To be honest, the title put me on the defensive, but I think she offers a valuable perspective. The target audience is men, and the call to action at the end is quite reasonable: talk to your colleagues and friends about these issues ahead of time, in an attempt to reform cultural norms. Personally, I would love to work with more women in my field, so I hope something grassroots like this can work. We might also need something more systemic tho, like scholarships or hiring incentives. If I remember correctly, Recurse Center tried a lot of stuff to try to get more underrepresented groups, and they ultimately succeeded, but nothing they tried was nearly as effective as cold, hard cash.
Once there are enough women in a given space, I think these problems tend to sort themselves out, but from a starting point of women as a superminority, it's a tough spot to be in as those women and as an organization trying to rebalance.
systemic tho, like scholarships or hiring incentives.
Sure these things are great! However, the issue of 'oh you're only here because you're a diversity hire', 'oh she's just here because they gave handout scholarships to a bunch of females' mentioned in the talk is still going to be said/thought... There's a behavior+attitude change that needs to happen in men, and it starts with those 'awkward conversations' and quite honestly, raising the next generations of men to think past these stupid tropes..
Edit: to summarise my point; technical and financial solutions to this don't really work unless attitudes are also changing from within men.
Once there are enough women in a given space, I think these problems tend to sort themselves out
I really hope you're right, but I unfortunately am not so optimistic :( Women make up slightly more than half the population of humans on this planet as a whole, and they still deal with awful heinous stuff at the hands of... men.
Unfortunately we are now seeing that young people are twice as likely to hold misogynistic views (that’s just the first study that came up, but I’ve seen this headline repeated time and time again and from experience it is true). It’s not just misogyny, but it is incredibly worrying to see just how normalized being sexist/racist/homophobic/transphobic/etc became in the last few years. If anyone said 1% of the shit we see politicians and influencers say every day five or six years ago they would have very rightfully been banned from whatever platforms they were on and ended their careers. Unfortunately tech bros got too comfortable and started being explicitly OK with this kind of speech, which just amplified it massively.
I’m really worried that this is something that’s going to get worse before it gets better, at the very least until someone forces social media companies to properly moderate their content.
'oh you're only here because you're a diversity hire'
is still going to be said/thought
As long as companies that do this exist, the prejudice will exist. And a say this as a gay man who dodged that bullet because they hired me barely knowing me after helping them with urgent work, but was there when our team was strongly suggested to get women in the team.
I know this was more an exception than a rule, but each person holds different perspectives based on their experiences.
Edit: I reinforce my view on personal perspectives. There's another comment about how men are allowed to be more assertive and "rude", but then, the only man I remember who was like that was fired after two weeks for being too assertive and "smart" with a more experienced developer.
Shame on anybody marking this off-topic. I'm a man in tech, and men so often get in the way of actually working.
I started a new contract. CEO calls meeting with me and the team to have a high level technical discussion. He monologues for 50 minutes. I address him as a tech equal, reminding him that good communication is key to good software. I'm seen not to be a "team player".
Remote colleague has unhelpfully strong opinions on Slack about technical decisions, but won't have video meetings. We have to put up with him because he's good value for money.
Old friend of the company and occasionally contractor joins project, rewrites large portions of the codebase rather than communicating with the existing team.
I'm not saying this to make it look like it's just as hard for men as it is for women in tech. I'm just pointing out that the matter of woman in tech is profoundly on-topic. It's not merely some, "yeah wouldn't that be nice to fix", but rather a technical concern at the very heart of working at the coalface in this industry. Software is literally worse and harder to make because of male culture.
I agree wholeheartedly. The amount of barriers I've seen women working in the field face are enormous, and they are present at all layers: education, hiring, promotion, etc etc.
Some of those attitudes can even be seen in the discussion here.
I know your intentions are laudable here, but I think your framing is problematic in and out of itself. Would any of this be OK if "male culture" made software technically better? Metrics by which technical excellence is measured is arguably often politically loaded anyway.
