The initial premise of the article appears flawed. Based on my reading of the community response to Horvath's post and Github's response, most people were in the camp that the founder's wife's actions were outright ridiculous, the coworker's actions (reverting her commits) were asinine, but that the article did not appear to portray sexism, because her only provided example of sexism was ~"some women were hulahooping, I saw some guys gawking at them, the guys thought it was ok". If she had a case for more pervasive sexism at GitHub, I'd like her to lay it out in the open so we can address it.
There's a minority of the community who are assholes and will always be assholes. Without becoming a censorship society we can't outright extinguish their ability to make noise. But the vast majority of responses I saw were sympathetic to Horvath's position, if not her sexism angle.
> If she had a case for more pervasive sexism at GitHub, I'd like her to lay it out in the open so we can address it.
She did. Yet it seems like every effort is made not to address it, including flagging of two articles on HN today, both incidentally or not by women, so that they wouldn't make it to the front page (one did, briefly)[1], [2].
> But the vast majority of responses I saw were sympathetic to Horvath's position, if not her sexism angle.
That's right. Many of the comments of HN were disappointingly sexist. Just to give you an example of how cleverly sexism can be masked (even, and especially, if it's unintentional masking of unintentional sexism), the very same people who were quick to assign blame in the NSA/Snowden story, or the Aaron Swartz story, all of a sudden called for restraint until further "data" is obtained in this case so they could form an "informed" opinion, while views supporting and expounding on the sexism claims were dismissed as "emotional". Actually this masking of sexism is so banal, that it is, in fact, anything but clever.
I'm sympathetic to the problems women face in this industry, but the fact that HN did not leap to unwarranted conclusions in this case is something that should be encouraged, not shamed. Maybe people were able to show restraint in this case because they felt less close to the issue due to sexist tendencies, but the modicum of restraint shown is not itself sexism — it's what should be the ideal across the board.
Also, neither of those articles are by Horvath and they barely even go into her accusation of sexism, so I'm not sure how they're supposed to illustrate that she did elaborate on her accusation. Are you sure you linked the right ones?
> the fact that HN did not leap to unwarranted conclusions in this case is something that should be encouraged, not shamed
Well, that it did so using the most banal chauvinistic terms makes it kind of shameful.
> but the modicum of restraint shown is not itself sexism — it's what should be the ideal across the board.
Yes, but the fact that restraint is shown only when women and sexism are involved is in itself sexist (actually, this is not quite true; I seem to recall similar calls to restraint of judgement back when Uber's employees picketed the company).
> I'm not sure how they're supposed to illustrate that she did elaborate on her accusation
They're not. Her accusations of systemic sexism are clearly laid out at the top of the original TechCrunch story, but have been largely ignored in the discussion. The flagging of those two stories is just another example of the commendable (yet strangely exceptional) restraint HN is showing today :)
... aaaand this very article just mysteriously dropped off the front page. Another fine example of admirable (albeit selective) restraint.
I just reread the article to be sure I hadn't glossed over it, and I personally do not see any clear account of sexism. She says it was there, and I believe her (because sexism at a tech startup is about as surprising as ants at a picnic), but she doesn't clearly describe it at all. None of the specific grievances she cites have any clear connection to her gender.
PS: Sorry people are hating so much on your reply. I do appreciate your overall point.
This isn't rape, you know. Sexism isn't an event. It's an atmosphere. She describes the atmosphere. Short of providing hours of videos or recordings, I'm not sure how much more clear she could have put it. Of course, if she had, those would have been generally dismissed as aberrations, or, more likely, as her "misunderstanding" the situation, or "natural in a competitive environment".
But that's not surprising either, because the HN community is sexist, and those are textbook responses to allegations of sexism.
If she does not give examples of the sexist atmosphere, we can't accurately form opinions about GitHub and GitHub can't address her concerns.
If I'm missing an actual example of sexism from her post, other than the hulahooping situation which I've already noted and addressed, please enlighten me.
