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Berners-Lee Challenges 'Stupid' Male Geek Culture
ZDOne wrote with a link to a ZDNet article discussing some comments made by Tim Berners-Lee on the discrimination women face within 'stupid male geek culture'. The respected developer expressed frustration at a culture that would 'disregard the work of capable female engineers, and put others off entering the profession.' From the article: "'It's a complex problem -- we find bias against women by women. There are bits of male geek culture and engineer culture that are stupid. They should realize that they could be alienating people who are smarter and better engineers,' said Berners-Lee. Engineering research facilities that interview candidates based only on how many papers they have had published also risk adding to the problem, according to Berners-Lee, because of an apparent in-built bias against women."
You want a cease fire? Fine. start playing fair with us and we might play fair with you.
excitingthingstodo.blogspot.com
When are we going to realize that some fields are shaped by the people they attract? How many people have sacrificed a weekend out partying to rebuild a Linux cluster? How many women want to sacrifice cute outfits to sling greasy wrenches under cars all day? I'm not saying there aren't lots of awesome women in IT (I've worked with them). Yes, there's discrimination, but in IT I chalk it all up to a field that practically demands a certain type of personality.
I swear to God...I swear to God! That is NOT how you treat your human!
"which could lead to greater harmony of systems design"
Being male or female neither enables nor disables the ability to create harmonious systems.
My twitter
Don't confuse the two. There is nothing personality-wise that isn't shared by both genders.
On the other hand, he does kind of skip over the other professions that also discriminate against women. How about the military?
Engineering research facilities that interview candidates based only on how many papers they have had published also risk adding to the problem, according to Berners-Lee, because of an apparent in-built bias against women.
I don't get it. is the task of writing papers inherently biased against women?
The theory of relativity doesn't work right in Arkansas.
He's just saying that cause he wants to score. Geeks have a hard time meeting women on their terms. He just wants to turn it around so that they meet on "geek terms".
"It's not whether you win or lose, it's how drunk you get." -- H. J. Simpson
This is news? A fairly closed off and socially inept social subgroup can turn off normal people from wanting to be a part of it?
Where are the tears for average guys looking to educate themselves receiving derision from holier-than-thou geeks? This isn't so much a gender issue as it is a problem endemic to geek culture: Perceived superiority due to an established knowledge base. You see the same behavior from informed body-builders, laughing at skinny people who express an interest in exercise but don't know where to start.
This is a fearsomely difficult and touchy topic... for what it's worth, here's what I believe.
There is meaningful bias against females in parts of tech culture. There is also meaningful bias against geeks in parts of female culture, as gurps_npc notes. Doesn't excuse either bias. Gets into philosophical hierarchy/expectation/etc issues I suppose.
Some of the worst cases of anti-female bias I've seen have been driven by other females. I'm not sure what that means.
Men and women are socialized significantly differently.
Men and women are biologically different. There is meaningful evidence that men are simply drawn more strongly to technology (I'll phrase it in terms of interest, rather than aptitude, but that's another variable we should consider). Since men and women *are* different, we shouldn't necessarily expect males and females to be present in equal numbers in technology fields. But we shouldn't use sex differences as an excuse for anti-female biases.
We'd all benefit if participation in tech fields (as well as the rest of society) was wholly meritocratic. It's definitely not right now. I believe females do tend to get unfairly marginalized by some parts of tech culture.
I thought this was an interesting take on sex differences, which could perhaps be applied to explore differences of participation in technology fields.
Err, whilst there is nothing personality-wise that is displayed by one gender and is found nowhere in the other, there are definitely traits more common in one than the other.
Males are more likely to take risks and indulge in competition (testosterone does that). It's just a fact of life.
I don't know if that behaviour is linked to liklihood to be good at software/IT, but it's a perfectly valid example of a personality difference between the genders.
Berners-Lee said that a culture that avoided alienating women would attract more female programmers, which could lead to greater harmony of systems design. "If there were more women involved we could move towards interoperability. We have to change at every level," he said.
