Donglegate: Why the Tech Community Hates Feminists

[sufrommich]

Rather than attempting to discern whether Richards was in the right or the wrong, I’ve been thinking about why the issue blew up and what it reveals. Because it’s far from the first time this kind of thing has happened. The Richards incident and resulting backlash not only reveals the lack of diversity and presence of misogyny in tech culture, but the myth of meritocracy and the growing belief in “misandry” online.

Regardless of the nuances of the incident, the fact remains that Richards faced a gargantuan backlash that included death threats, rape threats, a flood of racist and sexually violent speech, a DDOS attack on her employer — and a photoshopped picture of a naked, bound, decapitated woman. The use of mob justice to punish women who advocate feminist ideals is nothing new, but why does this happen so regularly when women criticize the tech industry? Just stating that the tech industry has a sexism problem — something that’s supported by reams of scholarly evidence — riles up the trolls.

One reason for this is the growing popularity of “Men’s Rights Activism” (MRA) — groups of men who refer to feminism as “misandry” and advocate vociferously that men face more discrimination than women. Its popularity is growing and is especially active online on sites such as Hacker News and Reddit, where much of the public controversy around Donglegate has played out in the comments. Even sites like GitHub, where the PyCon conference code of conduct was posted, are not immune.....

.....This is why seemingly tiny, individual acts of sexism — like innocent dongle jokes – matter. Such “microaggressions” combine to reinforce structural sexism. MRAs and garden-variety geeks expressing similar attitudes may not be radical activists … but they’re radical defenders of the status quo.


http://www.wired.com/opinion/2013/03/richards-affair-and-misogyny-in-tech/

[Little Star]

1. I hope everyone takes the time to read the article. She did a good job of...

explaining in terms simple enough for anyone to understand. If they want to, that is. k&r

[Helen Reddy]

2. Recommended highly! n/t

[niyad]

3. k and r for a most important read

[zazen]

4. the Wired comments section bashes Richards yet again

Apparently, women earn more than men because they're pretty (but only in their 20s), and then when they get bored, they leave the workplace to have babies, except they use that money to go on ski trips, while many more men than women are in prison because men have to steal to have enough money to attract a mate, such that women are accomplices in male crime but aren't prosecuted for it. Oh, and we're all whiners.

I think that sums up about the first 20 or so--I couldn't stomach it further.

[sufrommich]

6. Those are MRAs. They post these

articles on their sites then attack.

[seabeyond]

14. and here you bring back all the whine to du, lol. it is amazing. sociologically speaking,

this period in our history is very very interesting. and damaging. hurtful.

[Nitram]

5. Well said!

Thanks for saying it.

[ismnotwasm]

7. And what's hard to understand about this?;

Men’s Rights Activism sort of makes sense in a culture where masculinity places just as many limitations on men as femininity does on women. While women have hundreds of years of gender criticism to draw from when dealing with compulsory femininity, men don’t. There are few spaces where men can talk about the impact that gender stereotypes have on their lives.

However, just because these points of view are equally visible both online and offline doesn’t mean they’re equally valid. Factual evidence simply does not support the idea that men are being oppressed and that women have the upper hand socially, legally, or economically.

I get that classism and socio-economic disparities profoundly impact men. That doesn't turn men into instant gender losers however, it doesn't take away male privilege. And it certainly doesn't give the right to harass, threaten, belittle and minimize the struggles of women.

What's ironically funny is some of the loudest objectors to outing sexist behavior just love groups such as Wikileaks and Anonymous.

[seabeyond]

15. we watched it play on du. what about the misandry. call a man a dick is JUST the same. k.

so, you want to ban the sexism to men and no dick posts. whatever. sure. but to pretend, even for a minute that puts men in the same position is not academically, intellectually or logically correct. a big elephant stands in the room that we are all suppose to pretend is not there. there was a man poster, i cant remember where, that said even when called a dick there is not the hatred. and that there is an endearment to it. that is what i have always seen, so to pretend calling a man a dick is equal to the hatred of a womans body part, when we hold the dick up as all empowering awesome is stupid.