"aggressive communication on pull requests and how little the men I worked with respected and valued my opinion"
"character started being discussed in inappropriate places like on pull requests and issues"
"she felt she was being treated differently internally simply due to her gender and not the quality of her work"
These are actual examples of sexism. I don't know what exactly you were expecting. Pictures of men dropping their pants? Because that's not sexism; that's sexual harassment. Sexism is an atmosphere and a culture which she says she experienced. Please read up on what sexism is before placing yourself in the role of the lawyer for the defense. Just ask yourself this: were you displaying the same sort of skepticism in the Aaron Swartz case, or were you inclined to believe his accounts or the accounts of those close to him? If the answer is that you weren't skeptical back then, then you're displaying sexist behavior right now even if you don't feel like you are or it's not your intention.
When someone accuses you of sexism, then you are probably sexist even if you don't see it, precisely because you can't see it. It's just like someone telling you you've got something stuck in your teeth. When someone tells you you've got something stuck in your teeth, you don't assume they're lying, but you go look in the mirror; if you don't, you run the risk of looking stupid. Sexism is exactly the same: if someone tells you you're sexist, you go look in the mirror long and hard. If you deny it, you just look stupid, because how do you deny something that you can't see?
When someone accuses you of sexism, then you are probably sexist even if you don't see it
And isn't that convenient?
This is the reason why people are scared to death of a mere accusation of sexism or racism.
Of course, we can joke about it, and quote Avenue Q ("everyone's a little bit racist..."), but it's just about as easy to defend against as being accused of being a Communist in 1950s Hollywood, or being accused of being a witch in 1620s New England. Once the taint is attached to a person, especially in a high profile or scandalous case, it hangs around for a while.
In reality, all that we can determine when A accuses B of sexism, is that A experiences something B is doing as sexist (or thinks they do). But A could be mistaken, A could have an axe to grind with B, or it could simply be a difference of opinion about what is sexist and what is not. To say otherwise is just jumping to conclusions.
> In reality, all that we can determine when A accuses B of sexism, is that A experiences something B is doing as sexist (or thinks they do).
Yes. That's usually what sexism is. What A experiences.
> But A could be mistaken
In theory - yes. In practice, chances of that are low, especially in tech. You see, tech is such a sexist environment, that if anyone experiences sexism in your company, it's probably there. Even if no one experiences it it's probably there. Unlike Communism in the 50s, though, it's no biggie. You listen, try to understand, identify and empathize and fix whatever needs fixing. That's not "jumping to conclusions", but realizing that this is a very serious problem in tech right now, and all you need to do is try and fix it. No one is getting blacklisted or going to jail.
And it's not a "taint", unless the allegations are of something far more serious than simple sexism (like sexual harassment).
What I don't understand is why would anyone, when faced with the accusation that some of their employees feel unsafe or bullied, would try to fight this. If someone tells you the atmosphere in your company makes them uncomfortable, you better listen. You shouldn't take offense by someone calling you sexist because chances are that you are. Why? Because we are flooded with sexist ideas starting in kindergarten and everywhere else since. Think of it is a vestigial social appendage. Everybody has it. It's ingrained in us. If someone points that out to you, you should be thankful, because you're seeing something that you're not accustomed to seeing. It can be truly eye opening and enlightening, and unlike some interesting fact about the big bang, this knowledge can make living in our society a lot better for everyone.
I think part of the challenge is that people are conditioned by media to view "sexism" or "racism" only in the grossest extremes, as things that are only done by truly evil people. For example: "sexism" as the boss who gropes his female subordinates and proposes sexual services in exchange for special treatment or promotions; "racism" as the cross-burning Klansmen or curb-stomping skinheads.
As such, admitting to "a little" sexism or "a little" racism is viewed by many as a one way slippery slope of perception where their friends and colleagues will soon be viewing them as those aforementioned examples of undiluted evil.
Additionally, from a tactical / practical point of view, it may be unwise to admit anything in front of HR, which generally exists primarily to protect the company's ass from liability, and only incidentally to protect the employees. No one wants to be written up or sent to sensitivity training.
