Okay, Feminism, It's Time We Had a Talk About Empathy (2013) - <AUTHOR> https://medium.com/@maradydd/okay-feminism-its-time-we-had-a-talk-about-empathy-bd6321c66b37 <comment><USER2> This was awesome. Not because it dispels a meme that is negative in the industry, not because it is some sort of proof a woman can succeed in tech, or any other of this tropic nonsense. It was such an amazing message that was totally gender neutral:

"I like building things because I am curious and I pursue knowledge for its own sake"

With all the confirmation bias and name calling (which I am certainly guilty of from time to time) it is refreshing to hear someone talking about how they just want[0] to focus on building something exciting and not focusing on politics.

[0]this originally said _" both sides to shut up to they can get back to building and hacking."_, which was not meant literally, but to convey the sentiment the edited section now reflects.

edit: If you strongly disagree with me, and I am being sincere here, I can promise your energy will be much better spent building/doing/creating/enjoying something than engaging in a debate with me. If you are up to the challenge, go out and do. If you take some time to go out and do something awesome and you still feel like you would like to converse, I would like to talk about your projects/etc and my email is listed.

Cheers.

[final edit:] I have been doing a lot of thinking about cultural problems. I have began a change in perspective that has lead to personal growth, asking not why something matters but when/contextually something matters. Maybe whatever is being argued down thread is the single biggest issue you find fault with in our society or maybe it is the 5th, 10th issue, etc. I can only reiterate that "creating" will better your cause but this is not the context or the "when". Go start a scholarship, teach people to code, work on a product, call your senator, etc. Doing something is much better than talking about something and if there was a place to reasonably have meaningful discourse, I assure you this is not that place.

<comment><USER3> The "shut up and build things" position embodies the tacit assumption that the world naturally pushes itself to an equillibrium that is fair and just. The assumption that racism and sexism result in elastic deformation of society that will go away as soon as you remove whatever force is warping it.

I don't think history bears that out. Society is a soft ductile metal. If you bend it, it'll stay bent. You have to hammer it back into straightness. Talking (and browbeating and prosecuting when necessary) is how you do that.

PS: I don't disagree with the author that not everyone needs to be on the front line of every culture war. But I think someone needs to be.

<comment><USER4> _The assumption that racism and sexism result in elastic deformation of society that will go away as soon as you remove whatever force is warping it._

Yes, this is the economic assumption - folks are greedy and will exploit undervalued resources.

 _I don 't think history bears that out. Society is a soft ductile metal. If you bend it, it'll stay bent._

This ignores the history of various oppressed groups who unbent themselves (east Asians, south Asians, Jews, Irish). It also ignores the fact that women have unbent themselves in most fields, just not math heavy STEM fields.

<comment><USER5> Those oppressed groups mostly came "unbent" because they stopped putting up with their oppressors and started _killing them._

Are you even at all aware of the history of any of the examples you just cited?

<comment><USER6> Jewish folks and South Asian folks overcame discrimination from Americans by killing them? Are you from Earth-2?

Read Steven Dutch's essay "The world's most toxic value system" [1] before you recommend violence as a solution to any group's problems. It's a comfortably direct approach, but it backfires. It creates a class of violent people who will push others down, so the group as a whole stays down.

[1] [http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/toxicval.htm](http://www.uwgb.edu/dutchs/pseudosc/toxicval.htm)

<comment><USER5> I didn't recommend anything.

I just suggested one become a little more familiar with history before making absurd claims and value judgements against whole races of people. Every single one of the cited examples had to fight bloody wars of independence against occupation before their refugees were even seen as human. We enslaved the Chinese. We used the Irish in proxy wars between street gangs that _still_ are going on today in parts of the Northeast. The Jews spend hundreds of years trying to assimilate into European society, and then the Germans _killed 6 million of them._ We gave them back their own country. Out of guilt.

Spouting a bunch of stereotypes about the local immigrant population is a pretty fucking ignorant view of that history.

<comment><USER6> I just tried to educate myself about the Chinese getting enslaved and fighting a war for independence, but unfortunately I failed. Which events are you referring to?

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER7> To work in technology, especially programming, you have to put a heck of a lot of effort into the subject. If it's not some legacy technology then that also means learning constantly (on your own initiative). That's what I like about programming, it rewards knowledge and ability - whereas other careers reward other attributes.

I look at the Twttier-style feminists (I don't mean the traditional equality types, but the extremists) and can only think that they are doing it for their own gain. If they really wanted to participate in their targets of anger, they could just do what everyone else does: work hard at a hobby for years, even decades, and maybe, just maybe they too could dominate the field.

<comment><USER8> There are many examples of girls being actively refused entry in to technology classes[1] based on their gender. When the education system itself is prejudiced against women it's unreasonable to suggest women aren't getting tech jobs because they're unwilling to put in the effort - they can't because they're blocked from doing so.

[1] A recent example [http://jezebel.com/girl-fights-library-s-boys-only- robotics-...](http://jezebel.com/girl-fights-library-s-boys-only-robotics- program-1715777611)

<comment><USER9> I would say this a sample of 1 - and from a biased source, too.

My daughter graduated form high-school last year. Not only had I not heard a single case of girls being refused entry to anything - most of the times it seemed like my daughter and her female friends (most of them straight "A" students in a very competitive high-school in the Boston, MA area) were almost harassed to join the math club, the robotics club, etc.

None of them had any interest - they all found it "boring". The reasons are complex and a another topic, but in short, part of it is biology, part of it pop-culture where "nerd"/"geek" is not something you want to be.

<comment><USER9> Please do not downvote just because you disagree - it is against the rules.

I was questioning the statement "many examples of girls being actively refused...", because the poster provided an example of ONE incident. I provided valid observations from my own experience, providing contrary evidence, just to make a point that we cannot form an opinion based on one event.

<comment><USER7> Your comments are fine in my book. They reflect an uncomfortable reality that many don't want to accept. And yes, the link isn't the best of sources, their owner courts controversy and has made some terrible mistakes recently.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER10> If you want to join an existing group with an existing culture, you don't get to say "here I am; now change your culture to suit me". As an older gentleman(?) it's bizarre to see how traditional nerd hideaways such as programming and comic books have evolved into cool things that the cool people now feel entitled to participate in...you know, if we could just get these spergy nerds to act like cool, or at least normal people.

<comment><USER11> If you look at this author's medium page, she has another post on exactly that.

[https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds- collide-31895b01e68c](https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds- collide-31895b01e68c)

My favorite bit:

 _The mainstream tech industry offers us money, status, and a stable (if weak) position in its idealised social hierarchy. The voices clamouring for change offer us no money, a social role reversal back to "disempowered outsider," and a status demotion to "likely sexual predator." (The polite euphemism for this is "creepy," a pejorative applied indiscriminately both to those who actively transgress other people's boundaries and to those with the unmitigated gall to be attracted to someone else while being funny-looking.) Given a choice between these two, which would you side with? It's true that the one is confining, essentialist, and a far cry from the best of all possible worlds, but the other is all these things and a step backward for people who finally got to take a step forward for once when the internet took off._

<comment><USER10> She's a good writer

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> This is from 2013. It seems like a response to something, possibly one of Shanley's essays that's now no longer on Medium; I can't help but feel that I'm missing context as I get towards the end.

This also seems like a straightforward example of how mainstream feminism is bad at intersectionality. Arguably both sides in this discussion are not great at it: I feel like there's probably a good answer that involves neither belittling people for having different reads of social interactions nor asserting that everyone else should read social interactions the way you do.

I wonder what the people in this disagreement would say today. I think tech feminism has been getting more aware of intersectionality of late, so I'm curious if the problems the author identified about have gotten better.

<comment><USER13> I don't know what this means:

> This also seems like a straightforward example of how mainstream feminism is > bad at intersectionality.

Can you explain? What are they bad at?

<comment><USER12> I'm not sure I'll do it justice, but briefly, intersectionality is the viewpoint that systems of oppression affect people qualitatively differently when they're on the wrong side of two systems instead of one. From Wikipedia's lede: "An example is black feminism, which argues that the experience of being a black woman cannot be understood in terms of being black, and of being a woman, considered independently, but must include the interactions, which frequently reinforce each other."

In particular, it seems to me like the author is part of a group of people for whom certain social cues fall on dry ground, and her critics are part of a group of people for whom those social cues take root and flower like a weed. By themselves, there are advantages and disadvantages to participating in tech communities as a member of either of these communities. But they also influence how the experience of other systems of oppression affect them -- like the sexist reviewer mentioned in the article -- and it's not very helpful to think of a one-size-fits-all "feminism".

For instance, I don't think it's the author's intention and certainly not her fault if she reinforces a belief that certain behaviors are okay, simply because those behaviors don't register to her. But yet people use her as evidence that the behaviors are fine, and there ought to be room for identifying that as a problem -- not as criticism of _her_ , but as awareness of a problem with a system. At the same time, any solution to that problem must not shut people like her out by weaving subtle social cues into the fabric of the system, or else one system of oppression is just replaced with another one.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER14> I'm a big fan of Meredith. She's one of the few "women in tech" (yuck) that I feel like actually speaks _my_ point of view and articulates how I feel about all of this. My impression is that most of the people that spend their time pontificating about women's issues in this industry are doing so from the outside, and I kinda resent that.

This article by Susan Sons is also good: [http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/girls-and- software](http://www.linuxjournal.com/content/girls-and-software)

<comment><USER15> That article by Susan kept coming to mind while reading this one.

