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Is Sexual Harassment Part of Hacker Culture?
owenferguson writes "Valerie Aurora, Linux kernel file systems expert, takes DEFCON to task for poor sexual harassment policing. A nice followup piece to the recent Readercon fiasco."
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TITS or GTFO!
"Flyin' in just a sweet place,
Never been known to fail..."
Just when I thought you actually were making sense, you go and throw Daniel Tosh under the bus. Give me a fucking break.
What this whole discussion(158 comments strong as of the time of this post) really is are a bunch of bed-wetting 25 year-old virgins who actually believe that women want doormats and suck-ups who go out of their way to be yes-men, as if you all would do anything but piss yourselves if a real woman showed up at your doorsteps. It's basically over two-million horny, pathetic geeks competing for the attention of 5 homely women.
Guess what, sissies? While you are here telling everybody what kind of jokes they are not allowed to find funny, I'm out surfing and happily dating many women. Believe it or not, there are plenty of women(the most intelligent, in my experience) who enjoy a fucked-up sense of humor and will gladly appreciate you for having the balls to openly enjoy such things and be honest about it. If those geek women want to bitch and moan, then let them start their own hacker conference and exclude men. Hell, most "hacker" women I know are really entitled daddy's girls or mean bitches with overbearing fathers. Both types are in constant need of serious reality-checks.
As for you and your ilk, you are all disgraces to men, casualties of having been breast-fed until you were eleven years old. Please castrate yourselves and find a new life as women, since you are so empathetic to the sissy cause. Finally, a joke - What's the difference between Jello and an uptight geek bitch? Jello moves when you eat it.
-- Ethanol-fueled
The very concept that women need to be treated a particular way is a large part of our society's gender issues. Currently they are a protected class, both socially and legally, thus making them "more equal." At the same time, the PC crowd wants women treated "equally," and that there is some kind of magical gulf in treatment society has yet to cross.
We can either treat everyone with blind equality or we can accept that people are different for a variety of reasons, and as such, deserving of differing treatment. As long as we continue the masquerade that both propositions are fair and should be observed, we're going to be stuck in this middle ground where people are scared to make up their own minds or exercise their own opinions.
Consider the social stigma regarding infidelity. Here are the two common stereotypes: A married man who commits adultery is a scumbag, his wife should divorce him and take the kids. A woman who commits adultery had a moment of weakness or was driven to it by her husband and should be forgiven. If the man demands a divorce in the latter situation, the woman will in most cases still get custody of children.
The point of the exercise is not to punish anybody, it's to educate them as to what it's like to be treated like a piece of meat.
I know gay guys wouldn't enjoy seeing some geek parade around almost naked — who would? But I hope they'd be helpful enough to offer a few leers and catcalls for purely educational purposes.
The only bullshit is people thinking their own views of what is professional conduct should somehow be the standard of their workplace. You think rape jokes or commenting on peoples' tits are acceptable?
For the record, "off-color" does not imply "racist."
And see, this is why there will never be an equitable resolution to the whole political correctness problem. Because no one said anything about "rape jokes" or "commenting on people's tits," but that was immediately where you ran.
The only bullshit is people thinking their own views of what is professional conduct should somehow be the standard of their workplace.
Unless, of course, that person is a woman and the standard of workplace behavior is already "mellow and laid back" to that sort of joke, of course. THEN, naturally, it's not bullshit.
Anyway, I never said that I think any/all workplaces should have my standard of behavior. What I said was that it was demonstrably false that this "Sexual Harassment" political correctness bullshit is "women just wanting to be treated the same way that men are treated."
And your response actually supports that point.
Better than it would feel knowing that one is a semi-literate Political Correctness goblin with a twitchy knee.
There is an equitable resolution to this problem. We already have it.
That word. I do not think it means what you think it means.
Douchebags who think this is acceptable either STFU or take it to their private country clubs or deer blinds. If you really feel the need to express your douchebaggery on a public street, then go ahead, just try to avoid feeling butt-hurt when normal people point out that you are a douchebag.
Ah, except, in this case, you're the one being the douchebag, by your own earlier definition, by proclaiming that YOUR standards of behavior should be the standard for the workplace. It's inherently hypocritical.
Also, your assumptions are flawed. I rarely make jokes at work at all, other than snarky comments littered in my code. Your assumption that I'm one of these "douchebags" outs you as having an idealogical position, rather than a pragmatic one, on the issue.
The simple fact of the matter is that there is an inherent lie in claiming to be "just after being treated the same way" when the actual demands are to be treated better, such as in this case.
You can either be "Equal" or you can be a delicate flower that needs special protection. You can't be both.
that the author of this article is a feminazi:
From her web page http://valerieaurora.org/ ...
http://www.amptoons.com/blog/the-male-privilege-checklist/
A white male privilege checklist. Frankly, I wouldn't be surprised if she baits men to create evidence to back her feminist bullshit.
Compared to non-hackers, statistically, YES THEY DO.
Street intelligence vs book intelligence. Hackers have far greater street intelligence.
Social skills includes the ability to socially engineer and manipulate. If ordinary people had such good social skills why are they so easy to socially engineer, trick, brainwash, talk into doing stupid shit, etc? Ordinary people have the least social skills, I'd wager their social skills are so bad that they only know how to seek to conform, fit in and look like everybody else so they never had to develop real social skills which can only be developed when you can't fit in naturally. I'm proposing a hypothesis that ordinary people have ordinary social skills which don't apply to anything besides their 9-5 day job. Fitting into a crowd is not a skill it's a natural tendency which some people are born with more than others.
Lol. Sure. I would say that they have advance skills of affecting society, but the term 'social skills' has a widely accepted connotation for which your use of the word does not apply.
