The Male Programmer Privilege Checklist

by j_baker • 17 years ago

61 78 17 years ago

stavrianos2• 17 years ago

As a man, I'd like to point out that I really can't help sexualizing basically anything. Studies have shown that straight men will ogle other men if they've got chest. Frankly, I don't like how it can hang over everything either, but I do my best to minimize it. If anyone can actually propose a solution to this "problem", great, but otherwise can we collectively move on?

j_baker2• 17 years ago

I'd just like to point out that I also am a man and I don't have your problem. I have the capability of keeping my professional work environment professional.

ardit33• 17 years ago

i think it depends on age. if you are in your twenties your testosterone does it for you. (if you are 25 and under, you are basically a walking hormone).

Added the fact that in most tech companies guys outnumber girls 2 to 1 or worse (i am including marketing, sales, hr also), if you are a single and decent looking girl you will probably be hit on a lot.

Not sure if there is a solution to this.

As a counterpoint, i worked in a company of about 80 people, where 60 were female, and i got hit on a lot. I actually enjoyed it when girls were flirting with me. But that's the main difference i guess, women are more likeley to be more annoyed from non-wanted advanced than men are, call it evolution or social, i don't care.

The fact is that being the one differnt from your collegues, might make you feel a little bit like a fish out of water. And in this case is being female, where you are probably outnumbered 4 to 1 or worse.

teilo2• 17 years ago

Look, here's the deal. If you are a man, you have to actively move the eyes away, but the pull is always there. Now that does not mean you cannot be professional, but it does mean you have to constantly and actively choose to be so.

A woman who dresses provocatively in the office is a distraction. Far be it from me to tell women how to dress, but most women do not understand the effect they have on men, and of those who do, very few understand that men are, essentially, helpless when it comes to their reaction (even, as I said, if it is a reaction that they suppress). Heterosexual men who do NOT have this aspect of male nature are in the vast minority, although thy do exist. It is a part of being male, and as such, I refuse to apologize for it.

msluyter2• 17 years ago

I don't think the parent necessarily implied that he couldn't be professional. Rather, perhaps, it requires some conscious attention to avoid oogling or whatnot. I applaud the honesty, myself.

neilk• 17 years ago

Some of the items on that list are about sexuality, but most of them are about perceptions of competence. Is it really too much to ask that you separate "whoa she's hot" from "whoa she's smart"?

This is just my perspective as a guy, but I've noticed that in environments where females know that their competence is respected, they tend to let their guard down about sex issues.

Going 'PC' is indeed the breakdown of human communication. Writing up speech codes about how we're going to respect each other is organizational fail. So stop the fail at the source. Start respecting female or transgender co-workers.

I've worked on a few projects with female programmers, designers, and even welders and electronics designers. When there's just no question about competence, it's sex jokes all day long. Or maybe that's just us. ;) But seriously, I suggest trying it.

gruseom3• 17 years ago

Prissy social correctors are no less annoying than boors.

zimbabwe• 17 years ago

Might as well create the "male singer checklist", where we mention all the perks rock stars have that programmers never will.

timr3• 17 years ago

"Prissy" social correctors are at least smart enough to critically analyze the world around them. Boors are completely clueless. I'd take the former over the latter any day of the week.

gruseom3• 17 years ago

"Prissy" social correctors are at least smart enough to critically analyze the world around them.

That's not true in my observation. Most adopt a prefab ideology that they try to impose on the world around them. They like to label this "critical analysis" (or that old stalwart, "thinking for yourself"), but it isn't: if it were, their ideas and positions and tone wouldn't be so predictable. Actually, trying to impose a rigid ideology on others is a large part of what makes them prissy. The OP seems to me a nice example.

wingo• 17 years ago

Why would you be annoyed at this? It's not a dominant perspective, one that you hear every day.

Your statement, while pithy, misses the point.

gruseom3• 17 years ago

Heh. Not a bad question. That combination of pretentiousness and self-righteousness gets to me. I can sense it a mile off and feel an urge to take it down a peg. But why? I don't know. Maybe I'm a closeted ideologue. Or a closeted satirist.

It once occurred to me that to be angry about hypocrisy is hypocritical, since no one's words and actions are in complete agreement. I toned down a bit after that :)

buugs• 17 years ago

http://xkcd.com/385/

pookleblinky• 17 years ago

The first programmer was a woman.

Perhaps a better checklist would be "actual reasons why the average human, without regard to gender, does not enter technical fields"

mnemonicsloth• 17 years ago

Having potential romantic partners assume from your career that you're smart and well-to-do rather than unattractive and unfeeling.

