A general comment, likely grounded more in my own frustration and :
When did we become so concerned with awesome vacation getaways with code happening and less with, you know, programming?
I think it's awesome that there are people who have the free money/time/resources/independence to go spend 12 weeks hacking in the tropics, but unless we see some baller results I can't help but shake the feeling this is an experience for trendy kids and not for the hardworking, overweight, overscheduled neckbeard.
I hope you folks are able to publicize a bunch of cool stuff that comes out of this! That might give it a bit more street cred.
> It should be noted that this is NOT A VACATION. Participants are expected to work hard during "school hours," Monday - Thursday.
> You are free to choose any project you like, ideally something you think will help you improve as a programmer. Participants are encouraged to work on open-source code and 'for-fun' projects, but they are also allowed to work on commercial projects, such as freelance work or startups. We also encourage participants to spend as much time as possible pair programming and collaborating with other people.
> All included, we think participants could live frugally and get by on $3,500 for the three month period. However, a participant would have more flexibility with a budget of $4,000 - $5,000.
Will anything "cool" come out of this? Who knows. But $5,000 for a three month trip hardly represents an expensive excursion to the tropics, and it appears that the intent is to put in place a structure that participants are expected to adhere to. What's the problem with that? It's not like the hackathons and "schools" in the United States are consistently churning out masterful feats of engineering.
On another note, since when did you have to be overweight, unshaven and overworked to be considered a legitimate programmer? I didn't get that email.
I had the same confusion, from their website it's not clear whether the demographic is likely to be novices looking to learn or whether it is for established freelancers etc wanting to work from Costa Rica for a while.
Their website says that they encourage people to work mainly on open-source or fun projects but that would seem to rule out anyone with a family, a full time job or who wasn't already reasonably wealthy.
It wouldn't surprise me if their demographics skewed weird for that reason alone. The age breakdown might be interesting, is this mainly retirees? Gap year students? People taking sabbaticals?
Yeah, I meet the overworked and overscheduled parts (and couldn't afford to spend a month hacking on open source in the tropics), but I'm not overweight and certainly don't have a neckbeard. I get that "neckbeard" is more of a cultural term than a literal one, but it seems like even that interpretation has taken on a more pejorative bent lately.
I've always been uncomfortable about the idea of addressing imbalance by focusing and targeting ONLY the minority. I like your analysis and process of reworking your site to be more appealing to everyone. In fact, I think I'll apply now :D
Do one thing and do it well. This is a motto for more than UNIX in my opinion.
Are you hacking or are you retreating and obtaining social justice? Because meanwhile, real hackers are really hacking and they generally don't care about gender ratio nor group retreats to Costa Rica.
Don't think this is a dig just at this conference either. I get irate when I see fireman in uniform out collecting for charity and things like cowboy or biker churches. Fireman should be fighting fires. Churches shouldn't have anything to do with cowboys nor bikers (not a church attender...just something personally annoying I noticed).
Separate your concerns and you won't lose sight of the proper function of each component. Just my opinion. Others may feel differently.
Fair enough. For us, the thing we are trying to 'do well' is to build the sort of community that we'd enjoy living in while we work on our various projects. Perhaps it's a point of personal preference, but we enjoy living within a diverse community.
Disagree with our values or priorities? No worries - start your own flavor of community project and let's exchange notes. Ain't the free market grand.
Well I wish you the best of luck. I'm sure there are plenty of people with whom this project will jive.
I don't see it. But I'm in my 40's, have no tattoos, no fedora, a normal haircut and no beard so I don't know that diversity extends far enough for me anyway. For me, hacking is not about vacation nor social engineering and never the twain shall meet. But style preferences may vary. If it works for others, by all means disregard and carry on. I'm not intending to start a community. There are already plenty of those that grew organically over the decades where I live. I generally turn up my nose at them as well, so don't take it personally. Making a better living space is a laudable goal.
Sure, they should have plenty of time to do charity work. On their own time, out of uniform, as individual citizens, as members of the Elks Lodge, members of a church, members of a soup kitchen, whatever,.... just not on work hours as firefighters. Their job in that capacity should be simply to fight fires (and perform related public services).
Do firefighters routinely do charity collection while on the clock? I don't think I've ever heard of that, but I'm from the UK not the US. Are they from small fire depts that operate as charities and rely on donations to stay open or are they collecting for unrelated charities?
Yes, it's pretty common in the US. They stand at traffic lights in uniform with empty fireman boots for passing motorists to deposit money for causes unrelated to the fireman mission... Muscular Dystrophy research among other things.
But the point is not about receiving payment. The point is, they are representing themselves as fireman out doing something other than fighting fires. And this irkes me.
