Geek Feminism

Thank you for your honesty and self reflection. I really appreciate it. > frankly, I don't know how I can help it. Two things you can do are practice and self-education. Subscribe to http://geekfeminism.org and http://feministing.com. Reading those posts will give you the stories and information you need to understand the effects of your actions. Then practice. You won't immediately be able to catch everything, so just focus on the things that make you hesitate. Those moments when I think "maybe I shouldn't say this", I almost always learn later that I was right. Use at hesitation to do a little analysis of what the effect of your words might be. You can also practice in your head, or in conversation. When you're on the bus, think about things you said recently, and analyze them. Look for things that might've hurt people. When you're having conversations with people, think about what you would've said in that situation. Practice the analysis, and practice saying the right things. You'll never be perfect, but you can TOTALLY get to the point where you're mostly not harming people. Which is an awesome place to get from the default for men, which is harming people over all day without having any clue.

Here's a really interesting interview with the founder of Plover, Mirabai Knight, explaining how she got started and how efficient steno can be. "Steno is so ridiculously more efficient than typing every word out letter by letter that it’s possible to exceed the average qwerty speed in a matter of months, once you’ve got the phonetic system in your muscle memory." https://geekfeminism.org/2010/10/12/plover-freeing-stenography/

I think privilege is a better term than entitlement. Here's a great article on the topic: http://geekfeminism.org/2010/07/27/if-you-were-hacking-since-age-8-it-… I think a related problem is that this form of bragging is often rewarded (I've seen this myself for pretty much my entire life) because for whatever reason it's seen as a form of merit rather than privilege. I agree with other posters that there's some impostor syndrome at work here. (see http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Impostor_syndrome ) It is possible to catch up with the boy wonders, so we need to stop saying otherwise.

I didn't think the article was vacuous at all; the A-level and GSCE data were very interesting. And I thought it was great that you included a section on "why it matters". On the other hand, you didn't really disprove the myths. So a different headline and organization might be helpful, focusing on your core arguments: A-level choices are a big contributor to the lack of women in computing; the number of women choosing math IT implies that it's not aversion to technology or math; GSCE and A-level scores imply that it's not a matter of ability. Then design your graphs to show that more clearly. And it would have been helpful to include references to other data supporting these points -- there's bunches of references at http://geekfeminism.org/2010/05/31/ask-a-geek-feminist-the-definitive-…

we had a conversation on the geekfeminism blog a while back about the issue of not talking about the bad stuff in tech - you might find it insightful, in terms of how some women who are in tech, and have deal with this shit, think about it: http://geekfeminism.org/2010/06/10/dont-mention-the-war/

Agree 100% with that post... and I'd urge folk to follow the links and read some of the underlying tweets that started this whole thing off. I'm gonna take the liberty of copy and pasting something I wrote on the other thread about this since I think it's relevant to what Avdi said: ---- There's some text up on the main http://2013.britruby.com/ - among other things it says: "We at Brit Ruby were well aware of this fundamental and important issue. This was one of the reasons why we encouraged everyone to submit a speaker proposal. Sadly, BritRuby was used as the arena to air these issues on Twitter and this has fundamentally destroyed any chance we had of addressing these issues. Instead the community should have worked together and allowed us to bring these issues to light at the conference. How can the community address these issues if every time someone tries they are shot down and accused of such awful things? " I really feel for the organisers. Organising conferences is a bloody hard and often thankless task. But when you're aware of the problems with sex and technology conferences - and when their are numerous examples of previous similar shit storms - doesn't putting out a male-only speaker list just seem a tad... sub-optimal? In the last year or so I've been to about a dozen technical conferences and events in the UK, mainland Europe and the US. The only ones that didn't have female speakers were the ones with only 1-3 speakers. I can tell by the quality of the…

> Are women really put off of computing because [people use male pronouns for programmers, assuming they're male]? This doesn't need to be a hypothetical question. You could find a woman programmer and ask her. (A woman might even chime in on this thread, although given the ridiculous level of toxicity on this thread, if I were anything other than a het cis white man, I'd be staying the hell away from here.) Or you could even Google it, and find some woman programmers talking about this. Here are a few references to get you started. https://geekfeminism.org/tag/pronouns/

To give a little context, it reads: > We will not act on complaints regarding: ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’ This was taken from http://geekfeminism.org/about/code-of-conduct/ with one omission: > The Geek Feminism Anti-Abuse Team will not act on complaints regarding: ‘Reverse’ -isms, including ‘reverse racism,’ ‘reverse sexism,’ and ‘cisphobia’ (because these things don’t exist) I'd agree that the reverse-isms do not exist. Sexism is sexism no matter who it affects. But it is not clear to me if the text should be interpreted this way...

