A friend of mine has a strange approach to tech, at least in my opinion.
She didn't buy a computer till 5 years ago, only used the library ones to write and print some documents.
Then suddenly she bought a laptop and setup Linux on it. Took her a few weeks, but she got everything up and running without any help.
Also, she had an old cellphone for years and then she bought a Nexus 4, rooted it and installed an OS of her choosing on it. It took her at least a month to get the thing because she never used eBay or PayPal before.
My girlfriend also rooted her smartphones multiple times when they got no updates anymore and installed Cyanogen mod.
Both these women aren't what you would call tech affine, if you interact with them on a daily basis.
Somehow they got rather complicated technical issues fixed without any help.
This really challenged my perspective on technical know how.
"This really challenged my perspective on technical know how."
A good 25% or so of "tech knowhow" is just thinking that you can in the first place. A lot [1] of "tech ignorance" isn't actually tech ignorance, but people who have for one reason or another simply decided they can't.
[1]: And as I've come to learn the Internet's ability to misread things over the years, let me note that had I meant to say "all of", I would have. There are some who have decided they won't, for instance, and that's different, along with all sorts of other special cases. But I know a lot of people in my life who can't use tech because of what is basically a self-fulfilling prophecy.
Most problems we encounter in tech have multiple layers of problem-solving: we're installing this, when that goes wrong. To fix that we discover that we need to change this other thing. Changing that other thing means the jobbie over there breaks. Fixing that involves installing a widget over here, and so on. When you reach the end of the chain, and this fix means that thing works, which means the other thing suddenly springs into life, and so on up, is a great feeling.
I've discovered that some people can only do this one or two layers deep: as soon as this fix depends on that, which depends on the other... they give up because it's "too hard"
Everyone I know with "an aptitude for tech" is pretty comfortable going at least five layers deep.
I know this has no relevance to the gender discussion from the OP. I just find it interesting ;)
I’d put the number at much higher than 25%. And not just “tech” knowhow, but knowhow about any subject, whether that is archaeology, law, clothing production, journalism, astrophysics, or web programming.
Schools are in general pretty bad at teaching people that everyone is pretty smart, brains are incredibly plastic, and you personally can learn any topic and take up any field you put your mind to, and make a positive contribution, just by trying. For some fields getting to the cutting edge might take 10 years of intense study, and having a meaningful career might take credentials, but usually it’s possible to make some contribution much earlier than that.
I have some friends who are willing to let themselves be curious about a topic, and just dive in and start trying stuff, and they usually can get incredibly far in a short amount of time (months), and come up with new ideas that have not been tried before, often surprising and impressing the “experts”. And other friends who are outright terrified of anything that seems confusing to a layman at first glance, and never try anything they aren’t already good at. For the most part schools rarely pushed the latter group to break out of their cocoons, and often explicitly held the former group back.
Honestly I think it just means that they're smart. My girlfriend in college didn't remotely fit any tech stereotypes, but when she saw how much more functional my Linux laptop was than everyone else's, she spent a day and set up Linux for herself. We're still friends, and ten years later she's still happily using desktop Linux and grumbles to.me on the rare occasion she needs to run a windows VM for some specialty software.
The idea that being tech savvy requires lots of hobbyist time investment and a deep interest in the topic is insane, like saying that being a good driver requires being independently interested in cars as a hobby.
To a large degree, I think that Apple's marketing and the rest of the industry following (cf Google's shift in product design and focus six years ago) shoulders a big chunk of the blame. Endemic short term thinking in the form of only considering how easy to use something is in the first ten seconds has led to an entire generation of computer users quarantined into a tiny fraction of what their devices can do and how well they can fit their needs. (For example, my dad is _also_ on Linux, and he has barely managed to figure out copy and paste. Windows is simply too buggy and difficult an OS for users as novice as he is)
You're still describing just a portion of the population, at best. Yes, your point about the myths is fair. But even with those myths dispelled, there's going to be at least XX% of the population that struggles with or is unwilling to put in that work.
Think about other super important areas of life like finances and health. Perfectly capable, developed, functional adults still routinely neglect these things because they don't want to 'deal with' the mental overhead of 'figuring it out'.
As long as this population remains, there will be a market for solutions that offload some of the 'work'.
> Think about other super important areas of life like finances and health. Perfectly capable, developed, functional adults still routinely neglect these things because they don't want to 'deal with' the mental overhead of 'figuring it out'.
Not sure these are great examples. There is a LOT of good self-learning information out there about computers and tech. One could not know anything about Linux, study online references, experiment a little, and become competent. And you can always find a Linux nerd to give you advice and help. Contrast:
(Personal) Finance:
Most investing information on the net will not produce any kind of outsized returns, and quite a bit of it are scams and plain bad advice. You're not going to become rich by following r/PersonalFinance. And unlike tech, where a bad experiment means you need to wipe the hard drive and try again, a bad investing experiment can lose you money. And all those financial advisors out there? LOL, they're crooked as a bag of snakes and are primarily out to milk you.
Health and fitness:
Health is even more of a shit show. Good luck finding any consistent reliable information through self-study. This good for you. Now it's bad for you. This causes cancer. Now we know it doesn't. Now it does again. Every month there's a new diet fad. Online, quackery is the rule rather than the exception. Top 100 search results are going to be weight loss spam. And your doctor? LOL, he just wants to charge you for repeated visits and sell you whatever pill he's being incentivized to push this month.
I don't think it's about people not wanting to deal with the mental overhead of figuring it out. It's really a challenge to figure out and sort good from bad information.
Honestly I just think it means that this stuff really isn't all that difficult. I mean, sure, the first person that figured it out and posted a "how to" blog article is usually pretty smart (or at least a domain expert) but it really doesn't take much intelligence to follow the steps in an article posted online.
I think many of us overestimate our own intelligence just because we have worked with computers our whole lives. The rest of the world caught up with us circa 2010 and technical proficiency (and even basic development skills) are table stakes. Hell, they teach machine learning in high school these days.
Everyone is tech savvy these days. It's no longer a differentiator unless you gain some specialized knowledge and keep it current.
> Honestly I just think it means that this stuff really isn't all that difficult.
I mean, I agree. I don't personally think this stuff is difficult; "smart" in this case can be in opposition to either "too irrational to spend the time on high ROI computer literacy" or "unintelligent enough that the ROI _isn't_ worth it". I really don't think that the latter is true of most people, but that's the excuse people often give for making intentionally uninformed personal computing decisions.
> I think many of us overestimate our own intelligence just because we have worked with computers our whole lives.
Yea, this is definitely not what I'm saying. Frankly, I don't think you have to be all that smart to be an engineer, let alone computer literate.
Personally, I wouldn't say this is necessarily a strange approach. In fact, I'd say it may support my own hypothesis about tech knowhow and what not.
Namely, that it's not generally about some people being more 'inclined to it' or 'skilled' or 'intelligent' in some vague sense, but simply about whether it's necessary for somehow to be tech savvy in their situation.
It's like learning to code. Many people could do it, especially if they put their mind to it.
But for many people, they don't because there's no pressing reason them for them to know how to program. If they had an idea or pet project which needed them to make an app for it... well they may end up learning a hell of alot faster.
That's just my opinion on why this could have come about anyway.
I hated CS classes in HS and my first two years of college. Couldn't understand what learning about pointers and OO would let me do because all the assignments in the classes were so obviously stupid toy problems that had no real-world application.
Ended up getting into it due to a upper-level undergrad Math class where I realized if I dusted off those old skills I could write programs to help me with the math much more effectively than Excel or a calculator or such.
I think the point is, that high-tech like computers are more omnipresent now than they were in the past.
So back in the days, only "nerds" were inclined to get to know it inside out, because they liked it and thought it was cool etc.
You could get along in other fields of work without much in depth knowledge.
But today, with the rise of smartphones and the Internet, this kind of technology has a much higher direct impact on our life. So people who would be smart enough but didn't care before are now forced to do such things. They could have done it back in the days, but they simply didn't care.
This is only surprising for some subset of the 'tech crowd' who like to presume in a very self serving way everyone else is an 'idiot' and they are 'smart'.
The vast majority of human beings have innate intelligence and a large proportion are educated or highly educated and can get things done if required.
But no one is going to mess around with tech unless it is their core thing or a personal interest just like no techie is going to try to understand sales and marketing out of the blue.
Some people are also lazy and 'encourage' their tech friends and relatives by playing dumb and talking them up to get work done.
Yes, my friend said something like that. Her father told her if she wants to do something she should do it right or leave it be, lol.
My girlfriend is rather practical with this kind of stuff.
She works as a marketeer and if she needs some coding, she reads stuff about it online and does it herself if it's something you can learn in under a day.
Also, she was rather poor as child, so she likes to keep things she paid for longer than the manufacturers want her too.
Tbh, neither of those tasks actually require much understanding to perform; the ability to google things, and a decent attention span is more than sufficient. Both tasks have well guided tours, and you just can mostly get by just c&p'ing any errors into gooogle.
However, I've met a lot of people, even in tech, who can't imagine using google for more than the simplest query, and refuse to read anything longer than a paragraph unless absolutely necessary.
I'm currently of the opinion that the "tech-illiterate" mostly consist of those who almost actively don't want to have to solve the problem themselves.