I'd love to go to Costa Rica and plan to at some point in the future. But when I go to Costa Rica I'm going to surf and drink beer and eat a lot of seafood and lie in a hammock and do some shopping. I certainly don't plan to waste time in front of a computer writing code during this period. I do that here every day and I don't dream about Costa Rica nor worry about how many women nor minorities are in cubes next to me while I'm doing it.
Yes, it does annoy me (not a major annoyance but an annoyance still). Do you disagree with separation of concerns or feel firefighters are raising more money than their salaries and expense of getting them there? If so, don't be shy. Just tell me you disagree and why.
There are words for people who make comments with implied insults. Passive aggressive is one of them.
The fire service has a lot of downtime, yet you still have to have a lot of folk salaried, not all of them can just be on call. Given you have a lot of salaried folk sitting there waiting for fires to occur, I see no reason for them to not help out with other things. They are being paid to sit around a lot otherwise.
And sorry if you thought I was being passive aggressive, I was aiming more for comedic sarcasm.
I highly doubt any firefighters are doing charity work while getting paid. Most of them are probably just wearing the uniform because kids think firefighters are cool. And firefighers _are_ cool, so I don't think it is completely unwarranted.
You know what? I have some misgivings about some things on the Geek Feminism Wiki too. But I think the argument that there's nothing to learn from it is an untenable stretch. There's valuable information on it.
Singling out one specific issue in a source in order to discredit it in its entirety is a rhetorical tactic that is both popular and disingenuous.
While citations are preferred wherever
possible, we do not require them. Much
of our wiki is primary source material,
sometimes added anonymously in order to
avoid backlash against the whistleblower.
Original research is welcome.
2) The Geek Feminism Wiki, although simply referring to itself as "feminist", subscribes to a particular form of third-wave poststructural feminism that is not so much concerned with equity, as it is preoccupied with dubious and subjective gender politics. Indeed, their editorial guidelines outright say "[We]... accept each person's self-reporting of their feelings and lived experiences as valid". Ultimately, this leads to a lot of bias, misrepresentation and is only a specific feminist viewpoint.
Is there an alternative that you think is better? Also, is their "version" of feminism a problem since they're so clear about what it is? It doesn't seem like they're hiding their perspective at all, so readers can decide how to interpret based on that knowledge.
Their version of feminism isn't all that clear at all from the description. Essentially all forms of feminism that revolve around women's "feelings and lived experiences" use them to prop up their underlying ideological beliefs - the only feelings and lived experiences that are accepted are the ones that confirm their ideology.
You can see this in the list of out-of-scope items. For example, no "apologia for misogynist, anti-feminist, oppressive, or other harmful actions or ideas" is allowed - in practice this tends to include stuff like having an unfeminine attitude to sex and sexuality, doing sex work, being friends with anyone who does, opposing bans on it, being kinky, or complaining about any bad experiences you've had with other mainstream feminist women including systematic online and offline harassment (which is a serious problem for some groups of women).
If you think about the guidelines it's easy to tell they exclude some women's feelings and lived experiences, but there's no way to tell which. The linked page makes it sound like the policy affects oppressors when it's mostly those who are worst off that get screwed.
> You can see this in the list of out-of-scope items. For example, no "apologia for misogynist, anti-feminist, oppressive, or other harmful actions or ideas" is allowed - in practice this tends to include stuff like having an unfeminine attitude to sex and sexuality, doing sex work, being friends with anyone who does, opposing bans on it, being kinky, or complaining about any bad experiences you've had with other mainstream feminist women including systematic online and offline harassment (which is a serious problem for some groups of women).
Am I misunderstanding you? If your point of view is against sex work and "unfeminine" attitudes towards sex (wtf does that even mean anyway), it seems to me that you are being misogynist and quite possibly oppressive. I don't doubt those people exist, I've met quite a few of them, but that doesn't say anything directly about what the geek feminism wiki does and represents.
> If you think about the guidelines it's easy to tell they exclude some women's feelings and lived experiences, but there's no way to tell which. The linked page makes it sound like the policy affects oppressors when it's mostly those who are worst off that get screwed.
Is there any evidence to suggest that geek feminism wiki does that? Are viewpoints on sex work or sexuality skewed towards one point of view, or are there many points of view about those subjects on the wiki?
If your point of view is against sex work and "unfeminine" attitudes towards sex (wtf does that even mean anyway), it seems to me that you are being misogynist and quite possibly oppressive.
No, that's just sex-negative feminism. It's pretty common. In fact, the two major opponents to pornography have always been the conservative right and the feminist left. Opinion on BDSM is usually a litmus test for sex-positivity or sex-negativity.
