because shooting first and asking questions later is always the right thing to do.
The Ada Initiative, while its heart is in the right place in encouraging women's participation in STEM, is going to garner a lot of resentment if it is interpreted (as it looks like is happening here) as the arbiter of all content which concerns women. That's unreasonable. There are people who see the current state of the "trigger-warning" issuing "anti-oppression" culture as a bunch of a concern trolls. Which, as it turns out, is one of the best social engineering hacks.
In the post-fb age I've reactivated my lj activity for some of those very reasons(geek understanding of social networks). I need to vent? friends-only locked post on lj. I need to tell everyone I know what I had for lunch? fb. Most of the ppl left on lj are still operating like it's 2002 anyways, fb has pulled the more content free lj users into its own suckfield. so yeah, fb++
transgender != decrying traditional gender roles. Most trans people I know are so committed to them, they get surgery, take hormones, and deal with the legal system in non-trivial ways. That sounds more like a shining endorsement, not condemnation.
yeash. weird. that's a total fail. transgender is *not* a relationship orientation. it's a gender identity, it ought to be in there with words like "man" or "woman". A trans person may be gay, straight, bi, etc. It would be interesting if they included the option to identify as cisgendered as well. Such as A is a cisgendered straight man or B is a transgendered lesbian woman.
First, the engineering gap is not hidden. It's extremely obvious. In 10 years of sysadmin/IT work, I've never had another female in the IT/systems groups I've worked in. I've worked in edu, consulting, high tech start ups. I have a BSCS and noticed that there were only 10 other females in my graduating class (out of ~100). I have also noticed that it is a very western thing for females not to be interested in CS/EE. I have met many, many Indian and Chinese women in engineering with CS or EE backgrounds. They seem not to have any of these "inborn" differences than western women have.
So what if baby girls like to play with dolls and baby boys play with trucks. That says nada about future aptitude for CS or EE. I am the mother of a girl, and she loves playing trains and trucks and thinks dolls are a lot of fun to throw down the stairs while yelling "uhoh, my baby!". Basically, even if the brains are wired differently, I don't think it's enough of a difference to make technical work a non-starter for all females. There are some advantaged being socialized female brings to technical work; such as the ability to enjoy taking showers on a daily basis. As a sysadmin, I have noticed that users are often relieved when I work on their issues, instead of the BOFH type who is smug and condescending in his treatment of users.
I am a self taught sysadmin, I worked for 6 years before going back to school to get my CS degree. I think the main reason why we lack distaff autodidacts is that they simply do not have the confidence with machines in our culture that males do. I remember learning pascal (yes, i'm ancient) and my dad telling me "Pascal?! What is that crap, if you were a boy you'd be writing compilers in assembly" when I was 14. If that's not one of those hidden sexist cultural things which undercut one's self confidence, I'm not sure what is. I have been a linux user since 1997, and have attended several LUGs only to be hit on, disregarded, or publicly sexually harassed when giving presentations (on vi of all subjects!). It doesn't really make me want to have a lot do with LUGs.
Another issue I have observed is that males are protective of their in-groups in a professional and scholastic setting. These in-groups tend to make up the talent pool which upon which future start-ups are formed. In school we had several group projects, and none of the males in the top 2/3s of the class wanted me on their team, despite the fact that I usually placed in the top 5 on coding assignments(in class sizes of 60). It was like the third grade all over again. So there is a lot of self-segregation taking place. In fact, I'm not even sure why I'm writing this as these threads usually turn into a misogynistic circle jerk among the dominant male in-group of slashdot (and yes, I've seen many of these types of threads over the years around here).
FWIW, I totally disagree with changing classes to be more "girl" friendly as TFA suggests, that's bogus. Algorithms and computational models were my favorite classes, despite being "dry" or "boring". Math departments didn't paint math pink to get up to 30% female (3x higher than CS/EE by most counts). It's a cultural issue which must be addressed. And you can start by taking down the pr0n in the computer labs(yes, there was pr0n printed out and posted in my undergraduate computer labs, boys will be boys, right?!)
OTOH, I've found my career in IT to be satisfying and worth the trouble. It has the flexibility and high pay that a new mom needs, ironically enough. Try finding that in "women's work".
I understand that/. is latently misogynistic, having read it for the past n years, but can we keep the mom-bashing to a minimum? Why is the word "Mom" used when "luser" is meant? It implies that moms are lusers, and that helps to perpetuate negative stereotyping about women in the computer industry. Also, it's a played out cliche which is no longer amusing. As a mom (and sysadmin), it's highly irritating/offensive to be continually confronted with this crap. Yes, most moms couldn't tell PHP from PCP, but neither can the average person. We have already have a word for the average person: luser. Let's not drag "Mom" into this. Imagine if we put other groups into this construction: "Package X is not for you, it's for [black|elderly|lesbian|midwestern] people". There is absolutely nothing in giving birth to a child which removes permanently one's ability to understand technology.