That seems like an awfully stereotypical and biased view of female programmers on the part of Tim Berners-Lee.
You can have all the IT skills in the world (which I do :P) but that doesn't get you into the old boys club.
Men treat all competitors equally; if they think they can dominate you then they will try to dominate. If they don't think they can dominate you, then they give you respect and work with you in a partnership. Unfortunately for women, navigating this kind of environment is often counter to their natural biology and inclinations so the common outcome is that women make easy targets to be competitively dominated. They aren't being singled out for being women; men treat other men the same.
Bullshit.
Research has shown that when a women shows the same behavior that is supposedly prized in men, than she's labeled a "bitch" and the like, and continues to be on the receiving end of discrimination, just of a different sort. The actions are the same, they're just perceived differently because of who they're coming from. Apparently, So as a result, it's damned it you do, damned if you don't.
"You know your god is man-made when he hates all the same people you do."
Join the club. I get the same feeling. But is it just paranoia? Do you know why or do you just assume its because you're a woman? We have many women at my work place, and they are treated the same as male coworkers. In my case, its because of who I was associate with, my initial work at the company, and my relative lack of experience. Plus I talked too much and listened too little. If you think you're hot shit and show it, then likely people aren't going to take you seriously, male or female.
And then when I do great work, they all try to get their hand in the pot and take credit for things I did, which frustrates me to no end. A male co-worker actually got a promotion which seemed to me (from the little congratulations email went out describing all his wonderful accomplishments), mostly based on MY work. And did I get a promotion? Nope. And when I do, I'll still be at a lower level than most because my raise will be based on a percentage of what I currently make which apparently was pretty low compared to my male counterparts.Welcome to the reality of office politics. This happens to men just as much. Opportunists will take advantage of your work to promote themselves. They're in every office, and you have to deal with it. Happens in my office, and in pretty much every large group I've been in. Its not a male or female thing. Why should you be any different than the males that don't get credit for their work?
And then there's this whole thing all women have to deal with at work that being aggressive = bitch. And I feel like whenever I try to get other people's names detached from my work, my bosses don't take it seriously and have even gone as far to joke about it infront of other people!Doing something like that is very hard to do without comming across like a snob, whether you're male or female. I've done the same thing, and its come across very poorly. You have to be political. What you've told me here is not indicative of a sex thing.
Furthermore, could it be that they actually did help on it, and you're trying to remove credit from them?
And whenever I come to work dressed somewhat fashionably I get weird comments, not compliments, they are actually making fun of me I think. What the heck is that about. Sorry I'm not wearing wrinkled khakis and a wrinkled blue dress shirt like the rest of you slobs (we're corporate so don't do the jeans/t-shirts thing).If I came to work wearing a suit and tie I'd get wierd comments to. People would either think I was looking for a job on the side, or they'd joke around with me about it. Why do you assume they're making fun of you? And if they are "making fun of you," why do you assume its malicious instead of gentle ribbing?
Yeah so the other day I was talking to a female in marketing at my company asking her what it's like there cause it's really not cool in IT.I haven't seen any women at my office have problems. They're all very cool and part of the team. But they also know how to be political, and recognize the political games for what they are instead of sexism. They don't get defensive when people rib them, and they give ribbings back. They don't automatically assume sexism.
Now, I don't know anything about you, or your work environment, so I may be talking out of my ass. But the fact of the matter is that your post seems to indicate that you expect a certain behavior and if you don't get that, you assume sexism. Maybe its really just the culture not matching your expectations? You can't expect the office to revolve around you.
True that the article basically doesn't exist.
Nice that your experience is not the norm.
However, the [non-existent] article does indicate some fairly widespread truths. I personally haven't experienced that at any company I've worked for...but I think that is because most programming and IT work is actually done as part of the bigger picture, part of a company that has lots of departments and areas where there is not such typical gender isolation.
Saying that though...ever been through your typical game company? I've spent a fair bit of time at a couple...and Oh My God. Sorry, but the stereotype is completely accurate, if not greatly understated. You do NOT want to be a woman there unless your skin is VERY thick. It's disgusting really.
