Ah, the old "quoth PG" routine. You know, Paul is capable of saying things which are not entirely correct, and quoting his words does not immediately make you in the right.
What Paul misses, in this case, is that there's a difference between "laughing up" and "laughing down" – that is, laughing at an injust situation by mocking the people who benefit from such a situation, the people in power, and laughing at the people hurt by a situation. Laughter is a potent weapon against dogma, sure, but the feminist cause is far from dogmatic. It's a response to the incredibly pervasive anti-woman bias in the programming world, the workplace in general, and society at large.
It is truly unfortunate that Adria triggered such a shitshow, because I do think she overreacted, in a big and kind of cruddy way. But the unfortunate part is less that than the fact that plenty of people will use her as a symbol of how stupid feminism is, how humorless its advocates are, and how right men are to dismiss it as a cause completely. It's a damn shame. There needs to be a discussion about how messed-up our view of women is, and this is the sort of place to be having it. But because the first shot was fired by an overzealous woman, the conversation we should be having isn't being held at all, and instead we're reaching a group consensus that women who think things like this are an issue are full of themselves. Which is almost exactly the wrong consensus to reach here.
"Things like this" aren't an issue. Dongle jokes are not a social injustice. Feminists often do a good job of identifying social injustices and when they do, it's worthwhile to treat those injustices seriously. This is not one of those times.
I've heard from many women in the last few days that they are, in fact, made uncomfortable by the overt sexualization that happens in programmer culture. This comment on MetaFilter [http://www.metafilter.com/126184/Furore-over-sexism-being-ca...] made its point in a way that was particularly uncomfortable for me:
> Oh let's even forget code and the "fork" jargon and whatnot. Let's talk about hardware engineering. Male connectors? (those are connectors with sticky-outy-pins) Female connectors? (those are the ones that are receptacles for sticky-outy-pins) Genderbenders? (those are adapters you use to make one gender connector into a different one) You "mate" those connectors, of course. You might screw them. If you work in the underwater world like I do, you might have penetrators. Now you get to mate penetrators! lol! Sometimes if you don't have something mated to the penetrator you have to hack a way to make it waterproof just for a quick test so, guess what you put on the penetrator? A condom! (I am not joking, I have put a lot of condoms onto penetrators in my time, they are excellent quick cheap waterproofers) Also, did you know that in Australia, the world "flange" is slang for a woman's genitalia? Guess how excited I was when I found out I (female) had given 30 minutes of training to a bunch of Australian military men including discussion of mating the flanges on our equipment to put some things together?
> The tech world is full of "hilariously" sex-related terminology. When you first learn about it, you get a Beavis and Butthead heh-heh-heh phase to go through. Then you stop thinking of it as pervy and you forget it has a meaning outside of the work you do until someone has their Beavis and Butthead moment and giggles at you, usually in the middle of something you're trying to be smart and professional about. Most of the terminology I think was dreamed up by people (mostly men, because that's who was in the industry) who thought it was hilarious and now that there are women in the industry it's even MORE hilarious that they have to learn and use those terms regularly.
> I'm a woman in engineering. I'm one of the "cool" girls. I swear and I laugh at dumb inappropriate jokes and i proudly wear our (old, from startup phase) company shirts that say "when size matters" showing the different sizes of our phallic-shaped equipment. But I swear and I laugh and I wear that shirt in the small group of friendly coworkers with whom I am very socially comfortable. When I get the Beavis and Butthead chuckles from those I am not friendly with, it is tiring as all fuck. I don't care about the etymology of the word. I don't care how well-known the word is in the industry jargon. I don't care. What I care about is when I am using the professionally-accepted jargon, someone is giggling at me going "heh heh you know what that sounds like you're saying" because it is immature, distracting, and undermining to me when that's what people are paying attention to when I speak.
> No one invented "Fork me on GitHub" to be pure and virginal about it. Someone was going heh-heh-heh. And now it's "industry accepted." And now we all have to put up with everyone in their heh-heh-heh moments.
Me personally? I'm a young straight cisgendered white guy. I love dirty jokes. I like talking far nastier than mere "dongle" jokes, I assure you. I enjoy my wild and crazy give-no-fucks lifestyle.
The "master-and-slave" thing was mentioned in that MetaFilter discussion I linked you to, by the founder of MetaFilter no less! He talked about how a friend of his did find the terminology offensive, because he was black, and about how upon further consideration it was pretty easy to see why such terminology was offensive.
Does it bother me personally? No. But knowing that it might bother somebody else gives me pause, because I like to consider other people's opinions and emotions. It is not super hard to do! Listening to people is even easier than talking, all you do is stop opening your mouth for a while.
I appreciate your unnecessary sarcasm, Mr. Welch, but I'd like to ask you in turn why it's so hard to consider things that you do that might bother other people. Or to consider the very simple notion that some things are well and good to laugh at, but that laughing at other things dismisses and belittles serious issues that are worth not laughing at.
Yep, dongle jokes in a conference audience--and priggish overreactions to them--are a serious issue for sure. It's practically on par with nuclear proliferation and childhood obesity.
There was an instance where part of our team was going through a java object used to encapsulate paging behavior for our service. We had a user story that looked like it it could use it, but the paging object was too specifically designed.
I referred to it as a square peg in a round hole. All of a sudden two of my co-workers started giggling. "haha, get it? You always make innuendos like that, honestly hahahaha" I honestly wanted to throttle the life from them for a brief instant.
I am male. I'm fine with sex jokes, but what these women are complaining about is not the terminology, but the professionalism of the people they work with. They only think it's a gender issue because they only see males giggling. Imagine their surprise should they ever end up in an all female team, and it turns out -gasp- women can be unprofessional too!
> I've heard from many women in the last few days that they are, in fact, made uncomfortable by the overt sexualization that happens in programmer culture.
If straight guys in SF would like to get some perspective on this, imagine working 8 hours a day in The Castro in one of the more highly sexually charged environments there. I bet you'd definitely notice that. Being there also gives you a different perspective on what you thought were innocuous things like posters, let me tell you.
Do you want to be more explicit? Right now your comment is surely extremely convincing to people who know which environment you're talking about and what it's like, but will not help to enlighten anyone who doesn't already have the experience you're alluding to. And the people who do have that experience are probably already convinced! By The Castro, do you mean the neighborhood with all the gay people, or something more specific (a theater or bar, maybe)?
Heterosexual males can develop some sense of what objectification is like from the woman's perspective by figuratively walking a mile in analogous shoes.
What Paul misses, in this case, is that there's a difference between "laughing up" and "laughing down" – that is, laughing at an injust situation by mocking the people who benefit from such a situation, the people in power, and laughing at the people hurt by a situation. Laughter is a potent weapon against dogma, sure, but the feminist cause is far from dogmatic. It's a response to the incredibly pervasive anti-woman bias in the programming world, the workplace in general, and society at large.
It is truly unfortunate that Adria triggered such a shitshow, because I do think she overreacted, in a big and kind of cruddy way. But the unfortunate part is less that than the fact that plenty of people will use her as a symbol of how stupid feminism is, how humorless its advocates are, and how right men are to dismiss it as a cause completely. It's a damn shame. There needs to be a discussion about how messed-up our view of women is, and this is the sort of place to be having it. But because the first shot was fired by an overzealous woman, the conversation we should be having isn't being held at all, and instead we're reaching a group consensus that women who think things like this are an issue are full of themselves. Which is almost exactly the wrong consensus to reach here.