[blackspade]

21. Men’s Rights Activism.....

Has to be one of the stupidest thinks I have heard lately.
This is right up there with the 'white power' and 'oppressed Christian' movements.
All three are built on the fear of loosing privilege.

And you are exactly right: "I get that classism and socio-economic disparities profoundly impact men."
I would add that these same disparities have even greater impacts on women and minorities of all stripes than they do on men.

[fasttense]

8. I think the horrible economic climate,

the rampant unemployment and poverty, the American style austerity policies and the disappearing American safety net is what is at the heart of the resurgence in misogamy. It's a horrible cruel world American capitalism has created. To succeed you need luck and a willingness to be cruel, heartless and completely selfish. Oh a few people get really, really lucky and are able to succeed due to their hard work, but mostly luck tinged with nastiness and cruelty will get you ahead quicker.

Men, who were once the only sex to hold power and jobs, are now competing for ever dwindling resources with women. And capitalism really doesn't thrive in fair and equal competition. It needs imbalances, abused minorities and slave labor to be fully functioning. So, men are looking for a scapegoat for the awful economic problems they are facing in America. They turn and blame the only other sex available. Much easier to blame women for being feminists then to blame an entire economic system that they created.

[LiberalLoner]

10. Please post this as an OP in GD as all should read this, great comment!!!!!!!!

[seabeyond]

17. throw in a dash of financial independence and freedom for women and i think you got it. nt

[blackspade]

22. A great arguement.

although, I don't think that men in core capitalist nations blame women specifically any more than other less privileged group.
Men will seek to hold onto that privilege (as do all groups) by any means until they are convinced that is in their interests to change.

Fortunately, there are more and more young (and old!) people who are increasingly aware of this problem and want things to change.
I think it all boils down to power. Men don't want to loose their 'power' over the world around them, not realizing that that ship has sailed a long time ago. The capitalist world system is set up to rob all but a select few of control of their lives in order to maximize the accumulation of capital. The sooner men are woken up to this fact the better.

[magical thyme]

25. ^^^^^this x100^100. And I agree that this topic deserves its own thread

I worked in hi tech for 20 years, give or take, during the 80s and 90s, into the early 2000s. I was not a tech myself, but sat with and talked to techies daily. I worked at a variety of levels, from contract admin up to a marcom program manager responsible for all the collateral for a 5B line of business.

Maybe it was because I wasn't in direct competition with them, but I was consistently treated with decency and respect by the techies, was friendly with many them, dated a couple, and so on. Regardless of their level, they consistently treated me like an equal and with common decency, whether in the workplace or on a date. (I'm ashamed to say that I was not equally decent to one very nice, attractive techie that I dated. I wish I had contacted him after to apologize...I used him ill. Not intentional, but still, my bad.)

My worst abuses by far -- and this included serious sexual harassment in the form of an office stalker (plus I witnessed an HR director being harassed by the CTO of a startup in the early 2000s when hi tech was crashing) -- came from the business management side of the house, along with my peers, with whom I was in direct competition. And a few of the (more insecure) men were absolutely awful (as were certain women).

[Myrina]

9. Thus has it always been in the corporate world ...

.... I suspect since "tech" is the 'most recent big thing', that's why women see the targeting more keenly. 50 years ago it would have been banking. 75 years ago it was law & medicine.

Every glass silo we try to break through seems to result in this kind of 'men circling the wagons'.

[LiberalLoner]

11. This is a great thread, hope lots of DUers read it!

[seabeyond]

12. “microaggressions” combine to reinforce structural sexism. deterring future women from speaking out.

Yet while all of these cases involved some sort of doxxing, they didn’t result in the same sort of laser-focused hate speech directed at Richards. It seems that’s reserved specifically for women who call out sexism. The misguided focus on whether or not Richards was in the right ignores the bigger picture, which reveals a well-documented pattern of women in technology being shamed, doxxed, threatened, and harassed when they speak out publicly against sexism.