Yes, definitely. This is a common hypothesis, and it gets some study. See, for instance, http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Women_Don't_Ask http://geekfeminism.org/2011/06/17/quick-hit-one-reason-women-make-les… http://fdiv.net/2012/01/20/pseudo-science-and-pseudo-feminism-women-do… There is both the possible cause of women being socially conditioned (or biologically wired, or whatever causes this) to be less confrontational, and the possible cause of women finding it riskier / being in worse negotiating positions for structural-inequality reasons.

Something like this became a bit of a meme. http://geekfeminism.org/2009/11/29/questioning-the-merit-of-meritocrac…

> But that safe space shouldn't be at the expense of diversity in the workplace (hired on merit) What's your opinion on affirmative action? > or online public spaces (where everyone should be treated with respect regardless of the merit metric). This is bullshit. I have told one person on this site that I hoped that they died in terrible pain and that it took years because I meant it. Their opinion was vile and I would have said it to their face if they had been in front of me when they said it. Social opprobrium is a tool. There are people whose views I find abhorrent, who I hate and detest, personally. For a feminist perspective on this see the below link. http://geekfeminism.org/2013/09/05/tone-policing-a-tool-for-protecting…

I sense some antagonism on your part against Women In Tech groups. Here's a piece about how they are actually useful http://geekfeminism.org/2014/03/04/in-defense-of-women-in-tech-wit-gro… (Also all of those things would work, if men were negatively affected by our current patriarchy in the same way as women are in tech, which they aren't.)

It creates a sexualized environment, here's a good article: http://geekfeminism.org/2012/10/01/when-sex-and-porn-are-on-topic-at-c… It's hard to understand the "hero" feeling unless you've been quiet and avoided speaking out on similar (and often bigger) events. It feels good to stand up for your fellow females and community, even if you get negative public attention for it. I think more things big and small should be addressed so that it never leads to a "real" abusive environment again (As an aside, you don't get to decide what is a "real, abusive situation").

These two posts from actual successes building more gender balanced tech conferences will give a better perspective on the core issue (gender and ethnic diversity): "Beating the Odds — How We got 25% Women Speakers for JSConf EU 2012" http://2012.jsconf.eu/2012/09/17/beating-the-odds-how-we-got-25-percen… They were themselves inspired by: "How I Got 50% Women Speakers at My Tech Conference" http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women-speakers-at-my-t… To summarize, it takes lot of effort and thought. But it's totally doable with outreach + anonymization.

There are! http://geekfeminism.org/tag/wear-and-share-star-wars-day/ The problem appears to be the social backlash little girls face if they like those things.

Good Old Games had a booth with "booth grandmas" handing out cookies at PAX 2011. http://geekfeminism.org/2011/08/28/booth-grandmas-at-pax-prime-2011/ I'm OK with this :)

You should read her blog post on the issue - http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/13/on-being-harassed-a-little-gf-histo… It's a lot more than one email. It's a pattern of harassment by multiple people that's gone on for years.

I pointed this out to another poster: http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/11/online-harassment-as-a-daily-hazard…

I think you should read the full post: http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/13/on-being-harassed-a-little-gf-histo… It wasn't just emails, it was a sustain campaign of public comments on blogs and videos. Other colleagues received phonecalls to their workplaces making accusations about child pornography. The harassment was affecting her ability to do her day job.

Here is the direct link to the blog post referenced on itwire.com: http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/13/on-being-harassed-a-little-gf-histo…

A number of women have been beaten, raped and/or murdered by men making identical noises. MikeeUSA wasn't trolling, he was threatening to murder those women he was stalking, and justifying it. As MikeeUSA himself wrote: > The women of the "geek feminism" movement will be just as effective at excising men from the movement as Nina was at systematically destroying Hans Reiser's life untill he saw no reason, nothing left in his life, that could hold him back from striking back. Hans was convicted in 2008 of murdering his wife Nina. MikeeUSA is saying categorically that Nina deserved to die, just like MikeeUSA's targets. http://geekfeminism.org/2011/10/13/on-being-harassed-a-little-gf-histo…

What was once risque is now corporate and stale, such is the way of things. Meanwhile innovators are shaking it up, take the Good Old Games parody on booth babes at PAX - grandmas handing out cookies: http://geekfeminism.org/2011/08/28/booth-grandmas-at-pax-prime-2011/ Good opportunity for startups to get attention - do something interesting and different. That's probably where the "booth babes" concept started to begin with.