This might seem like a bit of a stretch, but I see a parallel with anti-racism based on the idea that "biology has disproved human races even exist". This is very bad and fragile starting point for anti-racism. What if science showed tomorrow that after all, human races are a thing, or that some subgroups are more <metric X> or <metric Y>? Would it make it OK for these subgroups to be marginalized or discriminated against?
Let's be more ambitious than that when we try to be part of building a better world.
Took me while to connect your crticism/feedback of OP framing with OP's framing, and now I see your point, but there is some merit to calling out the problems of $current_culture right now(imo!). While it's not a solution, and I'm not smart enough to say if it's fragile start or not, it can feel like the current situation is normalized by nobody criticizing it out loud. Also agree that we should be more ambitious when trying to be part of the building a world better.
Initially I did read tombh's framing in a way that it's more focused on the fact that labeling this kind of content/discussion as off-topic is not good, discussing the points of the talk should be on-topic for lobste.rs for us. It helps people pop out of their own tech bubble and hopefully evoke constructive feedback. And I do think it helps realizing the ambition you mention.
There certainly is! I did not mean to be overly harsh at @tombh at all, and I love to see "male culture" (or however you want to name it, maybe toxic masculinity, competitiveness, …) called out. I am a white middle-aged dude and certainly have some more deconstruction to work out myself. If it is harmful to building technically better software, there is no reason not to mention it either I guess, but I am generally cautious with "better from a technical standpoint" stances. For instance, I don't care that much if FLOSS is technically superior, I try to use FLOSS as much as I can because I believe it is ethically superior. Working out the technical parts can come later, if needed. Tech is the easy part.
That said, after listening to the talk, I don't think "male culture" is even what the speaker calls out. She lists her personal experience of blatant sexual aggression mixed with workplace harassment and general misogyny. What the actual fucking sick world we live in.
I’m confused by your examples. Could you explain what point you’re trying to make by them?
(Yes, I am asking in good faith; I can’t figure their purpose out. My best guess is that you’re saying these are things only men would do? But then the last paragraph doesn’t feel like it fits?)
Historically, that kind of behavior is only tolerated with men. A woman acting similarly (if she even felt empowered to do so in the first place) would be labeled "hysterical" or "emotional" and would be pushed out, even if only unspoken and socially rather than by official reprimand. What we're often left with are unpleasant men and "well-behaved" women.
I'm a man in tech, and men so often get in the way of actually working.
I don't doubt that this is true (and I didn't mark it off-topic), but it seems odd to analyze it as "men" when (by my estimation) it's a small minority of men (<10% in tech? if it's larger, maybe I've just been very lucky, or maybe most men keep their bad behavior hidden from other men such that I don't see it? or maybe it's not evenly distributed geographically?) who cause most of the problems. If someone were to note that all of the problematic individuals are humans and thus this is a human problem, everyone would implicitly agree that this isn't very helpful because the overwhelming majority of humans don't do this, so why settle for the same analysis for gender?
If such a small minority of men are badly behaved, why not look at what that group has in common that is driving this bad behavior in this minority but not in the majority? It seems far more tractable to address some at-risk population rather than trying to change the behaviors of half the population in hopes that they will, in turn, be able to persuade or coerce the problematic minority into behaving better.
And if you are really wed to petitioning someone to coerce the offenders to behave better, why try to persuade an enormous group of mostly powerless people based on gender when you could instead appeal to powerful people of both genders who actually have some power to affect change? It seems a lot easier to appeal to some critical mass of the ~1% of the population who has the power (regardless of gender) than it is to convince whatever critical mass of males are necessary to have the same effect.
It's also worth exploring the efficacy of the attempts of the 2010s to pressure people to change their behavior (and the ensuing backlash) and to compare that with other attempts, like the gay rights movement of the prior decade (which was so successful that a majority of Republicans supported gay marriage by 2020), and the civil rights movement.
Coming out publicly against bad behavior makes you stick out.
Most people miss opportunities to come out against bad behavior, either through inobservance or risk aversion.
Most people in tech are men.
Even if < 10% of men engage in bad behavior, most other men in tech still don't call it out enough or this wouldn't be a problem.
So yes. The problem is us men.
Man tells a dirty joke and no one calls it out? That's a problem with us men.
