Catch-22: Tech Blogging As a Woman

http://codingkilledthecat.wordpress.com/2012/07/01/catch-22-tech-blogging-as-a-woman/

by aiiane • 14 years ago

78 121 14 years ago

codingkilledthecat.wordpress.com

iamdave• 14 years ago

Where are the technical articles written by women? There are plenty of contributions complaining about oppression, while attacking men and claiming absurd stereotypes. Where are the technical contributions?

I think the author does a great job starting out by highlighting her own contributions via the linked write-up on Git submodules, but beyond the first couple of sentences on the topic nothing, and spends the rest of the article on a tear about the he/she dichotomy in comments.

While I can certainly understand the frustration when people get gender wrong, that seems to be the wrong place to focus on in this topic of women in tech. Is it possibly an indicator of the problem at large? Sure. Does it answer the question "Where are the tech articles written by women"? No.

It does play right into the exact same mold the commenter was talking about, that set this entire entry into motion:

There are plenty of contributions complaining about oppression...where are the technical contributions?

Instead of highlighting great articles from the women in tech, or linking to other women in the industry with well trafficked blogs and talking about their contributions, the author fell right into the category that perpetuates this problem.

Mind you, I agree that there is a rift that rises when people make the wrong assumption, but that's nil imo.

vibrunazo• 14 years ago

The point is that she shouldn't need to point out individual contributions by women. Because you'd hopefully understand that women don't go out of the way and say "hey, btw, I'm a girl!". So you'd understand technical articles by women are plenty, but they're not immediately obvious. Because women are not trying to make it immediately obvious. Because the internet is supposed to be gender neutral.

And hopefully, if you understand all that, you won't ask be asking "where are the technical contributions from women?" in the first place. So the question is mute, which is why she didn't answer.

Arelius2• 14 years ago

> So you'd understand technical articles by women are plenty, but they're not immediately obvious.

Actually, we have insufficient evidence to know that they are in fact plenty. However, we also have insufficient evidence to say they are rare.

Also, I think you mean moot, not mute. ;)

aiiane5• 14 years ago

There are other articles that are meant to be lists of female tech bloggers, e.g.

http://www.javaworld.com/community/node/3512/ http://www.webteacher.ws/2010/07/06/10-terrific-tech-blogs-b...

This article is not one of them. Just because it doesn't answer the question the way you want it to be answered doesn't mean it's "perpetuating the problem".

In fact, one of the indirect points of this article is that demanding lists of female bloggers in the first place is silly - who demands lists of male bloggers?

Tichy6• 14 years ago

Regarding you last post: it seems curious that there are actually lots of decidedly female tech groups (like geek girls or whatever), whereas male only tech groups would probably be met with outrage. That said, personally I don't need a list of female bloggers.

wickedchicken3• 14 years ago

> the author fell right into the category that perpetuates this problem.

You're missing the point of the article. The point is that if she does 'highlight great articles from the women in tech,' then she would be labeled a "female developer" instead of just a "developer." If she doesn't do this, then she gets labeled a male developer. She would like to be labeled "developer," but the two options she can see lead to undesirable outcomes.

This has been said before, but the key thing to take away is the concept of "othering." The author would like to be seen as a developer, not a subcategory of a developer that is somehow different from the norm. Perhaps a better way to demonstrate is to take this to the extreme:

"Instead of highlighting great articles from brown-eyed people in tech, or linking to other brown-eyed people in the industry with well trafficked blogs and talking about their contributions, the author fell right into the category that perpetuates this problem."

Sounds pretty absurd right? Who cares what their eye color is. On the other hand, imagine if everyone got it wrong. Imagine if you had brown eyes but there was a 'default assumption' that everyone had blue eyes. You wouldn't want to make a fuss every time people got it wrong, for fear of being "that person" who is annoying and pedantic, and "hey, it shouldn't matter! Technology is eye-color blind!" But if you don't do it, it gets a little grating when EVERYONE assumes you are something that you're not. It's a catch-22.

The solution is to remove the default assumption that developers are male. That is something that you, not the author, have to do.

sliverstorm6• 14 years ago

Imagine if there was a 'default assumption' that everyone had blue eyes.