This is also enforced by the opinion that the majority of the "tech" hobby isn't difficult, and doesnt require much intelligence at all; its mostly manual labour, but on the computer.
There are youtube videos and guides online, if children can get things going anyone can. Most people are not incapable, they just don't want to bother.
There must be a lot of backstory and context here that is going unmentioned, because I can't understand what this Dale guy is accused of doing. He "questioned her authenticity?" What does that mean? Was he implying she was some kind of non-human robot or something? What was the actual tweet? I feel like I walked into a movie 30 minutes late and missed the important part.
Naomi (@sexycyborg) is a well known maker who happens to have a lot of risque maker projects and plenty of photos of her online would be scandalizing for more socially conservative people.
She has been blamed to be the face for a manufactured persona, to be generally incompetent at anything maker related, etc. The explanation for why she (and her "handler") would do that, is that they get hired to endorse products. Plenty of sexism, slutshaming, and circumstantial "evidence" (e.g. the comment about almost cutting her finger this one time) have been used against her.
It is a generally disappointing story of slutshaming.
Now a well known media persona in the maker community decided to entertain those allegations and ruined her reputation.
No, that's not accurate. Dale Dougherty claimed publicly on his Twitter feed that Naomi Wu wasn't a real person, but rather multiple people manufacturing a persona. The subtext of the tweet is probably that Wu is a photogenic marketing spokesperson for the brand. It's not a cultural or moral critique. It's a grave, specific, and apparently entirely false one.
We don't need to get wound up into a knot about sexual mores to recognize that nobody should have to defend themselves against false accusations that they're not even a real person.
Nobody should have to defend themselves against false accusations that they're not even a real person. This issue is simpler than the thread here makes it sound.
I agree that there's probably an unpleasant subtext behind this guy's decision to wreck Naomi Wu's career. All I'm saying is, we don't have to reach that issue to see how reckless what he did was.
> Nobody should have to defend themselves against false accusations that they're not even a real person.
Do you mean the accusation that someone is playing a role for marketing purposes, and is not actually like the image portrayed? Why is that such an inconceivable accusation? Why should nobody have to defend herself against that?
> If she were a dude with an unfitted black tee...
That's an odd argument. Why would someone manufacture a schlubby geek persona? Seems like attractiveness and distinctiveness are key qualities in a (hypothetical) persona.
Our industry is (rightfully) going through a lot of self-examination on how we treat women as sex objects and here is a technically savvy woman projecting herself (among other things) as...a sex object. While it is certainly her right to do so it seems that a bit of push-back is expected (and potentially warranted).
That said, being called "fake" may be wrong. I have no knowledge one way or the other.
> it seems that a bit of push-back is expected (and potentially warranted).
It is generally useful to use a reversal thought experiment to check for logical consistency.
Would a photogenic young man who wore tight clothes while presenting their hardware projects be told he's not a real person because he had the audacity to own his sexuality? Would that be warranted or expected?
The ranks of the tech industry are dominated by men so if a man tried to use his sexuality to capture more eyeballs he'd likely be ignored or widely mocked. Also, since men do not endure the sexual harassment or objectification like women do in the tech field, I'm not sure if the situations are easily reversed.
How about this thought experiment: what if I made a poster of Wu and put it on my office wall next to the posters of Steve Jobs and Limor Fried? Would I be creating a hostile environment for my female coworkers?
Wu can dress how she wants in her private life and it's none of my (or our) business; commenting negatively on her private attire would indeed be slut shaming. However she is projecting a highly sexualized image into a field that has problems with sexualizing women; that is what opens her to criticism.
I must have missed the tweets where Dougherty tried to destroy the career and livelihood of, say, Taylor Swift or Beyonce or Miley Cyrus.
In what universe does "a field that has problems with sexualizing women" mean the opening for criticism is on the women, not the problem of "the field"?
Dougherty needs to stop pretending he's a fit and appropriate person to lead or speak for a major company - and go learn a bit of respect and restraint. Right now his reputation is lingering around Jake Applebaum, Frank Artale, Dave McClure, and Harvey Weinstein.
I'd like to hope Tim O'Reilly realises the damage Dale's doing to the Make and Makerfaire brands, and reacts as well as 500 Startups and Ignition Ventures both (eventually) did... But, as you point out, we're in "a field that has problems with sexualizing women".
Why and how did you create this “Sexy Cyborg” character? Is it all persona or is it also the real you? Basically, when you are not being a maker, do you still dress just as sexy?
It’s the other way around, I actually wear more conservative clothing when taking maker pictures and video for English-speaking social media than I do normally just walking around and running errands. Westerners just seem to get enraged over silly clothes. Well, Americans and British mostly. Europeans and South Americans just think it’s funny and exciting, like Chinese do usually.
I have what I call the Auntie Test: Do Chinese women over about 50 or so have any problem with my clothes? The Auntie who cleans the halls in my apartment building has twice sent me back home for a sweater, but that is just because it was winter and catching a cold calls for Chinese Traditional Medicine. I was raised properly and am respectful. If the day comes and the neighborhood Aunties tell me not to dress so sexy, I won’t. But so long as they smile and wave at me, I don’t really think it’s anyone’s business what I wear in my own country.
Heck, there was a freaking cologne ad campaign featuring a stanford grad student. We've got a clear example of a sexualized man in tech not getting this sort of negative response.
Being reduced to sex object and being sexy on top of being skilled etc are not the same tho. Nor should be. (I know there are some radfem who disagree with me on that point). It is precisely the "and since she is sexy then she must be bimbo" that is a problem and causes whole lot of negativity.
Pushback here is people literally saying she is fake and can't be skilled. It is not complain about the decency nor double standard.
Basically it seems like this girl is attractive and reasonably competent, and is using her sexiness to entice viewers to watch her maker videos.
Then you have competent people who arnt sexy thinking - hey that's not fair, she is using an asset I don't have to gain viewership. So they feel compelled to point out the obvious.
I feel like this is sort of like why the weather person is often an attractive girl. Sure maybe she doesnt have a phd in meteorology but she understands it well, and generally people would rather take the info from her than some fat guy mumbling about advanced meteorology. And so when this guy sees people flocking to get weather updates from her, rather than tuning into his youtube channel his instinct will be to say she is using sex to sell.
When that happens I'm not sure what the appropriate response should be. I mean, here clearly this girl is using sexy videos, so it seems odd to be defensive about it. Maybe the response should be- "yeah, so? All that and I deliver informative content"
Naomi Wu wrote about why she dresses this way in her FAQ:
"Beside personal taste, the other issue is my appearance is effective. Female Makers- or Women in Tech are rarely featured in Chinese news, it's just not something that gets much interest and there is no community of like-minded women I can look to. Sexy girls are still the delivery vector for nearly all messages in tech here. If I want to get my message out- that these new technical tools are accessible, and that there are well-paying jobs available for women that master them, I have to do so in a way that will actually reach my audience. I'm sure the high road is nice- but in China, no one will hear a word you say while you are on it."
I don't see the harm in everyone doing as much as they can with the cards they are dealt. The alternative is a dystopia like Harrison Bergeron (http://www.tnellen.com/cybereng/harrison.html)
The world is full of fakes and liars, especially where there is money to be made.
Some comments in this thread amount to encouraging that we should blindly accept that a person is who they say they are because they are the "right kind of person".
The world is also full of genuine people, far more than the fakes. Unless there's some reason to suspect a person is a fake, or some dire consequences if they are, why worry about it?
My question is; is there a double standard wrt sexualised personal projects?
There seems to be a contradiction in that sexual content by a man is seen as "hostile" or "unwelcoming" to women, but criticising a woman for producing sexual content is "slut-shaming"...
There is a difference between sexualizing yourself and sexualizing others. Especially when historically women have been sexualized without their consent which, while it happens, is a rarity for men.
So, if a male commenter were to complement her on her sexy outfit, which category does that fall into? And who is harmed by a project called pantyshot? Or posters of sexualised fantasy/anime women in skimpy clothing?
If a ripped 6'4" male model called himself @sexyengineer and posted pictures of him building things shirtless, I would roll my eyes and call his legitimacy into question. Doing the same to a woman isn't some sexist conspiracy.
Edit: To those downvoting me, can you please explain? I don't see the flaw in my logic.
The flaw in your logic is that sexuality has nothing to do with being "legitimate."
Furthermore the tech in question is more about creativity than skill, the entire maker movement is about abstracting away the more difficult concepts into easier to use pieces.
>If a ripped 6'4" male model called himself @sexyengineer and posted pictures of him building things shirtless, I would roll my eyes and call his legitimacy into question.
I was considering posting a comment along the lines of this. I decided not to, because I am somewhat terrified of discussing these topics in public, even behind the anonymity of an HN handle. There needs to be a way to talk about these things without people demonizing you for having a discussion. No, sexuality may not have anything to do with 'legitimacy', but I would think the same thing that the quoted parents said (re: the sexy male engineer). Why is that? I'm not sure. Certainly, you have the right to portray yourself in any light you see fit. But since engineering skill and sexuality have nothing to do with eachother, as we all agree afaict, then I don't see how its wrong to be skeptical when the two are presented together.
edit: to clarify, as Bunnie mentioned in his post, its often both more comfortable and completely appropriate to sit half-naked at your desk coding. But the next time Bunnie turns to social media to talk about something he's done, I don't expect to see a picture of him in his underwear next to the product.
