That the gender of names matters in correspondence reminds me of an anecdote I heard about two people, a man and a woman, doing the same job supporting clients or customers of the company. Their boss was unhappy with the woman's performance, because she took much longer to do the same work as the man.
Then, one day, the woman suddenly worked much faster and everything went much easier. At the same time, the man had a much harder time and customers were weirdly stubborn and obstructive. Turns out they were accidentally mailing under each other's name: the woman used the man's name, making customers much more willing to accept her expertise, while the man used the woman's name, making customers question everything he said.
There's a lot of that kind of subtle sexism in our society that goes way deeper than mere equal rights. How can you possibly control customers taking you seriously or not based on your name? Should all women (and possibly people with non-western names, who can run into similar issues) work under fake names?
Sounds like the kind of perfect anecdote that is made up to make some point. "accidentally mailing under each other's name" doesn't sound like a thing.
Incidentally, this kind of thing is easy to test, and indeed such studies have been done - I lent my name & image to such a study when I was a student, that was testing racial bias in resume applications.
In the place I work at at some point a customer support analysis was done and female agents got way more abuse, drive-by curse words, etc. It was like a different job compared to the men.
This wasn't because they had low opinion of women in tech. It's because some other speakers refused to attend if there weren't a specific percentage of women speakers but the organizers couldn't find enough to meet that quota. Still scummy to fake women speakers, but the motivation was not simply a low opinion of women.
> Hanselman confirmed that he was "duped" by seeing the bill including at least one fake female speaker. He also confirmed that speakers like him have rules for participating in conferences, including only joining inclusive speaker lineups.
> This wasn't because they had low opinion of women in tech. It's
because some other speakers refused to attend if there weren't a
specific percentage of women speakers
You raise a good, fair objection.
Maybe I shouldn't have said "low opinion". I don't know these chaps
and what their opinion is.
"Quotas" and suchlike certainly do those of us that advocate for
diversity - but confront reality - a great disservice.
> Still scummy to fake women speakers, but the motivation was not
simply a low opinion of women.
What I think happened (and maybe watch our video, please because Mercy
and Helen say things a little bit different - and why pay attention to
my words, written by a man, when you can see and hear what the women
actually have to say):
> but the organizers couldn't find enough to meet that quota.
Where I disagree is over "the organisers couldn't find enough". No
way, they could have "found enough". There's no shortage of smart,
confident women who have plenty to say about working in digital tech.
I've been in that situation myself as a conference organiser and had
to work extra hard to convince them that they would be taken seriously
and given equal voice - and could say what they want.
I strongly suspect what these organisers couldn't find were women who
would say the things they wanted.
> Where I disagree is over "the organisers couldn't find enough". No way, they could have "found enough".
It depends at lot on what the definition of "inclusive" Hanselman and other speakers were using. There are indeed situations where people are expected to have female participation that's well above their rate of participation.
This tracks well with what women in tech have told me: they're constantly bombarded with requests for them to speak. But they're quite reluctant because they feel (often correctly) that they're primarily being invited on account of inclusivity quotas like Hanselman's.
Sounds like a chicken and egg problem: those women don't want to speak because of the quotas, but the quotas exist because not enough women speak at those conferences.
"yes i turned my life upside down, opened myself up to discrimination, and took a cocktail of drugs that will actively make me dysphoric and also cause my muscles to atrophy, just so i can beat women in sport, despite the fact that the hormones i have been on for the last year have actually normalised my performance with women"
do people seriously think people transition to win at sports?
Doesn't matter what the original motivation is. Women's sports are not a venue for making males feel better about themselves, they're to celebrate female excellence and female competition.
a trans woman who had been on HRT for 5 years managed to qualify for and come second in an event, and later won some others, yes that is most certainly evidence that she had an unfair advantage /s
she was also in the ballpark with the other competitors, not the sort of far and away difference that you make it out to be.
Putting aside the fact that this is a convenient "and then they all stood up and clapped"-esque anecdote, scammers and poor quality outsourced customer support people working under names that are blatantly fake is such a popular meme, that doing it unironically is certainly not how you would improve customer interactions.