Even if < 10% of men engage in bad behavior, most other men in tech still don't call it out enough or this wouldn't be a problem.
By the same logic, there aren't enough men or women calling out this behavior or else it wouldn't be a problem, right?
And while yes it's probably true that there's some critical mass of men that could coerce the badly behaved men to behave better, we don't usually analyze other problems in society this way (and for good reason): "wealth inequality exists, ergo the problem is too few men calling out greed!". In fact, corporate propagandists have used this kind of argument to minimize or avoid regulations for decades--in the 1970s, corporations like Pepsi Co employed corporate propagandists who worked with well-intentioned "environmentalists" to argue that litter was first and foremost an individual moral problem i.e. "litter exists, thus not enough people are cleaning up after themselves" because they didn't want the government to hold the corporations responsible for the litter they introduced by way of container deposits.
I think by pursuing the least-tractable solution ("change the behavior of ~all men in order to change the behavior of some minority of badly behaved men") rather than more tractable solutions ("analyze risk factors for bad behavior and target preventative measures for the at-risk population, just like we do with ~every other serious issue"), we would be doing real harm to women.
(There are lots of other areas where this kind of well-intentioned argument creeps up as well--e.g., the 'environmentalists' who oppose EVs because they allow people to dramatically curb their emissions without becoming vegan cyclists)
Why would we ask the affected population -- and remember, in these environments there are usually fewer women by far than there are men -- to do the work? That's the antithesis of her point.
This is a problem with men, that we can and should be responsible for calling out and fixing.
Why would we ask the affected population -- and remember, in these environments there are usually fewer women by far than there are men -- to do the work?
I'm not advocating for women to "do the work", hence opening with "by the same logic". I think it's preposterous to analyze this as the responsibility of any identity category rather than society at large. I think it's similarly preposterous to depend on "call outs" rather than e.g. identifying risk factors and intervening in at-risk populations. "Call outs" as a mechanism seem like social justice theater at best, and more likely they produce a reactionary repressive wave (such as followed the "call out culture" of the 2010s).
I think it's preposterous to analyze this as the responsibility of any identity category rather than society at large.
Sure, everyone shares some of the responsibility, but when an action is targeting some demographic, voices outside that demographic speaking up can have outsized influence because they aren't just dismissed as "taking it too personally."
I think it's similarly preposterous to depend on "call outs" rather than e.g. identifying risk factors and intervening in at-risk populations. "Call outs" as a mechanism seem like social justice theater at best
Everyone would love it if prevention was working in advance to avoid the situation altogether. But if something has gotten to the point of calling out bad behavior when it happens, that prevention has already failed. This isn't an either/or... we should both point out bad behavior when it happens and think about how to prevent it in the future.
It's patently ridiculous to assume the minority population in tech – women – aren't already calling this out
Why? How does "women are a minority" prove "[all] women are calling this out"?
and that it's their problem to fix.
Whose problem is it to fix if not everyone's? Why is it any gender's problem to solve? Why not make it the responsibility of people with actual power to affect change? If some VP is behaving misogynistically, why is it more the responsibility of the male janitor rather than the female executive to correct his behavior? Why is responsibility a property of genitalia rather than power?
i usually can't watch videos like this because, as a woman hoping to get into tech, it's a harsh reminder of the reality i will soon face. but i appreciate that a talk like this was given, that there's (mostly) productive discussion on it here. i hope people really do sit with the message of this talk as the speaker asks.
If anyone I work with ever does this in my presence they'll be hearing some very strong words from me. If they report to me they'll be packing their stuff up that day if I have anything to say about it. If they don't then I'll be giving some very strong words to HR about it.
I've never actually seen this kind of thing happen in my presence nor been told about it happening by anyone I work with. I don't know if that's because I'm extraordinarily lucky in my places of work or if it's because they know the above about me and just hide it. Either way I have 0 tolerance for that kind of behavior.
Are you really gonna downvote the idea of intersectionality? This poor person just stood up for the absolute molten core of liberal ideals an was met with a stadium of booos. What the hell is going on?
On any other day, in any other context, we would embrace the idea that you cannot take one look at somebody and know everything you need to know about them. Heck you can't even take one look at somebody and know if they are a man!!