I think that most women that actually work in technology have feelings closer to the ones expressed here than the stuff that a vocal minority spreads all over the internet.

</comment></comment><comment><USER16> > _There had been interest, but one of the committers had dismissed the idea > out of hand because a woman had proposed it._

It blows my mind that this stuff still happens. In the OSS world of all places. I can't even compute how someone can apply such "logic".

<comment><USER17> I think we need to start recognizing that this is just the sign of low intelligence. You can not argue with people who are judgmental. It's just like arguing with a drunk. Whatever you say is just waste of time and energy and by even going in to the discussion you let them drag you down to their level.

<comment><USER18> It is not a sign of low intelligence. Just like being religious is not a sign of low intelligence. What we need to realize is extremely bright people choose to identify with ideas that are not true. Personally I think it comes social evolution and the need to belong to a group. It would be impossible to get along with everyone unless we were willing to compromise our personal beliefs and values to some extent.

<comment><USER19> > Just like being religious is not a sign of low intelligence.

It's not a 100% accurate sign, but it's certainly a pretty good signal: [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence#S...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Religiosity_and_intelligence#Studies_comparing_religious_belief_and_IQ)

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER20> The only problem I have with feminism is that it's often a movement _against_ men, and not _for_ women. I think they would be a lot more successful doing things to encourage women rather than disparage men. Meredith would not have had to write this article.

Of course, it's a lot harder to be positive rather than negative.

<comment><USER21> I am a man, and feminist, and have spoken with many other feminists over the years, and read a lot of feminist literature, philosophy, cultural criticism, etc. In my experience I'd say less than 1% of feminism/feminists have anything to do with being _against_ men. I'm having a hard time thinking of anything, actually, I could reasonably describe as promoting this view. Maybe some radical stuff from the 70s, like Firestone, but I'm hard-pressed to come up with any other serious examples.

<comment><USER22> Men are rapists and sexual offenders by default.

Men are violent.

If a man finds a woman physically attractive then he is objectifying her.

Men should not be paid according to the merits of their work and ability.

Men should not have any reproductive rights.

Men should continue paying for a woman's lifestyle after a divorce.

Men should recognize their "privilege" and be constantly reminded of it, even though being told you should be ashamed of your gender is at the very heart of sexism.

Men should not be allowed into women's "safe spaces", implying they are dangerous and intimidating by default. Similarly, men should not be allowed to have their own "safe spaces", because that's sexist and exclusionary.

Men cannot have body issues resulting from over-exaggerated muscle-bound heroes in cartoons and movies (He-Man and the like) because they represent a "male power fantasy". But Barbie is responsible for decades of female self- image issues.

Men cannot discuss their issues in a public forum without feminist protestors shutting down discussions.

If a female character chooses to dress provocatively, it is because a man chose to objectify her, not because a woman can take charge of their own sexuality.

If a man is harassed online, it's unfortunate (sometimes). If a woman is harassed online, it's representative of a disturbing trend. Similarly, men cannot understand the plight of a woman's harassment, even if said man also receives daily death threats and has had a gun fired through their living room window.

Men should receive much harsher punishments than women for committing the same crimes.

<comment><USER23> Oh my word. Not saying I agree with all of them 100%, but you have utterly misconstrued the arguments.

> Men are rapists and sexual offenders by default.

Nope, the argument is that there is a societal pattern that devalues the severity of rape through humour and other cultural tropes.

> Men are violent.

The patriarchal "masculinity" foisted upon men is one that is competitive and aggressive.

> If a man finds a woman physically attractive then he is objectifying her.

If you see a woman only existing as to please your sexual appetite, you are objecting.

> Men should not be paid according to the merits of their work and ability.

Women _should_ be paid according to the merits of their work and ability, along with men.

> Men should not have any reproductive rights.

A woman's body is hers to do with as she should wish. Nobody should have operations forced upon them.

> Men should continue paying for a woman's lifestyle after a divorce.

Due to the fact that often a carer role is taken by a woman in a patriarchal society, this means that her earning potential and career is sacrificed.

> Men should recognize their "privilege" and be constantly reminded of it, > even though being told you should be ashamed of your gender is at the very > heart of sexism.

There are advantages that men get because of their sex/gender, and these should be recognised.

> Men should not be allowed into women's "safe spaces", implying they are > dangerous and intimidating by default. Similarly, men should not be allowed > to have their own "safe spaces", because that's sexist and exclusionary.

Due to many women having suffered terrible experiences at the hands of men, and the tendency for men to dominate discussions, there needs to be a place away from that where people can talk without fear and interruption.

> Men cannot have body issues resulting from over-exaggerated muscle-bound > heroes in cartoons and movies (He-Man and the like) because they represent a > "male power fantasy". But Barbie is responsible for decades of female self- > image issues.

Not sure about that one, I think the argument drastically varies, but men are more often portrayed in a powerful, dominant role.

> If a female character chooses to dress provocatively, it is because a man > chose to objectify her, not because a woman can take charge of their own > sexuality.

Characters are often designed by men, for men.

> If a man is harassed online, it's unfortunate (sometimes). If a woman is > harassed online, it's representative of a disturbing trend. Similarly, men > cannot understand the plight of a woman's harassment, even if said man also > receives daily death threats and has had a gun fired through their living > room window.

Yes because receiving some flame or smack is the same as constant rape threats.

> Men should receive much harsher punishments than women for committing the > same crimes.

This is bullshit, obviously.

<comment><USER22> >> Men are rapists and sexual offenders by default.

> Nope, the argument is that there is a societal pattern that devalues the > severity of rape through humour and other cultural tropes.

"Teach men not to rape."

"Teach your sons to respect women."

>> Men are violent.

> The patriarchal "masculinity" foisted upon men is one that is competitive > and aggressive.

Framing masculinity as a negative is anti-male. "Patriarchy" as a concept, regarding men as responsible for all the ills of the world, is also anti-male.

>> If a man finds a woman physically attractive then he is objectifying her.

> If you see a woman only existing as to please your sexual appetite, you are > objecting.

Physical attraction alone does not disregard a person's humanity or personal agency.

>> Men should not be paid according to the merits of their work and ability.

> Women should be paid according to the merits of their work and ability, > along with men.

No arguments there. Unfortunately "positive discrimination" (an oxymoron I see as often as "reverse sexism" and "reverse racism") says otherwise.

>> Men should not have any reproductive rights.

> A woman's body is hers to do with as she should wish. Nobody should have > operations forced upon them.

I never said anything about forcing or denying abortions, only that a woman has the right to cede responsibility for reproduction whereas a man has none. If a woman chooses to abort or put a child up for adoption, she is well within her rights to do so. If a man suggests the same thing, he is a "deadbeat".

>> Men should continue paying for a woman's lifestyle after a divorce.

> Due to the fact that often a carer role is taken by a woman in a patriarchal > society, this means that her earning potential and career is sacrificed.

Again, "patriarchy" as a concept is farcical, and you're completely ignoring a woman's own personal responsibilities. You can either argue that women should be treated as equals, or that they should be treated like children in need of constant care, not both.

Also, men are not your personal ATM machines. If you see a man as only existing to please your handbag appetite, you are objectifying them.

>> Men should recognize their "privilege" and be constantly reminded of it, even though being told you should be ashamed of your gender is at the very heart of sexism.

> There are advantages that men get because of their sex/gender, and these > should be recognised.

You've basically repeated what I said, except you seem to think sexism a good thing as long as it targets someone you perceive as "advantaged".

>> Men should not be allowed into women's "safe spaces", implying they are dangerous and intimidating by default. Similarly, men should not be allowed to have their own "safe spaces", because that's sexist and exclusionary.

> Due to many women having suffered terrible experiences at the hands of men, > and the tendency for men to dominate discussions, there needs to be a place > away from that where people can talk without fear and interruption.

Men also can and do suffer terrible experiences as the hands of women, and can be dominated by them. If a woman gets "safe spaces", so, too, should men.

>> Men cannot have body issues resulting from over-exaggerated muscle-bound heroes in cartoons and movies (He-Man and the like) because they represent a "male power fantasy". But Barbie is responsible for decades of female self- image issues.

> Not sure about that one, I think the argument drastically varies, but men > are more often portrayed in a powerful, dominant role.

So as long as an exaggerated body image is accompanied by power and dominance, it shouldn't place unfair expectations on impressionable viewers?

>> If a female character chooses to dress provocatively, it is because a man chose to objectify her, not because a woman can take charge of their own sexuality.

> Characters are often designed by men, for men.

Bayonetta was developed by a woman. Women are allowed to be sexual if they please, and even if the character is designed by a man, ignoring the potential for sexuality in a woman's personality would result in one-dimensional and frankly unrelatable characters.

The idea of sexuality as being negative is also unhealthy, for both genders.

>> If a man is harassed online, it's unfortunate (sometimes). If a woman is harassed online, it's representative of a disturbing trend. Similarly, men cannot understand the plight of a woman's harassment, even if said man also receives daily death threats and has had a gun fired through their living room window.

> Yes because receiving some flame or smack is the same as constant rape > threats.

You must have missed the part where I mentioned men also get serious threats to their person, and that there are documented cases where those threats have been acted upon.

>> Men should receive much harsher punishments than women for committing the same crimes.

> This is bullshit, obviously.

Yes, obviously.

