Speaking up

http://www.sazzy.co.uk/2013/02/speaking-up/

by petercooper • 13 years ago

426 299 13 years ago

sazzy.co.uk

h2s6• 13 years ago

Are there any high profile women in this industry who haven't been treated like shit in some way such as this? What a nasty bunch of people we are. Are we (developers) the douchey 80s guy of the 21st century?

tudorw2• 13 years ago

I agree, all the stuff I read it's like going back a century, we are supposed to be on the vanguard of a brave new world, not re-hashing the same dumb ass attitude that has contaminated the past decades. Grow up, get on and be nice.

nollidge10• 13 years ago

See, but the fact that you're reading about it at all, that people are arguing about it at all, means we're doing better. The fact that outrage about sexism even exists is progress. It's the (slight) progress of shining a harsh light on the previously unnoticed realities that were always there.

mattdeboard4• 13 years ago

Seriously. I roll my eyes at some of the white-knighting that goes when a woman is slighted on the Internet but holy crap I get nervous for my girlfriend who's a talented programmer and about to graduate with a CS degree. Is this kind of bullshit in store for her? Sheesh.

afarrell• 13 years ago

Are you sure you aren't confusing "white knight" for "person who doesn't appreciate seeing other people treated like shit"? I originally thought that phrase meant something like "Claiming to represent someone's position or speak for them when they can very well speak for themselves." But assuming that http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/white-knight is a credible source, that phrase actually refers to dudes who argue against misogyny because they want to get laid. I hope that isn't the sense in which you're using it because there are some gaping flaws in that concept:

- Unless you're all using your real names and on the same campus or convention floor, how does that even work, logistically?

- Treating people with basic levels of respect does not magically make them attracted to you, though it will make them more comfortable hanging around you.

- If the only (or even the most notable) reason someone can think of for trying to argue against misogyny or other flavors of assholiery is to get laid, that person needs to go home and rethink their fundamental values in life. Implying this is true of men generally is pretty misadrist.

I suspect you aren't actually using knowyourmeme's definition, so could you clarify the behavior you're referring to when you say "white-knighting"?

roguecoder4• 13 years ago

I think the difference between white-knighting and not is whether it's about the woman or the person who's behaving badly.

"You shouldn't hit a girl!" <-- white knighting "You are being violent; if you do not stop we will ban you from this space." <-- insisting on basic, reasonable standards of behavior.

It's not about women needing special protection, it is about the community not welcoming people who act like assholes. Of course women can defend themselves, but no one should have to defend themselves against that kind of behavior. And the only reason I believe it is important to talk about gender in this context is because women are being targeted because of their gender and using cultural weapons specific to their gender. Again, it is about the people behaving badly, not their targets.

raganwald2• 13 years ago

I roll my eyes at some of the white-knighting that goes when a woman is slighted on the Internet

I don't give a rat's ass what the definition of "white knighting is. I'm calling you out now to be much more specific about what kind of slighting is involved and what you're rolling your eyes at. Give examples. Justify yourself.

pja4• 13 years ago

And this is why you need moderated communities, because otherwise the assholes will dominate the discourse in your chosen milieu and drive out anyone they deem unacceptable.

Very often it's women. I don't know why but either there's a class of developers who feel personally threatened by women in their chosen profession, or it's personal: some individual has believed themselves to be entitled to that woman's attention & when it was not forthcoming begin a cruel campaign of punishment to make up for the perceived insult. Maybe even both?

It's been said that sunlight is the best disinfectant: I know that I'd be completely unaware of this behaviour if some of the women involved weren't brave enough to speak out about it. I don't have any good solutions though: the best I can do is to refuse to tolerate any sexism in my own circles, on the grounds that the people who do this kind of thing take other people's silence (not wanting to be "that guy") as implicit affirmation of their actions.

thaumaturgy5• 13 years ago

Regarding your second paragraph, I think it's primarily a clash of two situations: software development by its nature attracts men who are socially awkward, and the women that are attracted to software development tend not to be there for the attention.

Software development has a broader appeal now than it did twenty years ago, and in spite of the numerous cases like this one, there seems to still be a growing population of women in the community. (I hope that continues, we need all the talent available.) So, hopefully this will sort itself out in time.

In the meantime, I'm more intrigued by the idea of gated communities than I am of moderated communities. Moderation seems to require a lot of resources and lead to conflict. Gated (online) communities don't seem to have been tried as much, and I'm curious about whether or not a lot of social problems would simply solve themselves if not everyone were invited to participate.

saraid2165• 13 years ago

Keep in mind that sexism exists outside the tech industry as well: correlation doesn't imply causation.

We certainly need to address the problems of sexism within our community, but I think it's a mistake to assume that it's part of the community's particular quirks that produce said sexism. Especially when there are some far more obvious indicators of where the sexism comes from: the larger cultural discourse and ambience, for instance.

mootothemax• 13 years ago

Are we (developers) the douchey 80s guy of the 21st century?

To paraphrase Neal Stephenson's Snow Crash, one problem is guys believing that they're too smart to be sexist.

I also believe that a lot of people involved can't handle the idea that they're being bullies, and so further attempt to rationalise their actions with terrible analogies and arguments that boil down to "I'm a geek - I'm incapable of oppressing someone!"

mtrimpe2• 13 years ago

I think to a large degree it's also about not understanding group dynamics. Let's say that:

35% or so of geeks are closet sexists in reform: aware that their belief systems are wrong / socially unacceptable and trying to change.

5% or so aren't sexists but misogynists: men who truly feel wronged by women and wish to retaliate.

60% are perfectly stand-up men who wouldn't do a bit of harm

Now the trick is that whenever the sexist and misogynists form a group where they have a significant majority, the closet sexists will give the misogynists a platform to damage women.

Meanwhile the other 60% sees nothing but 95% of perfectly respectful men who would do no harm against women and can't even imagine something like that happening in their company.

vickytnz2• 13 years ago

This sort of stuff also ties into the whole 'fake geek girl'thing as well: http://www.theatlantic.com/sexes/archive/2013/01/fake-geek-g... Or, the pink ghetto: http://tarahunt.com/2011/09/14/a-pink-collar-tech-ghetto/

hmason• 13 years ago

This isn't a problem with guys or with developers in general.

The vast majority of people who participate in conference are good people. However, it only takes one person (out of thousands!) who has this kind of personality dysfunction to lead an attack, and women are much much more likely to be the target of their dysfunction.

Aaronontheweb2• 13 years ago

If you think the developer community is bad, try advertising / media / sales.

malachismith2• 13 years ago

Having worked in both, I actually do not think the developer community is better (or less awful) than the advertising / media / sales community. The former is simply more nuanced and subtle. The sexism in the Ad / Media / Sales world is simply more obvious, unhidden and honest. Both are horrible and grotesque - but to be frank, I think that while there is less respect for women in the Ad / Media / Sales world, there is more women-hating in the Developer community.

ddellacosta• 13 years ago

I'm a man. We (male) developers don't have to be like this, and many of us aren't.

But, I've said it before and I'll say it again: men have even more of a responsibility than women to speak up and combat this kind of sexism. We (men) have the utmost responsibility to make sure that we are fighting to allow women a place in our industry, a place where they feel safe enough so that they can be equal participants without worrying about being looked down upon, harassed or concerned for their safety.

