[scandox]

He's quoting someone else though he is agreeing with them. The full quote is:

> We need to address the undervaluing of HTML and CSS for what it is: gender bias. Even though we wouldn’t have computer science without pioneering women, interloping men have claimed it for themselves. Anything less than ‘real programming’ is now considered trivial, silly, artsy, female. That attitude needs to eat a poisoned ass.

And it's from this link: http://www.heydonworks.com/article/reluctant-gatekeeping-the...

I admit I don't understand the point. I haven't experienced this perception of HTML/CSS as something "trivial, silly, artsy, female". It's possible though that this does exist? In some places? I mean people do have a tendency to think of what they're good at as superior to the things they're bad at...and loads of programmers are really bad at HTML/CSS.

[XCabbage]

More obnoxious than the "gender bias" claim is the idea that because computer science as a field owes its entire existence to female pioneers (leaving aside whether there's any sane sense in which that's true), men who now participate in it today are "interlopers". This is the first instance I've seen of the logic of "cultural appropriation" being applied to genders instead of races; women invented this, so it's immoral for men to participate! Uh, no it isn't, and fuck you.

[dwaltrip]

> women invented this, so it's immoral for men to participate

I don't necessarily agree with argument in its entirety, but it isn't about the mere participation of men. It is about the exclusion of women. Very different things.

[XCabbage]

No, that's not what it means to "interlope" (the original author's word choice). It means to intrude in a space where you are not supposed to be.

[dwaltrip]

I was looking at the phrase "claim for themselves", which I took to mean excluding women.

I see what you mean by "interlope", that is a good point. That is a rather poor word choice from the quoted article (by Hayden). I find it hard to believe that Brad, being a man himself, would argue that men can't participate in the field.

[XCabbage]

Sure, it's obvious madness, and it's hard to believe that anyone who says it (or quotes it approvingly) could really believe it. But that's basically what I expect out of any feminist commentary on any topic. The entire space is littered with claims like this - ones so patently false or morally outrageous that one thinks that surely, surely, the author doesn't really believe what they're saying. Stuff like that there exist no innate biological differences in ability between the genders, or that pro-lifers are motivated by a desire to exert control of women's bodies, or that being falsely accused of rape is less likely than being struck by lightning, or that Otto Warmbier deserves no public sympathy for being tortured to disablement and death by North Korea because he was a beneficiary of white privilege.

I've long since given up hope of trying to parse the madness. I sincerely don't understand what motivates people to say these ridiculous things, and as a consequence I sincerely can't tell when somebody means what they say to be figurative and when they are expressing a genuinely-held (but mad) belief completely literally. Given the alarming frequency with which these sorts of claims in fact become accepted truths among feminists that get repeated over and over, I err on the side of assuming the latter.

Hayden used the word, and did so in a context where there was no obvious way to interpret it as hyperbole or metaphor. In the absence of any other possible interpretation, I'm going to assume that he means exactly what he said.

[simonh]

I would understand it if any actual examples of men dismissing HTML and CSS as artsy or female were given, but they aren't, instead this association of them with femininity is being straw-personed into being as an excuse for ranting against an imagined bias.

Pioneering women were crucial in the development of CS as claimed, but HTML and CSS were both created by men so the author's accusation of denigrating the contribution of women is simply not a factor in this issue. Characterizing HTML and CSS as feminine in this way is promoting exactly the sort of gender stereotyping these rants are claiming to oppose.

I'm afraid this is what gender wars activism has come to - fabricating and promoting fake gender stereotypes and associations so they can keep fighting the good fight for it's own sake.

[yakshaving_jgt]

I think you're being overly-generous towards a nonsensical claim.

Attributing "gender bias" here is stupid and harmful. I'm repeatedly astounded that these people are taken seriously.

It's charlatanry.

[werber]

I currently work with women (and men) who feel their roles as front end devs are considered less than our back end devs within our company. We also have the worst front end "big ol' ball of Javascript" spaghetti mess I've ever seen from people trivializing not just HTML & CSS but also JS. I didn't see it as a gendered issue until it was brought to my attention by female co-workers who had experienced the same thing at multiple companies.

[rovek]

I'm not sure if this is satire or nonsense.

> ...women (and men) who feel their roles as front end devs are considered less...

> I didn't see it as a gendered issue until it was brought to my attention by female co-workers...

Female co-workers bringing an issue to your attention doesn't make it a gendered issue and you literally refer to it as a non-gendered issue, though parenthesising men.

As a full-stack JS dev, having come from a .NET background, through a pure frontend job, to a full-stack position, I regularly have to shoulder banter from Scala colleagues' (both male and female) snark at Javascript - primarily because it's existed for a long time and been a barely justifiable mess for most of that time.

[watwut]

If however only or predominately females encounter attitude and males dont, then it is likely gendered issue. And vice versa.

People tend to assume that I do frontend and try tu push me toward ui design side of things, despite me being completely crappy at that. It was real problem only once, normally I can easily negotiate different position. But, it requires me to often explain that I really cant design - I dont have to explain I dont do any other technology to avoid position, ever. People dont assume me to know sql, databases, server, java, but they do tend to assume me to be good at design.

[rovek]

> If however only or predominately females encounter attitude and males dont, then it is likely gendered issue. And vice versa.

Every frontend dev I've ever worked with has received this same treatment, so I would find it difficult to believe it's even predominantly females; but maybe I've met a lot of exceptions.

[watwut]

Oh, I absolutely know that frontend is undervalued. I am even one of those who undervalued it too.

But, I am not even frontend developer and get the assumption that I am one. When I was nearby frontend, people made further assumptions about which part of it I do - they expected me to do aesthetic work altrough I am really bad at it and were sometimes oddly awkward when I wanted to talk about architecture or algorithms. I don't think male frontend developers are not undervalued, but the assumption about which part of it they do is on average a bit different.

[yakshaving_jgt]

> If however only or predominately females encounter attitude and males dont, then it is likely gendered issue. And vice versa.

Or it's a False Cause.

https://yourlogicalfallacyis.com/false-cause

[torben-friis]

There is a perception of front end/user experience being easier than logic programming, in the same way that STEM degrees are considered harder/superior to other degrees. The implication of trivial -> female is quite unwarranted and unjustified IMO.

[watwut]

For whatever it is worth, I personally perceived HTML and CSS as less then programming and primary artsy/aesthetic. It was not real to me and I did not seen HTML/CSS as equal achievement. I don't recall where and how exactly I picked that attitude, it was years ago. I picked it by osmosis as "of course" attitude along with other attitudes I was reconsidering lately.

[dsego]

I honestly think it is less, speaking as someone who does it day in and day out. That HTML/CSS is so complicated to require specialized positions to handle the intricacies of these broken technologies, instead of having well though-out systems and visual design tools, speaks volumes about the rotten state of the web and and web development as a discipline. In this day and age we should not need a small army of so called developers to maintain a single marketing website.