Res Ipsa Loquitur. This is called "confirmation bias."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Confirmation_bias

_cbsz4• 17 years ago

What is the goal of this checklist, other than causing a series of individual guilt trips for a gender imbalance that results from societal factors and/or legitimate gender predispositions for/against our field? What are we supposed to do? Do these people think we don't wish there were more women in the field?

Also, I'm sure the ensuing discussion is going to resemble at least three other HN discussions.

timr3• 17 years ago

I think it's pretty obvious what the response is expected to be: you're supposed to have some awareness of the next time you're doing any of these things, and perhaps make a change in your behavior.

I don't agree with every item on the list, but the point of the exercise is plain.

knowtheory6• 17 years ago

1) i took a comment ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=624808 ) by the poster, j_baker, and ran it through http://www.hackerfactor.com/GenderGuesser.html which came up on this thread: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=608057 and the result came up most likely male (just a point of note).

2) I would surmise that the point of lists like these are to raise awareness of injustices or slights that are done, particularly ones that others may not be aware of, because they are not subjected to them.

3) You're a member of the community, can you really not think of anything you could do to make things different? Why not do something that bucks the geek/nerd stereotype? Why not help someone else do it? Why not encourage/help someone who's not a stereotypical nerd into the field? Why not just object to stereotyping of programmers?

These aren't problems that are going to change immediately. Being reminded that there are still problems isn't a bad thing imo. Just as being reminded that people do care about the issue, and would like to make things different (as you have done).

So the problem has been recognized. There is a will to do something about it. Let's do something. There are organizations like RailsBridge that are forming ( http://railsbridge.org/ ). The ACM-W exists ( http://women.acm.org/ ).

If you want things to be different, pick something to do and do it.

_cbsz4• 17 years ago

Re: 3, I don't think that the problems are at my age. They're at college freshman/sophomore and younger, when women decide to enter the field. By the time we exit college, there are hardly any women left to treat more equally.

knowtheory6• 17 years ago

Incidentally, programming isn't the only field with horrible gender inequality.

Dietetics/Nutrition and Nursing are dramatic cases with the opposite gender distribution (My wife happens to be in Dietetics). The treatment of guys in dietetics is just as strange as the treatment of girls in programming.

None of this absolves the programming community. Just because it's not a unique problem, doesn't mean that it doesn't need to be addressed.

likpok2• 17 years ago

So, if you pay attention to history, you can see that there isn't actually a predisposition which affects this.

In the 1980's, about half[1] of computer scientists were women. Now? 10-20%. Something is being done, and it is being done wrong. So it's not as simple as "They don't want to" or "Society makes them".

[1] I believe it to be about half. However, it might be slightly more or less. Definitely far higher than today.

ahoyhere4• 17 years ago

Based on what metrics?

Where are your #s coming from? What are you defining as "a computer scientist"?

msluyter2• 17 years ago

Here's an article from the NY Times that goes into this in some detail, although there appears to be no single compelling explanation:

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/16/business/16digi.html

One thing that the article notes is that women have achieved parity in other technical fields:

"When all science and engineering fields are considered, the percentage of bachelor’s degree recipients who are women has improved to 51 percent in 2004-5 from 39 percent in 1984-85, according to National Science Foundation surveys."

I find it rather hard to believe that software professionals are especially sexist compared to those in other engineering fields, thus I tend to think that other factors -- a reputation for grueling work hours, the "nerd factor", perceived drop in availability of jobs due to outsourcing, etc... -- are driving women away.

Tichy5• 17 years ago

It could still be "they don't want to" - conditions in society might have chanced so that other options have become more attractive for women.

Wasn't 1980 still a completely different time, when it was more typical for women to stay at home? In that case, it would be even more surprising if there was parity back then.

I had the impression that a lot of women from Russia tended to be into technical careers, I wonder what was behind that. "Better" childcare (as in children being raised by the state)?

Afton• 17 years ago

I recommend checking out [unlocking the clubhouse](http://mitpress.mit.edu/catalog/item/default.asp?ttype=2&...). It goes into this in significant detail. Too much detail for me dredge up from my read of it 3 years ago.

derefr5• 17 years ago

Interestingly, she possesses this bias as well:

"If you're married, having people take you to lunch without them speculating on how your spouse would feel about them taking you to lunch."