The sad reality is, more than having courageous women speaking up about sexism, men speaking up about sexism convinces other men to treat women respectfully.

saraid2165• 13 years ago

> But, I've said it before and I'll say it again: men have even more of a responsibility than women to speak up and combat this kind of sexism.

Some advice on how to do this, for anyone looking: http://www.anamardoll.com/2012/11/deconstruction-how-to-be-m...

mwetzler10• 13 years ago

On Friday I pitched my company to a room of 150 developers, since my company was a hackathon sponsor. I was the only female speaker out of about 15.

Afterwards, a well-known, elite developer asked me if I programmed. When I said yes, he said that made me 50% less attractive. Then he asked me if I cooked and cleaned. To my face.

You don't have to be high profile to deal with this stuff. Just being in a room where you're 1 female out of 15 males is enough to get this kind of attention.

rachelbythebay• 13 years ago

I wonder what would happen if someone found out who this "elite developer" was.

jellicle• 13 years ago

You know, naming names is probably one of the best ways to combat this. Silence helps the asshole keep doing it.

I understand the reasons why you might not want to. It's tragedy of the commons problem; you get no benefit and possible detriment from naming names - only society as a whole benefits.

Nevertheless you should. It's the right thing to do.

whiterabbit22• 13 years ago

Oh, I would say "none of his f*cking business". As a woman, you don't need to even be a developer to get this kind of "attention" on a regular basis.

rdl4• 13 years ago

I obviously never get comments like this (being a man in a male-dominated field), but I hear about some women in the industry getting it more often than others. I'm sure there's reporting bias, but at least some of the women I've talked to seem to think it's not a common problem for them at least (but happens to others).

I wonder if there are specific things which make it more likely for some women to be harassed like this. And, is relatively mild stupidity like this correlated in any way with more serious issues (either assault or serious job discrimination)?

kstrauser• 13 years ago

I just don't get this. Do these guys not have moms? Sisters? Wives or girlfriends? Daughters? Women friends? I would be incredibly pissed if anyone said those things to my family members; ergo, I can't imagine saying them to someone else.

For me, it really is as simple as that. I want my daughters to feel as welcome in their careers as I hope my sons will be. Anything less than that is utterly unacceptable.

I'm sorry this happened to you and I hope you believe me that not all guys think this way.

gfodor2• 13 years ago

What the fuck, I really can't wrap my mind around the fact that stuff like this happens. Who are these idiots? It would be pretty useful if there were a way to get these types of things anonymously reported so the accusers could have some way to publicize it, the accuser have their chance to voice their side of the story, and failing to clear the issue up (in your case, there is no excuse for that kind of response) the rest of the entire industry could never, ever hire that person. It's embarrassing that interactions like this happen in a professional setting and there are no good measures in place to report and prevent them.

lizzard3• 13 years ago

Wish I could even be surprised at this.

Join us on #geekfeminism sometime on freenode (if you're not already there) :)

chaostheory2• 13 years ago

Where did this happen? I'm reading this and I'm a little shocked. I don't understand why people can be such jerks.

enraged_camel3• 13 years ago

>>Afterwards, a well-known, elite developer asked me if I programmed. When I said yes, he said that made me 50% less attractive. Then he asked me if I cooked and cleaned. To my face.

You should have smiled and told him no, because you programmed a robot to do all that stuff for you. Then punched him in the face.

hopeless_case8• 13 years ago

> What a nasty bunch of people we are.

Why is wondering aloud how sexist/creepy the bulk of male programmers are more acceptable than wondering aloud how untalented the bulk of female programmers are?

I think both behaviors are rather low shaming behaviors.

andrewcooke2• 13 years ago

because discrimination is about power. if two groups have equal amounts of power it really doesn't matter that much (except for social courtesy sake) what they say about each other. discrimination is a problem when it's associated with inequality. it's a big deal when a majority bash a minority. the other way round, not so much. even less so when the criticism is internal to the majority.

Tichy20• 13 years ago

I don't like being compared to some random person (of unknown gender) who attacked a woman in an online forum just because I am a developer, thank you very much!

kapowaz• 13 years ago

Sexism is alive and well in the 21st Century.

Look at how women are treated in the Middle East. Listen to stories of the rape culture in Delhi. Pay inequality the world over. A media industry which sees young women as commodities to sell their product. What we're seeing here is the thin end of the wedge; the individual who committed this disgusting act would probably have felt entitled to behave this way even were they working in another industry.

It's ugly, but this is a very large societal problem that we're still really struggling to address. As pleased as I was to see President Obama address gay rights in his inauguration, it was equally significant that he addressed gender equality. We've a long way to go before this is fixed, but rather than indulging in self-pity or recrimination, how about we work to be the change we want to see in the world?

abcd_f4• 13 years ago

So apparently, she is a web designer (or a web design agency owner), but it takes an effort to find a link to an actual portfolio. There is the Resources page but it's full of her own photos from every angle. The About page is too full of important aspects of her professional background including how she takes her coffee (apparently 3rd most frequently asked question).

I understand that she is the brand and she's probably doing more public speaking than HTML coding, but I find this sort of "I am the only girl in web design, totally braving it" blatant self-promotion to be very off-putting. It feels calculated and manipulative.

tudorw2• 13 years ago

I don't see how criticising the formatting of the content without discussing the content adds anything. Was there a point you wanted to make ?

abcd_f4• 13 years ago

I am not convinced that her motives for posting this are genuine. This sort of deeply personal story has no business of being attached to the Resources and the FAQ pages on how to get her speak at your event.

danielsamuels• 13 years ago

It's not hard at all. You go to the about page (http://www.sazzy.co.uk/about/), look at the text where it says "Sarah is the owner of design studio You Know Who", you then click through to the company page (http://www.youknowwhodesign.com/) and click on Portfolio.

petercooper• 13 years ago

That's because it's her personal site, a place people often promote their own personal brand/speaking/photos/achievements/etc. Click on her company name to be taken to http://www.youknowwhodesign.com/ which is a more typical portfolio/agency site.

m4tthumphrey• 13 years ago

Pretty sure sazzy.co.uk is a personal site about Sarah, the person. Work is all at http://www.youknowwhodesign.com

mattdeboard4• 13 years ago

Everyone is too polite or concerned with HN decorum to say so but you're a fucking asshole.

anu_gupta2• 13 years ago

I really hope you don't get hellbanned for this - I absolutely agree with you.

pja4• 13 years ago

We're all just passive-aggressively downvoting that comment into oblivion instead.

acdha• 13 years ago

I regret that I can only up vote once.

sdoering2• 13 years ago

So you are looking at a personal blog (at least, that is what it looks like me), that is also used as a personal site for speaking gigs (press images, bio, et al).

You are not willing to follow the link to her agency, to look for a portfolio there, but you have the "right", quite passive-aggressively, to criticize her in a way, that makes her look not like the victim, she is in the told story, but that it is all her own fault?

cynism on

You feel manipulated, so you are the victim now. If a woman describes her experience with something like this, somehow you become the victim?

