Burqa’s draw attention to the fact that you’re a woman. This is the opposite.
More like a Star Trek uniform. Everybody wears the same thing, even Counselor Troi in the later seasons.
As icing on the poo-cake: somebody in [Pamie]'s comments just linked the website of the author: http://www.susanmarenco.com/
Please observe how the title of said page is “Your Site Title”.
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There are “no men” because to be male is considered the default. It is easy to miss this if one is, in fact, a male oneself. This is what we term “privilege”.
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Many people choose their usernames as some form of their own name. Should a woman be required to change her default username to avoid trollish dickheads? I mean, a man can use his name as a username and he’s not “announcing his gender.” You’re playing a weird victim blaming game here, when the problem is really “people being assholes to women on the internet”.
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My username is based on my real name. Can you tell what gender I am from my username?
I have grown increasingly concerned about the welfare of women online lately. Mostly since learning that Tumblr is more than just long threads of images of old movie posters or weird comic covers. It seems like people are cultivating a class of victimhood based simply on who they are, which is incredibly damaging. It is a pernicious evil that tells people that it’s not their fault that they’re in their situation, it’s someone else’s fault and it’s that persons job to fix it.
I work in a high tech industry. We try to be racially diverse and do a pretty decent job of it all told. That said, sometimes you’ll get a black guy who can’t stop talking about 3/5s or “they CLOSED THE SCHOOLS so my dad couldn’t go to school” and while annoying this isn’t fatal. What’s fatal is that they don’t know their shit. Like they can’t even pull the 5-tuple out of a packet when handed the frame on a silver platter. And then they don’t want to learn. And then the man is keeping them down again when they’re fired. It makes me wonder how they ever graduated from college in the first place if they’re not willing to do the work. A quick hint: It doesn’t matter how disadvantaged you are and how many boosts you can get, you’re not going to get ahead if you aren’t willing to buckle down and do the hard work.
Annoyingly though, the people with that mindset do make up a larger percentage of people looking for work, so you have to be careful when screening applicants to avoid wasting your time on a person like that.
Thankfully, I have not seen this in the women here. There is a lot of competence to go around, and they get the job done. That’s why they climb through the ranks and do well. Is there a glass ceiling? Maybe, the people I work with are not likely to hit it however, I’m not in the executive branch. Promotions here are pretty much entirely merit based. I would hate to see this ruined by people suddenly feeling entitled because my cis male privilege is keeping them down.
No gender is the default. If you want to assume it is a man then that’s your business.
This is still coming across like you’re saying - “Hey you silly women, stop wanting to use your first name as a username, even if you’ve done that for a decade or more. It’s your fault that you’re being harrassed online, because you’re ‘announcing your gender’ by refusing to change to a non-gender-specific username.”
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“There are no girls on the internet” is listed all over as one of the rules of the internet; it shows up in places like knowyourmeme and tvtropes. “There are no men on the internet” gets a lot of hits, but mostly discussing how it would be a logical corollary. Your implication that this isn’t something specifically about women here doesn’t seem to reflect how it’s used or other people’s experiences.
I can’t from your user name, but there are a few cases where you’ve mentioned your wife. And checking back, it’s often in very normal contexts that have nothing to do with gender or relationships - your experience with FaceTime, where you’ve heard complaints about education, and so on.
If you had said husband instead I’d know you were a woman or perhaps gay. Would that count as deliberately announcing that and so “looking for attention” as you put it? I wouldn’t think so, it’s just what normal conversation looks like. Such basic aspects of yourself become apparent unless you’re careful to guard them.
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And no…
Just because I have a wife doesn’t mean I’m a man.
This is a breathtakingly ignorant statement that can only come from someone enjoying male privilege.
Considering that BBoing sent me a notification that you’d replied to me containing your actual first name, you’re clearly not as anonymous as you think. Maybe you should pick a more gender neutral name so as not to flaunt your maleness. Balls or GTFO.
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That’s inappropriate.
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That’s true, and I said as much - you’re either a married heterosexual man or one of the small but growing minority of same-sex married women.
So earlier you mentioned women on 4chan are harassed for demanding attention for their gender. Are you then arguing this uncertainty means someone who mentioned their husband wouldn’t be treated accordingly? Because I’m skeptical that the small chance they were gay would stop that othering. 
Or is this just a quibble to ignore the obvious point that you’ve made your gender here reasonably plain without ever having actually demanded attention for it, Jason, even though you are saying that should work differently for women?
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This is true, its just that while not announcing your gender takes no effort, hiding it does. That is, choosing a username because its gender neutral means your choices are limited from the beginning, because you’re female. Also, some people don’t want to be anonymous.
Having said that, I agree that there’s no real reason to “defend your code” on stackoverflow, sure, style nazis will tear your code apart no matter what, but it either works or it doesn’t, at most somebody might come along that has a better way of doing things (And be a jerk about it, sure, but the code’s got to work).
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Why should women have to worry about remaining anonymous to make sure they’re taken seriously? Your comments suggest a return of the days when women had to use a pseudonym to be taken seriously as authors.
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I’ve never seen any overt misoginy on stackoverflow, its about as egalitarian as it gets, an example from one of the non-coding sites:
That doesn’t mean that there can be no sexism, just that conversations sort themselves out based on merit. Stackoverflow, being about IT in general focuses on solutions to specific problems and your solution either works or it doesn’t.
Do you not see that your argument is exactly the same as “I don’t care if people are gay, they just shouldn’t flaunt it, because I don’t need to know what people’s sexuality is” and including a male mentioning his husband/boyfriend as flaunting it. Because when a male mentions his wife/girlfriend, it somehow doesn’t count as flaunting THEIR sexuality. THAT IS THE ESSENCE OF THE PROBLEM. A male can use his real name and announce his gender in many different ways, and he’s never called on it, because nobody even THINKS about it, but a woman who does it must be doing it for attention, and therefore she should use anonymous gender neutral names (and user icons, where appropriate). Do you not see how f^@%ed up that is? Instead of attacking people for treating women differently from men, you’re suggesting women hide themselves… and not EVEN in some messed up paternalistic “yeah it sucks this is how the world works but for their own benefit they should,” which is bad enough, but because you feel that if they don’t, they’re demanding attention for their gender.
You’re tacitly agreeing with the misogyny. Don’t do that.
Maybe you don’t mean to. Maybe you’re not a misogynist. I hope not. But just as, in your view, you think women are “demanding attention” for their gender merely by allowing it to be identified, you seem to be demanding attention for your messed up beliefs by continuing to express them. If these aren’t your beliefs, you really should stop expressing them, even covertly.
You are the misogyny you refuse to see in the world.
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Oh, no, of course not. If I weren’t a woman, I’d know that he’s right… /s
So, you (or the 4-chan, or Reeddit, or better yet, the males in my life)get to decide how I should present myself in public… got it. Glad you cleared that up for me, because I was under the impression that I could be myself and get equal respect. Good to know that my gender is a “distraction”…
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