Maybe you just picked a bad example, but that would mean nothing to me. I actually generally assume brown eyes- but I don't have brown eyes myself...

g544s• 14 years ago

What is the OP's point? That people don't pay attention to the gender of the writer? If someone did a dedicated study about the last 6 months of top Hacker News and top r/programming articles what percentage do we think would be male authors? I would set the over-under at 95%. (Please don't point out that those audiences are sexist because the OP just showed that the readers don't pay attention to the gender of authors.)

For the record I think there is sexism in tech but it mostly starts in jr high and high school - at least in the US.

Volpe• 14 years ago

With you're example highlights the amount of 'hype' around the issue though.

If someone assumed I was brown-eyed (when in fact I'm blue), I'm not going to write about it, because it is a non-issue.

The issue is around the stigma we place around 'female developers' not the fact we (mis)identify them.

clockstrikesten6• 14 years ago

No. What's absurd is that Amber Yust reaped all the benefits of having blue eyes in her profession for most of her life, and then proceeded to author this article about how it's wrong to assume that people in her profession have blue eyes, written with all the fury of someone who had brown eyes for their entire life.

I say this because she has a Y chromosome and only updated her driver's license to read Female one year ago.

inopinatus2• 14 years ago

The author falls into no such category, having clearly made a considerable contribution already.

You've missed the point of the article. It doesn't set out to answer your quoted question with some faux-positive ra-ra laundry list of women's writing. Instead it unasks the question.

On the other hand, you've exhibited a classic indicator of unconscious bias by assuming that a woman was complaining. Especially when, as in this case, she clearly isn't.

rcfox3• 14 years ago

> On the other hand, you've exhibited a classic indicator of unconscious bias by assuming that a woman was complaining. Especially when, as in this case, she clearly isn't.

"complain: to express dissatisfaction, pain, uneasiness, censure, resentment, or grief"

If people can't disagree with you without being accused of bias at the drop of a hat, then we can't have a true discussion.

clockstrikesten6• 14 years ago

The stereotype is primarily accepted by two groups of males:

1. Men who believe women do not succeed in the tech world due to social pressures

2. Men who believe women do not succeed in the tech world due to differences that are genetic in nature

For the second group, author Amber Yust only fuels the fire of the stereotype, because she was born a man. For the first group, using herself as an example of a woman succeeding in the tech world is invalid, because she was a man for most of her life and benefitted from all the consequent privileges.

I find it dumbfounding that she wrote this article.

danso3• 14 years ago

> Mind you, I agree that there is a rift that rises when people make the wrong assumption, but that's nil imo.

It's possible you are very open minded in such a way that even though you don't "see" a group, and its accomplishments, you still consciously afford them the same benefit of doubt as you do for the majority group. Unfortunately, this is not a trait shared by societies and social groups at large.

RegEx10• 14 years ago

> The catch-22 here is that if I choose to blend in, then people like the commenters above assume that everything they see was written by men, and use that as an excuse to dismiss the concerns of women in the tech industry

Couldn't this be solved by a little 'about the author' section at the end of your articles? Pull in your gravatar and add a couple of sentences about yourself. Now everyone knows you are a woman, and you didn't have to change your background to hot-pink to do so! :)

thetabyte2• 14 years ago

Did you read the article at all? Her whole point is that women should not have to do this, that they face discrimination if they do do this, and that we should refrain from assuming that if we don't see one of these, it's by a man. The problem isn't that they don't know she's a girl. It's that they assume she isn't one.

RegEx10• 14 years ago

I actually did skip a paragraph on accident.

> Sure, I could go out of my way to make it obvious that I’m a woman. I could put my name at the top of my blog or on my About page, or I could mention it in passing in my writing. That’s not something a male author has to do, though. Furthermore, doing so results in harassment and having my writing dismissed/trivialized/tokenized because of my gender. Hence why I don’t (or at least, hadn’t until this post).

verroq10• 14 years ago

>Her whole point is that women should not have to do this, that they face discrimination if they do do this

I don't think this point is correct. The technical nature of computer science/technology makes it easier to judge a work by its technical merits, not by authorship.

verroq10• 14 years ago

Most of the time people use "he" when they don't know the gender of the author. It's not assuming the author is a man. It's a place-holder word in English.