As a whole, GFW appears to be sex-positive, with a few caveats as to how it understands objectification.
> 2) The Geek Feminism Wiki, although simply referring to itself as "feminist", subscribes to a particular form of third-wave poststructural feminism that is not so much concerned with equity, as it is preoccupied with dubious and subjective gender politics. Indeed, their editorial guidelines outright say "[We]... accept each person's self-reporting of their feelings and lived experiences as valid". Ultimately, this leads to a lot of bias, misrepresentation and is only a specific feminist viewpoint.
What you are saying is very wishy washy. You say dubious and subjective gender politics, but what does that even mean? Also, how exactly does accepting someone's self-reporting about lived experiences lead to a single point of view and allow for misrepresentation? If we are excepting self reporting and lived experiences, we are by definition excepting quite a large set of points of view.
Postmodern gender theory, the application of Frankfurt School narratives (pseudo-Marxist dichotomies reasoned over scenarios where Marxism isn't traditionally applicable, like race, sex, etc.) and so on.
Well, in theory, yes. Not at all in practice. The vast majority of people who edit the wiki are part of a general postmodern feminist hivemind, and those who espouse more traditional feminist viewpoints about gender equality without the vast baggage of sociological theory that is taken for granted tend to be reverted. You can read the editorial guidelines, it's all in there.
This is an excellent point. The posted harrassment policy is completely gender neutral. If it's an automatic red flag for you, then you're bringing in your own assumptions about how men behave.
Well I've never heard men cry for a no harassment policy. Of course it is an attack against men - it implies that men need such policies and firm authority from the organizers to keep their lower instincts in check.
But you know - I only tell you how I feel about it. You don't have to care. It's just my personal opinion that to me it would be a turn off. Just like men playing kicker is apparently a turn off to women.
Granted even independent of gender it would be a turn off to me, because I don't want to mingle with people who need to be reminded of basic decency.
Edit: I can not reply further. I don't think you understand my point at all.
But to roll with your example: imagine you read an advertisement for a coding retreat, and the first line says "NO MURDER ALLOWED". Would that make you feel more safe or less safe about attending? Since you are hell bent on disagreeing with me you'll probably claim "more safe", but I am pretty sure in general it would come across a bit weird.
You don't need a "don't murder" policy, because it is implied. So why isn't "no harassment" implied? By stating it, you imply that it is not implied, so you are effectively saying your attendants are prone to harass people.
Does the word "men" mean something different to you than it does to everyone else? Because HN's participants skew sharply male, so much so that the only reasonable interpretation of the pallid, sick-looking cast all your comments have taken on is that men do not agree with you.
That's your argument? I happen to be a man as well, and a HN participant.
Men believe all sorts of things. There are religious fanatics believing the most crazy stuff. That there are some men on HN believing x only shows that some men on HN believe x.
It's really funny how you all rush to vote me down only because I mentioned that some aspect of the conference is off putting to me. How is that different from women complaining that a picture of men playing kicker is off putting to them?
Don't worry, I have no interest to go to your conference of ignorant people. You can continue.
> Of course it is an attack against men - it implies that men need such policies and firm authority from the organizers to keep their lower instincts in check.
Are laws against murder similarly "attacks on men", who are disproportionately likely to commit them?
If you're not going to go around harassing people, you have little to fear from a no harassment policy. I don't personally need a "no murder" policy, but I'm fairly happy society has them.
You misunderstood: the policy is not an attack on men because it prevents them from harassing people. It's an attack on men because it's sole function is to cement prejudice against men. It's signalling "men are disproportionally likely to harass other people" (in your own words). That is in fact it's only function and the reason feminists want push it on conferences (it also signals "women are weak and need protection" a ka "women are victims"). It's function is to transport the feminist narrative.
As I wrote in my edit: why don't you have a "no murder" policy, and how would having one make you feel?
> As I wrote in my edit: why don't you have a "no murder" policy, and how would having one make you feel?
Murder is forbidden by law and thus already covered, whereas much of the harassment encountered in conferences is not actionable criminally (catcalling, comments about body parts, lewd jokes, pressure to have sex, etc.).
Is there a big problem with murders at hacker events? If there were, then maybe organisers would need to take steps to prevent them. There's certainly a problem with harassment, which is why it seems reasonable to have policies to mitigate that.
And that's where you are wrong - that's exactly the point of the policy, to support that narrative. In any case you don't need a policy to act against indecent behavior.
> In any case you don't need a policy to act against indecent behavior.
This may or may not be true. However, the existence of a policy is a good way to reassure people who are concerned about the problems that the policy addresses to have confidence that their concerns are going to be taken seriously.
