Over on the Men’s Rights subreddit, elegantchorus has provided the definitive mansplaination as to why the apparent sexism in the tech world isn’t really sexism.
He starts by addressing one recent controversy: the lack of any female presenters at a press event for Sony’s Playstation 4. Sexism — or just the whimsical finger of fate?
Sony not having female presenters at its console announcement because Sony doesn’t have any female executives, MIGHT be sexist, but its more just coincidence … .
What a strange coincidence that is! Sort of like, I don’t know if you’ve ever noticed this, but all the popes so far have been men. Weird! What are the odds? Anyway:
[T]here is certainly great examples of women in leading positions in important tech companies. Marissa Mayer of Yahoo comes immediately to mind.
That certainly is great examples!
Yet people spent a lot of time talking about how sexist the Sony conference was, while giving relatively few props to women who have actually succeeded, I actually think that’s more sexist than anything the IT industry can conjure.
Yeah. I mean, Kotaku ran an actual article about that Sony thing. Yet where — WHERE!!!? — are the articles about Marissa Mayer, or about that Sheryl chick from Facebook. What’s her last name?
Sheryl Sandberg! That’s right. I wonder how Google knew that. I mean, it’s not like she gets much press coverage. Oh well. Kudos to the male programmers at Google for figuring out which Sheryl I meant!
Anyway, enough with the discussions of actual women in tech. Elegantchorus moves on to the truly important question to deal with when we talk about women in the tech world, which is: where are all the lady coal miners?
The complaints about apparent inequality are always directed towards jobs like Computer Science and Engineering but never towards something like Coal Mining.
You’ve got to admit he’s got a point there. I mean, why are these selfish ladies all worked up about being excluded from high-paying jobs that involve sitting on your butt in front of a computer in a nice office instead of the really dangerous ones that take place deep underground? Why are women more interested in good jobs than in not-so-good jobs?!
It’s quite the GOTCHA moment. I mean, feminists NEVER EVER talk about getting more women into mining, except, you know, when they do. And it’s quite telling that there are ZERO organizations devoted to expanding the number of women in the mining industry except for, you know, the Women’s Mining Coalition and Women in Mining International, and maybe others, I don’t know, which obviously don’t count because of reasons.
Why aren’t there more Coal Mining women? Is the coal mining industry inherently sexist? If you can’t take that question seriously, why should I take the concern about the IT industry seriously?
Seriously, what a ridiculous notion! Sexism … in the mining industry? Pshaw! Women have always been welcomed into the mines with open arms — and some good-natured ribbing! Consider this amusing anecdote I found on the Internet.
The women who broke ground as coal miners faced discriminatory hiring practices from the owners as well as sexual harassment from men who felt threatened by the demands of the women to be treated as human beings, equal in every way. Barbara Angle, a mining woman, said, “There were three women and 300 men in my mine. They used to ‘joke’ with me. “Hey, just set up a cot at the pit mouth and you’ll make more each shift than if you mine.”
It’s funny because women are really only useful as vagina suppliers to men!
Meanwhile, I’d like to add, while feminists sit on their butts and don’t do anything about the lack of women in mining, except organizing and filing lawsuits and all that, bold and courageous Men’s Rights activists have been active indeed in trying to increase the number of men in glamorous female-dominated professions like, you know, housekeeping. Selfish ladies, bogarting 89% of the housekeeping jobs! And 97% of the secretary jobs!
You may recall the chants that filled the air at last year’s Men For Crappy-Paying Lady Jobs rally* in Washington DC.
What do we want?
To be secretaries!
When do we want it?
Right before your 11 o’clock appointment, sir!
And besides, though elegantchorus doesn’t get into this, women are simply not biologically suited for high-paying jobs in tech, just as men are biologically incapable of taking jobs as dental hygienists.
As a Redditor named lbzip2 explained in a comment posted in the thread, women
lack the necessary attention to detail. They are simply not interested in it. Guess what, they have no place here, just like I could never be a historian or translator or lawyer or doctor, because I hate meeting new people. I’m not “enforcing” this or some shit like that, I simply accept that most girls are like this for whatever reason and I’m not trying to force them into IT.