OK, sorry, but I really do not get this. I really try to understand it - but maybe I am not intelligent enough. Please try to explain. I really would love to understand your worldview...

cynism off

abcd_f4• 13 years ago

Jeez. If I am a victim now, then you are no lesser of a victim for being hurt by not being able to fully understand my comment of me not being a victim. Let's not go the soap opera way.

She is a professional public speaker, not a web designer. Whatever she's gotta say, it serves to promote her brand. This is factored into her decision to post. It doesn't make what she has to say any less true, but it does make it far less interesting and it also makes it look far more calculated.

edit on

Editing comments after getting a reply? Oki-doki.

edit off

adrianshort• 13 years ago

Sexism in the tech business "overblown", says anonymous troll who struggles to use a web browser effectively.

flexie• 13 years ago

Took me less than a minute to find this: http://www.youknowwhodesign.com/portfolio

gere• 13 years ago

This comment is wrong, but it can be a good starting point for what I want to say: it's very likely that in life people will pick on you for what you are. I've been tormented at various degrees because I'm short, or because I'm shy and introvert, or because I sort of like math. I mean I have been called a "pain in the ass" because I said that I don't like dubbed movies (I live in a country were dubbed movies are the norm). And all this in important settings like school and work. And not only by my peers, but also by teachers, boss and managers. But I'm not here to complain. What I want to say is that if you post photos of yourself and you are a nice lady, someone will pick on you for that. That's very sad, but it's the status quo. The hell if I know what are their reasons. But I know why they do it: because it's easy and it hurts. They don't pick on you for your work. It doesn't hurt that much and they could end helping you, pointing out one of your errors. But if it is your body, your beliefs, your personality they will do it. That's an easy bet.

So do I think that ladies shouldn't post beautiful photos? No of course, go on, you are hacking the system. You are getting a lot of good attention for that. But as always there are trade offs. A couple of weeks ago, here on HN someone complained because a young user posted something like: "I'm 14 and I developed an iPhone game". What's wrong with that? You did something and you want to advertise it. Saying that you are a young developer is a very catchy. And posting your photos is very eye-grabbing. Sort of refreshing after the n-th post about "beautiful typography" or whatever. Now, about the state of the industry. The only way to change things is for women to stick out and speak-up. Please don't hide. Soon or later things will change. I can imagine that 150 years ago, female teachers weren't as respected as men. Now, at least in my school experience, men were often the less respected one. While women were feared by students. Thing's will change, hopefully sooner than later.

WildMushroom• 13 years ago

And you are... Internationally acclaimed developer/designer with years of experience and almost 30, 000 followers? Mmm didn't think so.

petehotchkiss• 13 years ago

sigh clearly we as a community have a long long long way to go if we still have people of even contemplate such a reponse

newhouseb2• 13 years ago

Halfway through reading this article I had myself really wishing posts like these would just publicly out the perpetrator instead of referring to them anonymously - unfortunately as I finished the article I realized that she hadn't done so because the perpetrator was never found out.

For the cases where there is no question who the perpetrator is - I wonder if it would be beneficial to encourage more public shaming? Part of me knows that if these people are lead to believe their actions are left without consequence they will continue in their wrongdoing. When a blog post tells a story of someone being assaulted, a lot of good people will come to their support but I would be genuinely surprised if a creep is convinced not to be a creep by reading a story in the third person about another anonymous creep.

If we call these people out and kick them out of the community, like when a spouse kicks out a cheating partner, we have more room for responsible, respectable community members.

On the other hand, public shaming at any level _seems_ childish to me, but I can't point out why. Additionally, if someone makes false claims, they can do serious damage very easily. There is probably no easy answer here.

pja4• 13 years ago

I believe that the people who act like this almost always act out in other ways: tell sexist jokes, make light of rape culture, all that stuff.

One way we can make a difference is to refuse to tolerate that kind of thing in our own circles of acquaintances, because otherwise those individuals will take our silence as implicit affirmation of their worldview. Sometimes it's hard to be "that guy", but if you're not prepared to do it, then you're one of the people that's enabling this kind of behaviour. By not speaking out you're telling these people that what they believe is OK: silence is complicity, like it or not.

lukeholder• 13 years ago

I once criticized Sarah on twitter while agreeing with Robert Hoekman when he wrote a blog post about another person in the UX speaking circuit who did not have a huge amount of work behind them to back up the fact that they are up in front of people, teaching them.

I since regretted my comments on Sarah's success. I believe I apologized on twitter (after being called out). I was embarrassed, but have not contacted her since, I just see her on rosters for speaking at various conferences.

Now, when I read this post of hers my heart sank. Not only because it is utterly sickening someone could do this to another person, but that at one stage I was unkind to her online.

What if she suspected me because of my remarks 2 years ago? What if she called my name out as a suspect. My web development career and reputation would be shattered. Now what if someone decides to play detective and look through twitter history and sees my comments and accuse me publicly. Ruined.

Its not that public shaming is childish, its that that such accusations have huge ramifications if false. It's "better that ten guilty persons escape than that one innocent suffer"[0]

This does not mean I hope the person/people involved are not held accountable, it just needs to be handled outside a public internet witch hunt.

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstones_formulation

edit: grammar

newhouseb2• 13 years ago

Thanks, you helped clarify what I was looking to leave as an open question:

How do we hold individuals accountable without encouraging a witch hunt?

The larger developer community is open and unmoderated and as a result we have no organizational "justice system" to fall back on in order to correct behavior (not that I am proposing this).

tedks4• 13 years ago

(Proper link is https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blackstone%27s_formulation )

And from that same page, "better for whom?"

It takes great care to attempt to apply knowledge from one domain to another domain. Humans are great at seeing patterns and making analogies, but no matter how many times you say "technology is evolving," that won't make it adhere to the Hardy-Weinberg principle[0]. Attempts to actually implement these analogies tend to be problematic[1].

The US justice system, on the federal and state level, has a wide array of checks against it that (nominally) protect people from state abuse. This is necessary because of the vast power imbalance between a nation-state and a private individual. In this case, it's probably far better to have a 10:1 false negative:false positive ratio. The more false positives, the more potential for abuse.

Conventions and the hacker community do not have the power of nation-states. There's no reason to apply the same very stringent and very necessary restrictions that we apply on nation-states to DefCon. DefCon cannot hurt you the same way the US government can.

So, who is this better for? Certainly not the women attacked: they're left with few options, little sympathy, and copious amounts of victim blaming and denial (as the current top comment indicates). It's far better for the abusers -- especially when the potential for system abuse is far less, because conventions and other hacker/tech events are not nation-states.

