> I think that's a bad attitude and it puts people off who might want to join us.
I do not think that the solution to the gender imbalance in tech is to stop calling spades spades. The jokes made were not threatening or sexist, and if she felt threatened, her feelings were not justified.
Women are just as capable of reasoning as men, but they're also just as capable of being wrong. There are real sexism issues to address in the software industry. At a conference a few years ago, a coworker of mine was followed back to her hotel room by a drunk conference attendee--THAT is sexist and threatening. At a Ruby conference, a presenter showed slides of women in bikinis and made lewd comments about them--THAT is sexism. I don't think inventing a sexism issue where there isn't one does anything to solve the real problems.
To be clear: I do think that it is productive to look at what the software industry is doing wrong in relation to women. All I'm saying is that this particular instance is a red herring.
> It's not normal for her to have felt this way and I don't blame her for experiencing that.
I don't blame her either, but I don't think there's any conclusions to be drawn from how she felt. She just was wrong. People are wrong all the time.
> But she's not a crazy person, she was a developer evangelist for a well known company. She was well spoken and calm. Her response to Hank's original Hacker News comment was quite pleasant and seemed to acknowledge that bad situations can happen even though Hank is a good guy.
One can be sane, gainfully employed, well-spoken, and calm, and still wrong. I think any sane, gainfully employed, well-spoken, calm person will freely admit that they have been wrong many times.
> Yet she felt threatened by an innocuous joke because of the atmosphere of the conference, because she was vastly outnumbered, and because we are unwilling to address this.
What about the atmosphere of the conference made her feel threatened? If there was something that happened at the conference which was actually threatening, that is the problem, not these jokes. If there is threatening behavior going on, I'd love to figure out a way to stop it. But jokes about dongles and forking repos are not threatening behavior, and pretending they are does nothing to solve anything.
Yes, she's vastly outnumbered. That is a well-known problem which I would like to solve, but I think that will require coming up with solutions, not just telling people they're right when they aren't.
I don't think we are unwilling to address this, I think we HAVE addressed this. Just because people don't agree with her doesn't mean they aren't listening.
> Almost everyone here dismisses them out-of-hand, how is that attractive or inclusive?
Sure, we can lower our standards to include people who can't differentiate between something threatening and something non-threatening, and that might allow us to hire more women. But that would defeat the purpose. Women are just as capable as men and we can include them without lowering our standards.
Pretending women are right when they're wrong is not the way to be inclusive.
I do not think that the solution to the gender imbalance in tech is to stop calling spades spades. The jokes made were not threatening or sexist, and if she felt threatened, her feelings were not justified.
Women are just as capable of reasoning as men, but they're also just as capable of being wrong. There are real sexism issues to address in the software industry. At a conference a few years ago, a coworker of mine was followed back to her hotel room by a drunk conference attendee--THAT is sexist and threatening. At a Ruby conference, a presenter showed slides of women in bikinis and made lewd comments about them--THAT is sexism. I don't think inventing a sexism issue where there isn't one does anything to solve the real problems.
To be clear: I do think that it is productive to look at what the software industry is doing wrong in relation to women. All I'm saying is that this particular instance is a red herring.
> It's not normal for her to have felt this way and I don't blame her for experiencing that.
I don't blame her either, but I don't think there's any conclusions to be drawn from how she felt. She just was wrong. People are wrong all the time.
> But she's not a crazy person, she was a developer evangelist for a well known company. She was well spoken and calm. Her response to Hank's original Hacker News comment was quite pleasant and seemed to acknowledge that bad situations can happen even though Hank is a good guy.
One can be sane, gainfully employed, well-spoken, and calm, and still wrong. I think any sane, gainfully employed, well-spoken, calm person will freely admit that they have been wrong many times.
> Yet she felt threatened by an innocuous joke because of the atmosphere of the conference, because she was vastly outnumbered, and because we are unwilling to address this.
What about the atmosphere of the conference made her feel threatened? If there was something that happened at the conference which was actually threatening, that is the problem, not these jokes. If there is threatening behavior going on, I'd love to figure out a way to stop it. But jokes about dongles and forking repos are not threatening behavior, and pretending they are does nothing to solve anything.
Yes, she's vastly outnumbered. That is a well-known problem which I would like to solve, but I think that will require coming up with solutions, not just telling people they're right when they aren't.
I don't think we are unwilling to address this, I think we HAVE addressed this. Just because people don't agree with her doesn't mean they aren't listening.
> Almost everyone here dismisses them out-of-hand, how is that attractive or inclusive?
Sure, we can lower our standards to include people who can't differentiate between something threatening and something non-threatening, and that might allow us to hire more women. But that would defeat the purpose. Women are just as capable as men and we can include them without lowering our standards.
Pretending women are right when they're wrong is not the way to be inclusive.