[http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_gender...](http://www.bop.gov/about/statistics/statistics_inmate_gender.jsp)

<comment><USER24> This is perhaps a little late, since this fell off the front page, but I figured I'd respond to you because you seem to have your heart in the right place, but have a kind of twisted view of what most feminists actually believe. It also feels like you're mixing up the views of one political/social movement with the current state of the world as a whole, which is a poor argument against feminism. I would point out that most feminists are primarily interested in fixing women's issues at the moment, but that there are not, as far as I am aware, any men's groups that seem actually interested in addressing the (definitely less immediate or serious, to be honest...) issues that the patriarchy (as a social/hegemonic system) causes for men: which you seem to be particularly interested in.

> "Teach men not to rape."

Many (most?) rapists are men. Many men are not rapists. These quotes aren't claiming that all men are rapists, and you've pulled them out of their social/political context in order to claim that they are. You're taking those quotes a bit out of context: they are responding to the cultural expectations/norms/memes of teaching women to avoid rape (and blaming them if they do not) instead of teaching men to not rape (and not really blaming them if they do). The studies (not feeling up for going and fetching them ATM, but let me know if you want me to) have generally shown that rape prevention teaching aimed at women reduces the chance that any particular woman will get raped, but does not reduce the overall incidence of male on female rape--while rape prevention teaching aimed at men does reduce the overall incidence of rape. (Note: female on male rape/sexual assault is generally thought to be much less common, but that may be due to serious stigmatization of reporting by men and poor metrics for measuring it--which is a separate issue than what is trying to be addressed by these sorts of slogans/philosophies. TBH, I think the best option may be universal "don't rape each other" training given to everyone, rather than classes aimed at preventing yourself from getting raped or preventing only men from raping.)

> Framing masculinity as a negative is anti-male. "Patriarchy" as a concept, > regarding men as responsible for all the ills of the world, is also anti- > male.

Patriarchy, as a sociological concept, is not about blaming men for the ills of the world. It refers to a hegemonic system which shoehorns both men and women into specific roles, values the male roles more, and punishes both men and women for stepping outside of them. It can (and is) bad for men as well as women--look up the research on what emotions are acceptable for men to show, how many preventable deaths occur because men didn't go to a doctor when they should have, etc. It is also tied to the devaluation of certain activities men might want to take part in (homosexuality, acting 'feminine' in any way, wearing dresses, whatever) and the potential for assault if people who were identified as male at birth don't go along with it (look up murder rates for MTF women, for instance). Framing some parts of masculinity as 'toxic'\--inability to express emotions other than anger without being socially sanctioned, masculinity being tied up in punishing those who deviate (attacking homosexuals, crossdressers, etc.) is perfectly reasonable, too, and not an attack on men or masculinity as a whole--just the parts of it that involve hurting people. I will agree, however, that some folks don't seem to understand the nuance of what was is a formal academic term and misuse it. ('patriarchy'; this observation also applies to many other terms with formal academic contexts which were adopted by people without the background.)

> You've basically repeated what I said, except you seem to think sexism a > good thing as long as it targets someone you perceive as "advantaged".

This is a subtle point, but: acknowledging that you are, in some ways, given huge advantages by society as a whole doesn't require you to feel terrible because of it. This is something I think a lot of people miss: privilege isn't something you can do something about in the present, aside from acknowledging that it benefits you and that you may not experience the same struggles and hardships, or may not experience struggles/hardship in the same way as someone without those benefits. The difference is subtle, but pretty important. The things you can do to address that, though, are listening to the experiences of those who don't have the systematic benefits you do, call out when you may be getting what seems to be an unfair advantage, and when possible, using your advantages to benefit those who do not have them. (A super simplistic example of the last would have been, as a man, voting for women's suffrage when they did not have the right to vote. A more subtle and modern example might be speaking up if you notice that a female colleague's ideas are often restated by and then credited to men, as you're likely to be perceived as a neutral party in a case like that.)

<comment><USER22> > "Teach men not to rape."

That is word-for-word the way I hear it phrased, and no context can make it right. It implies that men are rapists who don't know any better, and need educated on what rape is and how not to do it. It implies that all men are sociopaths, and need to be taught basic human empathy.

Saying that all/many/most men are rapists is an unsupportable claim, as in much of the Western world rape has been (and still is) defined specifically as unwanted male-on-female penetration. Until statistics can be presented that have substantiated backing, this is an unfair assessment.

"Teach X not to Y" is an ineffective method for preventing Y. You can put everyone in the world in a class telling them not to mug, murder, rape, pillage, stab, shoot, or use the Oxford Comma. People will still act according to their own personal motivations and (presence or lack of) morals. If I want to prevent myself from being mugged, I will learn to recognize the sort of dangerous situations that could lead to that eventuality. I will take personal responsibility for my safety. I will also understand that there will be times that there was nothing I could have reasonably done to prevent it from happening, if it should.

<comment><USER24> See, I really don't get that from "Teach men not to rape". All I see it implying is that there are men who rape--this is indisputable, with most reported rapes being male on male or male on female, and almost all of my female friends in the past either having experienced either a rape or a sexual assault by a man. That doesn't make me a rapist any more than it makes you a rapist: but it makes some men out there rapists. Consider the studies cited here: [http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/05/01/campus_sexua...](http://www.slate.com/blogs/xx_factor/2014/05/01/campus_sexual_assault_statistics_so_many_victims_but_not_as_many_predators.html)

If the numbers agreed with you, then I'd say that "teach X not to Y" being ineffective was true.

However, the numbers really don't agree with you, given the repeated case of things like this being effective: [http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/dont- be...](http://www.theglobeandmail.com/news/british-columbia/dont-be-that-guy- ad-campaign-cuts-vancouver-sex-assaults-by-10-per-cent- in-2011/article1359241/)

And even for things like muggings/theft, a lot of the time the crime is an impulsive act, and there's also evidence that you can teach people to avoid making that impulsive jump to mugging/etc. It's a bit more complicated than just telling people "Don't mug", but something pretty much resembling "Teach X not to Y" is used by the US Govt. to reduce recidivism in criminal offenders: [https://www.crimesolutions.gov/ProgramDetails.aspx?ID=242](https://www.crimesolutions.gov/ProgramDetails.aspx?ID=242) and there's a large body of research that shows that it's effective. (There are other studies of similar CBT based programs in inner city schools with similarly good effects on people who aren't yet criminals but are likely to become criminal.)

<comment><USER22> You don't get that it's offensive to men to say "teach men not to rape"?

What about "teach black people not to murder"? Does that not sound incredibly racist to you? If it does, and I really hope it does, what is the effective difference? After all, there is ample data that the majority of murders are by blacks.

[https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in- the-u.s/2013/...](https://www.fbi.gov/about-us/cjis/ucr/crime-in- the-u.s/2013/crime-in-the-u.s.-2013/offenses-known-to-law- enforcement/expanded- homicide/expanded_homicide_data_table_6_murder_race_and_sex_of_vicitm_by_race_and_sex_of_offender_2013.xls)

Regardless of the effectiveness of "Don't Be That Guy", the ends do not justify the means. It would also be effective to immediately throw into prison the people most "at risk" to commit a crime, but that does not make it morally right. After all, how well do you think a "Don't Be That Black Guy" campaign would go over in Detroit?

<comment><USER24> > What about "teach black people not to murder"? Does that not sound > incredibly racist to you? If it does, and I really hope it does, what is the > effective difference? After all, there is ample data that the majority of > murders are by blacks.

Phrased like that, yes, it does sound a little racist. However, your point is slightly facetious: I think you and I are both aware that the statistical link between murder and blackness is poverty (i.e. control for poverty/neighborhood and the link between murder and blackness goes away), which is exacerbated in the US by a lot of structural racism/etc. that black people face.

However, from a practical standpoint, I believe that I actually advocated for exactly that, and I stand by my arguments: my point about CBT-based crime prevention (teaching people to not X)? Perhaps obviously, those programs are most effective at reducing criminal behavior from those who are most likely to commit crimes in the future. In the US, the places where they've been shown to be effective are for youth from high crime, poor urban neighborhoods and current prison inmates... both of which are populations that are predominantly black. I'd totally advocate for the expansion of programs like the ones I mentioned if they continue to show statistically significant results RE: reducing criminal behavior, and I think most people would. Teaching people who are most likely to commit criminal acts to instead not commit criminal acts is a net benefit to society and to those people. I'm not, I hope obviously, claiming that being black makes you criminal (or more likely to be a criminal) or that black people alone should be targeted with programs like the ones I mentioned regardless of location, risk, etc. at the expense of similarly high risk white people, in the same way that I'm not claiming that being a man makes you inherently a rapist.

RE: "Don't be that guy" and the ends do not justify the means: It's possible to come up with all kinds of exaggerated scenarios to argue this. I would agree that, say, killing all men to prevent male on female rape would be both very effective and completely unjust.

So let's keep in mind the comparison you're making here: we are talking about, variously, (a) a public advertising campaign about how it's bad to rape people versus actual rape, (b) a course that lasts a few days at the start of college or a week in middle or high school on the importance of consent (tbh, I'd claim it'd be good for it to be aimed at men and women) versus actual rape or (c) a month or semester long course on self control and healthy behaviors in middle/high school/prison versus actual mugging/assault/murder. The "means" we're talking about are not exactly things with a particularly high human cost, especially when compared to the "ends".

<comment><USER22> My example is not contrived at all, and equally relevant. You can take any feminist argument and search/replace "men" with "black people" and the underlying hate speech becomes readily apparent. The specific group of people does not particularly matter, it only highlights the very apparent cumulative effect this sort of feminism has had on convincing society as a whole that men are disposable enough to be talked about in such a manner.

