*headdesk*

[tim]

From a closed-forum reply to this link about casual misogyny and othering in the tech community:

"Why. WHY does this ALWAYS happen in CS courses??

In college my data structures professor used pictures of the following to examplify members of the class "Object", over and over again throughout the course:

A Lamborghini Diablo

A mug full of beer

A flat screen TV

Salma Hayek

headdesk"

(By the way, when I was majoring in computer science at a historically women's college? None of my professors used such examples. Just sayin'.)

Comments

[ivy]

I just got into an argument about an upcoming party at DefCon, which I am not attending this year. It features busty female dancers who don't know anything about technology wearing little thongs that say "Pwn me". And yet, many of the people in my field are still baffled as to why there are so few women. What a mystery! Aaagh.

[tim]

Let's just start making a bingo card with excuses for this:

1. It's not sexist.
1a. It's not sexist because my Magical Man Sparkles say it's not.
2. You're sexist for bringing up gender.
3. You're homophobic. The "Pwn me" imperative was clearly aimed at gay or bi women.
4. Y U HATE SECKS SO MUCH :-(
5. Don't censor me!
6. You're sexist for thinking women need protection from sex.
ω. Any response that lies-by-omission about the power imbalance between women and men and the relationship between gender privilege and public mentions of heteronormative sexuality, especially as a way of informing women they don't belong in a space except as eye-candy or a way of putting uppity women in their place.

Anything to add?

[ivy]

Your ω is horrifyingly accurate in its descriptive power. Unfortunately, it seems to boil down to "I want more women in the field to increase the number of women that I would like to date. I am completely unwilling to change my frat-boy behaviour in any way in order to encourage the result that I want. Women, this is completely your fault for not being interested in computers." from a distressing percentage of the fellows who are my geek counterparts.

I personally also get some "but you're bisexual, you should think this is as awesome as we all do!" pushback. (Because bisexual is clearly the same as needing someone else telling me what to think and what to be turned on by! Social inequity that hurts people like me, oooh baby, that's so hot... wait, no.) I am reminded of the project meeting for the open source project that I was contributing to... held at Hooters. I complained about that and was told that I could organize it next year if I cared so much. I jumped on that, and the next year it was at (the mostly gay clientele) Hamburger Mary's. Somehow, the other guys in the project didn't get the dose of perspective from that experience that I was hoping to impart. It was at Hooters again the following year. Sigh.

[puzzlement]

I made a sexist joke bingo card earlier this year, although undoubtedly there's enough excuses to make a sequel should anyone want.

[tim]

That is great, I'll be sharing it! I think that "sexist joke" and "heteronormative male sexual display in a space where female and/or queer sexual displays wouldn't be welcome" are slightly different kinds of fail that yield different sets of bogus excuses, but the sets definitely overlap.

[puzzlement]

That's true, but yes, some overlap indeed. (Sexist jokes on their own get less "but if I can't sexually display whenever the urge strikes, I will never get laid and the human race will die out!" for one. Sigh.)