As for those ladies who for some crazy reason actually want to work in the tech world, lbzip2 offers nothing but respect, and the occasional sexist joke:
I treat my female coworkers with respect, I politely discuss technical stuff with them if they feel like. I do make sexist jokes if I was able to get to know them sufficiently before, like any healthy male. They mostly laugh and if they don’t, I apologize and tune it down.
They mostly laugh!! So obviously the sexist jokes are fine, and probably not even sexist. Did you hear the one about the lady miner and the cot?
Yet some ladies bizarrely think that the deck is stacked against them in tech:
“Missing out on best career opportunities?” Well, concentrate on the fucking task at hand, not irrelevant details. Suppose I’d like to work in a fuckin’ bakery but hate that the clothes are white (which doesn’t mean in the least that they are clean). So who will start a crusade for me? If the circumstances of your otherwise coveted dream-job are accidental, try to change them. If they are intrinsic, live with them or leave.
Oh, and speaking of things that are stacked:
In my college class we had this beautiful girl with huge boobs. She was smarter than any guy in the whole class. Did we envy her? Did we hate her? Hell no. We respected her and we constantly tried to bring her in discussions for her insights. Did we talk about her body among ourselves? Hell yes, we’re no monks!
Boobs.
Boobs boobs boobs.
Booooooobs.
Oh, sorry.
Anyway, all you gals who don’t like sexist jokes at tech conferences, consider this: lbzip2 doesn’t like to travel!
Women consider sexist jokes repugnant in conference presentations? Well, I don’t go to no fucking conference, because I hate to travel, I hate to spend money, I hate the crowd.
Q.E. fuckin D! Male logic defeats weird lady feeeelings once again!
So, in conclusion, ladies don’t belong in the tech world, and there’s nothing whatsoever sexist about that. Also boobs.
—
*The Men For Crappy-Paying Lady Jobs rally is imaginary. The chant is real, though, in that I said it out loud a couple of times to my cats.
Of course I’m oversimplifying things. Speaking to economists working with government is hardly something I’m in a position to do. Like most people, I’m on the receiving end of the market-worship, and reading things that seem like dim echoes of the whole economic argument for letting millions of people die (ie. the Irish Famine) doesn’t improve my opinion of economists, or the politicians happy to be on that bandwagon. Perhaps it’s a PR failing, perhaps it’s the idiot media, but most of what I see from them is distasteful at best.
@cloudiah
>ableist BS
Go to hell tumblr downy.
Uhh, what? You’re going to have to do better than that to refute cloudiah being annoyed at your previously displayed ableism. For starters, you could’ve just said “go to hell” without he tumblr reference.
On topic — *sigh* commenting on how you didn’t ignore her despite her boobs? Sexist.
Today in “how oblivious is Argenti”:
Until reading David’s commentary I was questioning how, even by idiot standards, she could make more by simply sleeping, didn’t even occur to me that the cot here was not the sort for taking a nap but rather a “joke” about getting paid for sex.
Why yes, I am oblivious, thanks for asking >.<
I love it when MRAs reference working in mining as poorly paid, do they have no idea how much mining pays in Australia (a resource rich, labour skill shortage country?)!!!
$100k+ per year as a truck driver???
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/newsbysector/industry/mining/8979101/Boom-time-for-workers-at-the-mining-giants.html
It’d have been even better if nopestories didn’t fight accusations of ableism by spouting more ableism. (I dunno if you picked up on it Argenti, but what ze said, in addition to being a shit comeback was also totally ableist in and of itself.)
Nopestories, I hope you gamble on a fart and lose, douchebag.
I don’t know why their go-to career is mining. A much better comparison job would be garbage collection. It’s as male-dominated as secretarial work is female-dominated and pays comparably according to the site I found about it.
I can’t figure out if the “women don’t want to mine” poster has never seen North Country or maybe doesn’t realize that it was based on a true story? I mean that is *literally* about “women trying to mine, getting sexist crap as a result”.
All these discussions of female versus male jobs made me remember when I worked in nursing, and our labour union was going on a strike. We were in the same union as, among others, janitors and garbage collectors, who went on strike for all of us, while we in nursing (for obvious reasons) kept on working. You’d think the conclusion would be that our female-dominated job was more important than the male-dominated janitor and garbage collection, since we couldn’t strike, and they could, but MRA:s would probably interpret it as these lazy women can’t even manage A STRIKE on their own!