If your "means" involve teaching young men that they are considered sociopathic abusive rapists by society and that they need extensive education to learn otherwise, and you do not consider that a "particularly high human cost" then I think we should leave this conversation as it is. Neither of us will be able to convince the other of our position, and we'll only talk in circles trying.

<comment><USER24> I don't think any sensible solution to rape or to crime involves "teaching young men that they are considered sociopathic abusive rapists by society" or even "teaching young black men that they are expected to be criminals." That really is only likely to increase crime/rape.

Rape prevention education is generally along the lines of "This is what consent is. It's important! If you don't get consent and have sex with someone, that's rape, and that's bad! These are situations where someone really isn't capable of consent: when they're incapacitated, if you're blackmailing them, if you're holding them down and they're verbally objecting, or really if you haven't gotten a clear and enthusiastic "Wow I want to bone you" from them. You may see someone try to have sex with someone else under those circumstances: that would make you a bystander! If you are a bystander, here are some things you can do to keep that person from raping someone: (a), (b), (c). Etc." Similarly, the crime prevention things I linked and referred to take a different tack of "These are ways to control your emotions and think through the consequences of your actions".

Your portrayal of it as anything else leads me to believe that you haven't ever gone through a rape prevention course and have done absolutely no research on what they usually entail. The reason I'd advise them for everyone is because they're valuable courses for women, too: both because if there's a explicit culture of "nobody is getting laid without an explicit 'yes'", it's shocking how quickly people will start actually getting explicit 'yes'es (See Antioch College), and because I've known of at least one woman who got a man extremely drunk, well beyond where he could remember or consent, and then had sex with him. (Spoiler alert: The guy there was me. I remembered none of it and only found out we'd done anything a few weeks later. I never pressed charges, sought help, or reported it, because like in many situations these things are complicated and she was a friend. When we discussed it later/I'd found out it happened, she didn't think she'd done anything wrong, and that was probably the most messed up part of it. Let's just say universal consent training is something I have personal reasons to feel strongly is important.)

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER25> I don't know how much sense it makes to argue with "feminism" since it's an umbrella that covers a bunch of different schools of thought that have pretty serious disagreements among each other.

<comment><USER26> Yea, but then it doesn't really make sense to argue about anything, because everything can be statically defined in terms of the environment it exists in. The part can be described in terms of the the discrete whole of which it belongs to, minus the part.

I like to complain a lot, about many things, for like an hour, and then I get frustrated without observable resolution. It's all thinking noise, patterns, I prefer to stay at home, I like sleeping, so tired of arguing on the internet.

<comment><USER27> You can talk about different groups of actual physical women who have different types of thought about sex, sexuality, and men, because waves and groups of feminisms actually do exist. I recommend "Gender Inequality" by Judith Lorber as a starting point

<comment><USER25> Right, this is what I meant to say. Arguing with "feminism" is a bit like arguing with "politics" or "ethics" or "philosophy" given how disparate the different strains of it really are. I suppose most people who are arguing against feminism have a specific kind in mind but it doesn't do any good to the reader if you don't explain.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER28> Her experience is certainly very interesting and unique. There's a bit of intersectionalism going on here, though. The experiences of a non-autistic woman in technology, I would imagine, are dramatically different from an autistic woman. Just by the very nature of social intelligence.

</comment><comment><USER29> Is this just an issue in the USA, or perhaps just radical San Francisco? In other countries men and women tend to work together quite happily in SW development jobs without all of this nonsense.

<comment><USER30> Obviously it's going to be different in different places, but gender issues definitely come up here in Australia.

<comment><USER31> But that is usually driven through it being brought up in the US. Sort of like it culturally seeps through

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER32> I agree that overwhelmingly the experience for most "women in tech" is positive because we also love technology and building things, but its the small things that really make a difference. I think (although I can't speak for her) the author also experiences these small differences, like when her idea wasn't taken seriously because of her gender. Sometimes these things are easy to miss, but once you are on the lookout its a slippery slope to thinking that almost everything happening to you is because of your gender and its good to call people out on that. I have certainly misjudged actions, but there have also been times when people were discriminating against me because of my gender and those are the thing that we really need to have a conversation about. Sometimes these ideas or comments are minor and we can get past them like the in the author's case, but sometimes they have an impact. For example when I was taking APCS in high school, my programming partner (Asian male) was asked to join the UIL team and I was not, even though we were at the same skill level. There could have been other reasons that I wasn't asked, but since we both turned in the same assignments and had similar interactions with our old, southern teacher, I doubt it.

<comment><USER33> > Sometimes these things are easy to miss, but once you are on the lookout its > a slippery slope to thinking that almost everything happening to you is > because of your gender and its good to call people out on that.

Yes, probably. Both if you're a man or a woman.

</comment></comment><comment><USER34> The author is a friend of mine. What I say below is something I've discussed with her.

I think the last great frontier for humanity's "waking up from history" is awareness of group psychology, particularly the psychology of the "other." Ironically, as noted by GCP Grey, widespread access to the Internet has actually made such group psychology _worse_.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc)

One of the big problems with an awareness of what Noam Chomsky called "irrational jingoism," is that currently _society is made out of it_. Our organizations and social norms and structures actually use the natural jingoism built into _Homo sapiens_ in order to increase group solidarity.

The cognitive distortions that come out of such group psychology are a big problem online. It's been noted that if you go far enough in either direction of the political spectrum, things start to look the same. Historically, both extremes become militaristic and convinced of a duty to righteous aggression. I would invite hardy and curious souls to plumb both more militant feminist and more militant Men's Rights groups online, and witness firsthand the degree to which both sides can be eerily reminiscent of each other in tone and self- righteous attitude. (For example: Intolerant "you're with us or against us" attitudes.)

As 21st century citizens, we should already be aware of "bait and switch" tactics. We should also be savvy about the psychology of online groups, and be able to read when a group has started to cross a threshold and becomes driven by positive feedback cycles of outrage to garner more attention. We should recognize when the ideology of whatever movement has been thus hijacked to become _hateivism_. (EDIT: To clarify, what I refer to as "groups" are small- granularity, as in a few person's social networks, not everyone who identifies with a particular label!)

To clarify: my issue is not with either side of any debate. There are a few ideas on both sides of the issue I would agree with. My chief concern is whether the groups in question are self-aware concerning their own group dynamics. Such an organizational awareness was perhaps the chief accomplishment of Martin Luther King Jr. and his compatriots, though there seems to be no awareness of this particular accomplishment in the culture at large.

EDIT: I should clarify what I meant by saying "made such group psychology worse." Creating virtual meeting spaces and virtual online groups is far easier and far cheaper than organizing face to face groups, and the same communication resources also make it easier to facilitate such meetings in person. Much good has come of this. However, it has also created far more opportunities for the incubation of distorted mob psychologies. Often these take the name of some cause or ideology but are distorted in a jingoistic direction.

As 21st century online citizens, we should be as aware of such "bait and switch" with the labels of ideologies as we are aware of the same tactics with regards to name brands. We should be as savvy about the intellectual provenance of an online group's teachings and its actual practices as we are savvy about online shopping or choosing which Kickstarter campaigns to support. If just about anyone can set up shop online as an "activist," doesn't this create the same situation that arises when just about anyone can set up a web store? (Isn't this the same economic situation as with travelling medicine shows?)

From what I have seen online, people are often remarkably unsophisticated about evaluating distortions in their particular group's interpretation of ideologies or activist programs, and largely blind to their own group dynamics. This is especially true when "othering," stereotyping, and group hatreds have taken hold. Most importantly: It is just as true online as it is in-person.

<comment><USER35> I agree with the initial thesis and would go so far as to say two of the top functions of 'education' are to create empathy for others and to create self- respect. However, I don't believe that the internet has made things worse; rather it has just uncovered what was already there. Also, trying to argue that our species reverts to the base programming is specious. If that were true, polygamy and murder would be the rule of law, if there were laws at all besides that of the fist. More citations are needed to justify that.

I do believe that the internet, like fire, can burn or heat our species. We learn, slowly, how to use this medium. I think that we are slowly bending towards justice, to borrow from MLK, but that it will take a long long time. Also, something that is always lost is the inherent entropy in the system, the chaos that comes to any complex network. Some amount of 'bad' will always be here, if only by the random chance of life. Most 'hatevists' have logical arguments, it's just that the lemmas and starting points are off or they have taken one wrong step that sent them spinning into hate and terror. Fixing those steps is arduous and energy intense, but necessary.

Hopefully, the tech will help us here. The massive amount of data that Google and the NSA collects could be put forth in an effort to study the mechanics of ethics and personalities. That, again, is fire, and in the wrong hands, it'll burn. But discovery is like that, and you have to see through the flames of chemical weapons and siege towers to get to fertilizers and the Hagia Sophia.

<comment><USER36> > rather it has just uncovered what was already there

I would disagree a little on this part (agree with the rest), by giving the example of "The Left". The Left Wing was primarily socialist and communalist. It emphasized the similarity between people, races, countries, sexes. What we have in common is more important than what separates us.

The Internet and the stcredzero's thesis says is that the Internet shows what defines groups as being different, as being the other. The Left has, along with the Internet and along with many of us here who may see ourselves as supporting social justice, focused on the differences between people. The group of persons is more and more defined, the individuals within a society is more and more defined. The differences between people and groups are more and more emphasized with the Internet.