But wait! Don't freak on me yet as I know some want to...
It's not limited to IT at all. It's been around a lot longer than that. Construction? Factory work? Armed forces? On and on and on. When men spend most of their time isolated with other men, they develop environments that are not very friendly towards women all too often. There is nothing special about 'male geeks acting stupid', men in general do just fine on that front across the board.
No Comment.
You just supplied evidence that his solution would work.
I work as a software developer, and being female, I'm *VASTLY* in the minority. We have 2 women, and 20-30 min on my team, and well, I don't know if they act stupid or not, but they certainly aren't accomodating of femininity in general.
I would say most teams here have at most 10% women...
WARNING! This girl exceeds the MAXIMUM SAFE standards established by the FDA for BRATTINESS
But that's because... I've barely seen any.
There were a million programs at my school to attract women to CS - They have their own special program as part of the college, study groups, sorority, scholarships, special counselors, whatever. There were still only ever one or two in a given class.
I don't think any women applied for my current job when it opened.
At my last job, I worked with two women programmers - one was competent and taken completely seriously by the team. The other my supervisor (also a woman) admitted to me was a worse programmer after years of experience than I was after a semester of interning. But even she was taken as seriously as she presented herself.
I'm sure the bias exists in some people.. but for the most part I don't this massive group of women wanting to go into IT and being pushed out of it by chauvinist guys. The schools are practically begging women to sign up.
I see a lot more women who just plain aren't interested in computers and never were. I know one who started in CS but was't really into it, and wanted to hang out with more girls and less nerdy guys (although the same girl married a CS grad - go figure).
And this at a school where the engineering department in general at least has a decent-sized minority of women in it.
I think CS still has a very large "hacker" or "hobbyist" culture associated with it - my wife admits to being intimidated by how much the other freshman knew when she first started - she wasn't sure she belonged not because anyone treated her poorly, but just because they knew so much more than she did at first. Most guys going into CS started building systems when they were in high school. Most girls... never did that.
How long can we ignore science and realize men and women do have biological differences in their brains. I don't mean one is smarter than the other, but they function with some minor, but important, differences. The sooner you apply what we have learned from neuroscience, biology, genetics, anthropology, and psychology the sooner we can stop playing this game of "man-hate".
The other thing to remember is that, for the most part, a lot of tech is open to anyone. If you have a good idea you can base a company around it. We have numerous examples of this. If your product or service is good people will pay you for it no matter what your sex is. No one is stopping women from creating their own culture, their own companies, their own way of doing things, etc.
This is the problem with the Myth of Exclusion. For some reason one group of people carry the onus of creating and maintaining the so called exclusionary group. Yet when supposedly faced with exclusion others will choose to complain or sit on their hands. This is the totally wrong way to look at things. If you perceive exclusion then go around it and create your opportunity.
And there you have it in a nut shell. But it may not be exactly what you think.
I recall that at Purdue, they went through one of the periodic sensitivity manias, and found that male profs were getting more money on average than female, and female profs were, on average, remaining at the associate (pre-tenure) level longer than males (this caused the first finding, of course).
The reason for this was not discrimination, but the fact that men who were denied tenure typically left no later than the end of the academic year, while females who were denied tenure typically remained for the remainder of their contracts, often several years. This meant that a higher percentage of the female profs were lower-paid associates than were the males, even though the males and females were denied tenure at roughly the same rate.[1] A very different behavior pattern produced very different average results to the same stimulus.
How does this relate to you? Your co-workers and bosses may have learned that they can steal your credit, deny your raises, and you'll stick around anyway, unlike your male co-workers. If that's true, they're treating you differently than the men, but only because you are different than the men: you'll put up with it, and they won't.
Ask yourself this: do your cow-orkers and bosses have reason to believe that you value security and hate change more than most of your co-workers?
Or maybe you're just lousy at tooting your own horn.