> "I am somewhat terrified of discussing these topics in public, even behind the anonymity of an HN handle"
Thank you for facing your fears.
> "Why is that? I'm not sure. Certainly, you have the right to portray yourself in any light you see fit. But since engineering skill and sexuality have nothing to do with eachother, as we all agree afaict, then I don't see how its wrong to be skeptical when the two are presented together."
Let's be real, attractiveness doesn't hurt YouTube view counts. However, does the fact that not all of those views were motivated by the content being discussed call into question the validity of the content itself? In other words, if someone clicked on a SexyCyborg video because they found her attractive, but ended up enjoying the technical content, was the content effective?
What I'd be cautious of is promoting the idea that dressing a certain way was the only way to get ahead, but as long as people can get ahead based on their own effort, it doesn't seem like much of a problem. Clearly you think differently, and I would be interested in better understanding your point of view.
> "edit: to clarify, as Bunnie mentioned in his post, its often both more comfortable and completely appropriate to sit half-naked at your desk coding. But the next time Bunnie turns to social media to talk about something he's done, I don't expect to see a picture of him in his underwear next to the product."
It would be surprising, sure, but fundamentally I don't see what would be wrong about it.
To give a counter example, there's a high level player in the Street Fighter community called Poongko who's infamous for taking off his shirt whilst playing:
I'm not suggesting that this is an exact mirror for what we're talking about, as the context isn't sexual. The point I'm trying to make is that, even if a behaviour is unusual, it doesn't have to have negative connotations.
I think the argument is more that sex is often used to sell things so people are wary when it is used in what they see in an unrelated manner.
If I'm out shopping for an online course and I see one presented by a woman in a bikini vs one that is fully dressed I would be way more wary of the bikini one. I would think its content was not good enough to stand on its own and therefore they resorted to trying to sell it with sex.
Of course that does not give me the right to attack or make groundless accusations against the bikini course.
If you were researching ideas in DIY tech fashion and wearables - and one blog was full of pics of a generic bay area brodude in a conference schwag tshirt and hoodie telling you how good his fashion ideas were going to look, and the other was Naomi's blog - which of those would you be more wary of?
There's a quite important reason why Paris and Milan fashion shows don't use middle aged white men like Dougherty to stroll down the runways showcasing this season's ideas.
> The flaw in your logic is that sexuality has nothing to do with being "legitimate."
Yes it does. PR companies have the opinion that sex sells, so if someone in a technical conference is overtly oversexualized, that makes me suspicious of their true motives.
>If a ripped 6'4" male model called himself @sexyengineer and posted pictures of him building things shirtless, I would roll my eyes and call his legitimacy into question. Doing the same to a woman isn't some sexist conspiracy.
And you would be wrong to do so. You could call their fashion sense into doubt, but questioning their competency in unrelated areas is falling prey to the ad hominem fallacy. Picking one undesirable trait and generalizing outwards from that is the definition of ad hominem.
@realsexycyborg might have a nontraditional taste in style but this literally has nothing to do with her skills as a maker or ability as an engineer. To conflate the two is bias and reflects the core problem here.
I think the reason OP listed "sexism, slutshaming" separately is because they're separate issues. The downvotes are coming from your erroneous conflation of the two (and possibly being perceived as purposeful conflation to strawman the argument).
That said, I think the slutshaming you pointed out is just as damaging as what's going on in Wu's case. Who gives a shit if @sexyengineer is wearing a speedo in all of his tutorials? The point is the information and if he's not sharing bad info I don't see the problem other than the fact that you and I have differences in taste.
Don't have a problem with that phrase in a vacuum but in context of this discussion I find it highly problematic. Who decides the standard? Which standards actually matter?
I guess I see information (esp with regards to video tutorials/demos) as agnostic. If you're reading a tutorial online, there's no telling whether the person who wrote it was completely naked while doing so. Does the information change simply because you thought they should at least throw a robe on before trying to share info? As long as she's sharing good info, I don't see why it matters what she's wearing. And no, I cannot see what issue other people have other than a difference in taste (which, again, has no bearing whatsoever on whether what she's sharing is factual and helpful or not...).
This is how answered to that same comment a few months ago:
And if I promote myself as a Star Trek fan to bring attention to my engineering work, nerd-shaming is also in scope. Or a body-builder programmer shamed for being a "bro" by us nerds. Why do we need to shame each other about our quirks? (as long as those quirks do no harm, but as far as I know, Sexy Cyborg does not flaunt herself around kindergartens)
Whenever you leverage things outside of a field to become well known/get recognition within a field, people are going to push back on it and call it inauthentic. Those other traits could be sex appeal, it could be celebrity in another area, it could be wealth, whatever.
Of course having those other traits doesn't mean that you are necessarily incapable or inauthentic in that space. It doesn't "prove" anything. I doubt that Sexy Cyborg would be as well known without the sexual aspect, but fame doesn't correspond perfectly to competence either.
To me it's leveraging those traits to gain recognition that stirs people up - which, with a name like "SexyCyborg", she's pretty clearly doing. I don't mind it myself, don't think it says anything about her competence on its own.
> Why do we need to shame each other about our quirks?
Everyone judges everyone else. If absolutely everyone just keeps to themselves and has their own standards of right and wrong, no sense of community ever has a chance of forming.
I'm not saying OP is right or wrong, but I also don't think that social standards and expectations are 100% evil or harmful to society.
> "If absolutely everyone just keeps to themselves and has their own standards of right and wrong, no sense of community ever has a chance of forming."
Judgement of the personal lives of others does not have to be the cornerstone of a community, especially one that has nothing to do with the personality of others. How someone chooses to dress out of their own free will is completely unrelated to their interest in tech.
What I find to be disappointing is when people who can't/won't see past looks. Yes, our first reaction is likely to be visual, but if a hacker can't recognise a fellow hacker just because they look different to what they expect, that's a real shame. When I look at a video like this, I don't just see an attractive woman, I see a hacker:
>To those downvoting me, can you please explain? I don't see the flaw in my logic.
That's just the point, you have a worldview and assume it is correct and should apply to everyone else. But no one worldview will encompass everyone's thoughts and feelings. Why should someone's fashion choices tell us anything about their technical ability? Was Einstein less trustworthy on the days he forgot his pants?
You're misunderstanding; it's not about the fashion telling us anything about their technical ability. That thing about Einstein is a complete non-sequitur. Here's a comment in this thread by deeg that outlines one of the issues with the fashion:
> Our industry is (rightfully) going through a lot of self-examination on how we treat women as sex objects and here is a technically savvy woman projecting herself (among other things) as...a sex object. While it is certainly her right to do so it seems that a bit of push-back is expected (and potentially warranted).
> That said, being called "fake" may be wrong. I have no knowledge one way or the other.
> If a ripped 6'4" male model called himself @sexyengineer and posted pictures of him building things shirtless, I would roll my eyes and call his legitimacy into question
That's the flaw in your logic right here: rolling your eyes is one thing, call the legitimacy of people who don't conform to completely arbitrary (and historically and geographically moving) social norms is ANOTHER.
You can roll your eyes all you want, that's your problem. You can even decide for yourself that you will not listen to people who don't dress according to some code -- your loss.
But when you decide to project and impose your prejudice to the world then you become part of the problem.
> "If a ripped 6'4" male model called himself @sexyengineer and posted pictures of him building things shirtless, I would roll my eyes and call his legitimacy into question."
What difference does it make? Do you feel offended if other men are seen as sexy? If you're concerned about painting someone as a role model, what do you find offensive about what @RealSexyCyborg is doing? Is being comfortable being sexy something bad? Is she sending a message that the only way to be a female maker is to emphasize your looks?
Speaking personally, I'm a straight man, but if @sexyengineer ever shows up, I would have zero problems with that. If a male model or a female model shows an interest in engineering, good for them, if they decide to break conventions about what an engineer is supposed to look like, good for them.
Hey, I’d love to live in a world that operated the way you suggest. There’s actually a group of people who work towards that aim. They’re called (intersectional) feminists. You might find what they’re saying interesting.
Excuse me if I'm making an incorrect assumption here, but China is not your country, right?
Naomi explains that the fashion she wears is while perhaps not "mainstream", at least fairly unremarkable in her culture - and she's got video of herself walking around in public that supports that claim.
If _you_ are not capable of seeing and accepting other cultures, that's surely not Naomi's problem. It's no different from insisting your local library removes National Geographic magazines because they have images of cultures where breasts are not taboo.
"Social standards" are fine, and while you and I probably disagree on what those standards should and shouldn't allow in our respective cultures, imposing _your_ opinions of social standards on a culture you've never even visited (again, apologies if I'm making a poor assumption there) is the height of self important superiority.
And while I don't know where you're from, Doughtery's business runs out of Sebastopol - literally 50 miles away from where Folsom Street Fair is held every year. Tell me again how different his society's "social standards on how to interact socially and sexually" are from Naomi's?
Having sex or being sexy are not things that you should shame other people for. Sex is normal, and it's not right to punish women for not being virginal.
In the US "slutshaming" is part of the progressive stack so in a sense of unity, and voting on HN is often used to enforce political norms. So people who would downvote someone for using the N-word, for example, are attacking you to earn their good boy points because they're all in it together, etc.
There are other interesting examples along your example of @sexyengineer.
