Women in Technology, Rise of the Anti-Movement(medium.com) |
Women in Technology, Rise of the Anti-Movement(medium.com) |
The next question is how to bring that about, and this is where the arguments bog down, because this is where most of the disagreements are really happening anymore. We can't "move past rhetoric" until we agree on how to move forward, but that agreement is going to require rhetoric in its own right.
Among what, fairweather "friends"? People interested in equality don't throw a fit when their privilege(s) are questioned.
"Just stop discriminating" sounds like such a simple phrase, but the truth is that it's loaded with very complex and personal issues and meanings. The biggest blowups we've seen recently ultimately reduce to very passionate disagreements about the particulars of what it means to discriminate. Until that gets resolved, we're not going to be able to go very much further.
The problem is that I've seen a lot of articles about women in x (and x is often tech) end by saying that women need special programs and mentorship and opportunities and so on; am too lazy to dig them up now but chances are good you've seen them too.
The other issue is that if a specific company gets accused of a gender ratio imbalance, they can point at the special program and mentorship and opportunities as specific things, but it's very hard to show that the company is being "be more inclusive instead of polarizing."
Haven't noticed it before.
EDIT: Introduced April 10: https://medium.com/about/8304190661d4.
You do realize that, without reaching out to me, and other fair minded, humanitarian and inclusionary men, you will never succeed, right?
If you care, offer up a bit more than tone trolling. If you're actually for equality, you don't just give up that worldview because someone on the internet was curt to you.
Why is feigned ignorance of a basic, well-understood word such a common approach to argument on HN? I've seen this many times now, where people seem to want to insist "problem X is unsolvable because you can't even define Y".
The questions I asked in that last paragraph are not empty rhetoric. Their answers have major ramifications for current debates: I chose these particular questions because they basically define the different sides of the Adria Richards case. Yet each side treats its answers as self-evident and takes that self-evidence as entitlement to act unilaterally, pushing their definitions onto others rather than attempting to achieve consensus. Is it any wonder that things get so heated in such an environment? I'm no more immune to it than anyone else.