[1] If the study had found any evidence of discrimination, such as higher tenure denial rates for females or lower interview rates for female candidates, they would have trumpeted it to the skies. They didn't, because the departments had all learned to ensure that they were statistically clean, in anticipation of these Maoist self-criticism sessions.
See what I've been reading.
9- Periods induce insanity.
How is this a stupid male idea? It is quite common for my wife to come to me the day after her period and apologize for being insane for the past few days. Sometimes she even comes to her senses sooner and apologizes in the middle of an argument for acting insane because its that time of the month.
Any man who doesnt give a woman on her period a little space sometimes is just asking for a problem. I would say a better stupid male idea would be:
9) Why should I have to give a woman a break just because its that time of the month?
10- If a male manager/supervisor is mad at me I must have screwed up. If a female manager is mad at me it's PMS.
Now that is a valid stupid male idea.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke
- You are male
- You are aggressive and proactive
- You speak loudly, clearly, and fluently
- You speak and offer your suggestions without prompting
- You bring a previously unmentioned idea or approach to the conversation
- You only need to be told something once
- Your last project was successful
- You are unwavering in your opinion or suggestion
- You can recover from mistakes gracefully and tactfully
- You are not a whipping boy
- You have previous work credentials
- You have academic credentials
The more of those attributes you have and the more that are lower numbers, the higher your perceived value is going to be.Camping on quad since 1996.
I am not sure about the premise here. Do real programmers, the hackers in the old sense, like the "geek culture" of today? I can't say that I like it, or even pay attention to it. Geeks seem to be more into buying gadgets as soon as they come out and playing games than actually using and understanding software design and computer science the way the real hackers of old did. Do modern geeks produce anything like Emacs, LISP, UNIX, etc? Or do they just buy products? (I'm not sure exactly what the definition of "stupid" is, anyway.) If this is true, then even getting rid of male geek culture probably wouldn't increase the total number of programmers, since they are not contributing towards it in the first place. Maybe I don't know what a geek is. Do the creators of Linux, Python, Ruby, etc (where the real innovation is) call themselves geeks?
And wouldn't it be a survival mechanism to alienate people smarter than you so they don't compete in your arena? Sounds like survival of the fittest at work.
So, take a trip into this though experiment -- it's 12,000 years ago. Humanity lives in tribes. Yes, bigmen ( and that is a technical term in anthropology ) can afford 2 or 3 wives, but they have trouble taking care of them and all of their offspring, and also making sure that their 15-year-old brides aren't sleeping with other 15-year-old lovers when they're in their eighties. Let's say that 10%-20% of men never produced a child. Then, cities and civilization spring up. God-Kings have harems of thousands of women, guarded by eunuchs. Terrible despots like Genghis Khan sweep over whole continents, killing male children and raping thousands of women. Tyrant Kings like Herod order the death of all male infants. Whole societies go to war against their enemies, and kill every man, woman, and child. Suddenly, in a few thousand years, the representation of male ancestors in the population goes from 80% to 60%, on account of a few dozen tyrants.
So yes, currently, only 60% of male ancestors are represented in the current population. But that doesn't mean that 40% of men never had an offspring.
Computers are useless. They can only give you answers.
-- Pablo Picasso
"They talk at the urinals, they fart and laugh about it infront of each other, they tell each other stories about whatever girls they brought home from the bar, and ugh the worst thing I heard yesterday was my boss likes to go to the strip club and wear thin sweatpants so he can feel everything! (/vomit)"
And women don't do that? They don't talk about the size of men's dicks, or who has a nice ass, or their periods, or yeast infections? Please...
I was a school teacher surrounded by women, in very much the same position that you are now. Go ahead and TRY to tell me that doesn't happen, so you can lose what little credibility you have left.
You're calling men out for behavior that is ubiquitous, that being, when with a group of like minded people, you lower your guard and discuss more intimate subjects.
You're acting like normal human behavior is discrimination, because you WANT it to be. That's on you, not the (seemingly normal) people you work with.
I only go to buffets for the unlimited soft serve.