I am attempting to look in the mirror, and it looks like GitHub is as well. But saying ~"I felt like I was treated differently", and ~"There was overly aggressive communication on pull requests" is akin to telling someone "You had something in your teeth some time in the past year".
Regarding the claim that article [1] was flagged off the front page: It currently has 78 upvotes and 101 comments. As I have explained before‡, articles that have more comments than upvotes and more than 40 comments are automatically penalized by the controversy filter. Thus, it is likely that the article dropped off the front page due to the ranking algorithm, not due to a deliberate effort to suppress the article.
I'm aware of the algorithm. But that story, like the other one, did drop off the front page due to deliberate flagging. Most of the comments came later because the item was shared outside HN (I know because I was closely following it). One of the flaggers was brave and honest enough to own up to it, tried to explain himself, and then was open minded enough or civil enough to be convinced.
It reached around #8 on the front page with about 60 votes and no more than 30 comments, and then, poof, was gone in a few seconds.
Perhaps rather than whining about how 'banal' everyone here was, you could just educate us as to what the specific sexism was? All of the stories that were popular here were primarily about a crazy wife harassing an employee and a jealous employee behaving chilishly.
Interesting. I didn't see that much negative attitudes after the story was cleared out, actually most were sympathetic. The main disagreements were how the story was massively pinned everywhere as one of sexism, when the main conflict involved another woman, and then the man who reversed Horvath's commits appeared to hold a grudge, not necessarily sexist attitudes.
Sorry about the incident you describe, but I'm having a hard time extrapolating it to systemic racism. It appeared that it was an uneducated punk trying to impress a love interest through the only brutish way he knows: violence. He also needs to intimidate you somehow, and your race stands out. So what do you think he's going to do, in that case? Comment on your race, of course. People of lower caliber tend to focus on these superficialities.
Oh, and they also tend to be highly effective insults. There's that, too. If your goal is to offend, racial slurs are an invaluable tool.
But even if we were to assume that this arbitrary incident from over 25 years ago is evidence of current events, I still cannot take your claim that the tech industry is "as welcoming to women as medicine and law were a century ago" at face value.
Secret WASP classes, indeed. Most higher education today is the polar opposite of that ideologically, but there you go.
> the story was massively pinned everywhere as one of sexism, when the main conflict involved another woman, and then the man who reversed Horvath's commits appeared to hold a grudge, not necessarily sexist attitudes.
That is not true, that's just what the nitpickers here focused on. To quote the TechCrunch story:
Horvath claims: “I had a really hard time getting used to the culture, the aggressive communication on pull requests and how little the men I worked with respected and valued my opinion,” she wrote in an email to TechCrunch.
Why did Horvath work for GitHub? She “loved the idea of GitHub because it was the place people went to make things for people who make things.”
In light of that, Horvath told us that she “participated in the boys’ club upon joining,” but when her “character started being discussed in inappropriate places like on pull requests and issues,” the situation changed.
In short, Horvath said that she felt she was being treated differently internally simply due to her gender and not the quality of her work. She calls her colleagues’ response to her own work and the work of other female GitHub employees a “serious problem.” Despite GitHub hiring more female developers, Horvath said she struggled to feel welcome.
Ah, I guess one could have an argument for that, in that case. It still sounds like it was just a very informal and competitive environment, much like Bungie, where there are no idols and people are free-for-all, but I can definitely see how some can be put off by it.
Exactly: just like Horvath said – a sexist environment, and a sexist comment. Read here[1] on the definition of sexism. Notice especially how sexism explains itself away in naturalistic and/or neutral terms, like "free-for-all" and "competitive", while not so subtly shifting the blame to those who can't cope with such an "informal" environment. Usually, "informal" actually means that those who have power feel comfortable, while those who don't feel bullied.
Informal at the places I've worked meant wearing silly shirts on Friday and harsh language was used if you screwed up. If a woman quit does that mean it was a sexist workplace? If a guy quit after being berated is that different? I don't think so.
Also, you linked to a feminist site to provide the definition of a word. Is that normally how people cite the standard/objective meaning of a word or is this story a chance to talk about something you feel very strongly about whether it fits or not?