Sadly, what happened to Adria Richards tells women they’re only welcome in technology if they keep their mouths shut. There’s a big gap between geeks and programmers, and MRA-influenced trolls, but this incident demonstrates what happens when these communities overlap. Just as MRAs vehemently protest the mere suggestion that men are responsible for social ills, technologists need to make it very clear that blaming women for sexism is not acceptable.

we see the same dichotomy on du.

[Orrex]

13. It's really fucked up

Far and away the most competent and capable person in my IT department is 22 year old woman, but she has to perform at the absolute top of her games at all times or else risk being taunted for being "just a girl." Meanwhile, her male coworkers screw up simple shit all the time but face no consequences other than "whoops." I gather that this is very common in the industry, based on what I've read and have seen in several jobs.

I don't have any answer to the whole thing, of course, but I suspect that it's another example of an entrenched group being forced by reality to give up some of its power and to give it up on terms that the group didn't select for itself. In other words, the group's hostility is magnified because it's doing something that it doesn't want to do in a way that it would have chosen if it had been given the chance. A joke that would have been fine five years ago can get someone fired today? WTF?

Well, tough!

The community was given the chance--repeatedly--and it rejected that chance. I sense that this is also true to some extent in a lot of science-related fields (hell, pretty much anywhere, while we're at it).

Some of it is probably the nerd-in-the-basement stereotype writ large. Some of it also probably results from keyboard courage. And some of it likely is due to a(nother) traditionally male-dominated arena being forced to wake up to a more diverse reality.

[RILib]

16. k&r also Wikipedia

I stopped editing in disgust after I saw several articles about women deleted when men with equal or less equal accomplishments had articles. Jimmy Wales seems clueless about this problem.

That is not the same as the viciousness of the attacks on Richards, however, and by the way, I think she was absolutely right in what she did.

The Internet clearly "needs work" to prevent this kind of attack as well as prevent theft or destruction of information. I am all in favor of people being able to be anonymous, but not when they commit crimes, and let's be clear about this, threatening another person with physical harm is a crime.

[seabeyond]

18. stewart had a guest on last night, wrote a book about womens part in building the bomb. very very

interesting.

stewart plays in the sexism that is just for "play" not to be taken seriously that allows this hatred and inequality to flourish. so though he is a good guy, and would not support inequality, i am sure, he is also part of the problem and not wanting to recognize would revert to the easy, "liten up, tis a joke". anyway, i regress.

last night, introducing the author and book he said, we know the history when it comes to the men, listing them out by name. but, we are totally unaware of this part of history, that was about the women.

since HOF started, we have had women in history brought in and introduced. their accomplishments ignore in history books. or flat out taken ownership by men. it has been very informative and interesting and an eye opener for me.

[FreeBC]

19. How is a dongle joke sexist?

It's a joke about a penis, no? It's not a joke about a female or the feminine anatomy. It's not a joke that degrades women in any way, shape or form. She overheard an immature conversation, not sexism.

I get uncomfortable when I overhear certain republican conversations. That doesn't automatically mean that the people having that conversation have trampled on my rights.

I'm sorry, but offending someone's faux-puritanical sensibilities does not count as sexism.

While I agree that Adria Richards should have been fired, the mob backlash against her is disgusting. But that doesn;t make her any less wrong for what she did.

[sufrommich]

24. This isn't about " what she did to

deserve it". It's about the horrible sexist backlash that happens on the internet and in work places when women speak out. Read the article and stop trying to make this about any particular woman.She had no authority to fire anyone,his company fired him and yet gets no death threats for doing it, this little fact is routinely ignored by those who try to muddy the waters.

[FreeBC]

27. I agree

She definitely didn't deserve the backlash. But I do think she deserved to be fired.

[redqueen]

26. It's not about you, or what makes you, personallly, uncomfortable.

From the PyCon code of conduct:


"Sexual language and imagery is not appropriate for any conference venue, including talks."


