My childhood best friend and college roommate shocked me by calling one of our CS classmates a "huge bitch" for not going on a date with him after they had lunch together our first week of college.
I've lost track of how many sexist lines I've heard, like:
"make me a sammich bitch, haha",
"don't be an emo bitch about it, haha",
"if we don't let people freely express themselves on the CS listserv, then this is a tyrannical school that has been ruined by feminists (this one after of course, a guy posted a several page rant about why women are bitches, 'haha')".
Also, let me tell you this story of two friends I knew who applied at a certain internet start-up on Market Street in San Francisco in 2014:
A was male, 21 years old, a stoner and business school drop-out with a portfolio consisting of a Java tower defense game.
B was female, 30 years old, with several years experience doing QA on computer peripheral drivers who had re-trained herself as a web developer and had a Rails StackOverflow clone and a Meteor KhanAcademy clone for her portfolio.
A got offered a six-figure full time position.
B got offered an internship.
Final point, I've seen so much elitist and arrogant behavior from MEN directed towards OTHER MEN. Nothing could be further from the truth than software being completely welcoming. Of course it's still a very good industry overall; it's by no means the worst.
"that guy was kind of a dick" is an offhand comment that just means "rude" or "jerk" and you hear it all the time from college age women when referencing the slightest deviations from their standards of behavior. It refers to the male genitalia in a negative connotation and is terefor far more explicit than the dog word.
It sounds like you're trolling, but if you aren't:
1. One wrong does not make another wrong right.
2. "Dick" is used as an offhand comment usually because it is considered less offensive than other words with the same meaning, like "asshole" or "piece of shit".
3. I agree that women treat men badly as well. People suck.
4. Imagine your daughter or mother being called an "emo bitch" because they reacted angrily to an insult. Would you tell her "well at least they didn't explicitly insult your genitalia?"
True but the two neutralize each other when thinking in terms of a running tally of gender-specific offensive terminology.
> used as an offhand comment usually because it is considered less offensive than other words with the same meaning
the fact that it's considered less offensive simply illustrates a bias towards the acceptance of gender-specific negative remarks or "putdowns" when they're directed away from the feminine and towards the masculine. This goes to my point that actually women do throw a lot of these remarks around but we've just learned to tune them out. If a man makes a 'putdown' remark towards a young lady in class which references the female reproductive anatomy then he's on shaky ground and theoretically could have to worry about a lawsuit, but not the other way around.
> 4. Imagine your daughter or mother being called an "emo bitch" because they reacted angrily to an insult. Would you tell her "well at least they didn't explicitly insult your genitalia?"
I don't know a ton about the word "emo" but I assume it means "overly emotional" and the word "bitch" is a gender-specific word which insinuates that she's not attractive. While I'm sure we both agree that such a rude and insulting phrase is a terrible thing to say to anyone it's still only aimed at the individual.
On the other hand when you use a phallus reference as an implied negative connotation then you've just made a sexist remark because it denigrates an entire gender.
If I had to choose one or the other I'd rather my mother or daughter be exposed to rudeness or insult before obvious yet normalized sexist remarks.
> A was male, 21 years old, a stoner and business school drop-out with a portfolio consisting of a Java tower defense game.
> B was female, 30 years old, with several years experience doing QA on computer peripheral drivers who had re-trained herself as a web developer and had a Rails StackOverflow clone and a Meteor KhanAcademy clone for her portfolio.
Unfortunately, that's how college kids talk. I wish they wouldn't be so crude, but the language isn't CS-specific. That women in general are doing so well in college in general relative to men suggests crude language on the part of college men is not a serious problem. In the professional world, that kind of denigration would be completely unacceptable.
> Also, let me tell you this story of two friends I knew who applied at a certain internet start-up on Market Street in San Francisco in 2014
I don't think it's reasonable to generalize from this anecdote. Maybe he aced his interviews and she flubbed them.
My childhood best friend and college roommate shocked me by calling one of our CS classmates a "huge bitch" for not going on a date with him after they had lunch together our first week of college.
I've lost track of how many sexist lines I've heard, like:
"make me a sammich bitch, haha",
"don't be an emo bitch about it, haha",
"if we don't let people freely express themselves on the CS listserv, then this is a tyrannical school that has been ruined by feminists (this one after of course, a guy posted a several page rant about why women are bitches, 'haha')".
Also, let me tell you this story of two friends I knew who applied at a certain internet start-up on Market Street in San Francisco in 2014:
A was male, 21 years old, a stoner and business school drop-out with a portfolio consisting of a Java tower defense game.
B was female, 30 years old, with several years experience doing QA on computer peripheral drivers who had re-trained herself as a web developer and had a Rails StackOverflow clone and a Meteor KhanAcademy clone for her portfolio.
A got offered a six-figure full time position.
B got offered an internship.
Final point, I've seen so much elitist and arrogant behavior from MEN directed towards OTHER MEN. Nothing could be further from the truth than software being completely welcoming. Of course it's still a very good industry overall; it's by no means the worst.