The people in society with the best social skills are the social engineers capable of manipulating the most people. That is the objective measure. Just being "ordinary" or appearing "normal" is not a skill, that's just keeping your head down. A skill requires you to actually use your social "skills" to make things happen rather than merely not stand out.
A better statistic would be to say hackers aren't socially connected, but in my life the most socially skilled people I've ever known were all hackers. They are the most manipulative, slick, adaptable people I know. It's no accident that they can manipulate people out of their passwords, being manipulative is a social skill and one of the most important of all social skills. Having manners is also important but you can get away with being rude if you're manipulative enough to make being rude cool.
No. These are human beings in a physical place in a society that has laws and expectations that will not be ignored by subculture (ignore it all day and you will end up in jail or fired or both). The reality of that subculture's dysfunctional facets does *not* provide 'reason', nor does it justify the complete bullshit you're spewing here. You're using the 'she asked for it' argument,
No I'm not using the she asked for it argument. You're using a strawman to pick apart an argument I never made. I'm making the argument that it benefits those who hate hackers and the hacker community and all it's members male and female to start a gender war among hackers. I'm making the audacious argument that this is divide and conquer. If you can't figure out what is going on then you need to read Sun Tzu and develop more advanced social skills.
You are implying that the victims of harassment had partial responsibility --- no. A naked woman rubbing herself all over the guy next to you is *NOT* required to accept harassment from you of any kind -- to assume you are welcome to the same without her permission is absurd. If you can't control yourself when you see attractive women, you need a psychiatrist.
When did I say any of that. Quote me otherwise you're being delusional arguing with yourself here. No one is defending sexual assault and in none of my posts do I defend sexual assault. I'm defending the community itself. If there are sexual assaults then kick the perps out, they damage the community by making the community look bad and by bringing unnecessary negative attention.
I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt since you seem to mean well but that post was seriously fucked up on many levels. I kind of want to tear you a new one but I'm going to try and refrain since you seem to at least have your heart in sort of the right place.
First, social engineering skills != social skills. Not even close.
We disagree on the premise. In order for it to be a skill it has to be something which can be learned and it has to be objectively measurable. Conformity can be learned but are you really saying that fitting in with the pack is the most valuable social skill to you? That is really the only social skill missing in the hacker community, they don't want to conform but why should they have to?
Actual social skills that actual healthy adults
Healthy adults is just code word for "normal" adults. Once again why is it important to be normal?
have are a combination of understanding the motivations of others and having respect for them as individuals.
Not every hacker has a complete disrespect for individuals. But all individuals manipulate each other. Watch apes or monkeys interact and see what I mean. If you cannot see that on the fundamental level humans manipulate each other then perhaps you have a lot to learn. Normal people manipulate guilt all the time, that is not seen as disrespectful but I'm sure you've heard the phrase "guilt tripping". Hackers manipulate more than just guilt and have the same goal that everyone else has, hackers want to find ways to get you to do what they want you to do just like everyone in society is trying to do. That is social skills, it's just the methods people use to get you to do what you're supposed to do.
If hackers use these social skills properly hackers can actually make the world safer.
People are not a set of walking stimulus/response sets for someone to manipulate.
Then what are people? Autonomous objects free to do anything they please? Apparently that can't be true if there are laws and governments, advertisements and corporations, churches and cults.
Instead of blaming the hacker for having a deep understanding of certain aspects of reality why don't you work with the hacker to change what you don't like about reality? Because blaming or attacking the hackers is only going to make things worse.
A failure to distinguish between the two is very common among intelligent, socially awkward types. Hacker types *are* socially awkward on average.
It's easy to distinguish between the two if you ask hackers. But if you ask government officials, professors, doctors and the people who actually run society they'd view you more as an object to be controlled. If you have a problem with that then maybe you should rethink capitalism, rethink organized religion and rethink government itself because that is where the culture is coming from and that is what produces the "social awkwardness" that you have a problem with. Hackers adapt to the environment they were in best, develop skills which you do not understand, and probably will never understand unless you actually become objective and study the hacker community without bias or labels or stereotypes of social awkwardness.
The thing is that most people in hacker circles manage to learn actual social skills at some point. Sadly a portion of them never grow out of the mindset that crude, non-consensual manipulation of others for entertainment or gain is somehow indicative that they have learned to interact with other people on a meaningful level.
Why are you blaming it on hacker circles? Your circle doesn't have these immature people? I've never been in any circle which didn't have assholes, jerks and immature people. These people are in every level of society from top to bottom. They are in every class, race and gender, yes there are immature females.
It's not just about safety.. It's also about freedom. Unfortunately, politicians love the safe-tards who they've conditioned to fear 'terrorists' or 'pedophiles' or 'rapists' around every corner. They're reliable voters. The definition of 'rape' has expanded from the original 'unwanted sexual act' definition so much that basically she can define it to apply to whatever behavior she chooses in court...and the law backs her play. People like 'mightymartian' are just the useful idiots who reenforce this stupidity because they've been so-trained by the culture. Perhaps they suffer 'man guilt' and want to 'prove' they're not 'like that' at every opportunity, even if it destroys another's career. Or maybe siding with big-brother tyrant just helps him feel empowered as a wannabe little tyrant in a culture that increasingly disenfranchises individual liberty and self worth.
In terms of the article, this is how 'cultural marxism' gets in on the ground floor of a given organization. The trick is to divide the population by differences and attempt to paint one side as oppressed by the other. If no such real difference exists, manufacture it. The traditional 'hacker ethos' is a strict meritocracy, so here feminists come in with the whole "where's the women, huh? where are they" trollfest. Feminism today is cultural marxism divided by gender.