Slashdot Mirror
because shooting first and asking questions later is always the right thing to do.
The Ada Initiative, while its heart is in the right place in encouraging women's participation in STEM, is going to garner a lot of resentment if it is interpreted (as it looks like is happening here) as the arbiter of all content which concerns women. That's unreasonable. There are people who see the current state of the "trigger-warning" issuing "anti-oppression" culture as a bunch of a concern trolls. Which, as it turns out, is one of the best social engineering hacks.
In the post-fb age I've reactivated my lj activity for some of those very reasons(geek understanding of social networks). I need to vent? friends-only locked post on lj. I need to tell everyone I know what I had for lunch? fb. Most of the ppl left on lj are still operating like it's 2002 anyways, fb has pulled the more content free lj users into its own suckfield. so yeah, fb++
transgender != decrying traditional gender roles. Most trans people I know are so committed to them, they get surgery, take hormones, and deal with the legal system in non-trivial ways. That sounds more like a shining endorsement, not condemnation.
yeash. weird. that's a total fail. transgender is *not* a relationship orientation. it's a gender identity, it ought to be in there with words like "man" or "woman". A trans person may be gay, straight, bi, etc. It would be interesting if they included the option to identify as cisgendered as well. Such as A is a cisgendered straight man or B is a transgendered lesbian woman.
First, the engineering gap is not hidden. It's extremely obvious. In 10 years of sysadmin/IT work, I've never had another female in the IT/systems groups I've worked in. I've worked in edu, consulting, high tech start ups. I have a BSCS and noticed that there were only 10 other females in my graduating class (out of ~100). I have also noticed that it is a very western thing for females not to be interested in CS/EE. I have met many, many Indian and Chinese women in engineering with CS or EE backgrounds. They seem not to have any of these "inborn" differences than western women have.
So what if baby girls like to play with dolls and baby boys play with trucks. That says nada about future aptitude for CS or EE. I am the mother of a girl, and she loves playing trains and trucks and thinks dolls are a lot of fun to throw down the stairs while yelling "uhoh, my baby!". Basically, even if the brains are wired differently, I don't think it's enough of a difference to make technical work a non-starter for all females. There are some advantaged being socialized female brings to technical work; such as the ability to enjoy taking showers on a daily basis. As a sysadmin, I have noticed that users are often relieved when I work on their issues, instead of the BOFH type who is smug and condescending in his treatment of users.
I am a self taught sysadmin, I worked for 6 years before going back to school to get my CS degree. I think the main reason why we lack distaff autodidacts is that they simply do not have the confidence with machines in our culture that males do. I remember learning pascal (yes, i'm ancient) and my dad telling me "Pascal?! What is that crap, if you were a boy you'd be writing compilers in assembly" when I was 14. If that's not one of those hidden sexist cultural things which undercut one's self confidence, I'm not sure what is. I have been a linux user since 1997, and have attended several LUGs only to be hit on, disregarded, or publicly sexually harassed when giving presentations (on vi of all subjects!). It doesn't really make me want to have a lot do with LUGs.
Another issue I have observed is that males are protective of their in-groups in a professional and scholastic setting. These in-groups tend to make up the talent pool which upon which future start-ups are formed. In school we had several group projects, and none of the males in the top 2/3s of the class wanted me on their team, despite the fact that I usually placed in the top 5 on coding assignments(in class sizes of 60). It was like the third grade all over again. So there is a lot of self-segregation taking place. In fact, I'm not even sure why I'm writing this as these threads usually turn into a misogynistic circle jerk among the dominant male in-group of slashdot (and yes, I've seen many of these types of threads over the years around here).
FWIW, I totally disagree with changing classes to be more "girl" friendly as TFA suggests, that's bogus. Algorithms and computational models were my favorite classes, despite being "dry" or "boring". Math departments didn't paint math pink to get up to 30% female (3x higher than CS/EE by most counts). It's a cultural issue which must be addressed. And you can start by taking down the pr0n in the computer labs(yes, there was pr0n printed out and posted in my undergraduate computer labs, boys will be boys, right?!)
OTOH, I've found my career in IT to be satisfying and worth the trouble. It has the flexibility and high pay that a new mom needs, ironically enough. Try finding that in "women's work".
I understand that /. is latently misogynistic, having read it for the past n years, but can we keep the mom-bashing to a minimum? Why is the word "Mom" used when "luser" is meant? It implies that moms are lusers, and that helps to perpetuate negative stereotyping about women in the computer industry. Also, it's a played out cliche which is no longer amusing. As a mom (and sysadmin), it's highly irritating/offensive to be continually confronted with this crap. Yes, most moms couldn't tell PHP from PCP, but neither can the average person. We have already have a word for the average person: luser. Let's not drag "Mom" into this. Imagine if we put other groups into this construction: "Package X is not for you, it's for [black|elderly|lesbian|midwestern] people". There is absolutely nothing in giving birth to a child which removes permanently one's ability to understand technology.