I’m sorry, but no. Not all techies. Just like not all men are rapists. Because they aren’t. Just like not all women are rapists. Because they aren’t either.
Just because a fact is true doesn’t mean it isn’t a massive de-rail.
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It’s the “few bad apples” argument. The problem is that, not unlike “good” cops who refuse to speak up when “a few bad apples” effectively murder and rob others, it denies that there is a culture that produces a reliable supply of “bad apples”.
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So, how many friends do you have who are women who work in the game dev industry? Allowing for anecdote =! data, I can still tell you that I have half a dozen in my close friend/local friend circles, and am probably one degree of separation with between 50 and 100, and every one of them has stories about encountering similar attitudes toward women from their co-workers.
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Well, I’d say I’ve got about as many as you. From a CEO to artists to programmers to writers. But … I think we may be talking about different things? At least, I hope you’re not saying that the women you know are getting specific death threats from their co-workers.
Thing is, I really can’t imagine that there are very many game developers who weren’t gamers first.
@Michael_R_Smith was recently berated for saying something about having a different experience working in different environments. I know that women have major equality issues with tech jobs in general, but I’m going to go out on a limb and guess the culture which say, a traffic engineering firm pulls applicants from is a good sight better than the culture which a game company pulls people from. That carries over into the work environment.
I don’t know why you think that their lower middle aged tech workers. White and male, sure. But I don’t see any reason to believe that they actually work making games or even setting up printers in offices. Lots of people play games. These folks could simply be shelvers at Walmart for all we know.
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Because they act like lower middle class reactionaries, because most tech workers are lower middle class or skilled workers, and because most of the people I’ve ever heard of around 4chan were students or tech workers.
I hate to bust your bubble, but most tech workers and skilled labor aren’t lower middle class.
Anyway, so what if they are lower middle class? What’s your point? Rich people aren’t misogynists? Because that’s totally true. Their actions are despicable enough. There’s no reason to project your own biases on them.
Skilled labor isn’t middle class, by definition, of course, but quite a lot of tech workers are middle class.
My point was that these guys – the large number of misogynists – resemble fascists. Fascist movements have their origins in social crises, as some segments of the middle social layers feel squeezed and view emerging social movements among the oppressed as their greatest threat, as those movements challenge traditional ideas and upset traditional hierarchies. Fascists come from a social layer broad enough that they can engage in tactics that depend on numbers, and to insist on “traditional” ideas that are generally quite ahistorical.
Obviously, not all tech workers are fascists – not even all white male tech workers. That’s a description of me, and quite a large proportion of the regulars here. If anything, that means we’ve got an especial responsibility to counter this phenomenon before it gets worse.
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It was Wilhelm Reich who in 1933 said that Nazism was a sort of sexual hysteria of the rural patriarchal religious fundamentalist society. This sounds a little over top until we remember that one of the big social causes for conservatives was protecting traditional marriage from the sexual anarchy of Jews and Gentiles intermarrying, which later gave rise to the Nuremberg Laws. Clearly, Reich was ahead of the curve in grasping how Fascism is rooted in sexual repression… He also described various incidents of public “slut shaming,” which sometimes got violent.
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Skilled labour isn’t by definition middle class because the term, its definition & its use have nothing to do with class, but they aren’t exclusive at all.
The modern definition (of middle class) boils down to income levels, particularly discretionary income, which means that skilled labour / trades, by your medieval/classical/social definition lower class, are now mostly middle class. And should be.
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If you’re worried about a valid point being de-railed, simply don’t over-generalize it in ways that might be offensive to those “nice techies”.
I disagree on principle with any attempts to immunize over-generalizations against derailment. Over-generalizations are a) unproductive, because it will cause some of the victims of your generalization to join the “other side”, and b) evil, because they are the very mechanism behind all the bad -isms that have been plaguing humanity.
If someone complains about “the Jews” when they really mean a handful of powerful bank executives (some of whom happen to be Jewish), their argument deserves to be derailed.
Gamers, and people who “work with computers”, too, are a group that is regularly at the receiving end of negative stereotypes. After all, they are exclusively white males, with greasy hair, little social life and no sex life, who live in their mother’s basement until age 39. Some of them might have been exposed to bullying. That doesn’t justify death threats. But it does justify derailing overgeneralized arguments.