Edit: just read the definition. Women can't be sexist? Hilarious. Let me guess, African Americans & Asians can't be racist either? Warped view of the world.
> If a woman quit does that mean it was a sexist workplace?
No. But if she quits because she felt the environment was sexist, then yes.
> If a guy quit after being berated is that different? I don't think so.
Well, male-on-male bullying is also an interesting topic and subject to research, but the topic du jour is sexism, so let's stick to that.
> Also, you linked to a feminist site to provide the definition of a word. Is that normally how people cite the standard/objective meaning of a word...?
Well, I don't know if "sexism" has an "objective" definition, but yes, words are usually best defined by experts on the subjects. Just as gravity is best defined by physicists, sexism is best defined by feminists, who have studied sexism for the past few decades. I'm a newbie to feminism, so I defer to the experts.
> or is this story a chance to talk about something you feel very strongly about whether it fits or not?
It is something I feel strongly about because of this story and others like it. Because so far all evidence suggests that "it fits", I think those trying to make it look irrelevant are suspect.
> No. But if she quits because she felt the environment was sexist, then yes.
What if she feels she's Jesus... is she therefore Jesus? She also felt a bunch of guys watching some girls hula-hooping was sexist... and that the word "meritocracy" on a rug was sexist... so perhaps you should ask yourself whether her feelings are such an accurate guide to reality before berating the HN community for their supposed chauvinism.
Feminist scholars are in this case at odds with most experts on the English language, and the topic is unfortunately word usage. This is one of the peculiarities of modern feminism that I find frustrating. It is difficult enough to persuade people that discrimination against women is a real problem that needs addressing without also having to convince them to adopt this weird Newspeak.
> Well, I don't know if "sexism" has an "objective" definition, but yes, words are usually best defined by experts on the subjects. Just as gravity is best defined by physicists, sexism is best defined by feminists, who have studied sexism for the past few decades.
Feminism is an ideology, not a field of study (well, one can study "feminism" in that you can study what feminists believe and do, but that's not the subject here.)
Yes, feminism is an ideology, but one that is universally shared among those who study gender and sexism, just as anti-racism is an ideology shared by those who study racism. You can dismiss it based on ignorance, or try to listen for a second and might learn something.
The work environment was allegedly sexist, and sexist comments were allegedly made, based on the word of a disgruntled former employee who in the recent past complained that the word 'meritocracy' is sexist.
Somehow I think the most reasonable opinion to hold is that of extreme doubt towards someone who probably encounters hundreds of 'horribly, deeply sexist' situations in every-day life.
You've almost gave a perfect example of ad hominem there, attacking her character without offering proof & using that as just cause for dismissal of her claims.
Fact of the matter is, it's too early to say whether she was wrong or not - that is the most reasonable opinion, which yours veers far off of. You weren't the one who experienced the things she claimed, so to dismiss it so quickly without offering anything nearing the level of claims she did speaks to your character more than hers.
You may be right. You may be horribly wrong. Whatever the case, you definitely don't fall under rational/reasonable though.
It's not an ad hominem at all. She made claims that are, for random internet speculators, fundamentally unverifiable. Indeed, her claims simply cannot be proven either way via discussion. It's little more than "he-said-she-said." In situations like this, you have nothing to go on but perceived trustworthiness. Prior events that might damage trustworthiness are not irrelevant.
>Fact of the matter is, it's too early to say whether she was wrong or not
Obviously, but you can speculate and weigh the possibilities.
We have a disgruntled employee (who is no longer with the company) writing a piece attacking her former company and some people working there. That brings a lot of doubt over the validity of her claims already.
Add to that the hilarious debacle this employee created a few months ago over a rug that so brazenly included the terrorizing, offensive, gross word 'meritocracy' on it.
If someone thinks 'meritocracy' is sexist, might they also think a totally ordinary workplace happening is sexist?
My bet is on her claims of sexism being a waste of time (you do know that you can speculate on something without being totally sure, right?).