Deal, bros. Save your precious beavis and buttheaddery for your own back yards. The people who wish to evolve now please are fucking sick of it.

[FreeBC]

28. immaturity is not sexism

I don't think dongle jokes are funny. But that doesn't make them sexist.

I doesn't matter if you are sick of it. We all have to deal with things we are sick of. Sexual imagery is not by definition sexism, and feeling uncomfortable does not necessarily make one a victim of sexism.

[seabeyond]

29. he does when the penis joke is used to create a hostile work environment for women. men use these

"jokes" as a means to make the women uncomfortable in the environment.

[DeSwiss]

20. Man hates what he fears. - K&R n/t

[redqueen]

23. "MRAs and garden-variety geeks expressing similar attitudes may not be radical activists

but they’re radical defenders of the status quo."

Spot on.

Thanks for posting this. I hope people read it.

[FreeBC]

30. I'm a member of the "tech community"

I support feminism and I don't appreciate being painted with such a wide brush.

Posting on Reddit does not make one a member of the tech community. It's not a tech forum. Non-techs use the internet too. We're all using it right now!

Every community has a fraction of assholes. The tech community is no different. But the idea that sexism is rampant in the tech world is just nonsense.

Here is a much better take on the situation than the article posted above: http://amandablumwords.wordpress.com/2013/03/21/3/

[seabeyond]

31. Digging Beneath the Surface: That Amanda Blum Article on Adria Richards is Not What It Seems

http://www.technologywoman.com/2013/03/24/digging-beneath-the-surface-that-amanda-blum-article-on-adria-richards-is-not-what-it-seems/

When you drill into the details of the situation, however, you find that Adria was, on the whole, fairly reasonable in both situations. You could still say she was “overly alert” to sexism in these cases, I suppose, but this is not such a terrible thing. In both cases, she had valid points. Porn is too offensive to many people to be in a technical conference, and the XKCD-shirts do paint women to be stupid. Both objections are perfectly valid to raise.

Moreover, Adria responded to both situations in a fairly reasonable way. She was not overly aggressive or hostile. Rather, she explained her objections clearly and fairly. (I cannot say the same thing of the conference organizers.)

Amanda alleged a pattern behavior which, frankly, isn’t backed up in the post (at least not once you get past the high-level summary). And, interestingly, I also have yet to see someone else write up a similar set of issues. In fact, everything I see about people who have worked with her is fairly positive. Maybe there are a bunch of other stories lurking in the background, but I haven’t seen them: not from Amanda and not from other people.

Regardless, whether Adria has a pattern of behavior like at PyCon, it does not justify how the angry mobs of the internet handled it. We should speak up and have rational discussions about these issues; that is valuable. It is perfectly okay to object to how Adria handled the situation.

here is one less prejudicial.

[DonCoquixote]

32. sadly what happened is

That the tech field did have a bunch of men in it that thought that they were riding the next big wave, one that would let them stomp on the typical workplace, where the cheerleaders and jocks were helpless for once. That is why they did not unionize, and why they enjoyed what chance they had to stomp on said cheerleeaders that now had to give them respect. This was tragic, as the temporary feeling of power proved to go right to their heads.

In the process by the many tech ladies out there, many of whom were super competent, and did not want to take any shit from anyone, nerd or jock. Also, the jock execs had a nasty habit of using the tech ladies as a way of trying to emasculate the nerds, saying "look, mr overpaid smartypants, that goth chick with the nose ring can do better than you, and I can pay HER LESS BECAUSE SHE IS A GIRL!" Sadly, the it nerds took it out on the women.

Then of course, thanks to that Hillary lady that will be president in 2016, along came India, and the jocks and cheerleaders rejoiced, because now IT was once again a cheap field delegated to people who they could treat like shit, but the IT nerds did not realize that by telling the Unions and IT Nerdettes to go hang themselves, they had no one to help them.