The Internet has not led to an increase in communality, it has not led to an increase on people feeling like they are more similar to others. The Left used to and socialist used to work against a trend of group psychology to bring together peoples into a whole, to reduce differences. The successful politicians recognize the important of group thinking. In the recent UK election, the party who ran with the ideology of "all in it together" and "the party of the working people" was the right wing Conservatives! (They won)

Social justice cannot happen if we focus our energies as to what divides us.

<comment><USER35> What is social justice anyways? I only ever hear it in a negative way, that of Social Justice Warriors.

Here in the states, the republican right has historically been the people's party too. Part of their appeal is being the 'party of Lincoln'. Really, both of our parties have made good appeals to being a 'people's party' in their history. But trying to say that the international left was historically a party for all peoples is tough too. Russian reds started as an all inclusive bunch, but became quickly co-oped by anti-Semites, racists, and nationalists. Still, I think you can very well categorize them as Left through and through.

I still really believe that the internet has cemented our commonality. White folk in America are now seeing the daily interactions of black folk with the cops, and how unjust that is. And they are going out and protesting with them now. Cries of 'we are the 99%' are being made by all of us now. The treatment of women in Tech and elsewhere is at the very least, known to be a problem now. Say what you will for solving these issues, but the Internet has incited just communal outrage in it's short time in our lives. I say give the internet time to work itself out. There are still congresscritters that boast about not using email and we are just now raising an internet-always generation in many countries. This, like all things human, takes time.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER37> Meredith makes some interesting points. What I think is missing on both sides of the conversation is that guys will attack whoever they can - male or female - and the things they'll do or say tend to be what will make you feel the smallest. People are hierarchical and like to probe where they sit on the imaginary ladder of life by having a dig at those in their proximity. Meredith alluded to an interesting point towards the end of the post - not to confuse the motivations behind sexual assault/rape with the culture of insulting people for the purpose of securing a place on the social ladder. When a guy makes fun of another's dick-length or orders a female to _get back in the kitchen_ the same thing is happening: making them feel small or ineffectual so that they'll consensually walk down a few rungs of that horseshit ladder.

<comment><USER38> It's interesting to me that you only point out males that do that as if it's a gender specific quality. Where do you live that you haven't noticed women's infatuation with social pecking order?

<comment><USER37> I agree it applies both ways. My point was male-centric to align with the argument being made in the article. Probing the local social order applies to both genders and how they go about it can be slightly different but no less vicious.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER39> Interesting that she is autistic. Autism is apparently more common among boys than girls. Could this be one reason why tech attracts more men than women?

Arguably, a slightly autistic personality is helpful for a programmer. Possibly it could also be a big reason for many future programmers to turn to tech in the first place, where you deal with strict, deterministic rules instead of emotions.

This would obviously not excuse misogyny in tech, but could help explain the gender imbalance.

<comment><USER40> > Arguably, a slightly autistic personality is helpful for a programmer.

This sounds a bit like people who go "haha, I'm so OCD, I like my pencils all pointing the wrong way" \- incorrect self-diagnosis. "Slightly autistic personality" unfortunately seems to be fairly frequently used as an excuse to be an asshole.

<comment><USER41> Asperger's is a real diagnosis.

<comment><USER40> Certainly, when diagnosed by a doctor.

I'm talking about the "I've never been formally diagnosed but..." and "I think I'm a little on the spectrum" sort of comments that often wind up in threads about programmers being socially awkward.

Side note: having Aspergers doesn't make you an asshole.

<comment><USER41> > " having Aspergers doesn't make you an asshole."

My experience of people (medically diagnosed) with Asperger's does not support that statement.

<comment><USER40> Having difficulty with social interaction due to a medical condition, IMO, doesn't make one an "asshole", any more than a cancer patient who lies in bed all day is "lazy".

It's the people who are aware of and _excuse_ being an asshole by a self- diagnosed "oh I'm probably on the spectrum" statement I've issues with.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER42> Groundless discrimination based on race, gender, religion, age, and all kinds of other factors happens all the time, and it's a real bummer. The simple fact is that people take all kinds of shortcuts in making decisions, and very little of the workplace is an actual meritocracy.

When I first entered the workplace as a programmer, I was not taken as seriously as I might have been because I was so young. I got my first programming job at 16, and even when I started doing major consulting gigs across the country at 19, I looked really young for my age. One client remarked, upon meeting me, "You don't look old enough to operate a car, much less our computer." It was always a challenge for me to get people to evaluate my ideas based on their merit rather than their source, and to evaluate me based on my work product, rather than where they were at in their career when they were my age.

I have worked for myself for many years now, but if I sought employment elsewhere, I'd probably face some difficulties because I'm much older than the average developer, and people would assume that I'm stuck in old technologies as many professional developers my age are.

But the truth is that unfounded discrimination happens all the time in the workplace, for all kinds of reasons. Almost nowhere is a true meritocracy. At one place I worked, even when I was at the perfect average age for software developers, and white, and male, even then I was cut out of the circle of the key developers. It was because the developers, owner, and key management liked to stop working many days around 10:30am and start drinking heavily, maybe stopping back by the office briefly some time in the afternoon, then go back to drinking steadily the rest of the day until 6 or 7 pm. I didn't really do that with the same kind of endless enthusiasm that they did. I didn't fit in very well.

If you find a group of people that accept you the way you are, and evaluate you based on the work you do, you've found gold. If mere excellence is the currency of the realm, and all they want from you is to be the best you can be, then that's a glorious place to be. But finding such a place is very rare. It's hard to find that in a workplace, a church, a group of friends, or anywhere. And if you're struggling to find that, it's not entirely because of race, gender, age, or sexual orientation-- it's mostly because of people's basic nature.

</comment><comment><USER43> I understand the author has strong feelings about her innate tactics for avoiding misery, but the ultimate thrust of her "amelioration patterns" are variants on "toughen up" or "don't feed the trolls", both of which assign responsibility for the problem to victims of misogyny, not perpetrators.

The author got lucky and doesn't, or can't, feel bad about misogyny. This isn't true for everyone, nor should it be. I agree with the "feminists" that it's counterproductive to say that if more women were like you, misogyny wouldn't matter so much. Talking about "good" experiences as models is only productive when the difference between your experience and others' is the behavior of potential _perpetrators_ , not the behavior of potential _victims_.

<comment><USER44> The thrust of the article seemed to me to be that the author feels her experiences are being erased by prominent views on women in tech - that folks like Kane are labelling her experiences as invalid.

<comment><USER43> I agree that's how she feels. What I'm trying to say is that the problem isn't with her experiences, which are totally valid, but the extrapolation of those experiences into suggestions that place responsibility with victims rather than perpetrators.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER45> At the risk of over simplifying matters, what do you expect from people who see the world in black and white. Many of the feminists who say this (the third generation feminists with a cacophony of radical ideologies) read very specific material, mostly of the blogs variety, and live in their own bubble where their own reading material and friends reflect only their views. Add to this that difference of opinion and reflection are not entertained, this would imply that you have less than total belief in articles of faith and leaves you open to labels that are often applied to heathens. All that can be done with these people is to not get offended by them and let them work out for them selves why things are not always so black and white.

</comment><comment><USER46> NB I haven't read all the comments on this page and I apologize if somebody already said this...

NB I don't have the correct language to express this idea. I'm even concerned that I might be flat out misunderstood. Consult my own comment history to know where I stand.

NB I haven't heard of the author before nor read the apparent criticism.

\---

The author is a hardcore coder on the autism spectrum and thus fits in well with the "nobody cares about your gender, race, nor creed--show me the code!" meme.

The author asks her critics to cease putting her down to push their own agendas. Okay.

But uh... Back to that meme. Is there any chance that the author is perhaps... A coder first and a person with a gender second? That's what the meme is about, right? In text mode, we're all just text generating entities, idea makers. (It really is beautiful--I grew up on IRC myself.)

But look, the internet isn't just textmode anymore, and it doesn't exist just in cyberspace anymore. Decisions coders make affect the--blah blah you all know this, software is eating.

So, maybe, just maybe, the hardcore-on-the-spectrum-practically-deterministic- themselves folks shouldn't be the only ones with commit-bits, hm?

I'm tired of writing this. To sum up: I'm glad for the author's successful life as a coder and yes folks should stop attacking her, but no, the existence of the author nor a hundred thousand more of her does not solve the "tech needs women" problem. Because--back to the meme--it's not really women we need. It's heart.

Because software is eating the world, "Made with love" needs to more than a marketing slogan. We need more coders that are emotionally brilliant! There is a large technical debt around "how software will alter the course of human history" and frankly it terrifies me that so many emotionally stunted devs are the primary authors.

Annnnnd there go my points. ;P

<comment><USER11> _But look, the internet isn 't just textmode anymore, and it doesn't exist just in cyberspace anymore. Decisions coders make affect the--blah blah you all know this, software is eating._

 _So, maybe, just maybe, the hardcore-on-the-spectrum-practically- deterministic-themselves folks shouldn 't be the only ones with commit-bits, hm? [...] Because software is eating the world, "Made with love" needs to more than a marketing slogan._

If that is the way you want to frame this, I think your goals are tangential if not orthogonal to the conversation this blog speaks to. You're talking about products, most of the social topics rolling through social media and the tech news are about social interaction in and around development.

