While I agree that astrology is complete nonsense, you're not likely to win many people over when you treat stereotyping (which you've described here) and racism as equivalent.
Sure, "akin" isn't an exact synonym for "equivalent." Feel free to replace "equivalent" with "analogous to" if that bothers you; it doesn't really change my point.
It's more and more difficult to detect sarcasm these days but in case you are serious yes, we all treat people differently based on their looks, and it happens especially in sexual relationships and is not limited to humans.
All female software devs reading this just got extremely uncomfortable, and this comment chain no doubt brings up childhood body image issues — issues that men can’t know what it’s like.
I point this out from the sidelines in case any thoughtful devs reading this might want to reflect on their behavior. It wasn’t till I married one that I started to reevaluate mine.
I think it’s worth explicitly comparing our childhood issues. It took a long time to come to terms with the fact that it’s just nothing close to what women go through.
It’s horrible in its own way. But women are judged for the rest of their lives, in exactly the ways this thread illustrates. When have you ever wondered if your body was the reason you did or didn’t get a job?
It’s one thing for image issues to impact your self esteem. It’s quite another for them to be the central focus of your life. The makeup industry is massive precisely because of this double standard.
If that negates a few of our childhood experiences, perhaps we should try to get comfortable with that. The fact that we think we’re special and that we have it just as bad is part of the problem.
That’s true, and I don’t mean to downplay your experiences. This is more of me trying to convince you that it’s okay to feel angry and hurt without it taking away from other peoples’ experiences. It doesn’t have to be a you-or-them phenomenon.
All I’m saying is that it pervades womens’ lives more. They have to deal with it constantly, every day. If you have any trans friends, I’d encourage you to ask them about it, since the issues are doubly magnified. That was one of the stepping stones that let me start to believe that women have it much worse than men, even if our experiences are also awful.
Either way though, I hope you have a nice week, and I’m sorry if my comment brought up some trauma.
> If you have any trans friends, I'd encourage you to ask them about it, since the issues are doubly magnified.
This is like saying that blackface actors experience doubly-magnified racism, when they're actually just adding to the problem.
For women who want to be men, it is typically rooted in wanting to escape the harsh societal impositions of femininity, rather than confronting it head-on. This is also why many women these days are calling themselves "non-binary".
For men who desire to be women, it's mostly driven by a fetishization of womanhood, with their view of women as sex objects that can be male-emulated through cosmetic and surgical means.
For both women and men, the whole basis of "trans" is a perpetuation of misogyny, in one way or another.
If an HN comment is how a female software dev learned that hot people are treated better, then this is the easiest way to learn that lesson and they should say thank you. But this “think of the women!” hall monitoring has to be worse than whatever violation against women you thought you read in this thread. Are you sure this imaginary audience of female software devs isn’t made uncomfortable by your sort of comment about how we can’t even talk casually about human experience lest they feel uncomfy on HN?
Quite certain. The fact that you’d call them imaginary is simply … mistaken, to put it lightly.
I recommend asking some actual women how they feel about it. Feel free to link them to this subthread. But since you’re certain they’re imaginary, I imagine you’ve already done so and found it to be true, right?
This kind of attitude has no place in our industry, and it’ll be lovely when the social tides shift just a little bit more to filter it out. Imagine looking a black engineer straight in the eye and saying that it’s good they learned the lesson that people treat you differently based on your skin color, as if it’s a favor to them that we taught them that.
Just asked my girlfriend and two sisters about your comment and they said it was cringe.
Maybe it’s time you start a poll to double check your (and my) assumptions about the frailty of women when reading online chit chat? Especially with something as basic as being more agreeable with people you want to fuck, something women do too.
Are they into software? I’m sitting right next to one who is. She’s my wife.
Women outside of tech are entitled to their opinion. But if their opinion is that hot women should be more likely to get a job in tech, then their opinion is on the wrong side of history.
> Women outside of tech are entitled to their opinion. But if their opinion is that hot women should be more likely to get a job in tech, then their opinion is on the wrong side of history.
Could you point the place where the parent actually said that? Because it seems to me like you are responding to something else.
>childhood body image issues — issues that men can’t know what it’s like.
Excuse me? Men have their own flavor of stereotypical body images foisted upon them: Macho, six-packs, muscular arms, upside-down triangular back, etc.
For what it's worth though, men seem to care significantly less about body image than women do. Food for thought.
While it’s true that men have body image issues, when’s the last time you’ve seen them objectified the way a woman was in this thread?
That might happen too, but not with the same frequency or casualness. Worse, men tend to refuse to believe it’s a problem, and file it in the nonsense bucket.
One of the primary roadblocks for women getting into tech is that they’re not encouraged to the same way men are. And once they do, they constantly worry if they’re being treated specially just because they’re a woman — and if they don’t, they wonder if they would’ve gotten in if they looked just a little bit prettier.
