Do you intend to imply that women shouldn't feel welcome as Ruby/RoR hackers?
Because all this time, I just thought Ruby and RoR were about hacking in a powerful yet carefree interpreted language. I didn't realize it had anything to do with excluding women.
I'm claiming that the argument "As an X, I dislike the culture surrounding Y, therefore it should change" is arrogant and flawed. I then illustrated with a non-gendered example of a culture in which I fit poorly.
There are many valid criticisms one can make about either ROR culture (see Zed's rant) or academic culture. But "As an X, I don't like the culture surrounding Y" is not a valid criticism. That's just a selfish demand that the world change to make your life easier.
And I think you're doing a very good job of missing the point, because the issue here is gender. What the hell else would it be?
"As a woman, I feel unwelcome in the Ruby community" is the gist of the criticism. If you don't read it that way, fair enough. But I did, and in that context, your response came across as, "It's selfish of you to expect the Ruby community to be welcoming of women."
I shouldn't have to explain to you why that's just plain wrong, and not at all analogous to your experience in academia.
I understand the criticism. I don't agree with it. The template for criticism is this: "As an {{X}}, I feel unwelcome in the {{Y}} community."
The case under discussion here is "X=women, Y=ROR". I gave another example witha "X=macho hackers, Y=academia". In all cases, I feel it is selfish to expect a community to change just because of your feelings.
Could you explain why things are different in the special case of "X=women"?
"Selfish" implies that it's a personal problem. Making half the human race feel unwelcome just because they happen to have been born female rises above the level of a personal problem.
As a "macho hacker", you've probably adopted some beliefs and values that are a misfit to what you perceive to be the beliefs and values of the academia. There are no such beliefs and values endemic to being a woman. When a community starts to exclude people, not for having incompatible values and beliefs, but for having vaginas, I'd say there's a serious problem.
No one excluded women or made them feel unwelcome. The slides said nothing offensive about women. Women may have been disproportionately offended by them, but that is not the same thing. Anyone who is offended by the presentation is offended because they have adopted beliefs and values which lead them to be offended.
If the community is actively excluding women (e.g., not allowing them to participate or treating them badly when they do), that's a completely different matter.
They portrayed women as sex objects rather than living persons with minds of their own. They say to women, "we're more interested in your tits and ass than in any code you might have to write." You didn't get the message, and it may not have even been intended by the presenter, but the message was there, loud and clear.
Those of us who are interested in precise communication (which, in my experience, usually includes hackers) are usually more than willing to criticize someone for miscommunicating. If I go around saying "functional programming" when I really mean "procedural programming", somebody is going to stop me and correct my usage. And if I refuse to listen, the fault is my own. This is no different. If you don't want to broadcast misogynistic messages, don't use misogynistic visual language.
No, the talk portrayed porn stars as sex objects. The comparison was explicitly "bad database" == "ugly porn star", "good database" == "pretty porn star". You can't demand precise communication in one paragraph and then drastically read hidden meanings into things in another paragraph.
Besides, you would never demand the same level of precision in visual aids if he used lolcats rather than porn stars. I think that precise communication is simply a posthoc justification for your gut reaction.
Come to think of it, it's not necessarily a matter of precise communication. The fact is, the vast majority of women who saw that presentation got the sense of being unwelcome and objectified. I think you can measure just about any attempt at communication by the message that actually gets across to people, and the message that actually got across to women was what it was. That's the point of the whole article.
Why did the women in the article perceive it differently from you? Maybe because when you're a victim of systemic sexism every day of your life you're better at recognizing it, and when you're the beneficiary of systemic sexism every day of your life, you're better at ignoring it. That's the standard explanation at least, and there's merit to it.
Because all this time, I just thought Ruby and RoR were about hacking in a powerful yet carefree interpreted language. I didn't realize it had anything to do with excluding women.