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by kohanz
3408 days ago
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First, I assure you my daughter is very real and ceased to be a hypothetical about a year ago ;) As I said earlier, I don't think gender-segregated events should exist in a balanced world, but I don't have a problem with them when there is a great imbalance and they have the potential to tilt that balance back towards equality (by existing temporarily). The whole idea of them is to create an environment welcoming to girls and get them interested in coding. I don't particularly care whether they do this by promoting only to one gender or explicitly allowing only one gender; that's logistics. I care that if we can provide more girls and women with an accessible pathway into software, that's a good thing, because once CS classes are and industry are more gender-balanced, we won't need these types of camps. Calling it "weakness" to gravitate towards something that other members of your gender are doing is misplaced, in my opinion. My computer engineering classes were roughly 95% male and I'm not so naive to think that those were exactly welcoming enviornments for women. To deny these pathways is to claim that the status quo is fine and that this inequality is either meant to be or will somehow solve itself. I don't believe either of those things. I don't really understand what "handicaps" the existence of an all-girl coding camp represents to men or boys. There are a plethora of options for us/them. Who is getting really, genuinely hurt by this, in your opinion? |
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Heh. "Hypothetical child or children of unspecified gender".
> Calling it "weakness" to gravitate towards something that other members of your gender are doing is misplaced
There's a difference between doing something and discovering that most of the people doing it are your gender, and doing something that a higher-power (the event organizers) made gender-segregated.
And I don't mean there's a weakness in the person choosing the activity, I mean there's an apparent one you the parent are compensating for. Like if the event in question was basketball camps and you put your child in "Basketball for Short & Slow People". All the female-only events have a real taint of keeping out the strong performers so the weak can win too. imho it changes things from a primarily female-centric event which happens to cover programming to a people-centric event which forbids the "obviously" superior boys. What better way to make people feel second-class?
> I'm not so naive to think that those were exactly welcoming enviornments for women.
Agreed. But that seems like the problem to solve, by making sure that the events we organize aren't hostile to anyone. But anyone is far wider than women, and the offenders are far more diverse than men.
> I don't really understand what "handicaps" the existence of an all-girl coding camp represents to men or boys.
Not that there is a handicap, but that your son would feel like he's being given one so that he's on equal footing - just because he's male.
> Who is getting really, genuinely hurt by this, in your opinion?
Everyone. Both children, and all of society.
Your daughter would feel less sense of accomplishment, your son would feel that his success is less important to you than hers or that he's already good so why strive. Children of either gender who don't learn in the stereotypical way the group leaders think they should and are thus less-served by the program. Trans kids would suffer from more physical-gender stereotyping and all these gender-specific camps would just prolong gender segregation for everyone.
It's not an either-or question though. I don't think you should ignore traditional sexism, which I agree is huge pretty much everywhere including many classrooms. But I think we should do more-inclusive things, not less, to combat it. Things that help everyone, not that exclude.
There's a real reason to have mentors who look like you, in whatever ways you see yourself, but not I think, to be separated from those who are different.