Comment by VexXtreme
11 years ago
> "this makes me feel excluded"
I personally find it EXTREMELY offensive that you assume women have such delicate sensibilities that they wouldn't find this funny or simply see it as a joke. What do you think they are children or mentally incapable of processing wordplay? In this context, "bro" is an obvious pun on "man", what more needs to be said about this?
I don't know a single woman who would feel excluded by this but know plenty who would find it offensive that a random white knight is getting offended on their behalf and creating a huge fuss assuming they are weak little creatures that don't have the basic social skills to process this as a joke.
Am I also supposed to be offended because I'm not American and the word "bro" is so specific to the American frat boy culture and doesn't exist anywhere else in the world? Should I get upset and walk out of the room in indignation every time my American coworker calls me "bro"? Am I supposed to feel excluded by that? Would you like to get offended on my account as well?
Get real man. It really takes a mind of special caliber to even connect something like this with gender issues and I'm sure most women would agree.
Me. Right here. I am a woman and while I can obviously recognize that it is a joke, seeing these "jokes" everywhere is literally the worst part of my day. Reading tech news, browsing this site, and on every other technology related site, 10+ times every day I am inundated with these hilarious "jokes" implicitly suggesting that this community, this interest, is for a specific group of people that I am not, and will never be, a part of. It sucks. Like others are saying, it's not that I can't recognize it as a joke or that I feel "offended," it's just simply exclusionary.
Actually, it's not even exclusionary by itself. Which is probably why so many people can't recognize this issue. It's the fact that I wade through DOZENS of these types of things every day, and they all add up.
Rather than forcing the entire world to change to fit your world views and personality, it's always a better idea to simply stop seeking validation from the world and stop caring about things like this. If you are feeling excluded it's because you are choosing to feel excluded, not because anyone is deliberately trying to make you feel that way. I am a western person living in an incredibly exclusionary and xenophobic east Asian country and if I cared about every time I'm treated differently, I'd go nuts. And since I am a white person living among a bunch of Asians, trust me when I say that I get treated differently all the time. People often start acting differently when I enter the room, store clerks and waiters often treat me a bit different than the locals etc. And you know what? Most of that is not even intentional. It's just the way humans are and that's ok.
You can't force people to give up every single piece of their identity and what makes them different in order to fit this new politically-correct bland mold of people who all act and think the same so that no one feels "excluded". As humans we are different, diverse, have different types of humor depending on the geography, age, gender, subcultures etc. Being able to cope with that is part of being a mature, well adjusted person.
All this PC "let's-all-be-the-same-hold-hands-and-sing-kumbaya" crap is getting tiresome. It goes against everything that makes us human, different and unique. If that's the world you want to live in - fine - keep going with your crusade and feeling indignant every time someone shows a trace of uniqueness and being different. I for one refuse to live in such a suffocating colorless world. I love being different from other people because everyone is more interesting that way, and yet at the end of the day I can still find a way to relate to others.
The world owes us nothing. If you decide to take away positive aspects from your daily experiences, that's what you'll get. If you decide to feel miserable and angry when people don't act the way you want them to act, then sadness and misery is what you'll get.
Since I know that some blockhead is going to try to strawman me, I will preempt that by saying that I don't believe we should start calling black people "niggers" or take away women's right to vote. Just saying that if people manifest their diversity in a way that's not harmful to others, there is no reason to get upset.
So, I'm male and I'll confess that if this debate had happened a year ago I would've been firmly on your side, arguing that the onus is on the offendee not to be offended.
I think that's what's changed for me is the recognition that we're all imperfect, we're human, and sometimes we'll offend people by accident but that doesn't excuse us from trying to change things for the better once we realize we've offended someone. The reason I'd argued that "you're going to get offended, deal with it" was because I felt that if I didn't believe that, I'd be on the hook for every possible minor offense I might cause, and there's no possible way that I could know of or predict all of them beforehand. But eventually I realized that that's not what people are asking: they just want you to understand that from the POV of someone marginalized, such comments are exclusionary, and to do your best not to make them in the future. It's not about censoring every possible utterance you might make in the future, it's about self-censoring this one.
Nobody's asking you to give up your identity. But the thing is - is being able to use the word "bro" such a core part of your identity that avoiding it means giving up your identity? Could you just avoid it as a favor to the people out there who feel bad when they hear it?
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I didn't find the bro thing offensive. What I DO find offensive is you marginalizing gender issues by comparing them to your experience vacationing in Asia.
I am not "miserable" or "angry." I was trying to let you know why women have a problem with this type of thing. Nowhere did I say everyone should be the same. But usually, there is a balance to the "jokes". To use your example from your time in Asian (or rather a parallel one, because an Asian in America is not really opposite to an american in asia): an Asian man in Africa would be treated differently. Just as an African man in Asia would be treated differently. In tech-related fields, women are treated differently. Everywhere. There is no anti-parallel universe (in tech) where women actually have the advantage, where women are making "sis" jokes about other women. That is the difference. We are, to use your analogy, white people living in Asia except there is nowhere else to live.
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As read in an earlier HN post, being a programmer is all about having been socially excluded from evry circle. At 7 yo, excluded from football. At 8 from the local bike boys. At 16 from any group at high school. At student age because I'm a nerd. At 29 because a woman stepped ahead for the management job I hoped for. Do I look unhappy? I still have the best job someone could hope for. And tolerant friends.
Part of the happy programmer's life is, being socially excluded and building a potentially successful life for above social considerations.
A similar experience of being an outsider also pushed me into programming. I think it's sad that although so many in programming can directly empathize with feeling excluded, there's such a push to protect exclusionary aspects of the programming world.
Congrats to us, we've paid forward the insults, instead of making a better space.
Amusingly, wasn't the original 'brogrammer' pitch used to describe programmers that were not excluded from the rest of male culture; that fitted in with the 'usual' non-nerdy male fraternity stereotypes - athletic and sporty or physical - but also intelligent...?
>seeing these "jokes" everywhere is literally the worst part of my day.
You must lead a very privileged life.
Not really. It's just extraordinarily discouraging to be constantly reminded of a problem so deeply ingrained in millions of people that it couldn't possibly be completely addressed in my lifetime. It's pretty hard to stare into the abyss of those types of problems.
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