thus I should be ashamed of myself." It means speaking up when you hear someone being harassed, it means stopping bullying that's going on right in your classroom (and being aware enough of your classroom to notice it going on), it means trying to understand why someone's upset or offended and try to think of reasonable, fair ways to fix that, rather than immediately jumping to the conclusion that the problem they are describing is not actually a problem.

> There is a strong correlation between increased freedom to choose "non-traditional" professions and fewer people choosing them. More women worked "men's jobs" when they were told they were men's jobs than they do now that they are encouraged to seek those jobs.

So, where is your evidence to back up this claim? It's a pretty strong claim, so you had better have some pretty good evidence to back it up.

Sure. And that problem is bullying. It has absolutely nothing to do with women in technology. Saying "imaginary problem X is totally real because real problem Y is real" is not logical.

>He's saying that we need to stop being defensive about it, stop trying to deny that problem, and start taking responsibility for hostile and off-putting behavior

And I am saying he is wrong. That's how it works, one person gives their opinion, and another person gives theirs.

>It means speaking up when you hear someone being harassed, it means stopping bullying that's going on right in your classroom

None of which has to do with the nonexistent "technology is full of chauvinists who scare women away" problem.

>So, where is your evidence to back up this claim?

http://www.dailymotion.com/playlists/user/BrainwashingInNorw...

>It's a pretty strong claim, so you had better have some pretty good evidence to back it up.

Why don't you need evidence to back up the claim that women are avoiding certain professions because of sexism?

The problem is not bullying alone, though that is part of the problem. Something can be both bullying and sexism at the same time. Bullies will frequently reach for the strongest ammunition they can get, whether it's racist, sexist, homophobic, or any of a number of other ways to hurt their victims.

Just because it's bullying doesn't mean that it's automatically not sexism as well.

> http://www.dailymotion.com/playlists/user/BrainwashingInNorw...

Really? A video series called "BranwashingInNorway" about how there are a few people in Norway who are too politically correct to admit that there are some sex-linked behavioral differences?

Did you have any particular evidence for your actual claim that that once it's no longer taboo women don't want to cross traditional gender lines any more that you wanted me to look at, or am I supposed to trawl through the whole four and a half hours?

How about an actual reliable citation in an academic paper, rather than someone who's just trying to demonstrate that there are a few Norwegian academics who are a little too PC for their own good.

> Why don't you need evidence to back up the claim that women are avoiding certain professions because of sexism?

I do. There is plenty of evidence. For instance, the original post that this whole thread is about, though you choose not to believe it, or somehow are trying to classify it as not sexism. But there's plenty more as well:

http://web.archive.org/web/20070503012914/http://headrush.ty...

This is a woman who was terrorized from showing up at tech conferences due to threats of rape and murder.

Or how about this, a compilation of several sexual harassment issues that explain why Valerie Aurora, a Linux Kernel developer, no longer goes to certain hacker cons:

https://adainitiative.org/2012/08/defcon-why-conference-hara...

But OK, maybe you'd rather have statistics than anecdotes. How about this study which shows that women are more likely to leave fields which are more heavily male dominated:

http://www.nber.org/papers/w15853.pdf

That, of course, doesn't address harassment directly, but the general sense of unease that being in a small minority can give you, which can drive you out of the field.

I'm not claiming that the entire gender disparity in tech is due to harassment, or a poisonous atmosphere, or anything of the sort. What I am claiming is that it happens, it does drive some people out, and it's a bad thing. You seem intent on denying that there's any problem whatsoever.

And half of what I was complaining about was that you linked me to a 4 and a half hour long video series, which from a brief glance at the first video, appeared to be some guy just trying to get some Norwegian academics to claim that both sexes are exactly equal, and then catch them out on that. I had no idea where to look in those videos for evidence of the actual claim that you made, that once a profession is no longer taboo for women to join, they have less desire to do so. Could you please tell me where in those videos to find that evidence? Or, since he doesn't seem to be doing any original research himself, just interviewing academics on a variety of topics, can you point out the research that he summarizes that contains this information?

> When you observe an uneven sex ratio in a particular field, you need to form a hypothesis to explain that ratio, and then test it. You can't just jump to "it is sexism" as a conclusion.

The paper I linked to did test certain hypotheses about why it happened, and one of them that it found evidence for is that the larger ratio of men in the industry leads to more women leaving; which forms a self-perpetuating cycle.

You're right, this doesn't directly address sexism, but it does provide evidence for why there's an uneven ratio, and why it continues to be that way, even if more women enter the profession than before.

> But since you skipped the testing the hypothesis step and went straight to a conclusion, you find this offensive and unimaginable.

But it's not just the uneven ratio that we're concerned about. As I said many times, there may be multiple reasons for it; perhaps harassment is only a small portion of the reason. It is obviously a part of the reason; as I've pointed out, there is plenty of anecdotal evidence for that, of people who have been harassed out of the industry, or out of certain communities within it. But you're right, without a rigorous study, we don't know how much of an effect that is, versus other factors.

The "offensive" part is denying that there is any harassment, and denying that men should try to stop it. There is harassment. There is behavior that makes women feel uncomfortable. Rather than being defensive and claiming that people shouldn't jump to the conclusion that sexism isn't the reason why there are few women in the field, why don't we try to not act sexist, stop sexism when we see it, actively try to eliminate at least that problem? Perhaps it won't lead to a lot more women in the industry, as they are avoiding it for other reasons. That's OK; we're still at least working to fix the sexism problem.

Note that I'm not claiming that all, or even most, men in tech are sexist. I'm not claiming that there is a unique sexism problem in tech. What I'm saying is that there is sexism, that it does hurt real people, and so if you see it, you should do something about it.

Also, feminists need to stop being so fucking transphobic. It's a major issue and it is not being addressed.