One is in the area of cooking your example has long existed where theoretically the genre is "cooking" but in practice there are two distinct types of shows, the shows were the woman is in a revealing cocktail dress or date night attire while cooking with fantastic hair and makeup and by cis hetro standards is extremely hot, while the cooking knowledge and recipes are on the level of "cooking" a pb&j sandwich, vs real "cooking" shows where an average looking person, often below average in appearance due to being an older experienced teacher, educate you about cooking. For a variety of TV formula risk minimization strategies there is in practice essentially no overlap. Online, without hollywood execs, things can get weird and cross over. This is actually very comical in the foodie world, there are well known sayings about cooking shows where you can tell within seconds what kind of show you're watching by either seeing a lacy lingerie bra or a (dirty) apron, although they're all categorized as "cooking" shows.
Another interesting example is in woodworking there are real woodworking educational TV shows with average to below average older shop teacher type human bodies where you'll actually learn something, and there's one PBS woodworking show with a tall highly muscular male model from Boston who my wife finds very handsome but I've stopped watching because the carpentry content level is low.
Its fundamentally a difference between people who are looking for a strong attractive personality perhaps with a theme they enjoy; essentially this is every pr0n movie plot, ever. Meanwhile there are people looking for content and information. Do you want to hang out with a beautiful and stylish woman in her kitchen for a half hour, or are you looking for the official USDA food safety heating temp in deg F for ground pork? There's nothing wrong with either in any moral or ethical sense, but you'll see lots of weird lashing out and anger from people who want/need one and get accidentally stuck with the other, and people REALLY freak out when there's trans content bridging the gap and its hard to tell from second to second whats titillating pr0n and what is a reference manual.
There is likely an analogy for hard vs soft sci fi.
One way of looking at it is we very poorly label and identify content in TV and online such that we lump personality and appearance shows in the same named genre. Is the setting of a carpenters workroom merely the background of a pr0n flick or is the carpentry the main point and the actor is merely there as voice talent? Its the same for cooking, and in this weird case, engineering.
> If a ripped 6'4" male model called himself @sexyengineer and posted pictures of him building things shirtless, I would roll my eyes and call his legitimacy into question. Doing the same to a woman isn't some sexist conspiracy. To those downvoting me, can you please explain? I don't see the flaw in my logic.
The flaw in your reasoning is that it doesn't match reality. That example of the male engineer actually does exist (@aphyr), and he is (very justifiably!) well respected and not shamed.
In general, the key to understanding sexism (and social dynamics in general) is that the question is not one of what-ifs, thought experiments, or spherical-cow sociology, but an empirical one about a real-world system. Whether people behave in the way you hypothesize or not is an empirical question, and, in this case your hypothesis is false.
My high school cliques were the nerds and the band. Generally speaking, the nerds were not attractive people, maxing out at about a "6". Our group identity mostly came from our self-perceived intelligence, dedication, and skill.
So when an obvious candidate for the dolls clique presents himself or herself as a nerd, I know I am not the only one who might question their "qualifications". The hot bodies had far better options for clique membership, so we tended to get paranoid whenever one showed up. What do they want from us? Why would they choose to hang out with us? Most people didn't like us, so we held our noses, lowered our standards, and made do with liking each other.
Out in the real world, it turns out that being a nerd any time after 1970 can make you quite a lot of money from jobs that require knowledge of math, science, technology, and engineering: our presumed forte. Because of that money, one of the motives for hanging out with nerds could be to get at some of it. It's bad enough when the broheimer partyboys crash our con, but if the pro cosplayers and booth babes also turn out to be more than just eye candy, that means the nerdity wasn't about being smart, but was actually just being ugly, awkward losers with no social value. That hurts, psychologically.
It might feel like every time we make something nice for ourselves, the beautiful people just strut right in and take it away from us.
So yeah, I'm prejudiced too. It comes from a lifetime of the pretty and popular people being inhumanly rude to me and "my people". If you must insist on being born beautiful, at least do me the courtesy of making yourself morbidly obese, or giving yourself some disfiguring scars, before pretending to be an insider of my social caste. If you can't shim yourself down below a "7", you're just going to make us feel suspicious and uncomfortable.
How do you know your suspicions are warranted? It sounds like you could simply be letting people's outward appearance cloud your estimation of who is genuinely interested in a topic.
This attitude is so weird to me. I play in a local poker group with 80 or so regular members. We get all kinds, both genders, an age range from probably 20 to 80, and a diverse mix of races. The only commonality is we all share an interest in the game. We have veteran players and also see new people show up all the time. When a new player happens to also be, for example, a beautiful woman, nobody is going to care as long as she also knows how to play (even knowing how to play is optional, we'll help you learn). In fact, as a player, if you do assume someone is a phony just because they are good looking, that's a pretty reliable way to lose your money at the table.
The only people unwelcome are assholes and people who intend to cheat. Those folks can get lost. I've never felt "suspicious" of someone who wanted to join and have fun, regardless of their appearance.
> "It's bad enough when the broheimer partyboys crash our con, but if the pro cosplayers and booth babes also turn out to be more than just eye candy, that means the nerdity wasn't about being smart, but was actually just being ugly, awkward losers with no social value. That hurts, psychologically."
Do you not see that the issue isn't really "them", but that it's rather about perceived self-worth? If others put you down and made you feel like you lacked social value, I'm sorry, I wouldn't wish that on anybody, but your perceived value is something you have some degree of control of, as it's up to you how you wish to view yourself.
I fundamentally disagree with putting numbers on attractiveness, or even putting it on a scale, but let's say for the sake of argument that I'm not expecting a modelling contract any time soon. That doesn't mean I can't be friends with people who are "better" looking than me, or that I can't see them as my peers. If you've got something interesting to say, it's all good.
Perhaps you have never been ugly enough, or fat enough, or black enough, or xeno enough to catch flak from the beautiful people. But I have had enough of it that I simply avoid being out in public.
I know what I'm worth to me, but I also know that "society" doesn't want me hanging around where I can be seen. That's fine with me, because apparently society is full of nasty people and those who tacitly support their nastiness--people who are ugly on the inside, and people who find it easier to live with ugly on the inside than ugly on the outside.
I certainly could be friends with people much more attractive than myself, but it is rather unlikely that we would ever meet in the first place. And it certainly would be awkward if we went to a party together, and they eventually realized I wasn't allowed through the front door. Or if I did make it in, and then everyone else left, because the party was no longer cool. Or if someone made an insulting joke at my expense, loudly enough for everyone to hear, and they had to either let it go or get involved in a public fracas. These things have actually happened; I am not just imagining things that might happen.
You can be as sorry as you like, but that won't make the human track marks out there any more accepting, or me any more trusting. The only people I feel safe around by default are those who so obviously have something wrong with them that I know that we must share the experience of being crapped on. Everyone else has to prove they are not secretly a jerk trying to pull one over on the nerds.
There's nothing you can do about it, really. Some people are cruel, and it's enough for you to not be one of them.
There are two issues here. One is the "beautiful people" issue, where the people are playing a social game, and if they come to hang out with normal people, they are doing it for some way that it's going to advance them in their manipulative social game. Why should any of the non-"beautiful people" want anything to do with that? The only way we should is if we're dumb enough to want to play their game, because we haven't figured out that it's a game that we're going to lose at. Your instincts to run away are spot on.
But the other issue is, we've got our own communities. Maybe we're part of a community where we care about software, for example. Well, in that community, sure, be careful of people who are trying to use you. But if someone with good physical looks comes around, judge them by their software knowledge (or actual desire to learn); don't judge them (positively or negatively) by their looks.
I think you should wonder how you can be taken seriously while assigning numbers like that. You are a person, they are people, this girl we're talking about is a person. Not a 6 or 7 or 8 or whatever.
In the end, the talk here goes everywhere but fails to mention that bunnie vouched for sexyhacker. The point being that the maker guy knowingly posted something he knew was a lie. The issue could have been skin colour, nationality, anything.
You can rank anything by any arbitrary metric and divide the population into deciles, even subjective judgments of attractiveness. People get ranked and sorted all the time. IQ, FICA, GPA, etc. It doesn't make them any less human; it just quantifies the discussion.
She's a person all right, and likely more attractive than I am in the opinion of any judge you may care to ask. And that's part of the reason why someone wrote an article about her, and we're here discussing it, and why I am a faceless pseudonymous nobody that can only aspire to an upvote or two on HN.
I'm irrationally prejudiced against attractive people. That's somewhat rare for them, so might be disturbing. But it doesn't matter much, as my opinion doesn't really count for anything anyway. I have no power to act on that prejudice. Attractive people get all kinds of preferential treatment from people that can actually make a difference in their lives, so they don't particularly need some sour-grapes ugly to like them, too.
I may give an unattractive person more slack, simply because everyone needs to feel like they belong to some community, and mine might just be the only one willing to accept them. Attractive folk need to do more to signal their commitment, just because they have so many more options. But that's not a high bar for me. Sexyhacker has hacked hardware, and proved it on video, so that's quite enough to consider herself a real hacker, in my opinion. If she were ugly, though, I might just take her word for it. In the end, that's my problem, not hers, and nobody should be trying to make their problems into hers by tearing her down with unwarranted libels.
Honest curiosity, how do you feel about Marketers, Salespeople, and Recruiters (people usually associated with good looks and high-level social skills) joining HN en masse and commenting regularly over the last few years?