It does, but is the CEO from the first story acting that way purely because he is a man, or does the fact that he is a CEO, singularly obsessed with profit, and, in fact, legally compelled to do so (at least in America) play a role?
But also, bringing that up as a gotcha, when asked to say something when you see a sexism happening, is tantamount to playing goalie for sexism.
Yes, but all men need to pay attention to it. It's very, very, very easy to ignore it by accident, or not see it because it hasn't occurred to you to look for it.
I really think you should take some time to reflect on this. Your comment comes across as reactionary and defensive. She has a really simple premise, don't be gross and hold others accountable for not being gross. She backs it up with real issues she has faced in her career to appeal to the "logical engineering brain" that would probably ask for evidence and such. It boils down to something we are generally taught as children and just either ignore or forget, treat others how you would like to be treated.
I appreciate you've taken the time to write this reply... but honestly I do not believe the person you are replying to is worth this effort. They simply, clearly, do not care /shrug
The kind of attitude they hold should not be welcome on this website honestly.
I haven't watched this talk yet but you're both right here. The abusive commenter is unlikely to learn anything from any individual example. But hopefully in time they'll realize how out-of-step with basic decency they are and change. And also it reinforces community and society norms about treating people fairly for everyone reading, and makes it clear to folks who are discriminated against how rare and unwelcome that kind of abuse is.
andrewrk | 22 hours ago
To be honest, the title put me on the defensive, but I think she offers a valuable perspective. The target audience is men, and the call to action at the end is quite reasonable: talk to your colleagues and friends about these issues ahead of time, in an attempt to reform cultural norms. Personally, I would love to work with more women in my field, so I hope something grassroots like this can work. We might also need something more systemic tho, like scholarships or hiring incentives. If I remember correctly, Recurse Center tried a lot of stuff to try to get more underrepresented groups, and they ultimately succeeded, but nothing they tried was nearly as effective as cold, hard cash.
Once there are enough women in a given space, I think these problems tend to sort themselves out, but from a starting point of women as a superminority, it's a tough spot to be in as those women and as an organization trying to rebalance.
zk | 20 hours ago
Sure these things are great! However, the issue of 'oh you're only here because you're a diversity hire', 'oh she's just here because they gave handout scholarships to a bunch of females' mentioned in the talk is still going to be said/thought... There's a behavior+attitude change that needs to happen in men, and it starts with those 'awkward conversations' and quite honestly, raising the next generations of men to think past these stupid tropes..
Edit: to summarise my point; technical and financial solutions to this don't really work unless attitudes are also changing from within men.
I really hope you're right, but I unfortunately am not so optimistic :( Women make up slightly more than half the population of humans on this planet as a whole, and they still deal with awful heinous stuff at the hands of... men.
pta2002 | 14 hours ago
Unfortunately we are now seeing that young people are twice as likely to hold misogynistic views (that’s just the first study that came up, but I’ve seen this headline repeated time and time again and from experience it is true). It’s not just misogyny, but it is incredibly worrying to see just how normalized being sexist/racist/homophobic/transphobic/etc became in the last few years. If anyone said 1% of the shit we see politicians and influencers say every day five or six years ago they would have very rightfully been banned from whatever platforms they were on and ended their careers. Unfortunately tech bros got too comfortable and started being explicitly OK with this kind of speech, which just amplified it massively.
I’m really worried that this is something that’s going to get worse before it gets better, at the very least until someone forces social media companies to properly moderate their content.
fedemp | 7 hours ago
As long as companies that do this exist, the prejudice will exist. And a say this as a gay man who dodged that bullet because they hired me barely knowing me after helping them with urgent work, but was there when our team was strongly suggested to get women in the team.
I know this was more an exception than a rule, but each person holds different perspectives based on their experiences.
Edit: I reinforce my view on personal perspectives. There's another comment about how men are allowed to be more assertive and "rude", but then, the only man I remember who was like that was fired after two weeks for being too assertive and "smart" with a more experienced developer.