I’m relaying this from a woman who refuses to participate on HN (for so many reasons). Men seem to like this dynamic we’ve cultivated here. I liked it myself. But those of you who care about equality should take a hard look at our behavior and how we express ourselves.
>While it’s true that men have body image issues, when’s the last time you’ve seen them objectified the way a woman was in this thread?
Literally any time I've seen women talk about what they like/want from men? Go take a stroll through any NSFW r/AskReddit thread, plenty to see in there from both sides of the chamber!
>Worse, men tend to refuse to believe it’s a problem, and file it in the nonsense bucket.
Concerns about body image are nearly always problems stemming from oneself. If you don't think it's a problem, it's really not a problem. Who cares if you've got a beer belly? Life's better handled lightly, women might do well to take a page.
>One of the primary roadblocks for women getting into tech is that they’re not encouraged to the same way men are.
If you need outside encouragement above and beyond to get into something, I would question if it's something suited for you at all first. Tech isn't for everyone, much like any other subject of interest.
Also, a lot of tech nerds get into tech out of their own interest and volition, and lest we forget it was only fairly recently that being a techie became cool and attractive rather than unsexy and stigmatized.
>And once they do, they constantly worry if they’re being treated specially just because they’re a woman — and if they don’t, they wonder if they would’ve gotten in if they looked just a little bit prettier.
Why does it matter so much what anyone else thinks of you as an individual? If you ask me, women bring about a lot of peer judgment upon themselves because they are so concerned about what others think of them all the time.
Men care to a far lesser degree, and consequently there simply isn't as much judging of peers to be bothered by. In its place is judging each others' character and merit, whether we can do the jobs and face the challenges presented to us. If you can do your job with excellence and make people smile, who cares if you've got a beer belly or flabby arms?
>I’m relaying this from a woman who refuses to participate on HN (for so many reasons). Men seem to like this dynamic we’ve cultivated here. I liked it myself. But those of you who care about equality should take a hard look at our behavior and how we express ourselves.
I agree that men generally prefer spaces without women to remain womenless, I'm also one of them. However, if women want to join and they can demonstrate their worth (and not destroy the space, which is the chief concern from the men) I certainly won't stop them.
Some women also seem to take pride in creating women-only spaces to counteract certain notions of patriarchy, which is honestly the kettle calling the pot black and doesn't resolve anything.
Your comment is pretty thoughtful, so I’d like to respond in kind. One difference is that we rarely gain or lose jobs based on how we look. Another difference is that if we were to try to make a living by being a sex worker, we’d find that our income is much less than women, precisely because of the demand for a certain type of body. This realization is the essence of body image issues; to know that no matter what you do, you probably won’t achieve a certain thing in life unless you look a certain way. Worse, the question being ever present in the back of your mind will always get to you, no matter how much you try to shrug it off.
I note that this thread started out with a comparison of astrology to racism, and everybody seemed to buy into that. Is it so hard to believe that we’re just as guilty of our own flaws? It’s easy to make fun of a woman who believes the stars predict your future, but we should at least check whether we’re fostering a culture that can predict very accurately whether an ambitious young woman might want to join us as developers. The answer right now tends to be no, and I’m skeptical it’s because their interests are different.
I absolutely agree that looks play a role in how our lives can play out, our (and more broadly between men and women) disagreement is to what extent they play a role and consequently to what extent someone should care about their own looks.
I also agree that certain occupations will no doubt place additional biases concerning one's looks. Anyone in the service industry will likely find themselves performing better if they satisfy a certain standard of appearance, in addition to things like mannerism and personality.
But we are talking within the context of the tech industry, the jobs of which often find us staring at monitors and screens and clacking away on keyboards more than we do staring at each other. What we can achieve with our craft plays a bigger role than what we look like, here. One's looks has no bearing upon the quality of the code we write, after all, for example.
>I note that this thread started out with a comparison of astrology to racism, and everybody seemed to buy into that.
I actually disagree with that comparison because I want to believe words still hold meaning.
Racism is discrimination, and astrology used as a way to judge someone is also discrimination. Discrimination is never okay. But to call astrology racism only demonstrates one's lack of linguistic understanding.
We would also ignore how astrology by itself is just another fun pastime. Making fun of someone who's engaging in astrology is bad because you're making fun of someone who's just enjoying their time. Both men and women would naturally lean towards not mingling with people who don't respect their time and passions.
> But we are talking within the context of the tech industry, the jobs of which often find us staring at monitors and screens and clacking away on keyboards more than we do staring at each other.
To add to this, I have people in my team I don't know what they look like. And I don't really care. The ones who want to switch their camera on during calls are free to do so, most people don't. So even if I decided I want to discriminate against my female colleagues based on their looks, I wouldn't be able to.
Apart from the anecdata, the problem of course exists. Women prefer taller men. And not just women. In business, taller men are more likely to be promoted:
In relationships, they are ignored. Fortunately, in tech, where nobody gives a damn what you look like but how good your code is and how cooperative you are, they can feel safe and judged a bit less.