> I don't want to mingle with people who need to be reminded of basic decency.
Neither do the people who are being harassed! Unfortunately, such people exist, and the policies are designed to address their actions and how they affect the people around them.
Which part of what they did, specifically, do you think would exclude fat white dudes? The Hellen Keller quote? Not having the foosball photo? A conference code of conduct?
Even granting your premise (which I don't agree with), I can't see where anyone is being excluded.
A conference code of conduct is an indicator of negative prejudice against men. I wouldn't feel welcome there.
Edit: I am not allowed to reply any further. But you all don't get my point. I don't find the rule off putting because I am worried about my right to harass people. I am not interested in harassing people. I am worried about the implied accusation of such a policy. But if you don't see it - fine! You are certainly entitled to your policy.
This has nothing to do with gay men or disabled men whatsoever.
Harassment includes verbal comments that reinforce social structures of domination related to gender, gender identity and >expression, sexual orientation, disability, physical appearance, body size, race, age, religion, sexual images in public spaces, deliberate intimidation, stalking, following, harassing photography or recording, sustained disruption of talks or other events, inappropriate physical contact, and unwelcome sexual attention.
And who gets to determine if I'm doing any of these things?
The conference organizers? If I attend this conference, how
can they assure me that I won't be at the mercy of conference
attendees that suddenly decide I'm harassing them simply because
I say something within their vicinity they disagree with a la
Adria Richards?
Although I guess Richards would have been taken to task for
"harassing photography". Although by that point it would have been
too late anyway.
The problem with these speech codes is that they're just as easily
used as a way to silence and shame people who's views differ
from those of organizations like geekfeminism (i.e. not radfem).
You don't have to be a feminist to treat women respectfully.
This comment has practically nothing to do with the article. As usual, any submission concerning improving the ratio of women to men in our industry immediately becomes a coatrack for digs about "radfem".
For those of you who read the comments before clicking through to the article: this one is a list of things an event organizer did to try to boost attendance among women. None of them appear at all controversial. The "code of conduct" section this commenter takes issue with is table stakes at most major conferences. But that doesn't mean rude commenters will miss an opportunity to beat a dead horse.
The problem is you're hijacking a thread about specific, quantifiable steps that one group took, and the results they achieved, in order to spin the kinds of hypotheticals that have a proven track record of spiraling off into wank.
Don't do it. Write a blog post or something. Call your mom.
I'm doing nothing of the sort. The code of conduct was clearly cited as one of the steps taken. I have issue with that step. And I have as much right to comment here as you do. You're free to ignore me. Please do.
It's an article about how a group running a retreat targeted their message to change their customer demographics, no more no less.
Whether or not the mechanisms for doing so have sound philosophical and social underpinnings is quite beside the point--they did X, Y, Z, and it appears to have worked.
Go piss and moan about gender (in)equality elsewhere.
It worked in attracting women (perhaps a certain kind of women, but still). That doesn't mean it didn't have side effects.
I don't understand your problem with people criticizing some of the things they did. It's just saying they wouldn't be attracted to the conference. It's a piece of information the organizers can ignore or not, it's their conference.
I suppose in economic terms it will work out because having more women will attract more men. What mix of people they'll have is another issue.
No, Richards would have been fine, because these things are only prohibited when they reinforce "social structures of domination."
This is in line with the standard "reverse *ism categorically can't exist" claim. Discrimination is only bad when it favors the more powerful group, or so the claim goes. So a person might be rejected by a conference solely beause he is a white male, but because the system of power is (on balance) in favor of white males, that is not racism or sexism and not prohibited.
> Discrimination is only bad when it favors the more powerful group, or so the claim goes
The claim is not (or shouldn't be) that such discrimination can't be hurtful, can't be problematic, or isn't a legitimate target of criticism under some circumstances. The claim is that bigotry and bias in the "other" direction do not constitute structural "*ism."
What's the context of someone being rejected from a conference solely because he's a white male? If someone is rejected because the conference is trying to get broader representation then the rejection isn't just because he's a white male, it's because he's a white male AND white males were overrepresented.
It's unfortunate from a rhetorical standpoint that sexism easily seems like it could mean "any sex discrimination" but is also used to mean "the structural oppression of women."
I welcome the day when the objection is genuinely only about the arguable linguistic inconsistency, but I can't help but thinking the concept is the big hangup, not the word for it.