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And yet #NotAllMen and #NotYourShield is counterproductive. No one is claiming that all men rape women, or that every gamer (an also incredibly huge group of people, me included) hates women and sends death threats. It would be silly to assume so. A huge section of these groups are great people, but we still need to address these problems and the conversation always gets derailed on how this hurts someone’s feelings.
Just remember that not doing these horrible things is a very low bar to be able to participate in society. You don’t need a special pat on the back for not sending out a death threat today. (Or perhaps we should make a badge for that if it will help). When people bring up these issues, please, please, do not discount their experiences, it is certainly not a personal attack on you.
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Please point out where anyone in this discussion (or any other) has said “all techies/gamers are harassers and vile shit-stains.”
@Michael_R_Smith stated “I have never come across [harassing] culture… It’s the users doing this, not other developers.” @marilove responded, “You don’t see it or experience it, therefore it doesn’t exist. Also, #NotAllTechies”
At this point, @CaptainPedge took umbrage for some reason and insisted that indeed, “Not all techies” was some kind of important and valid point, central to this conversation. Which it is not. No one has said “all techies participate in harassing women.” If some techie is feeling tarred with this brush, either 1) they lack reading comprehension, or 2) they are helpfully letting the rest of us know that they have either participated in this kind of behavior or consider it valid.
“Not All ___” is a de-rail because 99.99% of the time, “All ___ do ___” is not the subject of conversation, and changing the conversation to defending how many X’s do not Y is… changing the conversation! De-railing it! A useless, pointless re-direction of energy away from the actual topic and toward the anxieties of whoever is trying to make sure that they get plenty of space to defend themselves from charges that were never leveled in the first place.
Learn to de-center, or take a Xanax or something. Sheesh.
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I’m not sure what the significance of the strike-out is there, but @Michael_R_Smith was “berated” for unwisely extrapolating from his own experience in his small corner of the world to women in the wider tech world, and this in preference to the reported experience of women in the wider tech world. That’s worthy of berating, I’d say.
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So why was it brought up? Why are you blaming me for not wanting to be described as a misogynist scumbag purely because of the field of my chosen occupation?
Who was describing you as being a misogynist scumbag purely because of your career choice? Please share with us the quote that stated “CaptainPedge is a misogynist due to his career choice.”
Why is it that we can’t talk about the blatant and obvious sexism in any field or in any location of the world without some guy coming in and going, “But but! I promise! I’m not one of those guys! You guys are making me feel so awful! I’m so full of myself I think you’re talking about me! Now let me continue to get super defensive and derail this discussion so that we’re now talking about me and what a saint I am! I would never ever ever do anything sexist!”
This is not about you. (Although now that you’re getting so damn defensive even after you’ve had people to tell you to be quiet and listen for a change… well, I do wonder.)
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You, when you sarcastically added “Also, #NotAllTechies” to the end of a post.
Why is it that I can’t point out that I am not a mysoginistic scumbag without you sarcastically adding a comment purely designed to shut down any conversation on the matter. You make comments like that and it gets people defensive. Instead of asking “well what can I do to stop other people acting like shitheads?” my main focus is now to point out that no, not all tech workers are scum.
You are yet to explain that comment, despite your mod deleted snark at my expense, so again. What was the purpose of that other than to shut down people whose experiences differ from your own. You are not the only person who has valid personal experience.
Could you explain to me what @Michael_R_Smith’s experience as a man has to do with what women experience in tech? He was trying to speak for the experiences women have in tech. He quite plainly staited that HE doesn’t see it, therefore he doubts it exists in his world, so his world must be so much better.
This is so text-book “I don’t see it, therefore it doesn’t exist, therefore I won’t even try to do anything to help change the culture, because clearly, since I don’t see a problem, there is no problem.” It’s apathy born from a self-centered world view, and it’s dangerous. It’s one big reason why this shit is allowed to go on! Do you think the CEO’s of Microsoft see sexism? Likely they don’t because it doesn’t happen to them so they just don’t’ think it’s a problem to address, or at the very least a big enough problem to address.
But sure, sure, sure. YOU, another man (surprising), and Michael can just assume together that sexism doesn’t really exist or happen in Michael’s field or culture because Michael’s never seen or experienced it so oooobbbbviiioussslllly it doesn’t exist, and I’ll be over here calling BULLSHIT.
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