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I continue to be unable to understand why I’ve never witnessed any of this. I’m a man who has worked in software for years and before that I was educated in STEM for years. In all this time I’ve seen one single example of the kind of misogyny described here: a senior colleague replied to me and not the intern who asked him a question when the three of us were eating lunch together. That was an odd experience made all the odder by the fact that it was the unique time I’ve witnessed such behaviour.
Am I blind? Lucky? It’s not as though I haven’t been trying to find corroborating evidence of this kind of behaviour.
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This is why I wrote this. While I’ve been in tech since I graduated in 2001 and have worked with many women I hadn’t seen these behaviors first hand. I write “seen” rather than “experienced” because I’m sure I was oblivious to many instances. Having a female business partner has illumninated to me how pervasive these behaviors are.
I don’t see sexism every day but I certainly do every month. Take that as a lower bound and multiply by years in the industry and it’s a lot to bear.
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Am I blind? Lucky? It’s not as though I haven’t been trying to find corroborating evidence of this kind of behaviour.
I wouldn’t say blind, more like our context-experiences, as men, make a lot of this invisible to us. It’s worth asking coworkers for their experiences with this, if they’re comfortable with it; they’ll have a lot of examples to share.
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I, like the author of the OP, have had a lot of opportunity to watch second-hand misogyny on the part of my wife. My guess is that if you aren’t seeing it, it’s because you’re not close enough to someone to hear how they experience things.
Listening to my wife, the number of open, clearly sexist things that happen over her 8 year career so far has been fairly low. There’ve been a few instances of “Little Girl” comments – the name stems from the first she experienced, when one of the R&D Engineers suggested that the project would’ve been better in the hands of a “real” Manufacturing Engineer, and not some “Little Girl”.
The result of him saying that, by the way, was a slap on the wrist by HR and, later, a promotion to a managerial position where he would only be dealing with men (because the R&D team there was 100% men).
More often, though, are the instances of much smaller, much less overt things. Some are similar to your sole experience, but many are so subtle that I didn’t understand the issue till she explained to me. One common gripe she has is the “Alright guys… and Sarah.”-trope. It’s insidious because it seems inclusive, but in reality it’s singling her out as being different. I asked her what it made her feel like as I’m writing this, she says:
Those sorts of things aren’t hurtful, but they do make me feel exposed. I don’t mind being one of the ‘guys’, I’d much rather you just do that, then make me seem like I need to be coddled/require special attention. Some women I know don’t like being one of the guys, some like being singled out, but none I’ve met mind when you use ‘folks’ or ‘Ladies and Gentlemen’ or some other really common, inclusive phrasing.
(emph mine)
I think these sorts of things can feel really ‘normal’ to someone, even someone looking for sexism and misogyny in the workplace or elsewhere.
Another common kind of misogyny she’s experienced comes in the form of reviews. My wife is a Manufacturing engineer. She’d tell you that being an MFE means that she figures out: “How to take the thing that R&D took 10 months to build 1 of, and make it so we can build 10, 100, 1000, however many a day.” This is a field that requires no small amount of crossfunctional ability. She’s equal parts an ME, EE, Programmer, Quality Control Specialist, Documentation Writer, and half a dozen other things. This means working with lots of people and exerting a lot of will to make things happen simply by convincing people it should. Now, I’m in a similar sort of role, though on the software side. I imagine, given the venue, that you are in some similar situation. I’m sure you’ve known folks who have argued strongly for their position – I imagine you’ve argued strongly for your positions. I know I have. I also know that I’ve never been told to “Be nicer” in my 1:1’s with my boss, or that I was “overly aggressive in supporting my view of the product.” Nor have I ever been called “Petulant,” to my face, by my boss – or anyone else for that matter. My wife is not petulant, she’s passionate. It’s something companies claim to look for in engineers – passion to do good work is important. The difference I’ve seen is not in the actions my wife takes, but in the way those actions are received. This is something broadly hidden from view to outside observers; no one sits in those meetings except her and her boss. When I go hard in the paint to try to argue for a particular design, I don’t leave anything on the table, I make a case as strongly as possible. I can say for a fact that there are times I have been petty and low-minded when I didn’t get what I wanted. I’ve never been called petulant in a review. I’ve never been told I was too aggressive. Even if you don’t believe me when I say my wife isn’t those things, you should at least believe that I’m telling the truth when I claim to be petulant and have never been called on it. Even if you can’t see the misogyny, hopefully that illuminates the privilege that is equal to the problem.