Not to hijack the convo, but on the topic of women in tech/”male” fields…
I JUST GOT A HUGE COMPUTATIONAL GRANT FUNDED!
…and back to work.
“Once people figured out that being a good programmer is actually a valuable and difficult skill, the menz took it over with straight-up sexist tactics to push women out of the field.”
BS and what would you expect from any phony gender think-tank? Men did not “steal” computer programming from women because they invented the entire technology. Women want to be handed assignments and be told what to do. In the early days of modern computing, these menial tasks were necessary given the primitive technology of the time.
If females had dominated computer technology instead of men we would still be using punch-cards (perfected by male IBM engineers) and you would not be able to post this nonsense on the “internet”.
*sing-song* Somebody is ignorant….
Please accept my humblest apology. (´A`) http://nstoriesblog.wordpress.com/2013/03/29/sorry/
David, you always have the perfect image and hilarious caption to go with your posts! I don’t have anything substantial to contribute, just wanted to give you props. Carry on brilliant regulars and ignorant trolls…
Nopestories, please feel free to make yourself useful and assist Uncle Elmer get his rageboner under control. I’m sure the two of you, working hand-in-hand, can figure out something.
>Men did not “steal” computer programming from women because they invented the entire technology.
Lol fuck no. “Ada Lovelace” ADA LOVELACE
But there is no point, i already argued this on /pol/ and /new/, white men will not even admit africans invented the piano. (mbira)
In case nobody wants to click through (nobody wants to click through) he defends his use of ‘retard’ with ‘I didn’t think that you all have family members with shitty defective genes, rendering them horrible freaks!’
“sorry” in this case means, of course, double-down-town.
Asshole.
It’s not that Gatling invented the “machine gun” to end war: he didn’t. He invented it in the idea it would reduce losses to the side which had it. Later he came to think (and wrote) that the cost of attacking “his” guns (he’d sold the patents to Colt, under a royalty scheme) would be too great for armies to consider.
It’s not clear just how much of this he believed. He was called a hypocrite, in his lifetime, because he kept tinkering with it, to make it better, lighter, more efficient (e.g. motorising the mechanism, so it wouldn’t need to be hand cranked).
The US Army kept it in inventory until 1911, and then the USAF adapted the motorised version to make the Vulcan family of machine guns and cannons.
Got stuck in moderation, think I know why.
To reiterate:
In case nobody wants to click through (nobody wants to click through) he defends his use ablist slurs with ‘I didn’t think that you all have family members with shitty defective genes, rendering them horrible freaks!’
“sorry” in this case means, of course, double-down-town.
Asshole.
Heh. Should have just refreshed.
Nopestories, fuck off. It’s too early for your drunk posting.
Unlce Elmer–piss off too. I see plenty of men everyday at work who couldn’t find their ass with both hands, a map, and detailed instructions for all of it. Kiss my gorgeous ass.
Nopestories is a total assbiscuit.
This op-ed at Wired may be relevant to this conversation.
I mean, the punchcards jibe?
If you know computers, you know that punchcards weren’t the real conceptual jump forward. You can program just fine on punchcards, that’s just an input system. That’s an inch, not a mile.
Switched from assemblers and machine language to high-end languages? That was a conceptual leap, and that was a game-changer.
And that was (mostly) the product of a woman’s forward thinking. (I say mostly because like many of the greats, her ability to collaborate productively seems to have been a big part of her success)
That article is really great, Dani Alexis. Thanks for pointing it out.
Men did not “steal” computer programming from women because they invented the entire technology.Elmer: Men did not “steal” computer programming from women because they invented the entire technology.
Ignorant Codswallop.
Ada Lovelace
Grace Hopper
Gertrude Tierny
No FLOWMATIC, no Space Program.
No Grace Hopper, no FLOWMATIC.
No FLOWMATIC, no COBOL.
It’s still the backbone of all sorts of serious (non higher math) number crunching. No COBOL, no Wall Street, no good actuarlal tables, nowhere near the ease of census collection.
No women in programming, the modern world looks very different. As in the PC you are blithering from required women, at the very outset, or it wouldn’t be.