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mjg59After Jesse Frazelle blogged about the online abuse she receives, a common reaction in various forums[1] was "This isn't a tech industry problem - this is what being on the internet is like"[2]. And yes, they're right. Abuse of women on the internet isn't limited to people in the tech industry. But the severity of a problem is a product of two separate factors: its prevalence and what impact it has on people.
Much of the modern tech industry relies on our ability to work with people outside our company. It relies on us interacting with a broader community of contributors, people from a range of backgrounds, people who may be upstream on a project we use, people who may be employed by competitors, people who may be spending their spare time on this. It means listening to your users, hearing their concerns, responding to their feedback. And, distressingly, there's significant overlap between that wider community and the people engaging in the abuse. This abuse is often partly technical in nature. It demonstrates understanding of the subject matter. Sometimes it can be directly tied back to people actively involved in related fields. It's from people who might be at conferences you attend. It's from people who are participating in your mailing lists. It's from people who are reading your blog and using the advice you give in their daily jobs. The abuse is coming from inside the industry.
Cutting yourself off from that community impairs your ability to do work. It restricts meeting people who can help you fix problems that you might not be able to fix yourself. It results in you missing career opportunities. Much of the work being done to combat online abuse relies on protecting the victim, giving them the tools to cut themselves off from the flow of abuse. But that risks restricting their ability to engage in the way they need to to do their job. It means missing meaningful feedback. It means passing up speaking opportunities. It means losing out on the community building that goes on at in-person events, the career progression that arises as a result. People are forced to choose between putting up with abuse or compromising their career.
The abuse that women receive on the internet is unacceptable in every case, but we can't ignore the effects of it on our industry simply because it happens elsewhere. The development model we've created over the past couple of decades is just too vulnerable to this kind of disruption, and if we do nothing about it we'll allow a large number of valuable members to be driven away. We owe it to them to make things better.
[1] Including Hacker News, which then decided to flag the story off the front page because masculinity is fragile
[2] Another common reaction was "But men get abused as well", which I'm not even going to dignify with a response
Much of the modern tech industry relies on our ability to work with people outside our company. It relies on us interacting with a broader community of contributors, people from a range of backgrounds, people who may be upstream on a project we use, people who may be employed by competitors, people who may be spending their spare time on this. It means listening to your users, hearing their concerns, responding to their feedback. And, distressingly, there's significant overlap between that wider community and the people engaging in the abuse. This abuse is often partly technical in nature. It demonstrates understanding of the subject matter. Sometimes it can be directly tied back to people actively involved in related fields. It's from people who might be at conferences you attend. It's from people who are participating in your mailing lists. It's from people who are reading your blog and using the advice you give in their daily jobs. The abuse is coming from inside the industry.
Cutting yourself off from that community impairs your ability to do work. It restricts meeting people who can help you fix problems that you might not be able to fix yourself. It results in you missing career opportunities. Much of the work being done to combat online abuse relies on protecting the victim, giving them the tools to cut themselves off from the flow of abuse. But that risks restricting their ability to engage in the way they need to to do their job. It means missing meaningful feedback. It means passing up speaking opportunities. It means losing out on the community building that goes on at in-person events, the career progression that arises as a result. People are forced to choose between putting up with abuse or compromising their career.
The abuse that women receive on the internet is unacceptable in every case, but we can't ignore the effects of it on our industry simply because it happens elsewhere. The development model we've created over the past couple of decades is just too vulnerable to this kind of disruption, and if we do nothing about it we'll allow a large number of valuable members to be driven away. We owe it to them to make things better.
[1] Including Hacker News, which then decided to flag the story off the front page because masculinity is fragile
[2] Another common reaction was "But men get abused as well", which I'm not even going to dignify with a response
Re: reply to this funny article from a woman IT professional
Date: 2015-07-09 06:00 pm (UTC)Because it doesn't. Men do not receive the same level of sustained harassment merely for being a visible member of a technical community. I've never been threatened with violence or death, despite being (if anything) higher profile than Jesse Frazelle. It doesn't happen on anything like the same scale, and attempting to equate the two is clearly inaccurate.
I don't know if you know any male nurses (I do), but yeah, there are issues in the nursing profession. But a large part of it is that nursing is considered a significantly less prestigious profession than other branches of medicine, and the stereotypes influence who applies in the first place. It's strange that nursing is such a go-to comparison in this kind of discussion, because it's accepted that there's a problem there and people are working to increase the representation of men.
Many of the problems in the technology industry disproportionately affect women, while few (if any) disproportionately affect men. I'm choosing to spend my time working on the former. If you'd like to work on the latter, feel free!
It's a made up word that implies that there's no pervasive sexism in society, and as such it's a denial of reality. Hope that helps!
Re: reply to this funny article from a woman IT professional
Date: 2017-10-17 01:55 am (UTC)