ChrisDenton | 20 hours ago
Zig is a grassroots organisation with some degree of funding available so I wonder if they're planning anything in that regard?
chbarts | 2 hours ago
tombh | 16 hours ago
Shame on anybody marking this off-topic. I'm a man in tech, and men so often get in the way of actually working.
I'm not saying this to make it look like it's just as hard for men as it is for women in tech. I'm just pointing out that the matter of woman in tech is profoundly on-topic. It's not merely some, "yeah wouldn't that be nice to fix", but rather a technical concern at the very heart of working at the coalface in this industry. Software is literally worse and harder to make because of male culture.
SamRW | 15 hours ago
I agree wholeheartedly. The amount of barriers I've seen women working in the field face are enormous, and they are present at all layers: education, hiring, promotion, etc etc.
Some of those attitudes can even be seen in the discussion here.
nicoco | 14 hours ago
I know your intentions are laudable here, but I think your framing is problematic in and out of itself. Would any of this be OK if "male culture" made software technically better? Metrics by which technical excellence is measured is arguably often politically loaded anyway.
This might seem like a bit of a stretch, but I see a parallel with anti-racism based on the idea that "biology has disproved human races even exist". This is very bad and fragile starting point for anti-racism. What if science showed tomorrow that after all, human races are a thing, or that some subgroups are more <metric X> or <metric Y>? Would it make it OK for these subgroups to be marginalized or discriminated against?
Let's be more ambitious than that when we try to be part of building a better world.
zetashift | 12 hours ago
Took me while to connect your crticism/feedback of OP framing with OP's framing, and now I see your point, but there is some merit to calling out the problems of $current_culture right now(imo!). While it's not a solution, and I'm not smart enough to say if it's fragile start or not, it can feel like the current situation is normalized by nobody criticizing it out loud. Also agree that we should be more ambitious when trying to be part of the building a world better.
Initially I did read tombh's framing in a way that it's more focused on the fact that labeling this kind of content/discussion as off-topic is not good, discussing the points of the talk should be on-topic for lobste.rs for us. It helps people pop out of their own tech bubble and hopefully evoke constructive feedback. And I do think it helps realizing the ambition you mention.
nicoco | 11 hours ago
There certainly is! I did not mean to be overly harsh at @tombh at all, and I love to see "male culture" (or however you want to name it, maybe toxic masculinity, competitiveness, …) called out. I am a white middle-aged dude and certainly have some more deconstruction to work out myself. If it is harmful to building technically better software, there is no reason not to mention it either I guess, but I am generally cautious with "better from a technical standpoint" stances. For instance, I don't care that much if FLOSS is technically superior, I try to use FLOSS as much as I can because I believe it is ethically superior. Working out the technical parts can come later, if needed. Tech is the easy part.
That said, after listening to the talk, I don't think "male culture" is even what the speaker calls out. She lists her personal experience of blatant sexual aggression mixed with workplace harassment and general misogyny. What the actual fucking sick world we live in.
chrismorgan | 11 hours ago
I’m confused by your examples. Could you explain what point you’re trying to make by them?
(Yes, I am asking in good faith; I can’t figure their purpose out. My best guess is that you’re saying these are things only men would do? But then the last paragraph doesn’t feel like it fits?)
singpolyma | 9 hours ago
Are any if those three cases uniquely men? The second one seems mostly like a clashf personal preferences?
gnafuthegreat | 8 hours ago
Historically, that kind of behavior is only tolerated with men. A woman acting similarly (if she even felt empowered to do so in the first place) would be labeled "hysterical" or "emotional" and would be pushed out, even if only unspoken and socially rather than by official reprimand. What we're often left with are unpleasant men and "well-behaved" women.
weberc2 | 4 hours ago
I don't doubt that this is true (and I didn't mark it off-topic), but it seems odd to analyze it as "men" when (by my estimation) it's a small minority of men (<10% in tech? if it's larger, maybe I've just been very lucky, or maybe most men keep their bad behavior hidden from other men such that I don't see it? or maybe it's not evenly distributed geographically?) who cause most of the problems. If someone were to note that all of the problematic individuals are humans and thus this is a human problem, everyone would implicitly agree that this isn't very helpful because the overwhelming majority of humans don't do this, so why settle for the same analysis for gender?