Envious, mostly. I can't exactly blame the dice if I got a lower Charisma roll than theirs. It's a mistake to believe that society should be fair when it is so heavily influenced by random factors.
I don't interact with that type very much in person, as they tend to ignore or rebuff me when I approach them, and they only engage or approach me when they think they can make money by doing so. So they're sort of like animatronic people, I guess? You have to buy a ticket, but then they just read to you from a script.
I'm old enough now to know that nothing stays the same forever. Slashdot got sold to Dice. The H in HN got diluted. So what? I can't control it, so I just enjoy it for what it is while it lasts, and will drift away whenever it no longer feels right.
I'm a fan of Naomi and watch her product reviews, mostly in part that I support the women's maker movement and Naomi regularly pops up even though I am male but also because I am interested in buying cheap but high-quality electronics from Shenzen.
I'm not really sexually attracted to her but I have noted a lot of people commenting how she is doing plastic surgery to enhance her breasts for the views or something. She is not, she got those breasts before the views and they were primarily because she wanted to enhance her body and become a cyborg, hence her own nickname: "Sexy Cyborg".
Moreover, negative comments build on this enhance-breasts-for-views argument to imply that she is a front built for commercial purposes.
EDIT: Heres where I paraphrased her body modification quotes, this pastebin link is also on her patreon and youtube.
Yes, there is a lot of backstory and context; this story has been developing for either a few days or a few months, depending on how far you want to go back.
To get some idea of what's going on here, see (EDIT: possibly NSFW based on where you work, and this is deeply part of the story) http://archive.is/GE0he from May. I have been following this story not super closely, but a bit; my understanding is the original tweets have been deleted, but Dale was saying stuff in line with that story up above. The article discusses why that matters.
I became aware of this as a story when the link I originally posted happened; I haven't been involved in the maker community since something like 2010. I am vaguely aware of what some people think about Make etc, feeling that it's similar to what O'Reilly did with open source more generally previously. It's both loved and hated.
I became aware of this specific situation because I started seeing tweets about it; basically this article contains most of my understanding of the situation, as well as some stuff that I didn't know, like "Guanxi Bias."
What exactly was said was not under dispute by anyone, as far as I can tell; mostly what's under discussion is the charges of Make being mostly a thing for tourists rather than working with local makers, the general blackballing of Naomi from Make events (and if it is 'blackballing' or just generally being overlooked, that kind of thing), the authenticity of the apology, etc.
That's pretty much my understanding at the moment.
Sometimes I wonder whether IRC really does have an advantage over richer media communications.
I do not know or care about the identity of someone who helps me with a tricky question in #emacs beyond their current nick. This lack of information is, in many ways, an asset.
I think the only place it goes wrong is that eventually you'll have to interact with people in the real world, and the easiest assumption to make on IRC is that everyone i'm talking to is basically me, but smarter, and there's some guaranteed weirdness when it becomes clear that this is not the case.
On IRC, if you stay in a channel long enough, you'll find that (depending on the channel) communities there do have their own slew of personalities and politics.
People may eventually reveal information about themselves (gender, age, ethnicity, etc.), and if the information happens to be real, whatever harassment or bigotry that's made in response to that can do just as much damage as if it were done over another medium.
This is all true, but the degree to which I get to control how much other long-time channel denizens know about me is much more under my control. I can even mask my IP pretty easily.
A real-name, photo-required, rich-media equivalent (i.e, twitter) tips the balance of mandatory disclosure away from my favor.
When they say eggs they mean accounts that literally do not have any avatar image, and are thus probably operated by newbies or bots.
A quick check of my feed shows that at least half of the accounts I follow don't have an image of a person or a name that could be a real name. Of those that do, some are clearly not the picture or real name of the user of the account.
If you've been there that long your opinion of the other people there will have been formed by their contributions long before you can take a good guess at describing the person behind the keyboard.
The problem with IRC is, if diverse participants realize their inputs arent as valued when viewed without bias, they will cause PR issues. On media like Twitter, you can always pay special attention to diverse folks so they dont feel left out
I am not certain whether this is a joke that flied over my head, but in case it is not:
The whole point of the parent comment was that on IRC you do not know other people's background and can not be discriminatory.
Most scientific evidence is the exact opposite of your allegation - when the "tribe" of the other is not know you assume they are of your tribe and do not discriminate. Project Implicit and "stereotype threat" are good phrases to google that would provide rigorous scientific studies around those and other similar topics.
Interesting.. I'll look up project implicit. The 2 situations which came to mind were the github conference that was cancelled for not being diverse enough after a blind review process and the study done by masking the gender of the applicant where men whose voice was modified to sound like a woman's did marginally better (Though not statistically significant IIRC) in coding interviews
There are a handful of examples in professional settings where there is a minor bias in favor of women or minorities[1], but both researchers and activists are honest about them (there are always zealots, but that goes for both sides). This bias is bad, but it does not invalidate the much more prevalent and problematic bias in the other direction (against women and minorities). Similarly, the bias against men in parental disputes does not invalidate, nor is invalidated by the bias against women in professional settings.
[1]: The example that comes to mind is that in academic settings if women are (for instance) 5% of the applicant pool, they will make (for instance) 10% of the people invited for interviews. (I made up all the numbers for the sake of explanation) But this seems to be explained by rounding (you would invite less than 10 people for interviews, so a single woman being present is already above the population average). This effect will hopefully disappear as we create more diverse community. And the effect is completely dominated by effects in the other direction like [2].
Why and how did you create this “Sexy Cyborg” character? Is it all persona or is it also the real you? Basically, when you are not being a maker, do you still dress just as sexy?
It’s the other way around, I actually wear more conservative clothing when taking maker pictures and video for English-speaking social media than I do normally just walking around and running errands. Westerners just seem to get enraged over silly clothes. Well, Americans and British mostly. Europeans and South Americans just think it’s funny and exciting, like Chinese do usually.
I have what I call the Auntie Test: Do Chinese women over about 50 or so have any problem with my clothes? The Auntie who cleans the halls in my apartment building has twice sent me back home for a sweater, but that is just because it was winter and catching a cold calls for Chinese Traditional Medicine. I was raised properly and am respectful. If the day comes and the neighborhood Aunties tell me not to dress so sexy, I won’t. But so long as they smile and wave at me, I don’t really think it’s anyone’s business what I wear in my own country.
1) Does Naomi do all of the work for all of her projects, without external help?
2) If answer to (1) is "No", does she ever represent herself as doing all the work, or claim that she doesn't get external help?
3) If answer to (2) is "Yes", Does this cause harm to people deceived by her public character as a "maker"?
The balance of evidence for (1), if you believe Dale's account and some others, is "No". There's piles of internet evidence for this (I don't want to drag them up, but can maybe find links if people are curious). This fact doesn't actually seem to be in active contention, so I'll move on.
The balance to evidence for (2) seems to me also like a "No". I don't think Naomi has ever claimed that she does 100% of the work for all her projects herself -- and that's totally fine! She's a figurehead / movement leader, she doesn't need to be a personal expert in every maker field to make a positive impact. If you read some of her FAQs (https://pastebin.com/V3474kYs), it doesn't seem like she's making this claim.
(3) is an interesting question that I will leave to the crowd. I'm already tired of writing this comment and realize that I actually don't care. So nevermind about all this.
I think part of the irony of this situation is that Make Magazine publishes tutorials and features white American childrens' projects who have almost certainly received extreme hand-holding help from parents.
If the standard is truly "without external help", are people following tutorials in Make magazine not 'real' makers?
If the standard is "represent as doing all the work", to what extent does Make verify that the (often privileged) children it features are doing all of the work themselves? Has the CEO ever called out a child for getting too much help?
Children is certainly a bit of a straw man, but I suspect they feature many young-20-something white male Americans whose parents have taught them technical things from young age, can afford maker equipment to experiment with at home, can ask their parents for technical help when they get stuck, have mentors in their family's social network that are experts in the field, etc.
I guess my point is EVERYONE in the maker movement needs lots of help if they are not from the highest levels of privilege. There is a ton of info to learn, and nobody has the time to trial-and-error brute force their way to expertise. Implicit standards that everything must be done and figured out yourself creates a bias to only feature people who "need" the exposure least and are most privileged. Anyone working 'alone' has likely received enough help on previous projects that they were able to build off those skills to self-teach the rest of the way.
Obviously, Make magazine appreciates the value of help and instruction within the maker community: that is their reason for existence. Thus, I believe Dale is holding Naomi to a higher standard than he does for most male American makers because of his own biases.
(Normally I'd just upvote, but want to clarify that this is my actual position and that I don't hold some ulterior motive from being frank & critical of the story as presented).
I'm mostly just upset that this blogpost / comments don't seem to have anything to do with Dale/Naomi's specific case and more to do with people's pre-existing opinions about "women in tech" or whatever.
One pernicious thing that happens in these conversations. I've spent about 10 minutes total reading some Discord/DM messages about this controversy, and quickly found the above information. I fear that, if I spent more time "digging up evidence" to make a lengthy/nerdy case about this, I could be accurately accused of "Well why are you spending so much time arguing about prominent female tech leaders? Do you have some sort of ulterior motive?". I recognized this internally, stopped writing my comment, and moved on.
