Whenever people get outraged about things like this, it interests me. I like looking at attractive women. I like programming. Would it be possible to have an event where I could program and look at attractive women at the same time? Or does enjoying seeing attractive women in public make me a bad person? As a man, is this my original sin?
In fact, I've even been known to flirt with attractive women in public--perhaps even servers at restaurants and events. I've dated many women I've met this way. Is it ok, when I'm eating and drinking, but not when I'm programming?
Sorry, but I don't think this is as cut-and-dried as the pitchfork brigades here make it seem. In my world, there isn't a bright line between "professional and sexless" and "fun", with programming strictly under "professional and sexless". Obviously there's a conflict here. I don't know what the right balance is, but I cringe every time men are screamed at for not hiding carefully enough that they like sex, as if it's mens' faults that women are powerfully interesting to them in a biologically mandated and different way than vice versa.
While I'm at it, I might as well mention that I very much doubt the dearth of women in technology is because men are sexual predators. Medical doctors have been mostly men, and, in my experience, exhibit pretty much the same desire for women as tech people, but that never stopped women from flocking to become nurses. As you well know, doctor/nurse fraternization is a time-honored pursuit. There is one big difference between the two groups, though, in that doctors are considered by women to be higher status than technical men. I've noticed that behavior which is welcome from high status men is often labeled "creepy" when exhibited by low status men.
Edit: I notice that people have latched onto the doctors thing which is bizarre inasmuch as it strengthens my point. I worded it the way I did on purpose, "have been", with an idle thought to making a point about the inroads made by women, but was too lazy to look up the percentages. The fact that the male/female ratio of doctors has improved so much is a tribute to the fact that women have no problem succeeding in a previously male dominated industry if it caters to their interests. And if you don't think the medical profession was a good 'ol boys club, or think that systematic "awareness raising" was the cause for the improvement, I'm afraid you're not too familiar with the history and dynamics of that industry.
The marketing material assumed that the people reading it would be heterosexual men, and gave no consideration to the idea that a woman might actually want to attend an event. Finding women attractive is not a sin. Assuming the whole world should revolve around what you find attractive without giving any consideration to the other half of the world's population is sexist. Not "I hate women" sexist. Just "women don't really qualify as people the same way men do in my mind, and no I've never really thought very hard about it" sexist.
In addition, the marketing material assumed that the people reading it would be drinkers, and gave no consideration to the idea that a non-drinker might actually want to attend.
In addition to sexism, the marketers seem to believe that "teetotalers don't really qualify as people in the same way drinkers do, and no I've never really thought very hard about it".
(They also seem to feel the same way about people who don't like massages, people who don't work out, and people who don't like cupcakes.)
"The marketing material assumed that the people reading it would be heterosexual men...Assuming the whole world should revolve around what you find attractive..."
Expressing outrage at "sexists in tech" is an important signaling ritual on Hacker News, as evidenced by the 50 million other threads interchangeable with this one.
It would help if you explained your logic a little further. Why this fact is relevant? If this fact changes (e.g., once the last suffragist dies), will the conclusion change?
Note that if the conclusion doesn't change upon the death of the last suffragist, the fact is irrelevant, and you bringing it up is a red herring.
> Note that if the conclusion doesn't change upon the death of the last suffragist, the fact is irrelevant, and you bringing it up is a red herring.
The fact highlights how recent this level of discrimination is in our history, and why "being a woman" and "disliking cupcakes" are significantly different characteristics when you're discussing power dynamics and discrimination.
I'm not disputing the existence of differences between the groups "cupcake lovers" and "woman lovers". I'm asking for a logical explanation of how those differences matter w.r.t. the points rauljara and I made.
>> gave no consideration to the idea that a woman might
>> actually want to attend an event
Spent about 5 minutes assuming that they were encouraging /women/ programmers to enjoy the female staff, and assuming all women in attendance were /lesbians/ ("Women: Need another beer?").
Like, "pff, not ALL women programmers are lesbians, you guys! ... ... ... oh wait. Oh ... "
> To not recognize that the tech population is dominated by men is to put your head in the sand.