Obviously the developers are in a place to put their mark on a product, but that's quite different. They're generally not the decision makers on the product goals and feature set. And to the extent that they can influence the product, that topic has gone entirely unaddressed. Conversation has focused around about software team interaction.

But I don't see how that adds up to building a product "with heart." Some of the grossest software business models and anti-consumer practices come out of NorCal, the epicenter of the brand of progressive politics popular in these discussions.

A comically apt anecdote is of a Facebook employee. The name Facebook let a transgender individual use as their workplace ID was not good enough for Facebook's real name policy for end users. Of course Facebook fell all over themselves to fix it when they got bad press. But if any of the political movements in tech were even tangentially about the products getting built, it would have never been an issue. The business rule that developers were tasked with implementing would have never been commited, or never thought up in the first place.

<comment><USER46> > _tangential if not orthogonal to the conversation_

Er, sorry. My train of thought was: products need to be less harmful --> the aggregate character of the the industry needs to change --> putting more emotionally competent people in the industry --> overcoming the gender-related conflict in the industry. Which, I think is the conversation.

As to developers cf. management... What sort of developer fails to think about the possible consequences a given product might have on the lives of people they will never meet? #cough#

<comment><USER11> _What sort of developer fails to think about the possible consequences a given product might have on the lives of people they will never meet?_

Any developer on a project that doesn't have a formal analysis system for feeding thoughts about the lives of users into the product spec. And I mean beyond the "will it sell" sorts of analysis. So to answer your question: most.

I have worked on safety-critical systems, my train of thought goes: products need to be less harmful --> FMEA.

I actually look at it a bit like the way computer security can go overlooked. You can actively employ as many netsec hobbyists that spend their evenings hunting vulnerabilities, reading research and messing with security software as you want. And they might marginally increase the security of the software and systems, but the business has to decide to invest in security before they're allowed to focus on securing the system. Once the business has bought in, then you really don't need a huge cultural change towards security, just get enough guys to set up the quality systems, and then keep up with security analysis and reviews.

Edit: From a purely reductive standpoint, developers can tailor product to overseas markets with different cultures. As long as the business cares, and spends the effort to determining how to target a culture, the developers don't really matter.

</comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER47> needs (2013) added to the title

<comment><USER39> Does it, though?

<comment><USER48> Yes, it helps demonstrate our current inability to have important conversations is nothing new.

edit: Downvotes again. I'm tired of trying to bring different viewpoints to these conversations. When you look around and find that everybody agrees with you don't assume it's because you've found the truth, it's simply because you've driven away everybody who disagrees with you.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER49> the author is just too sensitive in online discussions. One could simply dismiss your idea for being a nerd, gay, or sounds like a woman even if you are a guy. There is nothing that excludes a guy from the same snub behavior thrown by trolls. It is a community issue, not a man vs. woman issue. In fact, on the internet, you can't even be sure that it is a guy trolling a girl, but thinking makes it so.

Empathy is about seeing it both sides. It's not about everyone else making you feel welcome and comfortable.

<comment><USER50> You always know it's a guy, because of Rule 16

</comment></comment><comment><USER51> So, let's see here; Meredith Patterson has:

* "...posted an idea for a new feature to the developers' mailing list for an open-source project...[but on list she had no access to, it was] dismissed the idea out of hand because a woman had proposed it." The feature only became available because she had the opportunity to implement it in such a way that it became a "rousing success". (I should stop right here because that's about as damning an incident as I can come up with.)

* "...called the police in a foreign country to report an attempted rape at a conference, and argued with them when they told my friend that nobody would consider it assault since they'd both been drinking."

* "...thwarted a wannabe PUA at a conference completely by accident" by "a blazingly single-minded focus on whatever topic I happen to be perseverating on at the moment".

Now, I don't want to seem to be saying that she's wrong to feel as she does, or that her experiences are somehow invalid, or that she's in "denial" as some idiot put it. I'm not. Really. It works for her and others, and I think she would admit it doesn't work for everyone.

On the other hand, I don't think her suggestion of, "What I've got, and what I wish the rest of the 'women in tech' community who rage against the misogyny they see everywhere they look could also have, is a blazingly single-minded focus on whatever topic I happen to be perseverating on at the moment," is a workable approach.

Most of the people I know can't _ignore_ those sorts of things and can't be satisfied "...literally [doubling] over laughing at how nonplussed he must have been to see it not only implemented, but implemented to rousing success." Most of the people I know _don 't want to_.

(Ok, here's an internet-reasoning hypothetical for you: I know a lot of geeks who use the term "sportsball"; I believe many of them have this sort of antipathy because they faced some kind of abuse from the sportsball players of the world. Would you, assuming you're one of such, be willing to ignore that abuse because you were passionately interested in baseball or (American) football---both of which have fascinating statistical stories to tell, by the way?)

Now, me, I'm a right cranky, misanthropic rat-bastard and I can certainly single-mindedly focus on whatever interests me at the moment (early Mesopotamian and Near Eastern history, abstract algebra and programming languages, and natural language processing at the moment, fwiw), but I don't want to hang around a community that is casually abusive to anyone, even if it isn't me. And, damn it, maybe I want the goddamn feature that didn't get implemented because the idea was dismissed because of who suggested it.

I notice from some of the other comments that there are those who believe that the single-minded focus is the royal road to success in tech. It's not. How many people do you know who have the focus but aren't successful? (This isn't really an example because he is successful enough that you know his name, but has anyone read Chuck Moore's blog lately?) And how many people do you know who are successful but aren't especially focused---maybe because they didn't have to swim upstream against incidents like Patterson's? (Anyone remember the old Ruby community?) Further, by the way for those of you in the startup community, you probably don't want total focus on tech to be the ultimate. People like that are _very_ easy to take advantage of.

<comment><USER52> Part of her point is that the current activities of feminism in tech are not productive, might actually be negative, and if everyone just shut up and did what they loved the misogyny or perceived misogyny would disappear a lot faster.

I don't necessarily agree, but she may not be wrong.

<comment><USER51> Well, certainly, if everyone who decided they didn't want to put up with the horseshit moved on, they wouldn't be in a position to perceive it, and the horses wouldn't have the opportunity to inflict their excrement on anyone who would mind, publicly.

But that hardly seems optimal.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER53> The old rule is still in effect: Nobody hates women more than other women.

Her and I could be friends.

</comment><comment><USER54> _There had been interest, but one of the committers had dismissed the idea out of hand because a woman had proposed it. It was the funniest thing I'd heard in months — I literally doubled over laughing at how nonplussed he must have been to see it not only implemented, but implemented to rousing success._

Now that's a woman I respect. Instead of whining around, she just implements it. Suckerpunched the misogynist.

You will see how much easier your life becomes if you stop complaining and start doing. That's also how you earn respect.

<comment><USER55> So... more perceptive women, who see from the outset that they will have to work twice as hard to be only equally respected in the industry, should shut up and get to work instead of pointing out the unfairness? They should toil for a decade or two in order to have the requisite cred before complaining about injustice?

You don't even know your "stop complaining and start doing" solution will work. Since the anti-female bias isn't rationally based on women's ideas/work to begin with, what makes you think it will be any more rational when she produces better ideas/work? Some men may accept her, but grudgingly. Others may find their ego threatened and react even worse.

<comment><USER54> Any company that arbitrarily discriminates against talented women cuts into their own flesh: The competition will be able to hire this talent. If I were an employer, I wouldn't give two cents about gender as long as the work is done well. As a consequence, female-friendly workplaces have a larger pool of talent to hire from, therefore, they would thrive against the misogynistic competition.

<comment><USER56> This was a standard argument in economics: any business or culture that systematically discriminates against women (or other races, or other "types") is going to be at a huge disadvantage in identifying talent. And if you believe talent is everywhere, it's hard to argue with.

<comment><USER51> And yet, prior to World War II, that economic disadvantage had absolutely no effect. Even decades later, systematic discrimination was an open policy, in direct violation of economic logic.

Weird.

<comment><USER51> No, really. It took WWII for the United States to collectively realize that systematically excluding nigh-half of the population from the economy was a bad idea, economically speaking. And much longer for the damage caused by doing so in specific instances to have much lasting effect---indeed, without government intervention I suspect we would still be waiting.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER57> If we want to have a meaningful discussion about sexism in tech, it's time to talk about what we're up against, and it involves all of us: not just women and minorities. If it doesn't involve us now, it will in 20 years when we're two decades older, because ageism is just as much of a problem in the tech industry as the other "isms".

There isn't an above-baseline sexism among long-term professional programmers. Sure, there are bad apples, but the culture that you'll find at a gray-haired research lab or even a more traditional, supposedly conservative, enterprise shop is not nearly as exclusionary as the supposedly progressive and new Silicon Valley culture.

By stereotype, you'd expect 60-year-old men writing elevator controllers in Indiana to be far more sexist and exclusionary than 25-year-olds in California. It ain't true. First of all, someone who's 60 now was born in 1955 and has no meaningful memories of the bad old days; by the time he or she was starting a career, women were already in the workforce and it was accepted by many as a good thing. Second, if you control for education, the age vs. exclusionary behavior correlation goes away. Third, most people actually get more mature with age, and while there are some who mature at a lesser rate than society advances and become the "racist grandparent" trope, I don't think that it's the norm. (Also, American society's rate of advancement has slowed in the past 30 years compared to the 30 before that, but that's another topic.) Fourth, anyone who thinks the dominant Silicon Valley culture is still liberal has been asleep for 20 years.