Just so you know, the word "meritocracy", is in fact a parody, but because bitter irony has led to its being seriously adopted by some people recently, there is general consensus among people actually studying sociology (rather than some dudes with opinions) that "meritocracy" really is sexist as well as racist. If you care to learn something new, you can look it up and understand why, rather than dismiss something based on ignorance.
I'm sorry, but if a person posts their article online up for debate, then yes, I will comment on how I interpret what they've given of their story. That's how public discourse works, I'm afraid.
You can, but you need to have convincing argumentation. The statement that "tech treats women like medicine and law did a century ago" is a blatant provocation.
Most of Horvath's story detailed a power struggle.
If your goal is to offend. Context matters, people. Stop deliberately trying to get offended by everything, please. It's not that I agree with offending people, but it's what the person in the OP's story seemed to be going for, and since racial slurs are highly offensive, they are very useful in that.
> since racial slurs are highly offensive, they are very useful in that.
I agree! And the context of this is important, as you note -- as verbal constructions, racial slurs are more effectively offensive than pretty much any other available words, and one can often easily use them after just having looking at someone. And, after having these verbal weapons leveled at him, and being in a subsequent fistfight, he was essentially told that "boys will be boys".
This should tell you something about how the power structures in play deal with minorities.
Or perhaps it was simply them trying to brush off an inconvenient situation? That's something many institutions do, it's not just done exclusively when it concerns racial issues. Hell, the fact that it was a racial issue gives them more incentive to keep silence.
As for his friends, they might have simply decided it wasn't worth expending energy on a lowlife punk.
Two white guys (or two non-white guys) getting into a bit of a fight isn't going to make the local newspaper, let alone even the student newspaper. A racially motivated assault (which this most definitely was) just might.
Also consider that racially motivated slurs mostly have their power when used against minorities, rarely the other way around.
>And, after having these verbal weapons leveled at him, and being in a subsequent fistfight, he was essentially told that "boys will be boys". This should tell you something about how the power structures in play deal with minorities.
The "boys will be boys" mentality has traditionally applied to all men involved in fistfights, not just minorities.
It seems like whenever something like this happens publicly in our industry, a lot of people get all up in arms for a few days on blogs and twitter and then people forget until the next one happens. I suppose that is the way of the world, but it seems like people are more invested in being upset by things like sexism, racism, spying, or whoever sold for a billion dollars than they are in doing anything about it. I think a lot of people like complaining and being unhappy, even if the problems of the day have nothing to do with them directly.
I have experienced similar sorts of crap behavior in the past (racial, violent, etc.) - my only recourse in some cases were to respond to violence with violence unfortunately, although it did have a net positive effect that I somehow gained respect & the reputation that I would fight back, so that no one would mess with me. The downside is that sometimes you end up having to continually prove yourself at various points in your life.
Violence is not my preferred method of retaliation though - violence in itself does not prove a point, except that I am not willing to be trampled on. It has also backfired on me in the past at times (ex. fracturing my hand while in boot camp from retaliating over getting punched in a stressful moment - the initial punch I took was due to some mythical blame that I was at fault for the platoon getting jacked up). Sometimes you cannot do anything else when a bully attacks you directly - the only thing such people understand is meeting power with power, that is the state of their brutish mind. They don't ascribe to the fundamental premise of mutual respect, even when you have not done anything that should have provoked it. You're just used as an excuse to vent out frustrations over self-deficiencies or failures.
This is why we, the new privileged class of tech, should be doing everything to abet this behavior, and show that we should be welcoming - we should be showing that there is a better way than repeating the same old animalistic behavior in a new form. Behavior like this or what Julie experienced is abhorrent, and commentary should take into account that we are talking about people who have experienced what no one should experience ever.
The second paragraph is a complete strawman of the discourse that occurred here. It's so unrepresentative of what I witnessed that I thought it was a joke. How can you post something like that and expect any of your post to be taken credibly after that?
There's a minority of the community who are assholes and will always be assholes. Without becoming a censorship society we can't outright extinguish their ability to make noise. But the vast majority of responses I saw were sympathetic to Horvath's position, if not her sexism angle.