If such a small minority of men are badly behaved, why not look at what that group has in common that is driving this bad behavior in this minority but not in the majority? It seems far more tractable to address some at-risk population rather than trying to change the behaviors of half the population in hopes that they will, in turn, be able to persuade or coerce the problematic minority into behaving better.
And if you are really wed to petitioning someone to coerce the offenders to behave better, why try to persuade an enormous group of mostly powerless people based on gender when you could instead appeal to powerful people of both genders who actually have some power to affect change? It seems a lot easier to appeal to some critical mass of the ~1% of the population who has the power (regardless of gender) than it is to convince whatever critical mass of males are necessary to have the same effect.
It's also worth exploring the efficacy of the attempts of the 2010s to pressure people to change their behavior (and the ensuing backlash) and to compare that with other attempts, like the gay rights movement of the prior decade (which was so successful that a majority of Republicans supported gay marriage by 2020), and the civil rights movement.
pmbauer | 4 hours ago
Coming out publicly against bad behavior makes you stick out. Most people miss opportunities to come out against bad behavior, either through inobservance or risk aversion. Most people in tech are men. Even if < 10% of men engage in bad behavior, most other men in tech still don't call it out enough or this wouldn't be a problem.
So yes. The problem is us men.
Man tells a dirty joke and no one calls it out? That's a problem with us men.
weberc2 | 3 hours ago
By the same logic, there aren't enough men or women calling out this behavior or else it wouldn't be a problem, right?
And while yes it's probably true that there's some critical mass of men that could coerce the badly behaved men to behave better, we don't usually analyze other problems in society this way (and for good reason): "wealth inequality exists, ergo the problem is too few men calling out greed!". In fact, corporate propagandists have used this kind of argument to minimize or avoid regulations for decades--in the 1970s, corporations like Pepsi Co employed corporate propagandists who worked with well-intentioned "environmentalists" to argue that litter was first and foremost an individual moral problem i.e. "litter exists, thus not enough people are cleaning up after themselves" because they didn't want the government to hold the corporations responsible for the litter they introduced by way of container deposits.
I think by pursuing the least-tractable solution ("change the behavior of ~all men in order to change the behavior of some minority of badly behaved men") rather than more tractable solutions ("analyze risk factors for bad behavior and target preventative measures for the at-risk population, just like we do with ~every other serious issue"), we would be doing real harm to women.
(There are lots of other areas where this kind of well-intentioned argument creeps up as well--e.g., the 'environmentalists' who oppose EVs because they allow people to dramatically curb their emissions without becoming vegan cyclists)
offby1 | 3 hours ago
Why would we ask the affected population -- and remember, in these environments there are usually fewer women by far than there are men -- to do the work? That's the antithesis of her point.
This is a problem with men, that we can and should be responsible for calling out and fixing.
weberc2 | 2 hours ago
I'm not advocating for women to "do the work", hence opening with "by the same logic". I think it's preposterous to analyze this as the responsibility of any identity category rather than society at large. I think it's similarly preposterous to depend on "call outs" rather than e.g. identifying risk factors and intervening in at-risk populations. "Call outs" as a mechanism seem like social justice theater at best, and more likely they produce a reactionary repressive wave (such as followed the "call out culture" of the 2010s).
abeyer | 20 minutes ago
Sure, everyone shares some of the responsibility, but when an action is targeting some demographic, voices outside that demographic speaking up can have outsized influence because they aren't just dismissed as "taking it too personally."
Everyone would love it if prevention was working in advance to avoid the situation altogether. But if something has gotten to the point of calling out bad behavior when it happens, that prevention has already failed. This isn't an either/or... we should both point out bad behavior when it happens and think about how to prevent it in the future.
pmbauer | 3 hours ago
It's patently ridiculous to assume the minority population in tech – women – aren't already calling this out and that it's their problem to fix.
weberc2 | 2 hours ago
Why? How does "women are a minority" prove "[all] women are calling this out"?
