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Google-Supported CodeGirl Documentary Makes "Exclusive YouTube Premiere"

Posted by samzenpus on from the free-for-a-limited-time dept.

theodp writes: As part of our Made with Code and media perception initiatives," wrote YouTube CEO Susan Wojcicki over at the Official Google Blog, "I'm excited that we're supporting award-winning documentary filmmaker Lesley Chilcott — of An Inconvenient Truth and Waiting for Superman [and Code.org] fame — on her next film, CodeGirl. Until November 5 Lesley's film will be available for free on YouTube, before its theatrical debut in the next few weeks." Microsoft is pretty jazzed about the movie too, as is Al Gore. Decidedly less excited about CodeGirl is film critic Inkoo Kang, who writes, "CodeGirl, a chronicle of this year's Technovation contest, is just as well-intentioned as its subject. It coasts for as long as it can on the feel-good fuel of watching smart, earnest girls talk about creating an app, but with virtually no tension, context, narrative or characterization driving the story, the documentary grows to feel like a parent describing their daughter's involvement in an international competition. The girls' achievements are impressive, but you definitely don't want to hear about them for nearly two hours.

3 of 289 comments (clear)

  1. I'm upset because it's divisive. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As a woman, I'm upset because this kind of shit is divisive.

    Until all of this "social justice" bullshit really started infecting the Internet, we were all just coders. We weren't "girl coders" or "boy coders" or "shemale coders" or "heshe coders" or "dogkin coders". We were just coders. It didn't matter if you had a penis. It didn't matter if you had a vagina. It didn't matter if you had a penis that had been surgically converted into a vagina. It didn't matter if you had a vagina that had been surgically converted into a penis. After all, genitals have absolutely nothing to do with computer programming. Nothing at all!

    We used to be focused on the code, and only the code. But now thanks to the "social justice" wieners, we've been unnecessarily divided into these artificial groupings based on the flesh between our legs, or our sexual preferences, or our skin color, or some other irrelevant criteria.

    Let me repeat, GENITALS HAVE NOTHING TO DO WITH COMPUTER PROGRAMMING. NOTHING AT ALL!

    By the way, I'm a woman. Unlike many of the so-called "women" of the "social justice" movement, I was actually born a woman. I want us to return to the days where the focus was on the code, and just the code. Things were much more equitable then!

    1. Re:I'm upset because it's divisive. by Shortguy881 · · Score: 5, Funny

      Oh, are you so wrong. I use my penis as a third hand, effectively typing faster than any girl could.

      --
      Brilliance without wisdom, power without conscience. Ours is a world of nuclear giants and ethical infants.
    2. Re:I'm upset because it's divisive. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      experience gender dysphoria due to their body not matching what their brain perceives it should be

      Yes, but the salient point is that absent a birth defect or genetic mutation, the body is not what is broken. The body is fine. The issue is with the brain, and I've never seen any evidence of any "Trans" person having a brain which is physically at odds with the body. The logical conclusion is that the dysphoria is primarily psychological in nature, not physiological. A rational person would conclude that any treatment of such a condition would also be based on psychology, and that mutilating the body in an attempt to appear to be of the other gender is not a healthy course of treatment.

      there's no need to use scare quotes or imply that they're not real men/women

      Those are not scare quotes. Those quotes are used to indicate that the person writing the post does not agree with the contextual definition of the word the parent was using.
      Despite what many in the GLBT movement would like to believe, Gender and Sex are indeed the same thing. Gender Identity is not the same thing as gender, but all of our words which describe gender are based on the biological Sex of an individual.

      Maybe someday medical science will find a way to actually allow a full biological transformation. But there is no such process, and what we have today is at best a piss-poor attempt to mimic the biology of the other sex, and is almost completely cosmetic in nature.
      Bruce/Caitlyn Jenner is not a Woman. He is a man, who has had surgeries and hormone therapy so that his body vaguely resembles that of a female. He chooses to identify himself as a female, and personally I have no problem with that. But I am under no obligation to contribute to his personal delusions just like I was under no requirement to call Prince "The Artist" during his "change name to a symbol" years, and just like I'm under no obligation to treat this guy as if he was really a reptile: http://www.thelizardman.com/