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Culture War Roundup for the week of April 24, 2023

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Proportionally, do Trans women have greater visibility in the Open Source ecosystem as compared to Cis Women?

This is anecdotal, but I've often noticed that, I read a technical blog post by someone, end up following them, find that they are women (pronouns/name) and later find that they are trans.

At this point almost all women whose technical blogs I follow are Trans. So, this makes me wonder, are Cis women Software Engineers just not interested in Open Source or writing blogs? If there is some sort of discrimination involved then it should also effect Trans women since they are just another username on the screen, just like everyone else. In fact they may even face more discrimination than Cis women.

This very much looks like something progressives should be up in the arms about since Identarian politics and equality of outcome is very much their thing. But you only have strategic silence.

I think this is potentially evidence against the blank slatism that says systemic discrimination is the only possible reason for the lack of female representation in certain occupations. One issue you could poke in this argument is that Trans women were socialized as male, but I think all the young boys who are being socialized as girls today will soon prove them wrong.

I don't think my CS domain interests are too niche. They mostly lean towards Systems, Security, Programming languages (Go, Rust, C++, ...). I source technical content on these topics from HN, lobste.rs and some subreddits which themselves are not overly niche platforms in the Software industry. So I think there is something to think about here.

OR I am just falling prey to some sort of Sampling bias and the argument above is garbage.


Having said all this, I actually think a 50/50 gender distribution typically helps in creating a healthier work atmosphere, mitigating the worst excesses of either gender. Male dominated work environments can run you ragged and be outright abusive when under a lot of competition.

<rant>

But, I do not see any way to achieve this due to the asymmetry in the distribution of interest. When taken to its logical conclusion, average expendable (male) Software Engineers like me will be left hanging out to dry unlike average or below average women. And it galls me when my concerns get gaslighted as incompetent men who cannot handle the competition.

</rant>

But, I do not see any way to achieve this due to the asymmetry in the distribution of interest. When taken to its logical conclusion, average expendable (male) Software Engineers like me will be left hanging out to dry unlike average or below average women. And it galls me when my concerns get gaslighted as incompetent men who cannot handle the competition.

I am considering alternative options for my future in the software industry. I have noticed that there are certain expectations and requirements for participation in various aspects of the industry, such as employment and technical communities. I am aware that there may come a time when my opportunities in the industry may be limited due to these expectations and requirements.

deleted

Pretty sure he's referring to the deep-blue nature of the populations in these fields, and the concomitant tendency to police their communities for any hint of crypto-Red tendency or sympathy. There's a good chance that the further down this road we get, the more untenable it's going to become for non-true-believers to survive in the tech industry.

That's pretty much every field though isn't it?

Just as there's anti-black racism in the 'deeply subliminal and structural problems' sense and then there's anti-black racism in the 'will explicitly refuse to work with black people' sense, there's a difference between 'does exactly what's required to keep EEOC off them' and 'anti-racist layoffs'.

I got a ping today about a really inside-story drama from the modded Minecraft world, but one of the footnotes had Forge leadership getting pressured to leave a project by her employer over the Twitter Likes of an entirely different person on the project, and getting that person to step down from managing the project was the only way her employer would allow her to continue contributing.

This is insane cult behavior that makes maoist struggle sessions look measured and sensible. I have a hard time understanding what happened, but in the end the most rabid group won everything and purged all the competition? And these zealots are basically the self-appointed enforcers of community policy for all minecraft modding?

This collab program is occasionally misunderstood as a sort of "hit squad" attempting to "cancel" Minecraft community members and have them removed from as many servers as possible, largely due to rhetoric pushed by queerphobes, racists and other bigots that have been banned by communities taking part in the program. However, it does nothing of the sort

And then proceeds to narrate how they did exactly that

And these zealots are basically the self-appointed enforcers of community policy for all minecraft modding?

Perhaps not all, fabric is actually quite good these days