Men don't have to consider the possibility that they may actually get cornered in an office late at night by a woman capable of raping them, either.
There are differences. Men are built to take what we want. The better of us don't do it. But every woman knows someone, if they have not themselves, been victimized physically by a man. Period.
Everyone staring at a woman is not just childish.. it's threatening, in a very real sense. Just because we haven't been trained as men not to do it doesn't make it ok.
I'd like to point out the person who posted "fatbittervirgins" as an article tag, while presumably trying to ridicule the story, is leaving a pretty good example of the barely concealed viciousness that Berners-Lee is talking about. This attitude is undefendable and an embarrassment to the community. Grow up.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
And ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.
John 8:32(King James Version)
This is perfectly natural behaviour for a man. I will assume that I am superior and will take charge right away. Any evidence that corroborates this assumption will quickly solidify my position. If you disagree then it is up to you to challenge me. 3- Flavor X of utility type Y is the best ever. All else is heresy. ...and?
I use vim; see item 2. 4- 512 gigs of porn is a reasonable item to leave on the public network drive. I like boobies... what what the question again? 5- 80h work weeks is both sane and healthy.
6- Failure to do 80h works weeks is a sign of insufficient work ethic. No matter how much more you actually do during your piddly 40h week. It has nothing to do with my (the figurative me) opinion of your work ethic. Work ethics are for suits and grunts. The problem is that you are failing to show that you are obsessed with computers. You may even be subtly challenging my supremacy by hinting that you have a life outside of IT while I do not.
I secretly wish I had that life and will therefore attack you for bringing attention to this. 7- coding skills is directly proportional to Penis size. Penis size is directly proportional to Geek pedantry skills. full implications in both directions. no no no, coding skills and penis size are both accepted metrics for determining our ranking. Fortunately for women working in IT coding skills are the primary metric so you actually have a chance of competing effectively. 8- FPS skills are integral for all IT work. First person shooters are just one of many ways to measure your computer skills. In this case we are only measuring your skill at operating the tools. Knowing what to do with the tools is most important (see item 7) however an adeptness at handling the tools is also a consideration. 9- Periods induce insanity. There are a great many things in this life that may induce insanity. Yes, menstruation is one of them.
Fortunately women only menstruate approximately once per month. Us poor men are saddled with more constant insanity inducing biological quirks. For example, simply catching a glimpse of a well-formed pair of breasts can instantly wipe our short-term memory and cause a temporary double-digit drop in our IQ plus all sorts of almost random insanity. 10- If a male manager/supervisor is mad at me I must have screwed up. If a female manager is mad at me it's PMS. No, if a male manager is mad at me then he is an asshole. If a female manager is mad at me it is PMS.
This has nothing at all to do with the 'real world'. I am going to defend my position in the pecking order whether or not I have any valid arguments.
Now; it is 8pm on a friday night so I am going to play some LAN games then reboot into linux and then get back to work. (seriously)
I now declare myself winnar of this thread!!
Bow down before your geeky overlord!
While it can be admittedly sometimes entertaining watching the zingers fly back and forth, especially when one is cheering for those expressing a truth one believes in, I strongly believe that the oneupsmanship that is more common among men, especially Western men, I believe this approach is both anathema to many women, and not the best way to disseminate well-thought out opinions or inform others (or even to be funny). And as soon as any emotion is showed, or an appeal to balance, the very typical mockery ensues. Such a quick-to-argue culture is not a sign of healthy debate--it is a sign of partisan-infected, non-learning-mode immaturity and inefficiency that is sadly a part of the wider culture as well (we also are really, really deluding ourselves by thinking that our partisan system is necessary to democracy and the best way to find a qualified candidate--why do you think so few scientists get elected?). This is childish and typical of a masculine extreme. When I say masculine, this is an excess definitely correlated with many males (really, how many women engage in this kind of battling?) but this is not mutually exclusive of coexisting in society with feminine extremes either, so don't take this as being about women-good, men-bad and respond in kind).