To not recognize that advertising tech events that female programmers do not feel comfortable attending because they do not want to be treated like subservient beer-wenches is partially responsible for the continued decline of women in the tech industry is to put your head in the sand.
That's what people are taking issue with here. No one is putting you on trial for liking to look at scantily clad women. Trying to make yourself into some kind of martyr for "finding women attractive" movement misses the point so thoroughly as to defy belief.
Do you think that the overtly sexist nature of these little frat-parties come hack-a-thons might have any bearing on the lack of women in the tech industry?
Last I checked, women generally don't like being treated like perks.
So, the tech industry is dominated by men, and this announcement was intended for the tech industry, so it's fine by you that it was addressed exclusively to men? It's OK that any techy woman reading it might stay clear so that they are not mistaken for being a server and/or don't have to put up with sexism like this?
In what other situations do you not feel that the minority do not have rights?
Their right to be treated as equal. How would you like it if a predominantly female group was told there would be men serving drinks? Predominantly racist group told there would be blacks serving drinks?
Some people might see it as a poor attempt at humor and not demeaning to women, but I'm sure others saw it as a reinforcement of their beliefs that women are for serving beer. When everyone laughs along, because they know nobody 'really means it' it sends these people the message that their views are OK and widely accepted.
I'm completely OK with a predominately female group being told men would be there serving drinks? African americans serving racists? That's a totally different ballgame.
OK, so how about blacks serving a predominantly white group? I think my other race metaphor went too far, but this one works. There's nothing wrong with a black person working as a server/waiter. They're still considered by most people to be completely equal, and blacks are welcome to participate in the event alongside whites, it just so happens that their drinks will be brought by blacks.
What the hell are you talking about? Medical doctors are not "mostly men". Roughly 50% of all medical students are women, and current trends have women overtaking men in the profession long term.
"I very much doubt the dearth of women in technology is because men are sexual predators". Sheesh. I agree. Comments like this do the job just fine, too.
What the hell are you talking about? Medical doctors are not "mostly men". Roughly 50% of all medical students are women, and current trends have women overtaking men in the profession long term.
Hiding somewhere in the rest of that somewhat nonsensical comment (ellyagg's, I mean, not yours, tptacek) is the kernel of a fairly good question, related to what you're saying here: why is it that in almost every other once-male-dominated profession, the ratios have been rapidly approaching parity, whereas in programming, the separation maintains itself quite rigidly?
Male doctors, lawyers, and bankers tend to be a super scummy bunch assholes as far as women are concerned. Anecdotally speaking, guys in any of those professions are far more blatantly sexist towards women than your typical programmer is, and based on non-anecdotal data, the wage gap in each of those fields is worse than it is in programming (I don't have the refs at hand for that, but the conclusion is pretty solid, from what I remember programming is one of the fields with the smallest wage gap, especially for more recent grads).
I can't help but wonder how much stuff like the asshattery that's on display in this article is really the cause of the lopsided sex ratio in this field, and how much is a side effect of the fact that so few women are around in the first place. You'd think if sexist attitudes of men in a field really had such a huge impact on whether women wanted to enter the field or not, women would rarely go into medicine, law, or finance, but over time, they've flocked to each of them in much greater numbers than they have to programming, putting up with tons of abuse in the process (don't get me started on finance, oh, the stories I could tell...).
Not that it matters when sexist crap comes up - it's wrong, full stop, and if we really want women to enter the field we are right to make every effort to stamp it out.
I'd just be wary of accepting too easily that this is the whole story, or even the most important part of it; it's certainly a piece of the puzzle, but I find that I've got to squint harder than I'm comfortable doing to imagine that it really makes everything else fit together. [edit: just to be clear, I'm not saying that you or anyone else specifically claimed this here, but it's a common enough sentiment that I'm addressing it anyways]
I'm a doctor and the profession is still quite dominated by men. The women are far more likely to fill primary-care specialties while the good-ol-boys dominate ortho/neurosurg/EM/plastics and most of the internal medicine subspecialties. The women in my specialty (ortho) tend to lean toward the masculine side (in personality). A lot of it is about fitting in.
Which sentence did I write that is actually wrong? I'm glad to have another doctor writing here, but (respectfully) I am not particularly interested in how "masculine" you think women in your specialty tend to act to fit in. The statistics do not appear to back up the argument the previous poster made.
