Re: Women in Tech, Don’t Apologize, Just Recognize

I think the HN title of this post is misleading to the actual article content. The HN title here implies that the women in tech are apologizing, when she is actually saying to men "Please stop apologizing for other offensive males in tech, just recognize the situation in general, recognize your female co-workers, and strive for improvements".

The title is confusing, indeed. She's trying to say, 'Men: Don't apologize for the situation'.<p>And I totally disagree. As a man, I know what happens when we don't: We get lambasted for not caring.<p>We do care. We care enough to apologize and defend.<p>While I haven't worked with a female programmer, the ones I met socially were very competent. The female QA Testers I've worked with have been amazing. Even the female phone tech support reps I've worked with have been great. (For the record, most of the males filling those positions were better than average. I'm not disparaging them.)<p>The negative stereotype of women and science/tech/etc is undeserved and wrong.<p>But ignoring the situation is not the answer. Not-apologizing is a form of ignoring it. It doesn't help the situation at all.<p>Apologizing, however, shows support and that the vocal minority are just that: A minority.

"Ask Michael Arrington what Heather Harde has brought to TechCrunch, or Larry Page what Marissa Mayer means to Google. Ask Mark Zuckerberg what Sheryl Sandberg brings to Facebook."<p>Maybe it's not that they're women. Maybe it's alliterative names that makes the difference.

I find it ironic that the gist of her argument is a little sexist itself: <i>Don't call us victims, call us your valuable assistants!</i>

In all fairness, even if someone is your boss, they are a piece of meat. Cause we're made of meat. Unless there's something you want to be telling us..

&#62;Almost a year ago, a flurry of TechCrunch commenters repeatedly called me the “C word”, insisted that my brain somehow was incapable of quantitative tasks, and one even told me if I didn’t like my female body, I could euthanize myself legally in the state of Oregon. Awesome.<p>There's one big problem right there, taking a bunch of online comments seriously. Anonymity seems to be bring out the worst in people(both men and women), there's no point whatsoever mulling over it.

&#62;And the next time you say something crude to a woman at a happy hour, remember that one day, someone could wise up and hire that woman in a senior management position. She won’t be a piece of meat then–she’ll be your boss.<p>With respect to this quote: 1. Crudeness is, at times, appreciated and welcome, depending on context and consent. 2. This is a horrible reason to treat women with respect. This is literally the same argument religious people use to demand believers to not sin (i.e. "If you sin, you might go to hell"). 3. A good reason to treat women with dignity and respect is that they're conscious animals, just like you, the reader of this comment.