That's not to say that private sector tech doesn't have a sexist, exclusionary culture. It does. It doesn't come _from the programmers_ (although there are individual programmers who are assholes and keep it going). Rather, it comes from _the mainstream business culture_ (MBA culture) that colonized us. In fact, the sexism of the Damasos (see: [https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/vc- istan-8-t...](https://michaelochurch.wordpress.com/2014/01/05/vc-istan-8-the- damaso-effect/) ) who are sent West to boss nerds around is a lot more severe than that of the mainstream MBA culture. Banks might make it harder for women to advance; venture capitalists, on the other hand, will outright hit on them and threaten to "pick up a phone" and make them unfundable if they don't acquiesce.

You know how when a criminal gang kicks out some of its underperforming members and they form a new gang, the upstart young gang is typically more violent than the one it splintered off from? The sexism of the VC bros and the Spiegel types they fund is analogous. The demigods of the Valley are people who got kicked out of mainstream business culture because they weren't smart enough to do statistical arbitrage at hedge funds, so they were sent West to man this colonial outpost (from the MBA-culture perspective) called Silicon Valley. As MBA-culture failures, it's not surprising that they amplify some of that culture's worst traits, and that they've created a dominant culture in Silicon Valley that is (a) very negative and (b) far worse than the more superficially conservative (no sandals at work) but generally professional culture you see in more traditional companies, including the ones doing (say) hardware work and low-level programming, the latter of which seems to be the OP's interest.

She had a positive experience because she was hanging around Real Technologists, who aren't nearly as sexist as the Silicon Valley wunderkinder. The Shanleys of the world aren't complaining about 55-year-old men who still say "Oriental" (meaning no harm, and not holding racist views) but are generally professional and not very sexist (many are married and have daughters). They're complaining about 22-year-olds who get funded to the gills because they were in the same rape frat as a leading VC, and who go on to create horrible work cultures.

<comment><USER11> As an east-cost embedded systems programmer working at a sole proprietorship, you've changed my perspective of programming culture in SF more than anything else that I've ever read.

Sad that you're downvoted. I don't have much perspective to judge the veracity of your interpretation, but it seems perfectly plausible. I wonder which invisible boundaries of narrative you've been punished for crossing.

<comment><USER57> I was actually enjoying the streak of quality comments that were downvoted. Until this one went to +2, I had a 6-long streak.

</comment></comment></comment><comment><USER52> The victim mentality is the basis of all of the problems in modern -isms. People who (perhaps rightly) feel maligned by the world congregate, become an echo chamber, and then build in intensity. In effect, their altered perception of reality becomes their coping mechanism for something painful or traumatic that may have happened in their lives. Throw in a few drama addicts or discordians, and you have a recipe for zero discussion, and zero progress.

Is there sexism in tech? Yes. Is it condoned by the majority? No. Is it generally called out when it happens? Yes.

These people don't need to be derided, ignored, or educated. It wont work. They need healing.

</comment><comment><USER27> Once again we see demonstrated the simple dynamics of economics in that the stories that are on the HN front page is a function of demand from an overwhelmingly male base of regular users.

</comment><comment><USER58> It seems like she's trying to gain credibility as someone who's been "exposed" to the travails of most women in tech, but then her solution isn't to fight the physical violence, intellectual marginalization, or boys-club dynamic in the c-suite - all of which she alludes to and confirms with her personal experiences - it's to just bury yourself in work to the point that non of that (your career, professional life, emotional health, your entire life) matters. What a fucked up apology for the even more fucked up status quo.

</comment><comment><USER59> The complicated thing about an article like this is that her experiences are definitely valid, it isn't hard to see where she is coming from, and I'm actually glad to read a piece from this perspective. Yet I can't help but already hear the ugly gloating and coopting of the MRAs before I even got to the predictable comments at the bottom. Can we separate intent from effect, of should we expect every blogger to be politically savvy enough to preempt such coopting by explicitly distancing herself from the MRA/gamergate toads?

<comment><AUTHOR> From another article of hers, [when nerds collide]([https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds- collide-31895b01e68c](https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds- collide-31895b01e68c))

>[ ... ] much of the backlash from weird nerds against "brogrammers" and "geek feminists" alike. (If you thought the conflict was only between those two groups, or that someone who criticises one group must necessarily be a member of the other, then you haven't been paying close enough attention.) Both groups are latecomers barging in on a cultural space that was once a respite for us, and we don't appreciate either group bringing its cultural conflicts into our space in a way that demands we choose one side or the other. That's a false dichotomy, and false dichotomies make us want to tear our hair out.

Also, I'm not sure I'm seeing the "predictable comments" that you are.

<comment><USER59> The single comment below is exactly the self-indulgent whining against feminism in general I was expecting (as are some of the comments on here on HN)

<comment><USER60> To be fair, your posts read like self indulgent whining about those who you profess to self indulgently whine.</comment></comment></comment></comment>


Need UI developer for creating next amazing thing based on Web 2.0 - <AUTHOR>

<comment><USER2> If your project really is the next big thing, if you really are in the advanced prototype stage, then you can share more information than nothing at all.

As is said everywhere within the entrepreneur world - ideas are easy, ideas are worthless, your's isn't unique, you are not the first to think of it and there is someone right now working on the exact same thing. It's all about execution - the execution of the idea, that everyone in the world has, is the key to success.

So, all of that just to say - you'll get more offers if you actually tell us what it's about.

<comment><USER3> Sure, but there are also areas where the first mover advantage counts, and where a lot of people are capable of executing the idea - some perhaps better than the guy who thought of it.

<comment><USER4> If the team has no defensible advantage, then maybe it's not such a great idea after all.

<comment><USER3> Defensibility is created by means of demand-side economies of scale: having lots of users, in other words. Think reddit, and digg, for instance. Easily cloned, but reasonably defensible due to the large numbers of users.

<comment><USER2> All of this still doesn't change the facts. I don't one reputable designer (and I know a lot of them) that will volunteer without knowing what they are working on.

To be honest, most reputable designers follow the no-spec rules (<http://www.no-spec.com/)> and wouldn't work on a project without some form of payment.

Your only offered form of payment is equity in the company - which right now is valued at $0 because no one knows what the company is about.

<comment><USER5> Um... You mean most reputable designers who have never been co-founders?

The guy is offering equity... Presumably a considerable amount (given that the project is in such an early stage). That is not remotely the same thing as spec-work.

That being said, people here are right-- there is virtually NO value on the table here, so the OP should be willing to give up some serious equity.

Better yet, the OP should add a designer-partner. Design is serious business and it's what separates the iPods from the Zunes... It's an ongoing process and should be baked into the way you make software... It certainly shouldn't be "slap a coat of paint on it and we'll make millions".

On the disclosure stuff, I agree. Stealth mode is 99% of the time ridiculous. That being said, there's no harm in being discreet. If I were in the poster's shoes, I'd post a vague description and give plenty of detail to any designer who wanted to learn more.

<comment><USER3> I think the difference comes down to "publish the idea on a web page where anyone can read it - including many people with a proven interest in startups, who are more able to implement it than the original poster" VS "disclose the idea on the phone to those who demonstrate some interest". Sure, leeches could certainly pose as the second type of person, but at least you've made a cursory attempt at weeding them out.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER6> I'm looking for a senior AJAX user centered experience designer programmer rock star with Ruby, Lisp, Fortran, and Rails experience for creating next amazing thing based on Web 2.0, Social Tagging, Virtual Reality, and P2P Streaming technologies.

For great justice.

<comment><USER7> Upmodded for the AYBABTU reference.

</comment></comment><comment><USER8> If you're looking for a UI Developer on the front end. (Just graphics + layout.) Contact me at email@example.com

</comment><comment><AUTHOR> Need UI hacker for creating next amazing thing based on Web 2.0 technologies. We are currently team of two people moonlighting for last few months. The product is currently in advanced prototype stage and in need of UI guru for taking the user experience to next level.

You should be able to work for equity in the company.

We are looking for an expert in Adobe Air, Flex, Ajax, HTML, XUL and other web technologies.

Please contact us at: info at starbucksproject dot com.

<comment><USER9> "Please contact us at: info at starbucksproject dot com"

are you making a social network for people who love starbucks coffee? can i tag by my favorite coffee?

<comment><AUTHOR> Nope. Just named it very vague. We first met in Starbucks before started working together.

Its just a code name.</comment></comment></comment>


What should every programmer know about security? - <AUTHOR> http://stackoverflow.com/questions/2794016/what-should-every-programmer-know-about-security <comment><USER2> Since this is my specialty, I figured I'd put my 2cents in on hacker news, and repost it on stack overflow later. So to begin some tools that you should use for testing your code:

Burp tool suite (Pen Testing) BackTrack Linux Distro (has all kinds of tools, wont go into them, but download and it can be used to really cause havoc on your apps)

These tools allow you point programs towards your application and see if they are vulnerable to any kind of attacks, including XSS and SQL Injection (among a lot of others)

Engineers should also read the OWASP site, which has the OWASP top ten. It also has other tips and tricks about how to secure against different attacks. If you ever have a security question, this site has a lot of secure examples for different code.

As the top comment on stack overflow says, never trust your users. That means never allow your users to do things that you don't want them to. If you allow them to deviate from the structure of your program in any sense, someone will find a way to abuse the privilege. This is the key to good security.