I don't doubt what you say, but medicine (like most highly-skilled professions) has a long lag time. I would wager (without looking it up) that the median graduation date for practicing doctors today is around 1990. A beter indicator of current trends would be to look at medical school enrollment.
Combined with the sentiment about nursing and status, that's not remotely the message I took away from that paragraph. I'm happy to agree to disagree with you about this, because that's not what I think he wrote.
> Or does enjoying seeing attractive women in public make me a bad person? As a man, is this my original sin?
If you cannot understand the difference between admiring attractive women while programming, and listing "Women" as a
"Great Perk" you need to have a serious conversation with yourself.
> Medical doctors have been mostly men, and, in my experience, exhibit pretty much the same desire for women as tech people, but that never stopped women from flocking to become nurses.
What decade are you living in? You should check the current demographic breakdown of doctors, lawyers, scientists, and programmers. I'll give you a head start: one of these is an outlier.
I don't think there is anything wrong with appreciating and looking at attractive women, that isn't sexism. The problem here is marketing the event with "perks" that put women in a submissive position to men by default. Its not going to create an environment when female developers want to come hang out and hack, because it leads to those awkward "Are you a beer girl, are a coder?" conversations.
FWIW you can totally look at attractive women while programming, without objectifying them at a hackathon -- that's what the Internet was made for.
If you would spend 5 minutes thinking instead of playing the victim, maybe you could see the rediculousness of what you're saying.
As you well know, doctor/nurse fraternization is a time-honored pursuit.
Do you live in the 50s? Do you think real life is Grey's Anatomy??? The doctor/nurse dichotomy that exists today is a result of VERY powerful, and very wrong, sexism. For decades women were relegated to the role of a nurse in a subordinate position to a doctor simply because they were women. Beyond the blatant sexism, there exists a tremendous power play where the man is in a position to dictate what a nurse does, how her career progresses, what kind of roles she gets assigned to, etc.
Unlike TV, in real life nurses don't get into the field to fuck every doctor they meet. They go into nursing because they want to save lives.
> Medical doctors have been mostly men, and, in my experience, exhibit pretty much the same desire for women as tech people, but that never stopped women from flocking to become nurses.
Oh, honestly. Institutionalized sexism sure as hell made it quite difficult for decades (if not centuries) for women to become doctors.
> I like looking at attractive women. I like programming ... As a man, is this my original sin?
That is not the issue.
The issue is that attempting to herd software developers with promises of attractive females is tasteless, exclusive and offensive to decent people of both genders.
> Would it be possible to have an event where I could program and look at attractive women at the same time? Or does enjoying seeing attractive women in public make me a bad person? As a man, is this my original sin?
No, I don't think it's wrong to program and look at attractive women at the same time. I also think that dating/flirting at work is mostly harmless.
That has little to do with the above described situation though. What they manage to do with just that one line is alienate anyone that doesn't have the same sexual preferences to you. If they had left gender out of it and just had attractive staff of both sexes, then to me it wouldn't offend anyone (though it would seem as you say, a little bit out of place).
For me, there's so much viscerally wrong in this comment I'm just flabbergasted. I wrote a long reply and erased it. I think I'd rather just leave you with a cultural observation.
Americans tend to mired in sexism to a much greater extent than for example Sweden, where I'm at. The above comment would simply not be made by a professional in Sweden. I guess we don't equate sexism and fun to the same extent some americans do, nor is the female body under the same bizarre governmental scrutiny (abortion, an issue, honestly?). That there's a link doesn't seem entirely implausible.
It's always befuddled me that when it's a woman making a conscious choice about her body or when two men wants to marry the small government party see no issue with injecting themselves into peoples lives.
Also, it's slightly ironic to compare the american view on murder with a european view when you're the ones executing people.
On the issue of abortion, you can't see the other side at all? At the least, you're preventing a human life from happening. That doesn't give you cause for thought and reflection? Call it what you want, but if your mother had an abortion you would be dead.
The opposition believes that nobody has a right to make the conscious choice to kill another human being. That sounds like a reasonable place to start.
I'm consistently dismayed by the amount of intellectual and moral atrophy displayed in discussions of politics.