If we're going to solve this (or any) problem, we need to look past platitudes and into quantified, measured thought towards a solution. This might very well be naming and shaming likely perpetrators, especially when the evidence is more convincing than a few twitter posts two years ago. We might get more false positives, but we have to contrast this with the current status quo of simply denying any justice to the people actually being harassed for their gender. Personally, I think the cost-benefit is overwhelmingly in favor of excluding more maybe/maybe-not abusive men from our communities, if it results in half the human population being allowed to add their talent to the collective pool.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hardy%E2%80%93Weinberg_princip... [1] http://web.archive.org/web/20070818124133/http://www.greythu...

krickle2• 13 years ago

We shouldn't allow disfunctional individuals to participate in our communities, but I think at the point where you photoshop nudes to damage someone's reputation, a therapist would be more appropriate than a lynch mob. I think that's why it seems childish to you, you know that shaming wouldn't make anyone change, it would just satiate our thirst for revenge.

rimantas• 13 years ago

Please, tell me, how would comments look if someone did the same thing, but for the guy? The sight of a bunch of guys rushing to fight sexism (often without even understanding what sexism is) and solve women's issues for them is amusing. This is not to say, that there are no problems. But the biggest problem I see is a knee-jerk reaction to anything involving gender or race. Sometimes assholes are just assholes and couldn't care less if their victim is women or black person, or whatever. The bunch of self proclaimed righteous knights however fails to see that and then everything becomes sexims and/or rasism thus diluting real problems.

CJefferson• 13 years ago

It's interesting that you say "couldn't care less if their victim is a women or black person, or whatever".

Can you come up with a good example of this kind of extreme attacking of a white man? You say "How would this look for a guy", I honestly can't think of any examples where people go anywhere near as far trolling and harassing white men. I may of course just be forgetting some obvious cases.

icebraining• 13 years ago

I can, unless you mean white straight men.

randomdata• 13 years ago

I would suggest that harassment of white men (and men in general) usually comes in the form of attacking one's mind, rather than body. George W. Bush stands out as a notable example. I don't know of anyone posting supposed pictures of him naked, but the jokes about his intelligence were seemingly never ending.

DanBC4• 13 years ago

> Please, tell me, how would comments look if someone did the same thing, but for the guy?

HN is getting better at being less aggressive and at being more constructive with criticism.

Perhaps you can find an example where a male dev had pictures of his face, and pictures of another man's penis, posted to a website with his name and email address. And, when you find it, HN will be supportive of that man and will condemn the anon attacker.

aapl• 13 years ago

As an actual example, in the GitHub penis incident, HN seemed mostly supportive of the target:

http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2601342

onemorepassword• 13 years ago

Even if there is such an example, you really need to have your head stuck firmly up your ass if you're willing to argue that it would have anywhere near the same social and emotional impact.

Perhaps "outing" a developer as gay could have a comparable impact for men, but that would only apply in predominantly homophobic communities.

Which in turn says a lot about this community's attitude towards women. If it wasn't hostile to women in the first place, extreme examples like this troll would never have such an impact.

lukehorvat• 13 years ago

Please, tell me, why there is always one individual who reads an article like this and goes "but what about teh menz!?"

krickle2• 13 years ago

I agree that it's not appropriate here, but in general; people do it because male forced envelopment victims get congratulated, male domestic violence victims that call for help are redirected to a hotline to confess as an abuser, males are ignored in legislation bringing more health care benefits to women, males are more likely to commit suicide, and males are less likely to succeed in lower education or matriculate into college. Also the prisons are full of men (who get longer sentences for similar crimes), where it's also a hilarious joke that they are raped because fuck criminals.

I wouldn't have replied but I hate that "what about the menz" trope. Men and women both have social problems, it wasn't appropriate to discuss men's issues here but that does not mean it is never appropriate. Maybe people need better filters than, "a discussion about gender is occurring, here is my two cents," but it's hard for people who care about these issues to find a good time simply because it's somewhat taboo to say men have problems at all. So they probably just don't mention anything until they really disagree with something being said.

AutoCorrect• 13 years ago

yep, equality sucks, especially when you're attacked as an equal. The thing is, these idiots that do stuff like this are targeting the woman's sexual attributes, and not her intelligence or skills.

As for the guy that said he learned better from other men - maybe he does, give him the benefit of the doubt - it's not ALL about you.

Nursie2• 13 years ago

"Sometimes assholes are just assholes"

Good, lets out them and get rid of them whatever their issue is, so the rest of us can get on with our lives.

gavanwoolery5• 13 years ago

Sorry about your treatment. :(

(And here I go into down-vote territory... :D)

Before I say anything, let me say clearly I am not sexist; I am a strong advocate of equal rights (key word: equal).

Some of your attacks can definitely be attributed to sex, but it's bad propaganda just to throw them all in the sexism bucket, or treat sexism like it is the norm. I know several females in the industry who are not afraid of anything, and have never been attacked on the basis of their sex (or even been attacked otherwise). Sometimes people attack just because they don't like the cut of your jib. In other words, it can be tempting to project your experiences on the rest of the industry, but I think as a whole the majority of men are "good guys".

The simple truth is the more you open yourself to the public, the more you open yourself for attack, regardless of sex. You have almost 30,000 followers, so statistically speaking at least a few of them are probably psychopaths and/or sexist. Some of the highest profile tweeters, like Notch, get attacks daily (mostly by angry 13 year olds). My $0.02...

mtrimpe2• 13 years ago

And how many speakers have porn created of them distributed during conferences? And when that happened would you expect at least a small percentage to secretly have a little laugh at it?

There was another post on the front-page just minutes ago called The Distress of the Privileged [1] and it makes the very good point that these things are about a difference of scale.

On the one hand we have one of the most high-profile of tweeters facing regular childish threats; on the other hand we have a not all that well known female presenter having to deal with porn 'of her' being distributed during speaking engagements.

[1] http://weeklysift.com/2012/09/10/the-distress-of-the-privile...

gavanwoolery5• 13 years ago

Yes, people are going to attack women in very different ways then men. I can't imagine that many people would want to create nude pics of a guy to insult him. But that's not what I am getting at -- I am trying to say that this incident does not reflect the majority of males, nor does it make the whole IT industry sexist. You can't start saying that everyone/everything is sexist just because one incident of it occurred. Maybe people being bored with her talk had nothing to do with her being a woman -- maybe it was just a boring talk.

DanBC4• 13 years ago

> and have never been attacked on the basis of their sex

Do you really know this, or do they just never ever mention it?

I agree that everyone with enough followers will be the victim of attacks. But those attacks often take the easy route - someone who is Jewish will have anti-semitic rants posted about them; a woman will have graphic depictions (in text or imagery) of what people "want to do to her"; etc. It's fine to call a hateful attack sexist if it's using sexist tactics for the attack.

And it's a fact that women are more likely to be attacked than men. This is easy (but laborious) to prove - you get a list of conferences and speakers in 2012, then ask speakers if they had any attacks, then categorise and finally run some graphing / plotting software.

(I didn't downvote you BTW.)

gavanwoolery5• 13 years ago

Thanks - all good points :) As usual, the small sample of women I know is not necessarily indicative of anything, but of all the women I know, not one of them has complained about sexism; for all I know any of them could have been subject to it.

