This.
Jeff, I understand that from your point of view you were probably trying to (1) use your soapbox to try to accomplish something positive, and (2) avoid reopening a really ugly Twitter fight.
But not crediting @shanley for the post of hers that you read and critiqued that had the exact same title and similar advice was incredibly inappropriate. No matter how good your intentions were, you have done something very wrong here and you need to show some accountability now.
FWIW, men in childcare do not face equal opportunity. Our young daughter has a male nanny. My husband and I hired him not for political reasons but because we considered him the most qualified applicant. I have seen other mothers say that they would not even consider a male caregiver for their daughters.
I imagine that boys/men interested in childcare are discouraged both explicitly by people they interact with and implicitly by what theyâve absorbed of social norms. (Our nanny was supported, emotionally and financially, when he switched from being a computer programmer to being a nanny. I doubt that would be true for most men.) I have no idea what the ânaturalâ (whatever that means) ratio of men to women in childcare should be, and I donât think that anyone else can infer it either for the current ratio. Ditto for women in computer science.
I disagree with you. I think everyone should speak up against injustice. A man shouldnât interrupt a woman to defend her, tell her or anyone else what she should be feeling, or claim to speak on her behalf, but I would hope he would say if he personally found some behavior offensive, whether it was sexism against women or men or any other sort of language/behavior not appropriate for the situation.
I think the role of colleges when giving grants and scholarships plays a big part in the lack of women and minorities in tech and other stem related fields. When your average teenager is looking to start higher education theyâre given options you can either take softball courses and get a degree or get into one of the harder STEM fields.
Basically if youâre a minority, female, or both you get shuffled to the front of the government/university money handout lines (whether they be grants, scholarships or loans.) These teenagers will often and very naturally take the path of least resistance and pick the âfunâ or âeasyâ majors. STEM majors are typically hard and are picked last. When the white and asian males finally get to their turn to pick a major the only money left is in STEM and even then youâre in for a GPA fight if you want anything more than a crappy loan.
Make no mistake, I am not against giving women and minorities help. Iâm just a realist about the side effects.
Why are STEM fields filled with white and asian males? Because 10 years ago when white and asian males tried to get into anything else they were told that they needed to pay full price up front or go work in fast food.
- If you see bad behavior from other men, speak up.
I see bad behavior here, now, from us, and it should stop.
As @berkun noted; @codinghorror appears to have read and be familiar with Shanleyâs existing work. Failing to even acknowledge it is insulting and a fantastic example of what men should not do.
We should not erase women and the work they have done for our benefit from this discussion. Nor should we treat our un-researched speculation about what contributes to a male dominated field as on par with the results of actual diligent study of this situation.
I also agree whole-heartedly. The article is way too similar to Shanleyâs post to get away without attributing anything to her. It also has the unfortunate side-effect of undermining many of the points in the original article, such as blaming our behaviour on ASD, which is insensitive and not really true either.
Iâm horrified by this post. All the recommendations come down to âtreat women like fragile, incapable childrenâ. The very notion that you are trying to root out (sexism), is exactly what you are guilty of. How can women ever be seen as equals if everyone needs to change to not offend their childish frailties (your characterization of women)?
I think you misunderstood. It sounded like burden of fault here is being put on men for doing stupid things involving women when drunk⌠even if thatâs not the case I donât think thereâs fault being levied towards women with the original point, even if itâs not blaming men.
Most people in tech donât have Aspergerâs⌠They have ADHD. ADHD explains most of the anti-social behavior of interrupting others, saying things without thinking, and so on. Aspergerâs is something far worse and much more rare.
Regardless. I donât really find the tech world all that appealing any more. Itâs just really not all that rewarding.
How? Where?
âThere is no mythical menâs club where it is OK to be a jerk to women.â
Is this what bothered you? Just replace the word âmenâ and âwomenâ with âpeopleâ.
Did people genuinely sit down and read both articles thoroughly?
It shouldnât shock people that the topics are the same, and some of the solutions may be too. If two people say the way to screw in a lightbulb is to turn it clockwise, do you crucify the person who answered second?
The titles are the same, and the articles both use numbered lists. Both authors seem to be playing on the same team and itâs ridiculous that it has to come down to bashing. Honestly, letâs just see a plagiarism analysis somewhere. Please. Then Iâll shut up.
Well, Iâm right there with you both, except for âWhat Can You Do?â #4.