RegEx10• 14 years ago

I do this as well, simply because using 'they' in reference to a single person irks me.

orangecat• 14 years ago

If it helps, singular "they" is a long-standing practice: www.crossmyt.com/hc/linghebr/austheir.html

MBlume2• 14 years ago

Honestly, this is something you should get over.

aiiane5• 14 years ago

And you don't see how that leads people to unconsciously bias themselves towards thinking of the author as male, even if they don't actively decide to think of them that way?

RegEx10• 14 years ago

If the habit of using 'he' causes an subconscious bias, yet you refuse to correct our subconscious, what's to be done?

lmm3• 14 years ago

"she" is a diminutive of "he". As with other female-specific diminutives ("poetess", "actress"), the solution is for women to start using the "male" version, making it gender-neutral.

SoftwareMaven2• 14 years ago

I think you are right about using "he" in a non-gender-specific way, but I think there are ramifications. It becomes obvious that all articles are written by men, since you see so many he's writing them.

Perhaps English needs a truly gender-neutral pronoun.

verroq10• 14 years ago

People have no need to write "he/she" when referring to the author when using "he" is correct 90% of the time.

If women really want people to be know them as women then they should make it clear that they are. Hell, the suffragettes persevered through much worse than creepy internet comments.

sliverstorm6• 14 years ago

Perhaps English needs a truly gender-neutral pronoun.

"It"?

khuey2• 14 years ago

Despite obstinate grammarians, 'they' serves as a singular gender-neutral pronoun pretty well.

roguecoder8• 14 years ago

"He" is not gender-neutral, no matter how hard the Latin-obsessed grammarians tried [citation: http://scholarworks.umass.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=12...]

If you want a gender-neutral pronoun, "they" works perfectly well. It doesn't matter what you intend when you type "he", everyone reading it will interpret it as male.

sliverstorm6• 14 years ago

"They" is confusing, as it can be singular or plural.

strictfp• 14 years ago

We've had the same pronoun situation here in Sweden. Recently, however, a new pronoun started to become common in everyday speech: 'hen'. It's a mix of 'han' ('he') and 'hon'('her'). It's picked up in popularity fast since it solves the specific problems highlighted by this article.

Tichy6• 14 years ago

Non-native here: isn't "they" more like addressing a royal? That's what it sounds to me anyway.

darkestkhan2• 14 years ago

I thought English already had one gender neutral pronoun - "one".

One shouldn't reinvent the wheel.

undantag• 14 years ago

Just start using "she" instead of he.

RegEx10• 14 years ago

> Furthermore, doing so results in harassment and having my writing dismissed/trivialized/tokenized because of my gender. Hence why I don’t (or at least, hadn’t until this post).

I'd like to understand the severity of this issue. Can you provide examples of technical articles written by women that were dismissed due to their gender?

clockstrikesten6• 14 years ago

This was written by Amber Yust, who was born a man.

rcfox3• 14 years ago

You say this as if it were relevant...

clockstrikesten6• 14 years ago

I fail to see how it's irrelevant. In this article, someone who was a man until a year or two ago used herself as the perfect example of a woman who succeeds in the tech world.

Tichy6• 14 years ago

Interesting, but a bit of a strawman: one comment dismisses complaints of women because he accuses them of not contributing anything of merit. That is of course flawed in itself, but it is just one person's comment, not a general attitude towards female bloggers.

I also don't think that for example on HN it should be possible to "pay" with technical contributions for non-technical contributions, like, for every x relevant articles you would be allowed an irrelevant article. Ideally, every article should stand on it's own (probably not realistic, but an ideal to attain to).

HarrietTubgirl2• 14 years ago

You're not going to change this. Yes, virtually every great programmer or computer scientist is a male. So much so that we're all going to assume they're male, and when we see a female name (like "Leslie Lamport") we double-check to see if it's actually a female. This is just a normal tendency. We assume basketball players are over 6'3", we assume nurses are female.