I have been subject to a few attacks myself over the course of my life for being born a Jew (although technically I have always been more of an atheist or agnostic). But it never once bothered me that much, because I know many Jews have had it far worse, both in the past and present. Likewise, I kind of cringe a bit when we complain about these #firstworldproblems, because there are women who are getting stoned to death for cheating on their husbands right now. I don't think that sexism should be ignored, but I do think we have a tendency to focus on the most trivial (relatively speaking) instances of it.

bobx112• 13 years ago

I think, based only on hunch and not recorded data I can source, that the more attractive the female the more likely they are to become a target of such behavior.

juridatenshi• 13 years ago

If you have to preface your comments with "I am not sexist," there's probably something sexist about the words that are going to follow. You're hitting a lot of the derailing for dummies points here...

mezzoblue• 13 years ago

Maybe you're not sexist, but I dispute your simple truth. I have been on the same conference speaking circuit that Sarah has for 9 years now, and not once have I been on the receiving end of a similar attack.

I am a male. I have had my ideas challenged, but no one has ever made it personal. Do you really think most female speakers are so lucky?

nollidge10• 13 years ago

For glob's sake, I wish people would stop saying "I'm not sexist BUT..." or "I'm not racist BUT..." or "I'm not a homophobe BUT..."

Because:

A) You're setting yourself up for failure.

B) Show, don't tell.

but most importantly C) it's hardly ever useful to denote any one person as racist or sexist or whatever. It's thoughts and ideas and biases which are much more usefully labeled so.

So, great, you are not sexist: you do not willfully do women ill. But do your ideas and unconscious actions support that intention? I would start by reflecting on the need to say "key word: equal", as though there are some politically significant number of people wishing for something beyond that.

gavanwoolery5• 13 years ago

No buts, I just wanted to make it apparent from the start that I am not sexist. "Equality" is all that I want, and it bugs me when people start saying things like "the industry is filled with sexism" or "sexism is the norm" or "most males are sexist" because it is simply not true. Or it is true, and 99.999 women just choose to be silent about their cases of sexism. It is insulting when people attack males as a single group based on some edge cases.

fatbird5• 13 years ago

(And here I go into down-vote territory... :D)

The name of the fallacy this demonstrates is "poisoning the well", as in implying that anyone who downvotes you is just afraid to hear the truth, man........

sexism like it is the norm

As we keep discovering, sexism is the norm for women in general and specifically in our industry. Your blindness to this fact is not evidence to the contrary.

I know several females in the industry who are not afraid of anything, and have never been attacked on the basis of their sex (or even been attacked otherwise).

I suspect that if you asked them whether or not this was true, and they trusted you enough to answer honestly (and after reading your blythe dismissal above, I wouldn't), you'd find this is not the case.

Sometimes people attack just because they don't like the cut of your jib.

Can you point to a straight, white male who's suffered the kind of attention Sarah relates, for no other reason than that someone didn't like the cut of his jib?

the majority of men are "good guys"

The majority of men can be good guys generally, and still be guilty of sexist behaviour that's hostile to women, that drives them out of our industry, and that creates a pervasive atmosphere that no one should have to tolerate. Calling out behaviour like this is not a blanket condemnation of us as irredeemably bad guys, and suggesting that it is, is a way of deflecting information that makes us uncomfortable.

gavanwoolery5• 13 years ago

Wow talk about fallacies! :)

Here is one for you:

The straw man: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Straw_man

I am accepting that I am going to be down-voted, not challenging people not to do it. See above fallacy.

As we keep discovering, sexism is the norm for women ... We hear about one sexism case every few weeks here on HN. Of the many thousands of females in IT, do you think they are all just playing the silent card? Or maybe sexism is the infrequent case, not the norm? Sexism is rare for a pretty good reason: lawsuits. Of her 30,000 followers, how many have made sexist remarks? Less than 10? Seems like the norm to me...

We seem to have this conspiracy that sexism is all over the place, it's just that 99 percent of women are being silent about it. Does sexism exist? Yes. Is it frequent? Probably not, but everyone is entitled to their opinion on the matter.

RyanMcGreal3• 13 years ago

It's somewhat encouraging to read the comments here and note that for a change they are not already overrun by aggressive apologists for the continuing misogyny in software development.

kmfrk• 13 years ago

I was just about to write the same thing, before I saw your comment. HN is a cesspool in these cases usually, but I'm genuinely happy that it's different this time around.

steveklabnik5• 13 years ago

Don't worry, it's getting worse as time goes on.

rjknight3• 13 years ago

Hmm. The number of apologists is actually quite small, in my experience. I think the problem here is that most of the people here are men, who have no real idea what being on the receiving end of sexual or sexually-motivated harassment is like, but they also don't see what they can or should do about it. I think it goes something like this: "Stories like the OPs are terrible, I get that, but by saying that 'the tech community' is to blame, you're saying I'm to blame, and I've never been sexist to anyone!". Basically, they feel like something is being done or said in bad faith here. A lot of the people who wind up arguing on these threads aren't actually misogynists[1], they just feel they're being told something that doesn't make sense to them, and in a way they're not entirely wrong. There's not much reason to accept that "the tech community has a problem" if you and your friends are members of the tech community, and none of you are sexists, but you feel like you're being accused anyway. We need to make a clearer distinction between the average member of the tech community and, for want of a better word, the 'asshole contingent' who are the source of the problem.

[1] That some people arguing on the 'wrong' side here are not doing so for misogynistic reasons doesn't mean that nobody is; part of the problem is that you can't easily tell the difference.

RyanMcGreal3• 13 years ago

I think you make a fair point. However:

> We need to make a clearer distinction between the average member of the tech community and, for want of a better word, the 'asshole contingent' who are the source of the problem.

What I'm suggesting is that the average member of the tech community himself needs to do a better job of being distinguishable from the asshole contingent - and the typical pedantic, aggressive, head-buried-in-sand HN reaction to instances of sexism, chauvinism and abuse is a real part of the problem.

d4nt• 13 years ago

> it’s about finding female speakers who have enough of a thick skin to want to stand up infront of an audience of twitter-trigger-happy males and public speak

Was this awful incident a one off or is attacking female speakers at tech conferences a thing? I've not noticed it until now. I don't get it, why would you? To what end?

simonw• 13 years ago

Unfortunately, it's a thing: http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Timeline_of_incidents

vickytnz2• 13 years ago

One of the more famous incidents was the twitter backchannel for dana boyd's Web2.0 talk http://www.zephoria.org/thoughts/archives/2009/11/24/spectac... (admittedly, she did have a talk that bombed, but that's still no excuse for the angle that the twitter talk took.

adaml_623• 13 years ago

It's a thing. It makes front page on HN once a month or so which implies that it happens more than that.

The motives behind it seem to span a spectrum from straight sexism through to weird stalkerness.

As someone else wrote, sunlight is probably the best way to try and reduce the problem.

ucee054• 13 years ago

Let's keep in mind that the perpetrator of the fake porn pictures might have been a woman

lazugod• 13 years ago

Why is that worth keeping in mind? The result is still sexist discouragement.

sp332• 13 years ago

It's worth keeping in mind because people might assume that men are worth avoiding, or let their guard down among women.

mjmahone17• 13 years ago

Unlikely (for all the reasons of oppression and power dynamics), but even if that were the case, the people who view said fake porn, and for whom having porn be something that, in their eyes, can break your career, are going to be overwhelmingly male, in all likelihood. If having nude photos of yourself were seen as something we ought reward and celebrate, as opposed to something that makes women look like "sluts," then it almost certainly would not have been the vector this perp would have used for attack. I have a feeling fake porn would be a lot less detrimental to a man's career than a woman's.