Maybe we're getting into the unproductive game of definitions, but perhaps stereotyping is still stereotyping when the categories are completely made up.
After all, stereotyping implies incorrect categories. Otherwise it would be called classification.
Getting deeper into semantics, I have always understood stereotypes to be an essentially correct general average. Then of course people are so different that the average for a group fits no person in the group more than perhaps 30% so it always ends up being wrong when applied without thought.
But the general stereotype is not “completely made up” so to speak, it’s an observed average.
Then of course some total crap is always thrown in the mix but still.
From the viewpoint of the victims of a stereotype, I doubt that the degree of factual foundation which the stereotype possesses makes much of a difference.
Or based on a misunderstanding, but still coming from a real observation. For example in the US, apparently there used to be a stereotype that polish people are stupid, which came from language differences - polish immigrants had a lot more trouble with English than everyone else, or even were less likely to know any English.
A stereotype is a generalized belief about a category of people, I don't think there has to be any seed of accuracy to the categorisation in order for it to considered a stereotype.
Someone who believes in horoscopes has a stereotype for people born in the first part of April. I have a stereotype for first children. Whether or not they capture anything real, they still count as stereotypes.
He's describing prejudice, and often people mean "racial prejudice" when they talk about "racism" (sometimes they mean "structural racial disadvantage" instead).
IMO, this is a fair comparison. Comparing things does not create an equivalence, that's a silly straw man.
But stereotype and prejudice don't mean the same thing, even though they're related. Without getting too far into the weeds, stereotypes are (positive or negative) beliefs about characteristics of groups of people, whereas prejudices are internalized negative feelings towards groups of people, often formed on the basis of (usually negative) stereotypes. "what I must like etc [on the basis of star sign]" (quote from OP) is a generalized belief about a characteristic of a group rather than a negative feeling towards a group - a stereotype, not a prejudice. To be clear, I completely agree with the OP in that stereotypes (even positive ones) are harmful in that they don't treat people as individuals.
Even if you don't accept this difference between stereotypes and prejudice, however, there's still a big jump to get to racism. I won't attempt (nor do I think I could do justice to) a formal definition of racism, but I think most people would agree that it at least also involves (1) discrimination (individual, structural and/or systemic actions that are based on prejudice); (2) racialization (the social construction of racial groups); and (3) history (racism involves a lot of historical baggage that probably isn't applicable to, say, astrology). So sure, stereotypes aren't totally unrelated to racism - but saying they're "akin" to racism really misses the bigger picture.
A more complex definition of "racism" is unhelpful here. I'm not arguing there aren't additional aspects worthy of discussion. But "racial prejudice" is a perfectly acceptable way to use it, and it is also the dictionary definition. This isn't a teachable moment to explore the nuances of racism, it's simply a metaphor.
I think stereotypes are a kind of prejudice, again, using plain definitions. A stereotype is an oversimplified image of a class of people. That's a mechanism by which you might "pre-judge" someone.
> "racial prejudice" is a perfectly acceptable way to use it
Racial prejudice. Which adds a boatload of social and historical context to "prejudice" alone. Not to mention that no one talks about racial prejudice without (at least) an awareness of the discrimination and oppression that such prejudice often gives rise to.
> This isn't a teachable moment to explore the nuances of racism, it's simply a metaphor.
"Tell[ing] me what I must like [on the basis of star sign]...is akin to racism" (OP's words) isn't a metaphor. It's simply stating that one thing is analogous to another. I realize this all seems totally pedantic, but making a false equivalence between an astrological stereotype and racism trivializes the experiences of people who are on the receiving end of racial discrimination.
> I think stereotypes are a kind of prejudice, again, using plain definitions.
If we're simply looking up dictionary definitions, I'm happy to point you to the dictionary-defined distinction between stereotype (beliefs about characteristics of groups)[1] and prejudice (negative feelings towards groups)[2]. That being said, you did just repeat my point that stereotypes often form the basis of prejudices :).
Of course mentioning race in the context of prejudice adds context, that's why it's a more interesting analogy. That context might allow you to more intuitively consider the ramifications of what happens when prejudice goes unchecked.
Saying something is akin to something else IS a metaphor. Analogy, simile, whatever. It's a kind of metaphor. You've again described an analogy as an equivalence, which it just isn't. If it's not an equivalence, it can't be a false equivalence. I think we can handle analogies.
Also, as far as I can tell without a paywall (!?), neither definition you linked to mentions beliefs or feelings so I'm not sure how you're getting that. I don't disagree that stereotypes can cause prejudice, I just don't follow the distinction you're trying to draw between beliefs and feelings or how it makes a difference here.
The problem OP was trying to highlight is people making unjustified assumptions about people based on their pre-conceived notions (which are also indefensibly unmoored from reality).