Some Tips I'll give you: 1 ) Validate all input 2 ) Control Access to everything 3 ) Use secure application keys to ensure that people can spoof requests from different browsers 4 ) Use Multi Factor Authentication whenever its possible 5 ) Never ever pass any values from the server that should leave to the client. Even if it is hashed, I can break it using tools. Valuable data = Server side Public Data = Client safe

If you have any other questions, feel free to post them and I'll try my best to answer them or find you an answer.

<comment><USER3> Information security is a topic that I'm very interested in, but it's such a large area that I don't know even where to start. In this field especially, "learning by doing" seems an extraordinarily bad idea. You say this is your speciality; how did you acquire it? Are there any online courses, good books, or useful (i.e. non-bullshit) certifications that you can recommend?

<comment><USER4> Here are a couple of great books about web/software security:

[http://www.amazon.com/The-Web-Application-Hackers- Handbook/d...](http://www.amazon.com/The-Web-Application-Hackers- Handbook/dp/1118026470/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1336415263&sr=8-1)

[http://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Sins-Software-Security-One- off/...](http://www.amazon.com/Deadly-Sins-Software-Security-One- off/dp/B001PO67JI/ref=cm_cr_pr_product_top)

<comment><USER5> I love WAHH.

I can't stand "Deadly Sins".

I'd replace it with _The Tangled Web_, Zalewski's new web security book; WAHH and _Tangled_ is a formidable amount of knowledge to keep on tap.

<comment><USER6> If don't want/unable to get, Tangled Web, similar useful information by same author at "Browser Security Handbook" <http://code.google.com/p/browsersec/wiki/Main>

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER5> I am wary of software security advice that leads with "don't trust user input", or revolves around "validate user input". That principle has been the core of software security strategy for going on 20 years, and has bought us very little. In the real world, we have to start by acknowledging that the verb "trust" is situational, and that in some circumstances virtually all user input is "trusted" somehow.

You could phrase this less tactfully as "Validate user input? No shit? Now what?"

Here's some software security advice I'd like to offer, as a software security practitioner to the startup stars and the Dr. Drew Pinsky of HN (ducks):

* Plan to update your platform software at inconvenient times. Dry-run your update process, so you know it will work on no notice. I personally believe you should also avoid your OS's packaged versions of things like Apache and nginx; having a known-working source build gives you control of when and how you'll apply patches; it's something you should be able to do easily.

* Put someone on your team in charge of tracking your dependencies (C libraries, Ruby gems, Python easy_install thingies) and have a process by which you periodically check to make sure you're capturing upstream security fixes. You should run your service aware of the fact that _major_ vulnerabilities in third-party library code are often fixed without fanfare or advisories; when maintainers don't know exactly who's affected how, the whole announcement might happen in a git commit.

* Use TLS to encrypt data in motion and use GPG to encrypt data at rest, and don't do any other kind of crypto. GPG blobs are large and expensive looking, but getting custom crypto right is also very expensive.

* Stay on your platform's "golden path" for web security issues. Rails developers should default-whitelist ActiveRecord models, enable CSRF protection, and avoid "html_safe-ing" strings so that the maximum amount of code inherits default protections against mass assignment, XSS, and CSRF. Anything you customize will probably bite you in the ass. Keep your code boring.

* Triple check any piece of code that "shells out" to command line tools. By "triple check": have a process by which three signoffs are required to merge any such code into the deployment branch.

* Be extraordinarily wary of library code for web apps that includes "native" C/C++ code. Very popular C library code for modern web platforms has been found susceptible to basic memory corruption issues, because the kinds of people that look for memory corruption bugs don't usually think to troll Github for Ruby, Python, and PHP code with native backend code; terrible bugs can thus stay latent for years in code you can point a URL to and read.

* People will hate me for saying this but I'm here to offer honest advice: prefer almost any modern language to PHP or Perl. I don't know what to tell you other than that PHP and Perl apps fare worse on security assessments than everything else.

* I have more than once recommended that people who are very _very_ concerned about platform security (ie, about the likelihood that there are memory corruption bugs in their language stack) use JVM languages.

* Do your admin stuff out-of-band. Write a separate admin app (bonus: the admin app can look shitty, and so is less expensive to maintain) that requires a VPN connection to access. Avoid special-privilege accounts in your normal apps. From years and years of experience working with startups: this is something you will mess up on.

* Triple-check code that handles direct file uploads and downloads. The filesystem introduces a new namespace, so upload/download code needs to juggle different privilege and authorization domains to handle it. We see fewer problems at companies that dump blobs with opaque names into S3 than we do with apps that have a file repository with named files.

* HAVE A SECURITY PAGE FOR YOUR APP. Have that page very cordially invite people to submit security flaws to an email address at your site; provide a PGP key for it. If I was maintaining a commercial app, I'd put a phone number on that page too. If you don't have this page, you should know that you are tacitly inviting people to report security flaws to Twitter.

<comment><USER7> >People will hate me for saying this...

Here comes the first pitchfork-bearer! Are there ready examples of what makes the usage of Perl a security liability?

By grouping PHP and Perl together, it seems like the security issue you're highlighting is websites made by inexperienced programmers. Perl is much worse than PHP in this regard owing to the fact that Perl's history of being used by people building their first website goes back further than PHP's does.

The last time that I recall Perl being in the news for security was in the first quarter of this year when they were patching up the DDoS vulnerability in Ruby and Python [1] whereas Perl and CRuby had addressed the vulnerability in question in 2004.

I would argue that at least since 2007 or 2008, that the Perl programming demographics have shifted significantly and that most restauranteurs and florists who are trying their hand at making a page for their SMB are using PHP. At this point I would venture that the fat part of the bell curve of the Perl web programming population would be systems administrators who venture outside the bounds of their automation scripting domain.

Given the stereotypical sysadmin, I would posit that they might tend to spend extra time and energy on security (in building some script-y spaghetti monstrosity).

1\. [http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/12/huge- portions-o...](http://arstechnica.com/business/news/2011/12/huge-portions-of- web-vulnerable-to-hashing-denial-of-service-attack.ars)

<comment><USER8> > Are there ready examples of what makes the usage of Perl a security > liability?

The `open` function used on untrusted input allows arbitrary code execution (I've gotten privilege execution via setuid perl scripts many times this way, as well as getting a shell on the box via web apps allowing this).

While there are many other common things I saw in real world apps, e.g. perl scripts using backticks for command execution and allowing me to run anything I wanted, the `open` one is by _far_ the worst. It's insanely pervasive and incredibly easy to do.

<comment><USER9> _The `open` function used on untrusted input allows arbitrary code execution..._

... only if you use the insecure open form. The secure open form has been available and recommended since the release of Perl 5.6.0 in March 2000-- twelve years ago.

People who write insecure code, when the language makes it just as easy to write secure code, are to blame for insecure code.

<comment><USER10> > People who write insecure code, when the language makes it just as easy to > write secure code, are to blame for insecure code

We're not discussing who's to blame, we're discussing whether there's anything to assign blame for.

<comment><USER9> Can you name a practical language in which it's not possible, by default, to perform an unsafe operation with untrusted user input?

I can easily use Haskell's type system to disallow the use of UnsafeUserInput in my database abstraction layer, but that requires me to use my types pervasively and correctly.

<comment><USER11> The question is not whether it is POSSIBLE.

</comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment></comment><comment><USER12> I would add this to the suggested reading list:

<https://wiki.mozilla.org/WebAppSec/Secure_Coding_Guidelines>

<comment><USER13> I've found this list really valuable.

I believe that there are two main security objectives while designing a new system: one is to protect the system itself against attackers, another one is trying to limit damage (especially data exposure) in case an attack actually happens.

Nowadays I think the first one is a must... from this point of view I wouldn't say it's important to check user input... it's a must! (while building a system, I don't usually think how can I check user input, rather how can I assure that my system will _always_ check user input).

But since we can fail, the second objective is really important too and many design choices should really be done with security coming before functionality.

A simple example is password storage. The guidelines are good in pointing to bcrypt (another fine solution is pkcs5), but often just a hash function is used (sometimes even md5 that we can no longer consider a robust hash) or the salt is replaced with something which is not random (e.g. timestamp). These bad design choices could lead to easier password recovery.

Another aspect that I try to enforce in my neighborhood is protecting sensitive user data at least with user password. Of course this requires the user to enter her password every time the data must be accessed, but often this is already the case (think to a payment, wouldn't you ask the user for her password before doing it? So why her payment data shouldn't be protected?)

</comment></comment><comment><USER14> I think it'd be interesting to highlight some vaguely security-related measures that might make it less simple for attackers to _shut down_ your site just by using it normally. I'm not so sure it's relevant to the SO question, mind, as it's more in line with optimisation than anything.

This might include:

* Using a caching layer to store and re-use the results of complex, infrequently changing queries, instead of querying the database on every request.

* Using a message queue to handle the processing of certain things in the background. If you have an upload form that then manipulates or processes the file in some non-trivial manner, add it to the queue. The queue can drop messages or jobs if it gets too big.

I only say this having developed some projects where holding the refresh key down for a few seconds on pages with lots of queries (along with the hundreds Drupal makes anyway) could crash MySQL. As could using a separate form that sent emails and processed images on-the-fly.

Best not to present attackers prime opportunities to DOS your site.

<comment><AUTHOR> Interesting! :)

</comment></comment><comment> rudhir-secpanel [http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2012/04/google- attack-...](http://www.behind-the-enemy-lines.com/2012/04/google-attack-how-i- self-attacked.html)

Interesting post which showed how badly configured linkages between private google docs and S3 caused an accidental DoS.</comment>