I agree with it wholeheartedly with not fishing off the company pier as a personal policy (Iâd never date someone I work with myself), but Iâm also a firm believer that companies donât get to tell employees what to do in their personal lives off the clock - down that road lies trouble for everyone, and I would not work for a company that had such a formal written policy.
Handling our personal lives is something we must all learn do, as grown-up adults in the real live world where work and play sometimes overlap. If an office couple splits up and canât handle working together anymore one or both may need to quit, be reassigned, or be terminated. That sucks (both for the employee and the company), but explicitly establishing a policy you canât or wonât enforce is a lousy way to deal with the kinds of issues youâre trying to address, and creates real legal problems for the company if you do try to enforce it one day (the lawyerly phrase is âarbitrary and capricious enforcementâ).
The problem is that they arenât playing on the same team, and in fact there is a history of strong disagreement between Shanley and Jeff. Just check out @shanley on twitter to see how incredibly pissed off she is about this article.
For the record, yes I read both articles thoroughly. In fact I re-read Shanleyâs article after reading this one to make sure I was remembering it properly (I first read it when it was published).
Regarding plagiarism, I did not claim that the article was plagiarized, rather that it was very similar. If you want to see a plagiarism analsysis, then I recommend you perform one yourself, because it makes no difference to me whether or not you âshut up.â
How are they not playing on the same team? From my understanding their entire original twitter disagreement stemmed from the way content was presented, not the actual content itself.
It seems like both legitimately want women to play a larger role in the industry.
Letâs shut up and listen quietly with the same thoughtfulness that we wish others would listen to us. Weâll get our turn. We always do, donât we?
You clearly couldnât wait.
They do both legitimately want women to play a larger in the industry, youâre right there. However, the way that each wants to approach the problem is antithetical with the other. In other words, Shanley thinks Jeff is hurting the movement, and Jeff things Shanley is hurting the movement.
For the record, I side with Shanley on this one. Having everyone be polite and courteous in the movement is what leads to issues being dismissed. We need people to be loud and in your face, just as much as we need people to be polite and courteous. We need both firebrands and diplomats, a position which Jeff has disagreed with in the past.
EDIT: looks like I reached my reply limit since Iâm a new user, so Iâll leave with this final thought. Not everyoneâs role in a movement should be to try and change minds. Sometimes you need people to just stir things up, which is what I think Shanley does. Is this effective? Absolutely. The Stonewall Riots are generally considered to be the single most important event in the struggle for gay rights, and that was an act of outright violence.
The fundamental premise: Sperm is cheap. Eggs are expensive.
Yes, diversity is a good thing, but no one is stopping to ask why weâre doing this in the first place
Except for the researchers like those linked in the post, among others.
If itâs such a problem why is it that there is virtually no literature on it?
But the moment anyone dare suggests that there are biological differences in the way we think, and that that could potentially explain discrepancies in female and male-dominated jobs, you get crucified.
Because gender essentialism is a bullshit excuse used to suppress people. (Also, programming used to be a women-dominated field.)
Iâd rather not shoehorn people into a field they wouldnât feel comfortable in just because theyâd diversify it.
Nobody is trying to force women to participate in a field they donât want to be in, or displace others. The goal is to make the field something that wonât drive those who are interested away. Thereâs clearly a lot still to do. Jeffâs appropriation and dismissal of Shanley Kaneâs post (as well as Sarahâs) and discounting her voice is just one example of why women leave. Insensitive responses to the GitHub clusterfuck by prominent industry members is another.
Thereâs a difference between being polite, being impassioned, and being an asshole.
While often impassioned, Shanley is straight up being an asshole a lot of the time (on Twitter anyway). When has outright insulting people ever been successful in progressing any movement?
She has a lot of really valid points and she has been very articulate about them⌠but try to teach someone something by calling them a dumbass and they stop listening before you even get another word out. Give someone who disagrees with you a reason to stop listening and theyâll take that opportunity.
I guess this is kind of a Mac vs PC argument, in that thereâs probably no reconciling between opposing sidesâŚ
You seem to have some strange ideas on how science works. Itâs not, I take some observations, speculate on them, draw a conclusion and thatâs right. That is pseudoscience. Science is more, I take some observations, speculate on them, draw a conclusion and then test it, to see how wrong my conclusion was. Much more often than not, the answer is: completely wrong.
Now: you took some observations, speculated on them, drawn your conclusions, and convinced yourself (and tried convincing others) they were necessarily right. As I said, this is pseudoscience.
Do yourself (and everyone else) a favour: donât do it.