They do worse because they're constantly questioned. It's a vicious cycle that needs to be broken, and using male names seems to do that to some degree. Though not completely, obviously.
Oh really? We massively value women in cybersecurity because generally
their security model is better [0] - more diligent, more attuned...
but anyway, mixed teams are always stronger.
Hence "mixed teams are always stronger", because we can positively
celebrate differences and use them to our advantage. In the end,
winning against the enemy is all that counts.
That's not what I mean though. You make a sweeping generalisation based on the sex. For me, that's not far off saying 'women do worse on the same job'.
FWiW I was educated in the 1980s by a lot of talented people, a large number of whom were women, just to throw that on the table for fun.
Nonetheless, "We massively value women in cybersecurity because generally their security model is better" is an interesting quote, and within your link on page 18 comes the question of "what threats do you see online?" - good question as from threat comes the evolution of security model.
Obvious ever present threats are: (eg)
* Zoom meeting was hacked by immature boys in masks showing silly things they thought were disturbing.
* etc. (ever present threat of real or manufactured revenge porn, etc).
But this one I loved:
* The presence of my Chinese aunties online is pretty terrifying...
Being wached over by hyper smart(?) Mah Jong playing family members, the "chinese aunties" that are behind every major family social networking move and financial investment is seen as a "threat" - a limitation on what you can do.
You cannot disappear from sight - absence will be noted, actions must be masked by acceptable falsehoods that withstand scrutiny .. etc.
> The presence of my Chinese aunties online is pretty terrifying
Yeah that was the line that puzzled me. I see your point better
now. Thanks for that.
Indeed, some of the things raised from that PDF maybe seem "silly" to
me too. But then that's the point. "To me". What I'm championing here
is diversity of worldviews.
To parody my own (male) mind I might say "Ah, cmon, threats to an
actual gas pipeline are more 'important' than feeling gaslighted
online". But then, maybe I'd miss that the cumulative effect on 100
million people not feeling safe to participate online is actually a
massive blow to the vibrancy of national life and democracy.
With this hybrid-vigour (Rebel Ideas [0]) kind of thinking, I want to
hear all views on what security means. So far I've found that it's the
women in the room who seem way ahead in moving from the traditional
military metaphor, of perimeters and offence, and we're actually
seeing that percolating through to mainstream thinking that is slowly
focusing more on "Trust" and relational cybersecurity, as with the new
NIST report this week.
A classic early example of "Chinese aunties" online - eyes that watch everything and miss nothing would be the women of Bletchley Park during WWII.
Every known move of the Germans logged, every reported move was logged, every transmission (encyrpted or not, cracked or not) was logged. Cross references meta data filing was created on the fly to summarise and condences the known knowns, known unknowns, etc.
It was a master class in traffic analysis .. and with it comes the notion that to make it (in world affairs) you need to "fake it" enough that when you actually do something you have the traffic to hide behind.
I would also add that the largest group of sharp analytical minds that I've lost track off from my years in mathematics has been women ... and for the most part they've not been gravitating to kitchens they've been heading towards the five eyes groups, naval signal intelligence, etc - complex, security related, not overly well paid roles that provide national stability.
Appearances are important. But so is substance. I don't hang out with
girls that are all fur coat and no knickers, as we say round here :)
Regarding BP, as a Brit I'd love to do an episode [0] on Mavis Batey
sometime. Have you visited? One of the surprising facts is about the
extraordinary physical working conditions in the huts... it's
summer, the roofs are painted in dark green tar and camouflage, the
machines are kicking out tens of kilowatts...
I've not visited BP, I've been in the vicinity but otherwise engaged and don't live in the UK.
I did interview Bill Tutte in Canada in the 1980s when I was passing through though. I was getting a lot of referrals from my mentors when I was doing some work on the early Cayley, now Magma system in Australia.
In my wife's experience, men are generally less friendly to women in the corporate environment. In fact, as she climbs the ladder, she finds that the men are more aggressive and hositle toward her.