Whose problem is it to fix if not everyone's? Why is it any gender's problem to solve? Why not make it the responsibility of people with actual power to affect change? If some VP is behaving misogynistically, why is it more the responsibility of the male janitor rather than the female executive to correct his behavior? Why is responsibility a property of genitalia rather than power?
muemo | a day ago
Also available on media.ccc.de ad-free.
addison | a day ago
Would suggest a link replacement here ^^ The canonical link is CCC's.
[OP] gmem | 23 hours ago
Updated :)
girlonthemoon | 8 hours ago
i usually can't watch videos like this because, as a woman hoping to get into tech, it's a harsh reminder of the reality i will soon face. but i appreciate that a talk like this was given, that there's (mostly) productive discussion on it here. i hope people really do sit with the message of this talk as the speaker asks.
gerardnico | 13 hours ago
What a courage. All the best to all the girls out there.
manfred | 4 hours ago
Are you talking about children wanting to get into the field or do you mean women?
zaphar | 4 hours ago
If anyone I work with ever does this in my presence they'll be hearing some very strong words from me. If they report to me they'll be packing their stuff up that day if I have anything to say about it. If they don't then I'll be giving some very strong words to HR about it.
I've never actually seen this kind of thing happen in my presence nor been told about it happening by anyone I work with. I don't know if that's because I'm extraordinarily lucky in my places of work or if it's because they know the above about me and just hide it. Either way I have 0 tolerance for that kind of behavior.
chbarts | 18 hours ago
datboi | 17 hours ago
Hm... This reads like you didn't actually watch the entire video. The call to action at the end does apply to all men.
conartist6 | 8 hours ago
Are you really gonna downvote the idea of intersectionality? This poor person just stood up for the absolute molten core of liberal ideals an was met with a stadium of booos. What the hell is going on?
On any other day, in any other context, we would embrace the idea that you cannot take one look at somebody and know everything you need to know about them. Heck you can't even take one look at somebody and know if they are a man!!
hjvt | 7 hours ago
It does, but is the CEO from the first story acting that way purely because he is a man, or does the fact that he is a CEO, singularly obsessed with profit, and, in fact, legally compelled to do so (at least in America) play a role?
But also, bringing that up as a gotcha, when asked to say something when you see a sexism happening, is tantamount to playing goalie for sexism.
icefox | 7 hours ago
Yes, but all men need to pay attention to it. It's very, very, very easy to ignore it by accident, or not see it because it hasn't occurred to you to look for it.
spikewall | 17 hours ago
freddyb | 17 hours ago
Great to see that hateful commentary is downvoted into oblivion after mere minutes.
datboi | 16 hours ago
I really think you should take some time to reflect on this. Your comment comes across as reactionary and defensive. She has a really simple premise, don't be gross and hold others accountable for not being gross. She backs it up with real issues she has faced in her career to appeal to the "logical engineering brain" that would probably ask for evidence and such. It boils down to something we are generally taught as children and just either ignore or forget, treat others how you would like to be treated.
zk | 16 hours ago
I appreciate you've taken the time to write this reply... but honestly I do not believe the person you are replying to is worth this effort. They simply, clearly, do not care /shrug
The kind of attitude they hold should not be welcome on this website honestly.
trintron | 14 hours ago
I appreciate your comments in this topic, but I do think my grandparent is a valuable comment.
Not for their parent, I wholeheartedly agree with you on that, but for other people reading these comments.
It is actually an example of what Jo Francetti asked of men in her talk: speak up.
pushcx | 7 hours ago
I haven't watched this talk yet but you're both right here. The abusive commenter is unlikely to learn anything from any individual example. But hopefully in time they'll realize how out-of-step with basic decency they are and change. And also it reinforces community and society norms about treating people fairly for everyone reading, and makes it clear to folks who are discriminated against how rare and unwelcome that kind of abuse is.
I banned the bigot, of course.
agarmu | 17 hours ago
This comment seems really out of place and unnecessary to me.
zk | 17 hours ago
In future, flag comments like these as whichever unwelcome category fits into to :).
Since if you reply to a comment, you can no longer flag it (and vice versa).
nicoco | 11 hours ago
Out of place? Sadly it is very much on point with the talk. Rape culture is real.