This also blows my mind. 100% of my colleagues and friends who work in programming would suffer severe whiplash from the double take they would take after reading a statement like that from someone we were working with. How would someone who says something like that in a non-joking way not be immediately ostracized? They would be in any programmer community I've ever been a part of (besides maybe /g/? though even there I think people would just roll their eyes and assume you were trolling.)

When in a situation where someone might say something terrible, I'll sometimes go ahead and say it jokingly. The way I see it, getting everyone to laugh at how ridiculous it sounds is way to reinforce that it was unacceptable. And sometimes I think it was there anyway - somebody was thinking it but not saying it or it was implicit in their thinking and they didn't even notice.

For instance, when discussing which interns should be assigned which tasks, John was initially paired with the IT department. Then we realized that John was unavailable that day, so it defaulted to Julie. And I feigned puzzlement for a moment and said "Are you sure we should't wait for John? Girls don't like computers." Which was my way of needling my co-worker about the fact that initially defaulting to the male intern might not have been entirely arbitrary. I knew him well enough that he'd take my point without feeling like I was accusing him.

TL;DR, I think there's a difference between a sexist joke and joking about sexism

And nobody gets to "decide" what everyone else should feel. What I have a problem with is the idea that it's not the meaning of your utterance that makes it offensive, but merely the topic. The idea that tome expressed in the parent comment that there was literally no circumstance under which you could joke about women being treated unfairly (even if it was to call attention to the problem).

I find the idea of someone declaring what's "not okay" for everyone else to be as upsetting as a boor telling a mean-spirited joke and insisting that nobody should be offended because it's just a joke.

  1. The person was misogynist, and actually believed that women
     are less capable than men, and their ideas less valuable.
  2. The person was insecure about their own position of power,
     and would seize upon any convenient excuse to undermine
     potential future challengers to his authority.
  3. The person minimized effort, and shot down the idea using
     arbitrary reasoning only as the means to avoid having to
     implement any part of it himself.
  4. The person was inexperienced and ignorant about socially
     acceptable behaviors, and was merely copying previously
     observed behaviors.
  5. The person was a troll, and chose that reason as the one which
     would be most inflammatory to the target.
  ...

Another one that seems common is the assumption that all members of a synthetic tribe will tend to hold similar values and beliefs, and conduct themselves in a similar manner. People assume that members of a religion will behave in a particular way. People assume that members of a profession will act in a certain way.

You should think about what you're saying.

It's not a 100% accurate sign, but it's certainly a pretty good signal: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence#S...

Not only that, it also encourages them to argue even more in future. These types of people have already formed an opinion and then search for reasons to believe what they chose to believe. The best thing to do in such situations is to walk away.

Unfortunately, if that is the reaction to something like a patch being rejected because it came from a woman, being non-confrontational and ignoring someone who is an idiot, but has power, galvanizes their idiotic power.

Why should a reason of "female" be special?

"He got teased for being fat". I got teased all the time, why is being teased about being fat any different/special?"

I.e. I'm not saying it's "okay" to tease someone just because I question why being teased about being "fat" is any different to other kinds of teasing.

It just is. It doesn't mean that vapid reasons are not vapid, but this isn't vapid, it's toxic.

I don't know what other kinds of vapid reasons the parent was referring to, but many are just as bad as "female". There's the obvious ones: racist, homophobic and transphobic justification for example, but also less common, also harmful vapid justifications. Dismissing someone's idea because theyre an ex-convict is a good example. Or on the basis of their age.

These are all quite bad, even if not completely equally so. I'd humor an argument that "female" is the worst of these simply because there are a lot more women than ex-convicts and members of a gender or sexuality minority, and therefore more people who could potentially be hurt.

But not "it just is".

"It came from a woman" is one of the most irrational reasons I can imagine, but such a person also probably applies countless prejudices with no basis.

And this behavior is probably tolerated because some people on the project feel they can't get by without this person, which leads to subtle social cues that continue to fuel this behavior.