For her, she just wants to get the same pay and recognition as the rest of her group. For instance, she was the #1 seller of new work in 2023 in her 80-person group. Yet, she got a $10k bonus, while her male peers got promotions. (She's in the building industry, and there are only 8 women in her group).
Yes, this is surely the case. The more money and power at stake, the greater the likelihood that those remaining in the competition will be especially aggressive, as this is the trait that has gotten them so far.
They're sides of the same coin; both examples of people[0] not taking women seriously, not treating them as equals. The fact that there are cases where women can benefit from this inequality doesn't change the root issue: that a lot of people[0] still don't take women seriously in various ways. But especially having your professionality and expertise questioned constantly in the work you do every day must be extremely tiring and potentially harmful to your career. Does getting out of the occasional traffic ticket really make up for that?
Edit:
[0] I used to have "men" instead of "people" here, but it's also possible for women to take women less seriously than men in a professional setting. It is in fact also possible to take men less seriously than women in some situations, though that seems to happen more in cases involving raising children. In most professional settings, the common prejudice tends to favour men.
Unintentionally. I should probably have said "people" instead of "men" in that comment, because it's definitely possible also for women to take men more seriously than women in such situations.
I've also read about research that shows that when hiring, the people doing the hiring tend to be biased towards people who look like the people already doing the job. When they're white men, people tend to hire more white men, even when the person doing the hiring is not a white man and even when they're aware of this bias and of the need to hire with more diversity. And no, it wasn't because men were naturally better at that job, it was merely that the current demographic working that job create the bias, the prejudice, that they'd be better at that job. So clearly more diverse hiring is necessary merely to ensure that candidates can be judged in an unbiased way. Which is a bit contradictory, but that's the minefield that needs to be navigated to ensure everybody gets a fair chance.
You're missing the point of what I'm saying I think. The idea of 'equal' is a false one because things aren't equal, can never be equal. It sounds good to say 'equal' but its just not the way humans are. Neither men nor women are perfect. No individual is perfect.
Now you can force and harass people to do this or that.. but what you are doing is making everyone unhappy - people will be unable to act naturally and will never never be themselves. I personally think it is better to to let individuals be natural and a/ allow making of mistakes and b/ allowing for the opportunity of learning from those mistakes.
The idea that there is some known perfect state 'equal' is a nonsense - no one knows what this is - we are not gods in fact. Forcing others to adopt such an idea is certainly wrong though - we can say that much. Manipulating others, indoctrinating them will surely make people unhappy - men and women - for who can say what is right for others?
> I personally think it is better to to let individuals be natural
I challenge you to consider what you're assuming to be "natural." It seems you're implying not taking women seriously to be "natural," but that's simply an indoctrination you've had since childhood, apparently so effectively you're not even aware of it?
This is not natural in many cultures now and throughout history.
Ok: how would you have interpreted the comment? Rereading the thread, it seems they're implying that pushing back on gender stereotypes is to force people to not "be natural."
Here's how I interpret it (but note that I am not the author; I am guessing):
Let's say that I am a university-attending female, but even though I am attending university, what I really want to be is a wife and mother. (Such people do in fact exist.) Universities can "push back on gender stereotypes" so strongly that I feel like it's not OK for me to be who I want to be.
That is, you can push back on gender stereotypes so hard that those who fit the stereotypes feel like they "shouldn't" be who they are. Opposing stereotypes is fine; going that far to do so is less fine.
You're doing the same thing, presenting one thing as "natural" when there's no evidence for this belief that passes rigorous evaluation.
I don't think there's any reason "pushing back on gender stereotypes" should or would make someone feel uncomfortable expressing their gender however they choose - the whole point is to give people the choice to express their gender as they see fit. If that means by being a tradwife and mom, great, the important thing is that they get to choose that role of their own free will.
i'm missing how this is relevant like, at all? what with the context of the entire rest of the conversation, i struggle to see how you reached that interpretation
Obviously everybody is different. No two people are the same. No two men are the same either. But that doesn't mean that in normal social interaction, and especially professional interaction, people do deserve the same level of upfront respect and trust. At least until those are squandered by their own actual actions. But instead, it's, even now, still too common that some people get denied that respect based on prejudice about gender or race, rather than their own actions.