Too short an article. That particular quote was called out and discussed here when the Khan Academy article was discussed previously. It's a certain mindset that thinks this way. It reminds me of another discussion here where some people and a supporting article (http://geekfeminism.org/2010/08/10/restore-meritocracy-in-cs-with-an-o… argued that it is unfair that some students have previous experience programming when they enter a CS program, therefore classes should be done in obscure (and thus pretty useless) languages that no one has heard of, in order to equally handicap everyone.

Have you seen this article? http://geekfeminism.org/2010/08/10/restore-meritocracy-in-cs-with-an-o… One way teachers can even the CS 101 playing field is by doing something totally different than what the kids taught themselves or learned in high school (which is probably object oriented programming, these days).

Here's a recent example: http://geekfeminism.org/2010/11/29/white-male-tech-startups-get-fundin…

First, that things have "always been" one way does not mean they should remain so. And "people are people" is not excuse for bad behaviour. People can choose to be good or bad. Second, there are a really big bunch of clear rules about how to talk and the things it is okay to say and think that are being worked out right now. It doesn't equate with talking "nice". I'll give some examples: - Use the name and pronoun and non-binary person requests you use, [1] - Don't ask a transgender person what their "real name" is. [2] - Stop Using Diminutives [3] - Do not say racism is over because we have a black president. [4] - Don't say #AllLiveMatter, nor that you can where whatever you want, nor that black culture is disrespecting women [5] - Don't think reverse racism is a thing [6] - Don't say things that suggest physical contact or simulated physical contact [7] - Do not say, “Hey baby,” or “Hi cutie.” [8] - Acknowledge your privilege [9] - Do not center yourself, tone police or victim blame [10] For twitter examples of people policing ways of talking and thinking ( but bearing that burden without legislative support ), see: and [11], and [12] for some examples, and see [13] for it beginning to happen with the help of law enforcement at the intersection with civilian-enabled speech policing. This is not fascism because this was created by the American and UK left, these are the same people who railed against Trump, drive changes in the civil rights and social justice…

> It feels like not too long ago a couple guys lost their job for making a joke about dongles and forking. I fail to see how that was worse than this. That was Joe Schmoe male developer, who it is acceptable to fire for the slightest of reasons, including making an innocuous joke that wouldn't be out of place in a K-12 classroom. The men who are the customers of this startup are the rich guys in Silicon Valley who are awash in cash and cannot be fired. The two are worlds apart, don't be under any impression that they mix in any sense whatsoever. Unfortunately, the first group (Joe Schmoe) is squeezed to the max by policing by interest groups like "Geek Feminism" and suchlike. Notably, Geek Feminism seems to have a neutral/positive approach to this Dating Ring thing (http://geekfeminism.org/2013/12/30/happy-new-linkspam-30-december-2013… -- the company is referred to as "Y Combinator's first all-female company", and no negative comments.

"... I would explicitly not be satisfied with a process that resulted in 100% male speakers. I would have stopped once we’d reached, say, 17 male out of 22 possible speakers (being pretty conservative, I think) and insisted that the remaining five (a cool 22% female representation) would have to be women." This suggestion is a bad one. It is blatant tokenism. Try this instead: http://geekfeminism.org/2012/05/21/how-i-got-50-women-speakers-at-my-t… Key takeaway: "The easiest way I saw for getting more women on stage at the actual event was to get as many women to submit speaking proposals as possible. Selecting presentations was done without speaker information associated with the titles and pitches, so I wasn’t able to “reserve” spaces in the program for anyone based on aspects of their identity — and I wasn’t interested in that sort of reservation system for this event, anyway." Telling people that an unintentionally all-male conference is "inexcusable" is an unproductive (and incorrect, in my opinion) way to address the problem. The industry has a diversity problem, but it's not wrong for someone to not take action to address it. It'd be nice if they did, though. When I try to get people to do things that would be nice, I never use that sort of tone. People who improve diversity issues in the tech industry are doing us a favor. Treat them that way.

I like this article because it points out women are also geeky and that it's OK to be geeky. Women just may tend to have a slightly different way of expressing that geekiness. You want girls to feel comfortable because you want the girls who are good at CS to go into CS. This is independent of how many women go in total. But since we're at it, let's talk about the biology arguments: http://geekfeminism.org/2009/10/17/how-does-biology-explain-the-low-nu… http://www.mun.ca/cwse/Cannon,Elizabeth.pdf according to the above study, undergraduate women in engineering showed comparatively a higher interest in math than men though slightly lower interest in engineering and yet lower interest in physics. http://www.cs.cmu.edu/afs/cs/project/gendergap/www/papers/ Through additional work CMU increased their percentage of women in CS from 8% to 1995 to 42% in 2000. One thing I recall is that women were not as experienced when they first got into CS and had to work harder. However they believed they had caught up by junior year.