_b8r0• 13 years ago

When I speak at conferences, it's not unusual for me to receive heckles. It's part of a thing where a lot of people who know me know that I'm pretty good with banter and will usually respond with a put down or your mum joke in good nature. It's mainly because I grew into conference speaking in a hostile conference environment, and also I've done a bit of stand-up now and again so you get used to it.

The problem with all of this that I've realised is that other people in the audience will see me being heckled and will think it's perfectly fine to heckle speakers, and that other people will see me being heckled and might be discouraged from speaking. It's got me thinking quite a bit about this. Any ideas what I should do about it?

fatbird5• 13 years ago

Here's one: Instead of engaging them as a standup comic, willing to cross swords with a heckler (which likely encourages them), make up a three line response about how "this is a tech talk at a conference, please don't heckle, it just wrecks things for everyone." In other words, deflate the situation by being bland in your reply, and only bland.

dgrnbrg2• 13 years ago

What do we do about less overt sexism? For instance, there's a popular developer who writes useful plugins named after genitalia and sex acts. I find his code useful, and I've asked him publicly and privately to choose nonsexual names for his code, but he and his users see nothing wrong with this. Even consider the "weinre" project that's on the frontpage right now. "Get your weinre out"?!

His assertion is that it's not sexist if his projects are called "testicle" or "foreplay", since those words aren't intrinsically sexist. How do we, as a community, emphasize that sexuality and development can't mix if we want women to feel comfortable, given that they're currently a minority?

cllns2• 13 years ago

If they're open source, you could fork them with better names. You could even set up an rsync type script so it's always up to date. This could nudge him in the right direction. This would fork discussion in that community, forcing everyone to use two names for a while. But it's probably worth it.

h2s6• 13 years ago

Are you talking about Tim Pope, whose work includes vim-foreplay, vim-scriptease, vim-eunuch, vim-speeddating, and hookup?

dgrnbrg2• 13 years ago

I am talking about Tim Pope. I have forked his code and renamed it, but instead of the community helping me, I've received a lot of negative feedback about "fragmenting the community" for trying to maintain and evangelize a non-sexist version of the plugin. It is difficult to continue in the face of so little support, but I believe in what I'm doing, and all of my male and female developer friends agree with me.

methodin• 13 years ago

I constantly wonder if the era of self-centered, socially-awkward developers is coming to an end (hopeful). More often that not the younger developers I see tend to be bucking that trend which should go a long way towards addressing this problem - unless of course they are the primary offenders. Are these instances centered around older or younger developers, I wonder? If younger then perhaps this entire assumption is baseless, in which case the path developers are on in general is indeed alarmingly derailed.

sakri• 13 years ago

An attractive female that makes dorky men do stupid? You don't say...

lifeisstillgood• 13 years ago

Is there becoming a general consensus on what to do about a problem we are becoming aware is worse than most of us thought?

I glean the following from a few of these threads

1. Conferences, conventions, hackathons all should have published "acceptable behaviour" statements, and possibly a red / orange / green card system that everyone understands

2. online examples get red / orange carded though a bitly link posted on a red card site (did I read that?)

3. conferences share blacklists

4. we accept that this shit will continue and get worse in an anonymous internet and that we accept that as a price of freedom and try to mitigate it for those who actually pay that price.

mnicole3• 13 years ago

I read that the card system turned into a running joke at DEFCON (people giving their buddies cards at the slightest insinuation), which could lead to watering down the purpose or making it somewhat of a joke to receive one in a literal sense. Do any other conferences have in-the-moment/non-confrontational methods of calling people out?

tedks4• 13 years ago

In activist circles, getting called out for racist or sexist behavior means you're kicked out, immediately, no questions asked.

Based on my understanding of it, the red/yellow card system is largely an effort in self-policing, in that they're based on the assumption that someone who receives a red card will learn and change their behavior.

This seems like a bad assumption. A better system might be to have a simple mobile app or website, run by the conference, that allows women (and only women) to report harassment by a particular person, causing that person to be immediately blacklisted.

This is severe enough that you won't see it being used as a joke, and it'll be effective at removing scuzzy people from conferences.

Tichy20• 13 years ago

Do conferences really need to post a rule that "spamming the forum with fake porn pictures is inappropriate"?

I do grant though, that a lot of people seem to be missing some education on how to deal with other human beings. I don't think conference rules would be the best place to get the message across, though. Wondering if there should be courses in high school...

bobx112• 13 years ago

I worked with Sarah 1.5 years ago and can't imagine why someone would have a grudge with her personally - she's incredibly nice.

DasIch2• 13 years ago

Sexist misogynistic asshole on a project? Take away his commit access and ban him from all channels of communication, if you have the power and if you don't, don't contribute to the project anymore, make the reason public and create an alternative if possible.

In daily life I don't hang out with those assholes, do you? If not, why the fuck are you doing it online? Just because they have decent skills? How many people do they keep away from your project and from this community who could easily make up for that, who would have better skills and who would bring you project much further?

If you have a project and want to do something against what is currently fashionable in discrimination, stop writing comments, write a code of conduct and let's be honest if you don't, you are not any better than the people you are criticizing.

cllns2• 13 years ago

Worth noting that outing someone requires an immense amount of courage.

I think the more privilege you have, the less courage it takes.

DasIch2• 13 years ago

You are probably right but that just makes it more important that we all do it, whether a victim or a witness and especially if we are privileged. Privilege is power and while its existence is bad just as the ways in which it is so often used, I believe we can use it for good as well.

hagios2• 13 years ago

This is absolutely true. It's almost always easier (and certainly less emotionally taxing) to just walk away entirely--especially when [the perception is that] the community will be either passive or against you after you act.

timsally2• 13 years ago

Whenever an instance of blatant sexism comes up, an attempt is invariably made to rationalize away the fact that a sexist act has actually occurred. We have had two such attempts made here so far and I expect more. One commentator is attempting to advance the baseless theory that the bully did not care about the sex of his victim. This particular individual even goes so far to say that "the biggest problem" is the alleged misuse of labels related to racism or sexism, as if this could somehow be worse that the discrimination the disenfranchised experience on a day-to-day basis. Another commentator states that it is because of her popularity not her sex. This too is bunk. There are significantly more males in this industry with significantly more popularity. Yet no evidence is presented that these figures also have received this level of harassment.

There is one word for this behavior mentioned above: denial. Unfortunately, there seems to be a part of our community that refuses to call things what they are. This was an instance of sexism that manifested itself in a nasty way.

h2s6• 13 years ago

Not to mention the conspiracy theorist positing that it might have been a woman posting the fake porn pictures. The mental gymnastics some people will perform to avoid facing the obvious truth are amazing. How can we solve a problem we don't all admit exists?

konstruktor2• 13 years ago

Why worry about the meaning of the terms you use when there is an opportunity to call somebody who disagrees with you names?

nollidge10• 13 years ago

Also, it super doesn't matter what the gender of the person posting the pictures was. The gender of the actors does not matter if the gender of the victim obviously does.

hopeless_case8• 13 years ago

> Not to mention the conspiracy theorist positing that it might have been a woman posting the fake porn pictures.