"Naomi is a persona, not a real person." is veeeeery far from "Naomi gets help on project", and event still pretty darn far from "Naomi misrepresents her contribution to the her projects"
To be honest, I have NO clue what's going on. I just have a good memory of previous stuff I've read and saw. Maybe this'll give more hints about what's going on here
When you search for that URL, you see only 5 hits. The very first one is on http://krautkanal.com/b/12075357 by user mandalareopens. This just stranger and stranger. :/
Edit: For those that downmodded me, I don't believe this stuff. I'm saying there's a history of someone running a smear campaign against her.
My issue with her isn't with her at all, but rather with what Bunnie calls the Idol Effect. She posts projects on Reddit[0] from time to time, and they pretty much always gets upvoted way beyond their technical merit. One was a pair of 3D printed shoes with storage for lockpicks and a wireless router, the album was close to 40 pictures, several of them of her in a very small dress.
I don't follow her, I don't have anything against her. I don't like how people upvote her projects simply because of girl.
1. Reddit. Seriously. Pictures of cats get upvoted way beyond their "technical merit".
2. A pair of shoes with storage sounds like a great idea. I believe she described how hard it is for women to find storage space when they dress up. Men's clothing have pockets everywhere, but women's clothing often don't. I don't think it's easy to find shoes with storage.
3. What's wrong with her wearing a small dress? Feminism means women can wear whatever they want. She goes into this issue in depth on her blog. She makes a fair point that the response to it is social/cultural. In China, she doesn't get the same sexually-related responses. Puritanism doesn't quite run the same over there.
4. Her perspective on the maker movement is fair and diverse. White, balding middle-aged males aren't going to have the same problems or concerns as an attractive, young asian female. What's wrong with bringing her perspective into the milieu?
Incidentally, it was actually broader than "shoes with storage", she specifically did the project as a pentesting exercise. "If I was trying to hack a big company, how would I do it?" She made the connection between these styles of shoes and a specific outfit, and that the whole "sexy" thing would be a distraction, enabling her to sneak USB drives out of the shoes. They contained wifi-enabled equipment inside the shoes, with power, to automatically probe wireless networks around her. Etc.
So it's actually even more deeply technical than that summary lets on. You can find the exact description on her website if you're interested.
> 1. Reddit. Seriously. Pictures of cats get upvoted way beyond their "technical merit".
Not on r/DIY or r/hacking.
> A pair of shoes with storage sounds like a great idea.
Yes, it probably is. Is it hacking? The fact that she put a battery powered router and a set of lockpicks in the storage doesn't make it hacking.
> 3. What's wrong with her wearing a small dress?
Nothing. But is it necessary with several images of it in an album on r/DIY? Is the post upvoted merely because of the 3D printed shoes? Does a post about a 3D printed Raspberry Pi case with makeup and a mirror need 11 pictures of her holding it first? [0]
> 4. Her perspective on the maker movement is fair and diverse. White, balding middle-aged males aren't going to have the same problems or concerns as an attractive, young asian female. What's wrong with bringing her perspective into the milieu?
I never claimed there was anything wrong with her bringing her perspective. I specifically said "I don't have anything against her". My problem isn't with her, it's that people see a skinny young woman with large breasts doing technical stuff and automatically think that because she breaks the mold her work is more interesting that it actually is. It's a little insulting to women that doesn't use the same gimmicks.
Yes, it's hacking. It utilizing something (shoe heels) in a way that was not intended by the people who designed it to solve a problem.
Putting a router into a shoe that has storage isn't hacking. Changing the shoe to make it possible is.
>My problem is that people [...] think her work is more interesting that it actually is.
Ah, my apologies then. Of course, there is an objective, intrinsic metric that measures how interesting something is, and you clearly are someone with the ability to compute it, unlike the unwashed masses, who are all wrong, and are definitely guilty of the sin of finding something more interesting than you do.
It is especially daunting since never in the history of humanity, and especially on Hackernews, has interest in something been connected to the person who made it in any way.
Nice use of [...] to cut away my point there. I make no claim of representing any objective truth, only my own opinions, as I assume you do too. And one of my opinions is that I prefer more silicon than silicone in my technical articles.
> Putting a router into a shoe that has storage isn't hacking. Changing the shoe to make it possible is.
She didn't change any shoes, she 3D printed them. And she called them "3D printed platform heels for hackers", and claimed that she made them to be used for pentesting. Here you go, the first image from her pentesting gallery posted to r/diy, r/hacking, and r/lockpicking:
https://i.imgur.com/7aiOCYR.jpg
Out of 37 images there are 5 that shows the build process.
I'm not trying to put down the shoes themselves, she has a whole backstory constructed for how they could be used and the reasoning behind them. I still think a lot of people find some parts of the gallery more interesting than the actual work being displayed, and she knows that. How many would find a gallery of a pair of 3D printed shoes as interesting if it only had pictures of said shoes?
I find that most times interest on Hackernews is centered on a person it's because of that persons previous achievements or demonstrated technical ability, not their appearance. Her work isn't particularly interesting in isolation (maybe I should add IMO for much needed clarity), yet here we are with a big Hackernews discussion thread about a post made by Bunnie Huang about a post by the CEO of Maker Media, all centered on her.
Her positioning of her public persona here is not doing her any favors. On the one hand, if she can get taken seriously while showing herself off as a sexy cyborg with her bod strongly highlighted, this may help break some stereotypes. On the other hand, women already get pigeonholed as being only good for one thing. Playing up the sexy angle is going to make it generally harder for other people to perceive her as anything else.
I have never heard of her before. I have no idea what she is doing that she chooses to pursue this positioning as someone sexy as her primary identifier. But it strikes me as inherently problematic to take that positioning in a male dominated field.
It is something I have wrestled with. I don't think there are any easy answers here. Women are damned if they do, damned if they don't. If heterosexual men find a woman attractive simply for being, for example, an intelligent woman, it winds up being a huge challenge to combat that. It can happen no matter how conservatively she dresses or what she looks like. If being "old and ugly" cured the issue, I wouldn't spend so much time contemplating such questions. I have joked that I am still waiting to become old and ugly enough for this to stop being an issue.
But, you know, I can't control what the world does. I can only kind of sort of take a smidgeon of control over my limited choices in life. And I found it helpful to take a different approach than this.
Not an issue here in Shenzhen. No one bothers me. They notice but there is no problem. Our sex workers do not wear this kind of clothing as Chinese men prefer an innocent/cute/childish look. You can see from my 360º videos on YouTube that aside from curious looks no one bothers me or cares very much. Mostly they enjoy the novelty and ask to take pictures with me.
Beside personal taste, the other issue is my appearance is effective. Female Makers- or Women in Tech are rarely featured in Chinese news, it's just not something that gets much interest and there is no community of like-minded women I can look to. Sexy girls are still the delivery vector for nearly all messages in tech here. If I want to get my message out- that these new technical tools are accessible, and that there are well-paying jobs available for women that master them, I have to do so in a way that will actually reach my audience. I'm sure the high road is nice- but in China, no one will hear a word you say while you are on it.
For people making negative comments- while sex workers in your country might wear some similar clothing, women in your country also wear and do things that only sex workers in other, even more conservative countries would do. While we all would like to think our country sets the standard for the World it’s polite not to impose our standards on each other- no matter how surprising the differences. You can be sure if I visited your country I would dress so as to not cause offense."
Sure, but the whole point of your comment seemed to be that she shouldn't do things this way, because she can't control how the world reacts to her. Maybe I misunderstood it.
She can do whatever she wants. I have tried very hard to make it clear I am not saying "She is doing it wrong!" But I have handled things different from her.
I am currently working on a blog post about it. It isn't an easy thing to address. The subtle distinctions I want to make are not very well served by chatty, off the cuff forum comments.
>If someone asked you to draw a picture of an engineer, who would you draw? As you draw the figure, the gender assigned is a reflection of your mental prototype of an engineer – your own prototype bias. Most will draw a male figure.
How about it being a reflection of status quo?
If one sees more male engineers, they are more likely to draw a male one than a female one.
Ever more so if their goal is to draw a representative or "median" engineer, and not an activist one (to help increase the number women in engineering roles) when doing the drawing.
Right, but the point the author is trying to make is that having that vision of the 'prototype' in your head changes your behavior and keeps people who are not the 'status quo' out of the field.
Men generally seem to take issue with women who own their sexuality, combine that with the general level of misogyny and sexism in the tech industry and the general level of gate keeping that surrounds "nerd" culture and you get this.
Please stop repeating the myth that tech industry is somehow extremely misogynistic or sexist. It's not more than other industries, in fact I strongly suspect it is actually less.
Did GP imply that tech is more misogynistic than other industries? Or "extremely" so?
I do not think they did.
Even if tech is on par with, or less than, other industries with regards to misogyny, what then? We (HN) largely work in tech. It (the industry) has a problem. Let's talk about what to do about it, not pretend it doesn't exist because "it could be worse".
I think they did hint at it, to quote "combine that with the general level of misogyny and sexism in the tech industry"; but only they know. If they didn't - good!
> We (HN) largely work in tech. It (the industry) has a problem.
No, it's a social problem. Tech industry per se has nothing to do with it. I can see many social problems (and worse ones, let's be real) unrelated to tech that we can and should talk about and not pretend they don't exist.
I mean, look at it from the other side - we shouldn't ignore a social problem because it isn't an issue in tech - for example, homelessness.
