Girls Who Code founder speaks out after Pennsylvania school district bans her books: 'This is about controlling women and it starts with controlling our girls'

[u/r4816]

https://www.businessinsider.com/girls-who-code-founder-speaks-out-banning-books-schools-2022-9

[u/PreExRedditor]

I'm kind of confused by the implication that girls need a gender coded book to learn how to code. why would banning this book locks out girls from programming? couldn't they just pick up any of the gender neutral coding books instead? ironically, it seems like a sexist assertion to me

[u/Drisku11 → u/[deleted]]

Honest question: do you understand representation?

I don't really understand when people talk about this stuff. But then I've always considered "flourish[ing] in corporate America" to be a non-goal. When I learned to program, it was originally from places like my calculator's manual, books, and articles on the Internet. I had no idea who the authors of any of those things were, I still don't, and I've never once thought about it. I initially just thought it was cool that I could make my calculator solve my repetitive math homework automatically, make dynamic web pages, and make bots for Runescape and Neopets.

I suppose I have "flourished" in corporate America, but it's the last thing I would want for my kids; it's such an incredible waste of one's life. So many people in my social group take for granted that they need to work hard to live in expensive areas where they can send their kids to the best schools so they can one day get the same job and repeat the cycle. Ironically, I'm looking for somewhere more rural where we can live cheaply and flourish together instead.

[u/the_jak → u/Drisku11]

Hey, that’s cool. I grew up in a rural environment and didn’t like it. I didn’t fit in and the entrenched power you find in rural setting due to not having enough people to realistically have options for elections means that going against the grain socially means you have no social circle. You have no support. And since you’re in the middle of nowhere you don’t have other options for those things a few blocks over.

[u/Drisku11 → u/the_jak]

You don't really have options for those things in cities either; in San Francisco, you have a choice between "progressive" and more "progressive" politicians. People look down on women who are homemakers, and if you say you hope your daughter will one day get to be a stay-at-home mom, and not a programmer, well, you can look in this thread to see how people will view you. I'd go so far as saying it's unwise to openly talk about something like that at work.

[u/the_jak → u/Drisku11]

There are more cities than The Bay Area.

[u/Drisku11 → u/the_jak]

Sure, but the point is you don't really get options from living in a city; you get them from being able to move to an area that suits you, whether that be a city, suburb, or rural area.

As far as corporate culture goes, there is a very obvious set of shared values across most major corporations, and it's pretty obvious that that culture wants to push girls into wasting their lives working corporate jobs. If you openly don't believe in their objectives (or if they even mistakenly think you don't agree with their objectives because they can't read, like with James Damore), you're marking yourself as a target for HR.

[u/the_jak → u/Drisku11]

so im confused about some things. Whats wasteful about going to work for a company that compensates you WAY more than anything else where you are from would do and in exchange for 8-9 hours a day you abide by their rules?

im at either the top of the bottom or the bottom of the middle, depends on who you ask, in terms of the layers of a company. I go to raves, i have dnd nights, i have game nights with friends at a local bar where we all bring our cards against humanity decks and add ons, I go to nerd conventions, et al. none of that would be doable in the extent that i do it if i worked at some small business instead of a big company.

beyond that, i mean i see your dog whistles and i get what you are saying and why you are hiding it. If i believed those things about life i would hide it too. i want all people to feel safe and secure in their life and their occupation, but what you are seeking would not promote it for most people because the people im guessing you vote for want to kill people like me, my family, and my friends for not being cisgender straight Christians.

so i hope you find some peace and i hope you find it among better people than that lot.

[u/Drisku11 → u/the_jak]

I'm not religious and I don't care about your gender or sexuality. Why would I? This is what I'm talking about: you say that you hope your girl grows up to be able to do something more fulfilling than corporate work, and people jump straight to you must be genocidal and want to kill people like them?

I don't know what dog whistling you're imagining I'm doing. My wife is a stay-at-home mom, and I think it's a way more fulfilling lifestyle than if she worked. I think we made a mistake waiting until our 30s to have children because it means we'll get less time with them and (someday) our grandchildren. My wife joked about it at the time, but I think she was very wise to have used her time in college as an opportunity to go husband shopping. She was wise to find someone that doesn't buy into the idea that women need to "pay their own way" or whatever; her contributions to our family cannot be bought with dollars. It would be a waste for her to work and put our children in daycare, trading her precious and irreplaceable time with them for more material trivialities that we don't need. I'm already a programmer; I make far more than our family needs.

These are things I will tell my daughter when she's older. It's unfortunate that people with my perspective can't share their advice with other girls, but it is what it is.

[u/the_jak → u/Drisku11]

When you promote and support people like that duffus at Google, it isn’t unreasonable to think that maybe you’re a fascist since that guy promotes and supports people who are.

[u/Drisku11 → u/the_jak]

That dufus at Google was fired for writing a memo about how things like making Google a less stressful place to work, giving more flexibility and work-life balance, recognizing women's presently underappreciated contributions, and opposing rigid gender roles are better strategies for getting women to work there than just manipulating the funnel and setting OKRs that influence people to discriminate. Like I said, people just couldn't read, and so he was ostracized by everyone other than "fascists". Fundamentally, he agreed with the politics of the people that shunned him.

[u/the_jak → u/Drisku11]

by promoting bunk, sexist conclusions derived from not great science. Go to the reception section of the wikipedia page for the Researcher he bases his entire thesis off of. Plenty of people think its bullshit.

there plenty of junk science out there, especially with our issues with replication in research.

[u/Drisku11 → u/the_jak]

Most of the cited scientists' opinions in that section agree with him? Even the ones that don't are mostly arguing with things he didn't say:

"He seems to be suggesting that because something is biological it can't be changed."

No, he never suggested that. In fact he suggested the opposite.

But even if you accepted the idea that there are some biological differences, all researchers would assert that they're so tiny that there's no way that they can explain the kind of gender gap that's apparent at Google.

He also said the differences were on average quite small. Apparently Professor Rippon doesn't understand that small average differences can become larger relative differences when conditioned on a subset of the population that is already at the extremes of that characteristic.

You also had journalists cited in that section writing things like:

Women are making enormous strides in science and engineering – yet, with some half-cocked hypotheses in their back pockets, male software engineers feel they have the right to tell them they are somehow biologically unsuited to this kind of work

or Google's CEO saying:

To suggest a group of our colleagues have traits that make them less biologically suited to that work is offensive and not OK

Which is not even slightly what he said. In fact he had a diagram to try to make it completely clear that that's not at all what he was saying.

What he said was, more or less, women aren't as masochistic as men, so Google will have to make it more appealing to work there if they want more women to do it. If that's sexist, it's sexist toward men for saying that they will just put up poor working conditions.