Gender Dyscodia: Interactions of gender in the tech field

It's interesting to document the differences of how women and men are treated in the programming society. Guys are "just another programmer", while women are "bleeding edge" (bad pun, I know).

A guy asks for help, and it's like "uhh, you did something wrong with (blarg), should should fix it"

A person who lacks a y chromosome asks for help. "Oh, let me help you! Uh, hi, uhm, you're cute (atleast your screen name is cute), uhm, your code needs a new tri flux capacitor, let me code you a library for one, and change the compiler to accept time travel."


Women get babied to some extent, which is harmful, but at the same time, they do get a *lot* more help. Men have very little tolerance for the in-capabilities of new programmers, especially if they learned it faster, or easier themselves.

After reading about all the stupid twitter related garbage on dongles and forking (not even going to bother to link that), I do think, while women should be respected in the community, they should have equal treatment to men. Women in tech should not be treated special, they should not be given preferential help.

People really should be gender blind. A man shouldn't treat a woman special, and a man shouldn't constantly ask a woman to do feminine associated tasks, such as getting the coffee. Referring to her by name, and not sweetheart or honey (unless she specifically prefers that, if she does that, returning the favor is acceptable) is generally much better.

Then comes the issue of sexual humor. It's very gender independent. In some work places, with mixed genders, it's fine. In other work places, it's completely unacceptable. The environment, the people involved, the tone, the word usage, the implications, the directionality of the jokes, etc etc, are all very important. You can't create a hard rule on what's ok and what's not, without just banning all of it, which is why many workplaces do. It's not that the jokes are wrong necessarily, but there are so many variables in the situation, especially pertaining to individual sensitivities, trying to write an employee handbook is practically impossible.

There are some really raunchy talking women!
There can be an office of 10 people, 5 men, 5 women, 9 of them can be total dirty-talkers, one is sensitive, and then things go to hell. Who's right, and who's wrong? The 1 person, or the 9 (who could be any gender, even potentially all women)?

Some might say "it's unprofessional", which I'll counter point that many programming companies do daily beer runs, and everyone drinks on the job. Does the work get done? Yes. Does it get done well? Yes, or they won't stay in business. Is it considered unprofessional? Depends on who you ask.

If 100% are fine with it, it's perfectly fine in the workplace when not dealing with customers, but if a single new hire freaks out, what do you do? The reason why most companies ban it outright is quite simple, twitter. Things like this don't even need a lawsuit if twitter is the judge, jury, and executioner.