I suspect the cause of her issues is not that she is female, but that she uses her physical attractiveness to promote herself in a community that has traditionally valued pure technical ability over all.
If you look at her YouTube channel, it's full of her showing off scantily clad outfits, which has allowed her to amass a relatively large audience. Had she been male, her same projects wouldn't have allowed her to attain any sort of similar notoriety (the fact that many of them center around fashion aside).
Contrast the lack of similar reactions towards Jeri Ellsworth.
I don't think I've experienced this rarefied field where people were valued purely by their technical ability. I would love to be in that field!
In my opinion, no one should be penalized for their attractiveness or lack thereof and no one should be penalized for the clothes they decide to wear. Any shame you may feel over being attracted to someone is kind of your own thing and, surely, doesn't impact that person's ability to do their work, technical or otherwise.
For sure, many workplaces have certain dress requirements. This is someone blogging on their own time, from their own home or workshop. They can wear whatever they like.
She is not being penalized for her attractiveness, quite the contrary. Her choice of clothing has allowed her to gain a substantial media following without the need for advanced technical ability - she has admitted herself that most of her projects were on a "middle-school level" (hyperbole, but still demonstrative).
It's not the case of a person who happens to be attractive doing technical things and being judged for it - it's the case of a person becoming popular because of their attractiveness, with the technical abilities being secondary.
Plus, if you look at the media reaction to the events, it is almost entirely supportive. Dale Dougherty was blasted by the media and had to apologize for his remarks.
Not long ago, there was a stanford grad student who got featured in some cologne ads in the usual hunky poses. Did anybody question his technical ability? At all?
That's the point. She's not just a woman, she's a woman with fake tits and no problems to show her physique--I think the possibility of her being a persona is over the roof, the same I would think of a super hot guy who posts all of his gadgets surrounded by his abs
I have not followed this case at all, but given my experience looking at twitch camwhores and the like I would be inclined to think of her being a persona for some nefarious purpose (selling shit? just getting clicks?). Evidently if I were the CEO of a company I would not make such an accusation openly. That was the mistake here.
Anyway as they say "just don't look". Don't give any attention to either of them.
Maybe it's not exactly 'looks' and physical attributes but her general appearance in these tech tweets/blog posts. I don't see guys in analogous outfits in maker blog posts.
What would be analogous? A guy looking cool or a guy making sex jokes (sex analogies are common in electrotechnics)? Overly mascline dude? Is there even analogous outfit for a guy?
My guess is that not really, this is not symmetric situation.
> There's no reason to inject sexuality into technical things.
Flip-side, what about injecting technology into everyday things people might find sexy (e.g. clothing)? Is putting some lights or LCDs on a miniskirt less worthy as a project than sewing them on a hoodie? Neither one is particularly high-technology nowadays, but that's generally not something the Maker brand/movement cares about, and on one level the only difference is that different people are more likely to wear one over the other.
> It's not something that we really want to promote in our workspaces.
In the specific case here, Make did the "not promote" thing for years, and people didn't care all that much (@sexycyborg claimed she was banned by Make from presenting at Maker Faires, even when the local organizers were fine with it, and there were some complaints about that, but even that sparked no big outrage as far as I heard). It now only blew up when their CEO went beyond that.
That is not really sexy, no more then swimming shorts. I don't know what all dudes in here have with speedo. I suspect Americans are picking it cause they are disgusted by that for some weird reason.
Sexy dudes targeted at women look different.
Also, electrotechnics is full of sex jokes. And I have seen presentations with bikiny or other women in them for no reason. It is not like sexualitu was not there previously, it is just that it was not produced by women.
> they are disgusted by that for some weird reason
Sacha Baron Cohen as Borat.
He's not the reason, but he perfectly illuminates the reason. The banana-hammock beachwear crosses the line between sexy and sleazy. It's actually worse than just being completely naked--an expression of anti-modesty.
And as America is generally more prudish than anywhere else, other than former parts of the Caliphate, the projection of anti-modesty is offensive to us. It's fine to be good-looking, but not to explicitly call too much attention to it. It would actually be better to "accidentally" show off your six-pack abs and bulging quads than to go around singing Right Said Fred songs in a man-thong.
None of them wears speedo. They have long pants and long sleeves. Also those pics are old school as hell, like 80 idea or something, one has only dudes (ugly) face. Frankly they seem to me like dudes idea of what women should like, but if that happened to work on cover and those books were super succesfull then whatever. I checked modern romance covers and they seem to be sexier to me. So I am not all that much odd one out.
I am not saying that sexy dude wears full body outfit that covers him entirely. I am saying speedo is really not it and it is used here to play to fear of Americans of ... something speedo related. It is not example of "sexy", but of something I am supposed to find disgusting. (I dont. In here, speedo is perfectly normal for swimming.)
I'm a Naomi Wu fan so I am biased but I want to point out that we shouldn't doubt people as a front because they prepare what they say beforehand from the internet or other sources or even because they have to do research or ask for help from other sources before doing a video.
I'm a programmer and yet surprise I use Stackoverflow. In the end, points of authority are still people and should be seen as such, they are not all-knowing sources of truth or some kind of tech Buddha.
I also found this apology to be pretty weak sauce. Obviously the damage can't be undone, but why not take a stab at trying? He owes it to this person, after all.
Things I dislike:
- The actual apology is one sentence long
- He doesn't state what he did wrong
- He doesn't acknowledge the harm he has caused
- It's not clear he's learned anything from this event
We've already asked you not to troll, so could you please stop? The difference between trolling and discussing is whether or not you've met the bar of information over provocation.
I was giving my perhaps cynical take on the question, but it was not trolling or attempting to be provocative.
I work in a biG tech company and have seen first hand people be bullied, shunned, and placed on informal 'do-not-work-with' lists by managers not just for holding disgusting views, but also for holding not-quite-Liberal-enough views. Also, holding views which are okay to express generally, but wrong to express more specifically about a single class(say, women).
This controversy would not be happening if a random fat dude was accused of faking building things. It's only because this story includes a female, and therefore ties into some subset of society's obsession with gender and race issues that we are discussing this.
This is addressed in the article; see the part saying
> Although Dale had issued a public apology about the rumors, the apology fixes her reputation as much as saying “sorry” repairs a vase smashed on the floor.
The article generally discusses why this situation is asymmetric, and the power dynamics at play.
For the record, the tweet in question is on Naomi's twitter page header. It reads:
"I am questioning who she really is. Naomi is a persona, not a real person. She is several or many people".
Also more pictures of Naomi on her twitter- I have to admit she looks like a booth babe and the first thing that came to my mind when I saw here pictures was "fan service".
But that means nothing of course. In fact, if I think about it- having a poor sense of style is so being an engineer.
> Western men visiting China often feel entitled to the attention of local women, says Wu. When she declines romantic or sexual advances from American ex-pats, Wu says they often respond with rage. [1]
A few years ago the video game convention PAX instituted a policy, under pressure from attendees, that amounted to "no booth babes." This applied to hired models whose only job was to dress provocatively standing in a booth, but also to cosplayers who demonstrated a level of creativity in costume-making and performance matching Naomi Wu.
In that case, a class of creative professional who are passionate makers and enthusiastic fans of a medium were denied a chance to ply their trade because the organizers felt it was a salacious distraction from the core proposition from the show.
The sense I get is that Dale is being criticized because he's seen to be questioning an individual's technical skills based almost exclusively on her physical appearance. I get that, and that criticism is fair.
However, my read of his comment is that he shares the view of the proponents of PAX's policy. In that case, Jessica Nigri was a creative enthusiast, but her presence made the show less comfortable for other attendees for a variety of reasons, e.g. promoting unrealistic body images, adding a sexual dynamic to what is supposed to be an all-ages show, etc.
I'm curious if the uproar would be at all diminished (or exacerbated) if Dale had framed the original decision to not have her present along one of these lines of argument:
1) If he was dismissive of her work, but not her as a person.
"Naomi Wu is an impressive young maker with a large following, but we feel like her popularity is driven more by her appearance rather than the quality or originality of her work."
2) Or if it was presented as an editorial decision:
"We've not invited Naomi Wu to present because her work, while interesting, is sexually charged and outside the scope of projects we want to highlight at MakerFaire."
3) Or a commercial decision:
"Naomi Wu has not been invited to present at MakerFaire because while we believe makers should feel free to pursue a wide range of interests and modes of self-expression, her presence may prove distracting to the busloads of first-graders who make up a large portion of the audience, and uncomfortable to our sponsors."
4) Or even if it was a moralistic judgement:
"Naomi Wu has not been invited to present at MakerFaire because we believe women in tech face huge amounts of latent sexism and our judgment is that featuring work in this style would worsen, not improve the problem."
Would these have been better or worse?
FWIW, I had the good fortune to spend a few hours with Dale and some of the O'Reilly crew circa 2008. It's hard for me to imagine a more "woke" group of people at the head of a large tech company. They were focused on diversity and inclusion well before the topics took on the wide-spread buy-in that they have today.
I don't know how it works, but it's an argument that gets made, often by the same people who are now protesting Make. I don't see a major difference between the women who were told to cover up or get out at PAX and Ms. Wu. Both have carved out a niche at the fringes of a tech industry by flaunting their physiques. I understand the arguments for and against celebrating them, but their treatment seems inconsistent.