Point being, it’s certainly possible that you work and live in a particularly good environment, where the people are aware and try to curtail this sort of thing, but more likely it’s that the misogyny that’s happening isn’t on the surface. I encourage you to engage with women engineers in an honest and open way; ask them about their experience. Ask them if you’ve been party to that experience. If you care about not doing shitty things to people, it’s worth an ask. Some women will give you the brush off about it – they don’t want to talk about it, that’s okay. But in my experience, when I’ve asked women about their experiences, they’ve been more than willing to tell me; especially when I open with, “Hey, my wife had something shitty happen to her, does this shit happen to you? Can you tell me about it? Do I do this? I’d like to not; but I don’t know if I am.”
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This is a really interesting article. Thanks for sharing it. Personally I usually just use “People” or “Folks” (as in, “Hey People” or “Hey Folks”); my wife I think was getting at the main point of there being a problem of being singled out, but this article makes a good case for even that ‘more inclusive’ phrasing of “Ladies and Gentlemen” still being about gender. It occurs to me now it also leaves out various folks who find them selves identifying as neither ladies nor gentlemen. Very interesting, TIL.
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Now you got me curious. I’d probably smirk or smile a bit but no more than over the unusual things down here. I say adapt it and spread it. To heck with the haters! :)
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It ends up somewhere in the vicinity of rhyming with ‘Mal’ (as in “They stabbed me, Mal, with a sword, how weird is that?”). I can put on an accent and say it okay, but if I’m speaking naturally, it doesn’t really work. Suffice to say my accent ended up in a weird place when it solidified; and while I can force other accents, my default is… pretty weird.
I usually try to speak in a pretty flat accent, but it’s an affectation. My natural accent lives somewhere between a Worcester/Brockton/Rhode Island accent; and leans pretty hard on hard ‘a’ sounds (I pronounce “Java” with an ‘a’ like “at” or “apple”, not one like “hard” or “all”); thus the weirdness with “y’all”.
I sometimes do use “y’all” in text, but it’s usually not something I need to do (if I’m addressing a group, I’ve probably started a chat/am sending an email, and “You all” is more appropriate there).
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I keep using it being from the South. It’s more efficient. :) It also has the side effect of baiting out those that bully over grammar or just look to argue with those who are perceived as less educated. That’s sometimes useful.
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Well, that’s an interesting take on it. Makes sense.
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Does anyone know what he’s talking about w.r.t. “breakpoints” used by strace around the 17:00 mark? strace uses
PTRACE_SYSCALLmachinery, not any hardware breakpoints (e.g. theint3instruction on x86); the claims of it being unsafe came off as a bit FUDdy in an otherwise-good talk.-
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But my point is that (unless I’m grossly misreading the source…) strace’s syscall-tracing isn’t implemented using “breakpoints” at all – it uses
ptrace(PTRACE_SYSCALL, ...)to request that the kernel, as you describe in the talk, stop the tracee and hand control to the tracing process when the tracee makes a syscall. This is implemented via a simple conditional branch on a process flag in the kernel’s syscall-entry path (here, here, and here); the ptrace call just sets the magic flag on the target process (here).
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Glad to see you’re working on sexism – but while you’re at it, maybe check your ageism?
If you were offended I apologize sincerely. It was only my intention to poke fun at myself as an oldster.
Since we’re on the topic of subtle sexism, ageism, ism-ism, “If you were offended, I apologize” is a classic non-apology form, so if you want an apology to be taken as an apology you might look at alternative ways of stating similar apologies. Not saying you meant it as a non-apology, just pointing it out.
Navigating written text and tone is hard!
Apology accepted :)
In general, “millennial” tends to be a slur, but “see yourself out” really felt non-welcoming. Just FYI for the future :)
Way to man up to your mistakes! punches self in face
Yeah, came here to say this.