She is assuming here that the person "taking them out to lunch" is also male. If the offerer were female and the offered were male and married, there definitely would be speculation as to his fidelity, perhaps moreso than with the roles reversed.

tim_chevalier7• 17 years ago

I'm a guy.

derefr5• 17 years ago

Sorry, I was using the politically-correct singular-second-person-of-unknown-gender pronoun (I couldn't tell from the post that you were male.)

People don't seem to care as much when you assume a girl on the Internet is a guy, but assume a guy is a girl and everyone is up in arms. (This may be a point toward your post.)

jldugger• 17 years ago

Chief among those privileges not in the checklist: attendance at Wellesley College!

tim_chevalier7• 17 years ago

Interestingly enough, the maintainer of the checklist (me) is a man who went to Wellesley.

schleyfox• 17 years ago

> Never being described as a "hot guy" first and a competent professional second.

Oh Really?

http://www.flickr.com/photos/46457493@N00/230535210/

> Having potential romantic partners assume from your career that you're smart and well-to-do rather than unattractive and unfeeling.

Unattractive, unfeeling, AND with neck beard is our stereotype.

> Joining in appreciation of the sex object du jour without having to be gay or bisexual.

This goes the other way too. Johnny Depp doesn't exactly place guys in a less awkward position, you know, because we're all totally comfortable with our sexuality in the male community.

> Listening to speakers refer to an inanimate software construct as "this guy" without getting distracted.

And ships are referred to as "she"'

All in all, there are some good points hidden among many "grass is always greener" style arguments. Programming is hard work, people are insecure by their nature, and yes, there are gender related issues in the community. Hopefully, the stigma against women programmers will continue to lessen as the stigma against all programmers (bunch of nerds) also subsides.

potatolicious• 17 years ago

> Unattractive, unfeeling, AND with neck beard is our stereotype.

Yeah, I didn't get that either. I have never had anyone identify me as smart and well-to-do from my career choice. People just seem to assume I'm nerdy, socially awkward, and would rather have sex with a robot (actually heard that one before, for some reason).

Some of us are (somewhat) normal dammit :(

maethorechannen2• 17 years ago

I'd like to add

> Having your desk near the entrance to your office without visitors assuming you're the receptionist.

I'm male, I've had the desk near the entrance and guess what - I got treated like a recptionist too. It's not gender, it's that your the first person people come across.

maethorechannen2• 17 years ago

also

>Having interests that are unstereotypical for your gender and getting seen as cool and progressive rather than freaky and asexual for it.

A male (programmer or otherwise) with interests that are unstereotypical for a male is rarely seen as "cool and progressive" - being seen as freaky and gay is far more likely.

nopassrecover2• 17 years ago

"Not having to explain why the term "gentlemen" doesn't include you. " - So no "Hi gentleman", fair enough

"# Listening to speakers refer to an inanimate software construct as "this guy" without getting distracted. " - So no "Hi guys", fair enough

"Not being the special case ("hi guys and girls, I guess, too, if you want to get really technical about it!!") " - So no "Hi guys and girls", err..

rw1403• 17 years ago

You could try 'Hi, everyone'. I suspect it depends on who you have in your audience. Personally the special case irks me more than a general 'Hi chaps', or 'Hi guys'. It simultaneously singles me out and wastes my time.

I wouldn't generalise too far off this list, though. It looks like an amalgam of things that annoy different ladies. I only picked out 5 of them that I agreed with.

enneff3• 17 years ago

"Hey everyone!" "Hi!" "Good morning/afternoon/evening/day!" "Hello!" "Greetings!" etc...

Although I say "Hi Guys!" sometimes when greeting my wife and daughter, so I don't really see what's so offensive about it.

tim_chevalier7• 17 years ago

The second point was meant to be about inanimate software constructs: for example, "This guy jumps to that guy without pushing a new stack frame."

The difference between "hi guys and girls" and "hi guys and girls, I guess, too, if you want to get really technical about it!!" is that the second sentence goes out of its way to call attention to the Other-ness of the marginalized group. But why not circumvent the issue entirely and use a gender-neutral term like "folks", "everyone", or (depending on the formality of the occasion) "distinguished colleagues"? It perplexes me that people who have no trouble writing a compiler or debugging device drivers apparently find it so difficult to phrase a simple sentence in a way that doesn't exclude anyone.

nopassrecover2• 17 years ago

I see your point but guys has come to become gender neutral. Sure a guy is still male but "you guys" is anyone.

thristian• 17 years ago

> Listening to speakers refer to an inanimate software construct as "this guy" without getting distracted.