Of course a woman can be a "maker". Of course an attractive person can be a "maker". But Naomi Wu's entire shtick seems to be "skimpily dressed girl with fake tits does stereotypically nerdy male activity". Look at her Youtube channel [1] - every video starts with an anime cartoon of her, obviously intended to titillate.
People have frequently criticised startups for using sex to promote their products. (E.g., Geeklist, a few years back [2]). Now a scantily clad woman is a feminist icon? I get that there's a view of the world whereby the Geeklist woman was being exploited, and Naomi Wu is simply owning her sexuality, or whatever. For most outsiders it simply looks like fashion. Using sex to promote tech products was passe, and now it's in again and slightly edgy, but only if you're cool enough to pull it off.
She has an explanation about how the breast implants really express her interest in bodyhacking and the outfits reflect the cyberpunk style of Shenzhen. (B.S., by the way - most of Shenzhen is just a normal Chinese city). And when all her photos and videos are of her in a skimpy outfit, wearing makeup and with hair styled - she's choosing to present herself in a certain way. She could do a video wearing a sweater, working on a late night project with a ponytail and bagged eyes, but she doesn't. She knows looking good will get her videos more clicks. (It takes a lot of effort to look good consistently, which is why engineers and scientists of either gender are stereotypically not good-looking. They're spending too much time on other things).
Then there's the fact that her Twitter [3] simply doesn't sound like a mainland Chinese girl. No, I can't prove this. But I spent enough time studying Chinese and living in China, speaking with a wide range of Chinese people, and I'd bet any amount of money that those tweets were written by an American. Even when translated by a native English speaker, Chinese has a ton of idiosyncratic phrasings and sentence patterns that give it a distinctive style. (For an example, see ChinaSmack [4], which translates Chinese internet culture into English).
Not only do Naomi's tweets lack that style completely, they definitely do not sound like they were written who grew up in a Confucian culture. China favours modesty, hierarchy and conforming to the group. Sure, there are sassy, independent young Chinese women, but they don't sound like sassy, independent young American women. Naomi Wu sounds like an American woman. (Specifically American and not generically Western - Europeans don't have that brash aggressiveness). Again, I can't prove this, but her Twitter postings simply do not have the slightest hint of Chinese-ness. [Edit: having listened to more of her videos, it is highly unlikely the girl in the videos made those tweets].
Then there's the fact that she screenshotted his tweet and uses it as part of her Twitter header photo [3]. And the huge pile-on to a guy who made one tweet and later apologised for it. She even goes digging and trying to associate him with Donald Trump on fairly spurious grounds [5]. This whole story designed to hit the tech industry's buttons and incite everyone to pontificate about "tech bros". My guess is that her company is intentionally using this episode as a guerilla marketing/PR exercise, but I have no idea.
In my opinion, the article also unwittingly reveals the fetishization of Asian women in North America.
How dare an Asian woman who has breast augumentation surgery and risque photos call herself a technologist? How dare she use her physical attractiveness to woe the attention of men other than getting naked in front of your computer screen?
"How dare"? Who is saying anything like that? I think the original accusation focused on the deleted account of an experienced engineer associated with Naomi.
But you know what?
> How dare she use her physical attractiveness to woe the attention of men
I'm just gonna go ahead and say this is, in fact, a questionable thing to do. Especially in a community with a name like "Maker" that purports to be about technical ability.
> I'm just gonna go ahead and say this is, in fact, a questionable thing to do. Especially in a community with a name like "Maker" that purports to be about technical ability.
Are you even remotely aware of your own biases here that I'm trying to highlight?
So communities that purports technical subjects should enforce strict Puritan dress code for women to fit your own world views?
> You're not wrong, but it's a touchy subject and the word "slutshaming" polarizes people pretty effectively in the current year.
In your comment you invalidate 'slutshaming' completely, do you think it might have impact on what you are writing?
> So communities that purports technical subjects should enforce strict Puritan dress code for women to fit your own world views?
Come on, this is an obvious strawman. There's a gradient between a "strict Puritan dress code" and "let's get naked!". If I showed up to Strange Loop in a slingshot speedo do you think that'd be okay?
> In your comment you invalidate 'slutshaming' completely, do you think it might have impact on what you are writing?
I don't think I "invalidate slutshaming completely". I said it's a polarizing topic, which it is.
Well the main complaint seems to be that she was dressed too 'sexy' without taking the context into factor. Her aims were marketing and she succeeded.
> If I showed up to Strange Loop in a slingshot speedo do you think that'd be okay?
It's okay if you are okay with it, regardless of what others think. I'd imagine this example was created to illustrate how unsexy for a grown male (which I assume here) is to wear a speedo whereas it would work for female (assume hetero). I'm sure some folks at Strange Loops will find your attire attractive.
Which is pretty much the entire point of me trying to explain the underlying sexist bias that's at play here.
Calling 'slutshaming' a touchy word and a modern trend are invalidating remarks because you minimize it's importance and that it's not worthy of discussion because it's merely superficial like a trend. It's real and the only reason why you might not think so is simply because you haven't experienced it which is not valid grounds to say 'slutshaming' isn't real.
Things that are inappropriate in your head are that way because of your own emotional relationship with those "inappropriate things". In this case, seeing somebody in a sexy light and blaming them for arousing you is inappropriate initself. It might warrant as harassment of sorts. Do you walk up to your female co-workers (just the sexy ones) and tell them they can't wear what they feel is within their rights because you are uncomfortable with your own feelings which is entirely within your control?
> Do you walk up to your female co-workers (just the sexy ones) and tell them they can't wear what they feel is within their rights because you are uncomfortable with your own feelings which is entirely within your control?
No, HR does that for me. Have you even seen Naomi's pictures? If she wore anything like that at work in the USA it would absolutely be a problem. It's not "my own emotional relationship".
> It's okay if you are okay with it, regardless of what others think.
Wow, I really think you're in the minority with that opinion. I would expect to be thrown out. It's not about it being "unsexy", it's about it being inappropriate and unacceptable. Funnily enough, I'm sure one of the reasons given for the ejection would be the idea that it makes the conference a hostile environment for women.
She doesn't seem to have a problem conforming to dress codes where they exist. She has posts demonstrating that she wears more clothes when at faires, and even did one blog post with no pictures of herself to show that Make would still ignore her. But in the "community" there is no dress code. Make's problem with her is not how she dresses.
She 'makes' several aspect of her physique herself. I believe she has had plastic surgery, and I assume she works out and keeps a particular diet. Her moniker containing Cyborg suggests she sees this in relation to technology as well.
But most importantly is that she has the full freedom to do what she wants, and decide what is valuable to her. She does not have to ask anyone for whether a thing is 'questionable' the eyes of others, when it hurts no-one. This is a value that is quite strong in 'maker' communities.
Making is about you deciding what you want to do, and just getting it fucking done. How is entirely up to the person who does. Why is entirely up to the person that does.
>I don’t know the background, but prior to Dale’s tweet, Naomi had aggressively dogged Dale and Make about Make’s lack of representation of women.
>Dale could have recognized and addressed this core issue of a lack of diversity. Instead, Dale elected to endorse unsubstantiated claims and destroy a young female Maker’s reputation and career.
Are there other sources that corroborate Dale’s supposed sadism?
I think "sadism" may not be the appropriate term. Based on what I have read, it sound more like Dale is simply sexist. His doubts and concerns have a pretty sexist bent, as do his actions.
When a person really thinks another class of person simply cannot do a particular thing, this is what you get.
This 'controversy' could be settled if Naomi would just say whether the assertion is right that the 'timaz' user is either her boyfriend or someone she is in contact with.
The problem with this is what I've been experiencing for years. Online shopping is fine, but what if I need something right now, and I can't wait for overnight shipping?
What if I need something for a Halloween costume, in December? What if I need a tie or pair of pants for an interview? What if I forgot to get a gift for my nephew? Malls don't require that you have a meticulous plan for everything you might need in the next month. Malls make it easy for me to go to, get something I need and get out. No matter how fast online buying is, they can't compete with local stores that allow me to get something as fast as I need it.
I first started seeing this when a bunch of convenience stores went under after 2008. Now it's getting worse. CompUSA and other tech stores used to carry a lot of PC hardware stuff I needed and could get when I needed something. Radio Shack, CompUSA, and bunch other shops all went under. Now if I need something, I'm left with Best Buy's paltry offerings and the closet Best Buy store is a good 20 minute drive one way because they already closed three of the shops that were within a five minute drive.
The death of the Malls and retail in general is already killing the convenience of being able to get something when I need it. Now I have to drive further, spend more time trying to find a retail store which is still open, and then hope their minimal offerings will do the trick.
She didn't buy a computer till 5 years ago, only used the library ones to write and print some documents.
Then suddenly she bought a laptop and setup Linux on it. Took her a few weeks, but she got everything up and running without any help.
Also, she had an old cellphone for years and then she bought a Nexus 4, rooted it and installed an OS of her choosing on it. It took her at least a month to get the thing because she never used eBay or PayPal before.
My girlfriend also rooted her smartphones multiple times when they got no updates anymore and installed Cyanogen mod.
Both these women aren't what you would call tech affine, if you interact with them on a daily basis.
Somehow they got rather complicated technical issues fixed without any help.
This really challenged my perspective on technical know how.