There are many stories of people overcoming discrimination (say, Indian immigrants being thought to be unfit for executive positions in Silicon Valley), and they make the current hot topic of women in tech look incredibly dumb. We're talking overt discrimination, not occasional pronoun misuse.

Indians in Silicon Valley started a group called TiE to help establish a presence. Does it hurt for them to have labeled themselves as "Indus Entrepreneurs" and try to help each other? Doesn't seem so.

So maybe the right way to overcome this "oppression" you feel is just to quit fucking bitching, put your head down and code, and maybe help a few other women out along the way when you achieve success.

ben0x5392• 14 years ago

Wow, rude.

Your misogynist default behavior isn't the fault of the OP and kinda your own failing to overcome.

The onus isn't on the oppressed group to overcome discrimination, it's on the privileged group to cut it out. And downplaying everyday casual sexism just because it's not literally witch burning anymore is a really privileged thing to do!

gcb• 14 years ago

dilettantism is way easier than work. And recently may be as effective. Heck i usually get hundreds of upvotes just by pretending i have some knowledge.

This one will skyrocket because i may be a woman. And maybe Indian.

mkaltenecker• 14 years ago

This is how your comment reads to me: Misogyny is totally cool and you should never do anything to change it, not even write a harmless and polite blogpost. No, see, that's bitching. Mentioning a very clear and obvious problem is totally not cool.

HarrietTubgirl2• 14 years ago

I don't see how this has anything to do with misogyny? Perhaps you mean something else, like stereotyping.

adimitrov• 14 years ago

Careful: Computer science got big in the 50s and 60s, a time when "women and technology" was a topic consisting largely of the kitchen stove and the radio. Gender equality has come a long way since the 60s, especially in education, technology, and business (I'm not saying it's come all the way.)

Add to that, today's tech environment doesn't make your gender necessarily obvious, except if you choose to shove it into your readers' face. Take the linked blog, for example. It's indistinguishable from any other blog; the name "Amber" might as well be a male's pseudonym, and in any case, it's such low contrast and so small it's almost invisible. I know I skipped over it — also because I'm not typically interested in who wrote an article, but in the article itself.

So we have a population of males traditionally assuming everybody of relevance to technology is a man, and not many non-obnoxious ways for women to establish their gender in their postings (to be honest, I want it to stay that way. Your gender has absolutely nothing to do with what I'm interested in.)

Men need to stop whining and finally end the idiotic assumption that it is fine to use the default 'he'. English has a particularly elegant way out of the dilemma (just use 'they' whenever you'd use 'he') contrary to other languages where you will also need to adjust the inflection of verbs or nouns throughout the sentence.

It's a simple change. Nobody is going to get hurt, and it would do a lot to make women feel more welcome in the (formerly) manly sociotope 'technology'. Why is it such a problem for men to just make such a simple change?

(PS: please don't take my above post about women and their penetration into the technological sphere in the 50s and 60s all too literally. I meant the general population and the accepted role of women in society; I meant not to exclude the extraordinary achievements by some (few enough, unfortunately) women already accomplished in those times.)

wccrawford3• 14 years ago

It's not actually a catch-22, it's just a shitty situation.

Catch-22 means you can't do something without doing another thing first, but you can't do that first either because it relies on the thing you wanted to do in the first place. It's a closed circle with no way in.

This, however, it's just painful. Women can't emphasize their gender without being ridiculed by assholes, but they can't hide it because they would then be helping prolong the ridicule for others.

"You're either part of the problem, or part of the solution." Sitting back and doing nothing allows the problem to continue. I'm as guilty of doing nothing as anyone.

I really don't care who wrote the article, only that it's a good article. If I see something techie don't by a woman, I generally think "Good for her" and then continue on with life. I don't assign any special weight to her words at all. They still stand on their own.

On the other hand, my experience is that closed communities are a lot better about not discriminating. If someone says, "the op is a She", everyone apologizes, switches, and continues on.

Open communities, where any asshole with a keyboard can leave a comment, tend to be slums. Assholes know they can post their opinions without censorship, so they do. Constantly. There's repercussions, either.

As much as I like finding random stuff on the net, the only communities worth joining are the private ones. And there's precious few of those any more.

Catch-22: Tech Blogging As a Woman

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