To answer specifically for Hacker Paradise, "who gets to enforce the code of conduct" is something we have been discussing internally. Casey and I are very much hoping to be part of the group, and as such we are in a somewhat biased position when it comes to addressing any issues that arise. One idea we've been playing with is having a remote neutral, third-party ombudsman that anybody can email (anonymously, if they prefer) to address any issues. The ombudsman would then ostensibly do some investigation and bring the issue up with us if it feels appropriate.
We're still thinking through this - one month to go until the retreat begins - and would love to get HN's input. Has anybody tried anything similar? As an organizer for a ~15-person group and a white dude, I realize and acknowledge that some inherent bias exists. We want to address it as effectively as possible.
A) Codes of conduct are best enforced by example. So be very, very mindful of your own behavior and that will do a lot to deter problems.
B) When I worked at a Fortune 500 company, harassment got reported to HR. HR interviewed people separately. So that might be sort of a vote for a neutral third party to turn to.
(I got interviewed after I emailed a male on my team and copied our boss and told him in no uncertain terms "don't you ever speak to me that way again in a meeting." I was never told the outcome but my suspicion is that he was probably sent to sensitivity training. So, presumably, they decided in my favor. He avoided me and was angry for a time. I spent some months winning his trust again. I eventually smoothed things over. But, no, he never spoke inappropriately to me again.)
Can you cite any examples of people who have been silenced or shamed by a conference harrassment code?
At a professional conference, it should not be that hard to control your behavior. Just pretend your grandparents are with you. Adults routinely modulate their behavior based on the setting and it really is not a burden.
You can come up with all kinds of theoretical scenarios where you're a conference martyr. But I would really like to hear some specific, shocking examples of this happening to anyone. Because I've heard a lot of specific, shocking examples of women being verbally and physically harrassed.
It might be useful to remember how the conference organizers handled that incident:
> Both parties were met with, in private. The comments that were made were in poor taste, and individuals involved agreed, apologized and no further actions were taken by the staff of PyCon 2013. No individuals were removed from the conference, no sanctions were levied.
But let's grant for argument's sake that this was an example of public shaming that cries out to the very heavens for justice. What are some others? Just to balance out the huge number of reported harassment incidents from tech conferences, and the bigger number that must go unreported.
The harassment numbers are not really huge. Feminists try to maintain a list and I think it clearly shows that incidents are rare - and half the items on the list are even cases I personally wouldn't count. But even if you count them all, given the huge amount of IT events, it is a very short list.
I think at the last Chaos Computing Congress there were a huge number of incidents and feminist campaigners threatening people with self-made "red cards". Just to mention one example that might be easily googleable.
My argument is that the kind of thing you're concerned about basically never happens, while harrassment at tech conferences happens all the time.
That's an assertion of fact, which you can disprove by giving examples. Maybe I'm wrong and all kinds of men are being kept from conferences, and shamed into silence, by harrassment codes. Tell me their stories!
There are enough examples of men being ruined by female accusations. Most recent I remember from HN is the GitHub founder being fired. Then there was the guy who reverted the gendering comments on some open source project (was it NodeJS?) and received a shit storm. Another one I remember is the Ruby conference where an employee flirted with her boss at a restaurant (letting her colleagues drink from her navel) and then called rape when he ended up slow-dancing with her. Adria Richards is also a good example - why wasn't she expelled from the conference, what good is a policy if it isn't being enforced?
Your question is of course also absurd because you ask for examples of the absence of something. It doesn't create much publicy if somebody decides to skip a conference. I personally would think twice about going to a conference with such policies because I consider them insulting.
Another victim could be women - if the safe way to attend a conference is not to talk to women. I remember a post on HN by a woman who has long been a coder/hacker and got along very well with the male coders. But recently she noticed that they don't dare to invite her (or was it just the newcomer women whom they didn't know so well yet) to parties and after show events anymore for fear of unwarranted accusations.
I'm not concerned about how often it happens. I'm concerned about the potential for it to happen. The Richard's example shows that potential. Your insistence on more examples as some metric of proof is none of my concern.
You're worried about the potential of a code of conduct being used abusively. Meanwhile, they exist because of the real, not theoretical, abuse encountered at some events.
> I could name a hundred and you still wouldn't be happy. Why bother.
I could support what I'm saying, but that's too hard. The reality is there aren't many examples of someone being unjustly sanctioned by a code of conduct.
When did we become so concerned with awesome vacation getaways with code happening and less with, you know, programming?
I think it's awesome that there are people who have the free money/time/resources/independence to go spend 12 weeks hacking in the tropics, but unless we see some baller results I can't help but shake the feeling this is an experience for trendy kids and not for the hardworking, overweight, overscheduled neckbeard.
I hope you folks are able to publicize a bunch of cool stuff that comes out of this! That might give it a bit more street cred.