Why is that possibility not worth considering?

pekk5• 13 years ago

Even if it were true that the bully didn't care about the sex of the victim per se, and only attacked her because of her popularity, the nature of what was done is still sexist.

If I were to bash a competitor in public by reference to his homosexuality, it won't make anything better to know that I actually don't have any problem with gay people myself. It's unacceptable and downright evil.

danso• 13 years ago

> This particular individual even goes so far to say that "the biggest problem" is the alleged misuse of labels related to racism or sexism, as if this could somehow be worse that the discrimination the disenfranchised experience on a day-to-day basis.

This is one of the most persistent problems when discussing these issues: the idea that if the victim of discrimination didn't get raped or beaten by people wearing white hoods, then it does not qualify as real discrimination.

hagios2• 13 years ago

There is a LOT of blatant sexism in the tech sector. The more specialized you get, the worse things get. It's a pretty well documented problem (e.g. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/sexual_harassm... for a collection of security related anecdotes). This kind of culture turns away lots of tremendously talented people, and those who choose to endure a culture which seems to be slanted against them generally either end up targets or else silent lurkers.

It's absolutely accurate to call the general reaction 'denial.' People who complain who are on the receiving end of the harassment are 'overly sensitive' and those who aren't who speak up against the status quo are 'apologists' and 'white knights.' It's difficult to address a mindset which a majority of a community is complicit in at best, or active defenders of at worst.

protomyth• 13 years ago

"It's a pretty well documented problem (e.g. http://www.schneier.com/blog/archives/2012/08/sexual_harassm.... for a collection of security related anecdotes"

At this point, I'd say it was the opposite of well documented and that's a problem. We do not have the statistics on this since it is not being reported to law enforcement or another body that collects these statistics. Does tech have more incidents than lawyers, plumbers, or actors? Don't know and I wish I did. I believe that it is a problem, but I cannot point to finding or study.

detst2• 13 years ago

How do you know the motivation of this person? Every time one of these stories come up, someone tries to call other people out for rationalizing. It's not rationalizing, it's calling it as they see it: someone being an asshole.

If you want blatant sexism, FTA: "no offence, I just don’t relate to girls speaking about the industry at all, I learn better from guys". That's sexism.

It's not denial if you don't know the motivation. Why is it so important to label these actions a certain way when we can just call it as it clearly is?

Trying to label everything that may or may not be sexism doesn't help the cause. Most of us know there is rampant sexism. Arguing about this just detracts from the real problem. There are more than enough obvious instances to demonstrate the problem.

EDIT: for the 2 down-voters so far: the point I'm making is that sexism is a major problem but trying to ascribe motivation to something with uncertainty is intellectual dishonesty that does nothing but detract from the real problem.

nollidge10• 13 years ago

Do you legitimately think we could remove gender from the situation and it would've played out in the same way?

steveklabnik5• 13 years ago

> How do you know the motivation of this person?

It's irrelevant. If you do sexist things, you are a sexist. Maybe you don't know you're a sexist, but you are.

lizzard3• 13 years ago

We can call it misogyny, or using misogynist tools and strategies -- the motivation of whoever did this doesn't make that any less true.

zamryok3• 13 years ago

Furthermore, it seems clear that the way she was attacked was specifically designed to exploit at least the following :

- the fact that she is a woman adressing a predominantly male audience (the fake porno)

- the ambient objectification of women in society

How can that not count as sexist?

Tichy20• 13 years ago

Excuse my ignorance, just wondering: is it established that porn is sexist? Are they demeaning to the male actors in porn, too? Or is the underlying value that it is demeaning for a woman to have sex? It seems to me a universal judgement isn't easy to come by?

Tichy20• 13 years ago

To be honest I don't understand what this has to do with sexism. I would think this is actually a crime (stalking?) committed by some deranged individual, whose real motivations we don't know anything about. Even if they were "hatred of women" or whatever, I fail to see what the lesson to be learned from that should be? Is the implied assumption that the deed was encouraged by rampant sexism in the industry?

In the last story I read about stalking the stalkers were people who had personal relations to the victim. No idea if this is common for stalking (as for rape), but I wouldn't be surprised.

I don't mean it to defend anything (what?), just trying to understand the "xyz is sexism" mindset?

mwetzler10• 13 years ago

Sexism definition: Prejudice, stereotyping, or discrimination, typically against women, on the basis of sex.

This was clearly sexism since it was demeaning to the woman and her gender was used as a part of that (e.g. the fact that pictures of naked women were used in the attack).

If the same happened to a man, we would probably call it harassment, not sexism, since men at large are not discriminated against based on their gender. A female posting pictures of a man at the conference wouldn't be signaling that men don't belong in the group, since the group is dominated by men to begin with.

Either gender can be stalked, but there are FAR more female victims, a symptom of sexism at large in society. FAR more women are harassed as well. 1 in 5 college women are raped during their college years.

To take some of your words, the deed was encouraged by and reflective of rampant sexism in society at large.

I don't think I've done a good job explaining this, but hopefully provoked some thoughts on it at least.

timsally2• 13 years ago

I've read all your comments on the various threads and a central theme seems to be the following question: how does sexism fit into all of this, isn't this just harassment/stalking? It's a fair question. Recall that sexism is discrimination based on sex OR behavior that fosters stereotypical/hurtful attitudes and roles. The attacker did both here. He attempted to drown out the technical ability of the victim by, during her technical presentation, spamming pictures that quite literally turned her into an object. This is a manifestation of classic behavior where men value women for their appearance only and everything else is ignored. Had that attacker had his/her way, this would have been the reality; all the attention would have been on her appearance and no attention would have been paid towards her technical presentation. His/her goal could not be more clear. To tie the goal back to sexism: what the attacker wanted is both a distinguishing treatment based on her sex (the first definition) AND a behavior that encourages ignoring the technical ability of women in favor of focusing on their appearance (the second definition).

I hope this makes my use of the word sexism clear. I welcome further communication here in this thread or at my personal email, which can be found in my profile.

moe4• 13 years ago

Whenever an instance of blatant sexism comes up

Excuse me, have you even read the article?

Someone uploaded fake porn pictures of her to a forum and then persistently sent the URL to her employers and acquaintances.

This was a targeted attack on her reputation, or perhaps malicious stalking, but how on earth does sexism factor into this?

The porn pictures were merely a vehicle. If the attack had been carried out against a man they would probably have used accusations of child pornography or such.

ender7• 13 years ago

The parent's point is that she is a target because she is a woman, and society gives such people more tools to abuse women than to abuse men. This makes it a sexist act.

There are significantly more males in this industry with significantly more popularity. Yet no evidence is presented that these figures also have received this level of harassment.

When the OP says that "[women in technology] are scared" it is because they feel that they are in an environment that targets them for harassment and abuse. At this point, we hear arguments like "this could have happened to a guy just as easily" but the fact is that it doesn't. In a world where such events happen with equal frequency across genders then yes, this might be a silly discussion, but we do not live in such a world.

