[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.