I wasn't sure why this particular item was included, but I suppose I too am momentarily distracted when I hear a woman personify an inanimate object as 'she'. I mean, I understand it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, but there's just that split second where the world seems to turn inside-out and I have to recollect my thoughts.

I wouldn't call it a Male Privilege, though.

enneff3• 17 years ago

I find the whole anthropomorphising abstract objects to be an annoying and distracting trait, anyway, whether they're saying "he" or "she". (My mind is saying inside "It's an IT, damn it!")

whichdokta• 17 years ago

I think that in a healthy society the point of someone talking about things that make them feel uncomfortable is that you have an opportunity to spend some time thinking about how what they are saying applies to that society rather than telling them the one hundred ways how what they just said can't possibly be true.

If we don't take those opportunities to think about what makes someone else uncomfortable (maybe because it makes us uncomfortable ourselves?) then, over time, the people with the willingness to speak out about something which could be improved simply leave and an opportunity to improve that society vanishes with them.

Which is a great sadness because I think we've all got our own stories about things we don't like about the software biz and I think many of us feel a little bit hopeless about ever being able to change some of that...

...but discouraging folk willing to talk about things that can improve, even if it's not something we find important ourselves, means that it's a little less likely that any other conversation about improvement is going to get a hearing either.

For the record, I'd like to see more women and other types of human than white&male&alpha in software myself because over fifteen years of doing this I have found that the most toxic development environments (high levels of stress, distrust, dishonesty, coercion etc.) have also been the environments with the lowest human diversity.

It is not difficult to scare away people who are different from you or people who you expect to silently put up with problems caused by your point of view.

But the problem is, as that happens, without differences your society slowly stops having anything to communicate about and without communication it becomes dumber and without intelligence it eventually becomes a target for attack and takeover by some other failed community with an eye to your resources. (Sun / Oracle anyone ? ;-D)

sdurkin• 17 years ago

Female Programmer Privilege Checklist:

Guilting every male programmer for both real and imagined slights.

The beauty of startups is that no one cares who or what you are, so long as you can deliver. So stop complaining , AND BUILD SOMETHING ALREADY.

rw1403• 17 years ago

Sure, "so long as you can deliver". Are we going to be treated equally when we fail? Even worse, are we going to be treated as representatives of half the species (someone's already linked to that XKCD cartoon). It may be paranoia, but it doesn't help.

PS. Mostly I try not to guilt my co-workers about stuff. I don't think it makes them or me any more productive.

jlouis• 17 years ago

Failure is an important step towards mastering. Sure hell you are going to be treated equally from the professional standpoint if you have the courage to fail a couple of times.

It depends wholly on if and how you play the gender-card in the game. Or how you can be coerced/forced to play it.

tayssir• 17 years ago

I'm reminded of Smolin's _The Trouble with Physics_:

> Note that whereas there have always been talented women musicians, the number of women hired by orchestras rose significantly when candidates began auditioning behind a screen. This is why there is affirmative action. In all my experience, I have never seen a woman or an African American hired through an affirmative-action program who didn't strongly deserve it -- that is, who wasn't already arguably the best applicant. When hiring committees are no longer composed only of white men and we stop hearing expressions of open prejudice, then we can relax affirmative action. As it stands, people who are different -- who, for one reason or another, make powerful older male physicists uncomfortable -- are not hired.

(This was in the context of an argument about how physics institutions often filter out challengers to orthodoxy: including those who think differently, not just look differently.)

Tichy5• 17 years ago

"Are we going to be treated equally when we fail?"

I don't get this. You think men don't get problems if they fail? And why do you even ask, how about trying it out? It sounds as if you don't even want to try it because of all the prejudice.

ahoyhere4• 17 years ago

I find this kind of thing absolutely nauseating, divisive, and thoroughly unhelpful.

I'm sure it makes you feel good, Mr Ultra Feminist, but you're not advancing "your" cause whatsoever by trying to guilt people - and with such weak, whiny examples, too.

You just make women look weak and whiny. (And, by extension, yourself, since you're not even a woman.)

That's unproductive and leads to - guess what! - women being not taken seriously, and being avoided because well-meaning men will assume everything they say will cause offense, and women not getting hired or picked because they make everyone else uncomfortable.

Isn't that ironic?

You also treat all women the same when you presume to speak for them. That's just more plain old sexism dressed up in a suit of righteousness.

I hate people grouping me with all other breast-and-vagina people, and assuming I like them, and agree with them, and share their agenda... and support them speaking on my behalf, as if we are all alike.