Engineers tend to find it disconcerting that an action's goodness or badness depends on its context. After all, shouldn't we be able to tell just by looking at the inherent properties of the action? What if we can't read the context correctly? Well, the answer is that we frequently do, and the result is these inane argument over whether posting fake porn pictures of a woman is a sexist act.

The fact of the matter is that women in tech are targeted because they are women. They are overwhelmingly more frequently attacked than their male counterparts, and if you think this is silly, then I suggest you go make friends with some women in tech. This attack is another outgrowth of that pervasive sexism, and the fact that it uses a medium that is traditionally associated with denigrating women [1] just makes it even more sexist.

[1] Yes, there is some non-misogynistic porn out there, but it is the exception rather than the rule.

jberryman• 13 years ago

> how on earth does sexism factor into this?

According to wikipedia:

> Sexual harassment, rape and other forms of sexual violence can be a part of more extreme, expressive, and emotionally impactive forms of sexism.[10]

what happened to her was obviously sexual harassment and extremely misogynistic, so at least according to wikipedia "sexism" is an appropriate word.

> The porn pictures were merely a vehicle. If the attack had been carried out against a man they would probably have used accusations of child pornography or such.

I don't think that's really how that works. This particular kind of attempted shaming / harassment is intimately tied in with notions of gender roles, patriarchal social norms, etc. I think if you're suggesting that attacking a man with accusations of child pornography is also sexist you might be right.

belorn4• 13 years ago

Conferences are a problematic area even if one ignore what kind of community it is. (be that IT, gardening, Sci-Fy, trucks, manufacturing, or furries). The math is not giving out pretty numbers.

Lets compare two conferences. One is 5% females participation, and a other is 50%. We can directly say that the risk of getting sexually assaulted is minimum 20x larger at the 5% conference than the 50%. there is also a number of additional considerations one can add to the risk assessment like age, marital status of people in the conference, and access to alcohol.

pekk5• 13 years ago

Based on what data can you "directly say that the risk of getting sexually assaulted is minimum 20x larger at the 5% conference than the 50%"?

belorn4• 13 years ago

Let's make up some numbers, and let's pick say 200 members conference. Let's also say that each male participant is a equal risk of being a person who commit a sexual assault, and that risk is 10%.

  50%/50% distribution:
  100 male participants, 100 female participants
  number of sexual assaults: 100x10% = 10
  *Risk for each female participant: 10/100 = 0.1

  5%/95% distribution:
  190 males, 10 females
  number of sexual assaults: 190x10% = 19
  *Risk for each female: 19/10 = 1.9

  *Risk compared: 0.1 vs 1.9 = 0.1/1.9 = 19x

Okey, not 20x, I rounded the number 19x to 20x. It also assumes that:

A), Female to Female sexual assault is 0. Not true, but close enough in regard to what is reported.

B), Regardless to number of females, the risk of each male participant stays the same. If the 50%/50% actually has a higher number of assaults in practice, then the risk difference between the two type of conferences actually drop.

Nursie2• 13 years ago

It does sicken me sometimes, the attitudes towards women of some of the tech folks I've run into. Not usually out and out misogyny, but stupid jokes and inappropriate comments. Most often made/said when there are no women around, they show how some of my fellow developers still think and it honestly feels to me like I'm working with neanderthals.

On the minor-but-still-horrible end of the scale, female colleagues have complained in the past that their ideas are often not taken seriously until repeated by a man. I hope I'm not guilty of this one (being the repeater or the listener) but I'm not entirely sure.

There have also been incidents where female friends and colleagues have been verbally and physically harassed in the workplace or in learning establishments, and they face an uphill struggle to get anyone to take their claims in the least bit seriously, with witnesses dropping out and the accused making all sorts of bizarre claims.

So no, sat here in the enlightened 21st century, amongst the people at the cutting edge of technology, the people who like to think themselves the vanguard of the new knowledge and tech based society... we're not the vanguard of social enlightenment, we don't operate as the fabled meritocracy, and we need to watch out for this behaviour and encourage women to speak up about it as much as possible.

If nothing else I have no desire to spend my days around sexist arseholes.

Skywing• 13 years ago

How would you combat this scenario, though? If the person who is doing this has not been caught, then is it really a good idea to publicly state how much of an annoyance he or she is being? (I say she, because seriously, it could be another woman as well. Everybody is assuming it's probably a guy. We've all seen how mean women can be to other women, though. I grew up with 2 sisters and their friends ... I've seen a lot of that.) But, if this person is still anonymous then I'd think this would just fuel the fire and make them go even more full throttle, now. I don't think staying quiet helps either, but this is just that typical internet scenario where somebody is hiding behind anonymity and is enjoying the attention and drama that their actions are creating. I really don't know how I'd combat this, if it were happening to me.

This is nothing against the author of the article, this is just me some what brainstorming out loud about how to combat this scenario. Without trying to take action, and with the antagonist still unknown, what does the author want everybody to do, though? What is the call to action here?

paperkettle• 13 years ago

I think the goal is general awareness about sexism & harassment present in the industry.

Even she doesn't make the specific offender more accountable by speaking up, she raises awareness and hopefully makes everyone less tolerant of this kind of outrageous stupidity.

rada• 13 years ago

"We've all seen how mean women can be to other women".

Thanks for contributing your "all women are bitches" opinion to a discussion on sexism. Classy.

imran• 13 years ago

We have to fight for what is right!

enemtin• 13 years ago

Here's to your bravery Sarah. I admire your courage, it's not easy to publicly announce that kind of thing.

whiterabbit22• 13 years ago

What's always very frustrating, some guy may hold a grudge or be sexist... but why does he always find so many supporters, like those who visited his web site and sent this woman emails? People who shouldn't have anything against this woman but just can't keep themselves from attacking her. Frat house? Too many people in this industry don't seem to ever graduate from it.

_hnwo• 13 years ago

I want to do something about this.

How can I help?

rjknight3• 13 years ago

Who are these people? I mean, really, what the fuck?

It seems hardly a week goes by without someone bringing forward a genuinely awful case of harassment, abuse, or worse, and that's only the stories horrible enough to make the front page of HN. So, who the fuck is doing this and how do we make them fuck the fuck off?

I kinda understand why some people's response is to doubt that this could really be happening, because it is pretty fucking unbelievable. But it seems that it really is happening, and it's undermining some pretty central notions of the meritocratic, no-bullshit character of the community. This kind of thing is pretty outrageous bullshit.

OK, to a certain extent we must accept that there will always be assholes, and the kind of spite and vindictiveness the OP relates sounds like the behaviour of a disturbed, obsessive individual, but there must be a way of deterring such behaviour. What more can we do here?

nacker• 13 years ago

Face it people, Feminism is Evil!

http://www.jesus-is-savior.com/Evils%20in%20America/Feminism...

charlieok• 13 years ago

How awful is it that when I see a trending headline on Hacker News titled “Speaking up”, I can make a very good (and in this case accurate) guess on exactly what it is about.

hakaaaaak• 13 years ago

This post is just so sick. I'm sorry that anyone would have to go through all of that. While I think that calling people sexist or racist when it isn't founded is terrible, this is an extremely obvious case of harassment and those involved should be punished. I hope my daughters don't have to deal with this crap when they grow up.

Speaking up

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