> Now you can force and harass people to do this or that.
You can set certain professional standards within a company, community, field or industry, but the issue in this example is that the difference in performance was caused by the prejudice from the customers, and that's not something you can control.
> I personally think it is better to to let individuals be natural and a/ allow making of mistakes and b/ allowing for the opportunity of learning from those mistakes.
But how can you do that when people are being held back from being their natural selves by unfair prejudice? And educating customers is hard to do when it might be a completely different customer every time.
> The idea that there is some known perfect state 'equal' is a nonsense
Which is why nobody is talking about that. I'm talking about obstacles that are needlessly holding people back, and about what can be done to remove those obstacles. Using fake names is an ugly fix; one that appears dishonest and doesn't really address the underlying prejudice, but it does mitigate the immediate symptoms of that prejudice.
I totally agree that forcing and indoctrinating is wrong, but what do you do if people have already been indoctrinated, and as a result are forcing other people in a way that restricts them both?
I can't really reply fully here, as my comment is flagged, and I'm accused of starting a flame war by even replying to this already charged story. It doesn't matter that the academic that who did the initial research is clearly an active and political academic figure - as I showed. That is fine apparently, but it is suggested that my comment here is wrong and I should simply not comment. It feels like only one side (not mine) is acceptable for a public airing.
> I totally agree that forcing and indoctrinating is wrong, but what do you do if people have already been indoctrinated, and as a result are forcing other people in a way that restricts them both?
Just on this point - can the right answer to dealing with indoctrinated people be even more indoctrination? Surely the answer to stop telling people what to do, live by example rather than endlessly judging and trying to change others for their own good, despite themselves.
> Just on this point - can the right answer to dealing with indoctrinated people be even more indoctrination?
What is doctrine? Wikipedia says,
> Doctrine (from Latin: doctrina, meaning "teaching, instruction") is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the essence of teachings in a given branch of knowledge or in a belief system.
Can people be educated without being indoctrinated? I say no, indoctrination is synonymous with education. Much like the word "agenda," this is a word that is being used to instill fear and distrust in the reader. I keep hearing politicians saying they don't want kids to get "indoctrinated" but if you read between the lines, what they actually want is for kids to receive a different doctrine.
Here's a list of observations I've made over the years that make this such a difficult thing to talk about:
1. People love to rank things. The moment you say two things are unequal, their brain is busy trying to rank them. Things are either the same, or one is "better" than the other. A lot of people really do see everything as totally ordered sets,
2. If your selection criterion is "person who is good at X" and your pool is a fair sample of society, the person you find is more likely to be male (because you'll get an outlier). But this doesn't mean if you were to take a man and a woman at random from the same pool the man is likely to perform better at X, nor does it mean the same person would be picked given (even very slightly) broader criteria,
3. If you tell people "you will suffer prejudices etc. due to Y" then they will attribute every misfortune, every unsuccessful endeavour and, yes, downright unfair, but unrelated, treatment (e.g. nepotism etc.) to Y and are less likely to think "maybe I should just try again".
I just find it really tiring to have these discussions now because you try to be reasoned and then find you're talking to someone who thinks we all fit into some neat hierarchy and can't see the massively multi-faceted nature of human beings. I also find that almost everyone is sexist (and everything else -ist) to some degree, especially a certain type of feminist. So when people talk about what we should be doing everyone is talking about a different thing (see equal opportunity vs equal outcome).
Then, one day, the woman suddenly worked much faster and everything went much easier. At the same time, the man had a much harder time and customers were weirdly stubborn and obstructive. Turns out they were accidentally mailing under each other's name: the woman used the man's name, making customers much more willing to accept her expertise, while the man used the woman's name, making customers question everything he said.
There's a lot of that kind of subtle sexism in our society that goes way deeper than mere equal rights. How can you possibly control customers taking you seriously or not based on your name? Should all women (and possibly people with non-western names, who can run into similar issues) work under fake names?