If you want to create change, you have to stop whining, stop laying blame, stop pointing fingers and saying "YOU DON'T KNOW WHAT IT'S LIKE WHEN THEY CALL OBJECTS 'GUYS'!!!!" and do useful, productive things. This is not it.

For what it's worth, men in IT are more likeable than women, because when men fail, they don't blame it on other people's oppression of them due to their sexual equipment.

Tichy5• 17 years ago

My favorite was from another article where they claimed that all programming languages were tailored towards male ways of thinking. If that would be the case, why not set out to create a programing language tailored towards the female way of thinking. I for one would be really curious to see that.

j_baker2• 17 years ago

Just out of curiosity, would you happen to have a link to the article? I'm genuinely curious as to what makes a programming language "male oriented".

ahoyhere4• 17 years ago

See, the funny thing here is I agree, up to a point and with a lot of footnotes.

The "extreme male brain" is overrepresented in programming, and programming tools are made by the people in programming.

But those "male-oriented" languages would be better describe as "extreme male brain-oriented" because it's more common in men but not exclusively a male trait. I have met women just like that, too, and there are tests that place you on a gender scale (for lack of a better way to put it), based on your cognitive style. (I test as more male than female in my own cognitive style, for example.)

So these "extreme male brain-oriented" languages don't really exclude anyone, but they may not feel comfortable or natural. And I wouldn't say they are unnatural for women, but unnatural for anyone with a more "typical female brain" cognitive style -- including some women of course, and lots of men who happen to have different cognitive styles, including designers, linguists, architects, teachers, musicians, etc.

I think Ruby is an anti-example of this assertion. So is HyperCard, AppleScript (to some degree), Logo, and Ethan, and there are others.

Of course, it's entirely ridiculous to say that the fact that languages are "extreme male brain-oriented" is some kind of oppressive conspiracy.

People who have to make their own tools, make them to suit themselves.

knowtheory6• 17 years ago

Amy, i think you're off base here.

You (and many others) are making an assertion about the intent of the list. Why do you assume that this is guilt tripping? Are they calling out this behavior to blame someone? Why isn't the assumption simply that they want particular behavior to cease, regardless of what the cause is?

So i want one of two things for people accusing this of being a pointless exercise in flagellation.

1) If there are valid issues in the list that should be addressed (and i would assert that there are), how should the information be communicated in a way that doesn't raise hackles (but still gets the point across).

2) If you don't think that the contents of this list should be raise, how does one raise and preserve awareness of the gender disparity in the programming world, and that there are problems that arise because of it (at least with some segment of our community)?

Additionally, there are other sardonic lists of things particular programmers hate (that questionably characterize their subject matter). Why is this one causing everyone to get their mad on?

ahoyhere4• 17 years ago

Assuming we agree that the list is factual or at least objective (I don't), and that there are valid issues in the list (I don't think so), and we agree that there is a problematic gender disparity that should have "awareness raised" (and I don't agree at all), which do you think is more effective...

* laying it out as List Of Privileges People With Penises Have And Don't Realize They Have, and posting it on "news" sites dominated by young men, or...

* keeping the list to yourself, and doing something about it?

Everything I know about being powerful, and being effective, says "For the love of god, take door #2."

Weak people lay out all their cards and say, "Fix it for me" and "Let's have a discussion." Strong people work behind the scenes and fix things so nobody even knew they were broken to begin with.

The bonus of the "strong and silent" choice is that it doesn't lead to these stupid kind of tail-chasing, bitchy, whiny, finger-pointy, divisive "discussions." It just creates... change.

Also, to say that the tech industry is a community - it is to laugh.

knowtheory6• 17 years ago

Some of the things that have been added to the list since it was posted to HN are actually obnoxious:

Laughing at jokes like this (http://codetojoy.blogspot.com/2007/08/closures-are-hot.html) because women holding bumper stickers about closures is funny in the same way pictures of cats "reading" calculus books is funny, rather than wondering whether your colleagues see you in the same way as those women.

I do think the Code To Joy thing is funny. Why? Because the discussion about closures in java (so far as i am aware) has left the realm of technical discussion, and now is just gridlocked. The opinion on closures of women at bars (however well informed), at this point is just as relevant to me as other discussions on the pros and cons of including closures.

It's not funny because girls are stupid, or because being hot precludes one's knowledge of pros and cons of closures. I would not expect random strangers at bars (be they male or female) to have an informed opinion about closures in java. The fact that Code To Joy picked only pictures of women to post may be sexist in the sense that they show a bias, but i don't think that the joke is demeaning to women.

The Male Programmer Privilege Checklist

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