I've honestly tried hard to understand the other side, but no, I cannot. First of all, I don't see what gives you the moral prerogative to make that choice for a woman. Secondly, I don't believe it's a human being yet (we're not talking the 38th week here). If my mother had an abortion I would not be dead right now, I would have never existed at all. I would be a non-event. And I'm fine with that.
On the flip side, how about contraceptives? If removing a fetus after 4 weeks is murder, how about birth control pills? Or emergency contraception pills? Arguably, they kill as well?
I'm a strong believer that evolution/sex are the primary drivers for almost everything we do in life. The outrage in the comment thread here is part of the "pretend it's not like that" mentality. I'm sure the marketing people here senselessly thought "hey we want lots of programmers, most programmers are guys, what do guys like, girls!". I'm not offended by this, but it is clear they are alienating women (and homosexual men). If it was reversed; "lots of hot men serving beers", guys probably wouldn't be in a rush to show up either.
It's not just that women reading this flyer wouldn't be interested in showing up, it's that they are instantly reminded of how the programming world perceives them and their place in the industry. It reminds them of the sexism they've endured their entire professional careers and it reminds them of how little has changed.
"Lots of hot men serving beers" isn't a very comparable example because male programmers haven't been discriminated against (at least, not professionally). A better example would be if the flyer were changed to "lots of Mexicans serving beers" or "lots of African Americans serving beers". Wouldn't that offend you even if you were able to somehow derive how the marketing people arrived at this approach?
The problem here is not that most men are attracted to good looking women. The problem is that they made it a marketing point, which is blatant objectification. "Booth babes" aren't even advertised like this.
Or does enjoying seeing attractive women in public make me
a bad person?
It does if that hobby is so on the forefront of your mind that you would organise for them to be present at a specific public location and you feel this is such a perk that you should use it as an advertisement to attract others to come look at those attractive women.
It does if, while describing the situation at an event involving people of all creeds, you draw attention to the fact that the presence of a part of those people is considered a treat, independent of their ability.
Replace 'female' with 'midget', 'gay', 'asian' or 'leather clad' and ask yourself that question again. Personally, I like looking at attractive leather clad asian gay midgets. That does not mean it's proper to collect a few to staff a programming event, because so many of us enjoy looking at attractive leather clad asian gay midgets.
> I like looking at attractive women. I like programming. Would it be possible to have an event where I could program and look at attractive women at the same time?
I like custard. I like meat. Would it be possible to have a dish where I could eat meat and custard at the same time?
In fact, I've even been known to flirt with attractive women in public--perhaps even servers at restaurants and events. I've dated many women I've met this way. Is it ok, when I'm eating and drinking, but not when I'm programming?
Sorry, but I don't think this is as cut-and-dried as the pitchfork brigades here make it seem. In my world, there isn't a bright line between "professional and sexless" and "fun", with programming strictly under "professional and sexless". Obviously there's a conflict here. I don't know what the right balance is, but I cringe every time men are screamed at for not hiding carefully enough that they like sex, as if it's mens' faults that women are powerfully interesting to them in a biologically mandated and different way than vice versa.
While I'm at it, I might as well mention that I very much doubt the dearth of women in technology is because men are sexual predators. Medical doctors have been mostly men, and, in my experience, exhibit pretty much the same desire for women as tech people, but that never stopped women from flocking to become nurses. As you well know, doctor/nurse fraternization is a time-honored pursuit. There is one big difference between the two groups, though, in that doctors are considered by women to be higher status than technical men. I've noticed that behavior which is welcome from high status men is often labeled "creepy" when exhibited by low status men.
Edit: I notice that people have latched onto the doctors thing which is bizarre inasmuch as it strengthens my point. I worded it the way I did on purpose, "have been", with an idle thought to making a point about the inroads made by women, but was too lazy to look up the percentages. The fact that the male/female ratio of doctors has improved so much is a tribute to the fact that women have no problem succeeding in a previously male dominated industry if it caters to their interests. And if you don't think the medical profession was a good 'ol boys club, or think that systematic "awareness raising" was the cause for the improvement, I'm afraid you're not too familiar with the history and dynamics of that industry.