[Fuzzwah]

I'm a white male. I'm a husband. I'm about to become a father (we're avoiding finding out the sex until birth, so there's a 50% chance I'm the father of a daughter). I work in IT. I've worked with a few women. Some of been excellent, some haven't. Just the same as the men I've worked with.

I tried to work out what Shanley never, ever wanted to hear again, and I figure that it is the following 7 words.....

"I don’t know much about this, but"

However, my follow on from the but is; I'd like to get educated. The following are the points I'm taking out of this article (please let me know if I missed any, I am seriously not being sarcastic or a jerk).

- do not try to defend the "white male establishment" which I apparently am part of. (I do not feel part of it, but I guess I get lumped in it until I prove I'm not part of it?)

- do not attempt to tell a woman what she is feeling (luckily, I've learned this lesson a long time ago)

- do not talk about my experiences with women in IT (they are probably outliers like Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer)

- be able to read vague complaints about general sexism with out thinking they're targeted at me

They're fairly easy things for me to work on.

I would actually be interested in advice from Shanley on what book I should pick up to educate myself with.

A wall of passionate words with out a good call to action for white males to pick up on is frustrating to me. I want to try and help, but beyond being the decent human I've been relying on, I'm at a loss.

[theorique]

do not talk about my experiences with women in IT (they are probably outliers like Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer)

Oddly, 99.99% of women in IT are not senior executives of large companies like these two. I think what Shanley's article meant is, you aren't supposed to point at these two and claim that everything's cool for women in IT, because they are outliers.

Presumably, it's reasonable to employ anecdotes about the female CTO you worked with, or the female developers on your team with whom you have personal experience?

[jfarmer]

Honestly, it seems like you're being deliberately obtuse. Although you might think the author is being maximalist, you don't need to respond in kind. I realize you said you aren't and that you're being sincere, but it's hard to reconcile how those were the points you took from the article with a sincere desire to understand what the author wrote.

In fact, to quote the author: "They bring nothing to the table except ... self-involved demands for “education”, endless derailing techniques paraded as “logic”, [and ] disingenuous bewilderment."

I'll take you at your word, though.

> I tried to work out what Shanley never, ever wanted to hear again, and I figure that it is the following 7 words....."I don’t know much about this, but"

I think if there were one thing the author never wants to hear again, it's something like "There there, I know you're upset, but let me educate you on just how wrong you are." That conveys the quality of it, at least.

> - do not try to defend the "white male establishment" which I apparently am part of. (I do not feel part of it, but I guess I get lumped in it until I prove I'm not part of it?)

Personally, my main qualm with the phrase "white male establishment" is how cliché it is. Here are some lighthearted reflections on what the author was talking about, as I understand it:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TG4f9zR5yzY
    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y4LkrQCyIz8
    http://bit.ly/JZJYMv

> - do not talk about my experiences with women in IT (they are probably outliers like Sheryl Sandberg and Marissa Mayer)

No, her point was that Sandberg and Mayer are exceptions and shouldn't be used as a counterexample to statements like, "In technology it is more difficult for a woman to become a member of executive management than a man." This has the same flavor as folks arguing that racism in the United States is a thing of the past because we elected a black President.

I'm sure the author would love folks to talk about the everyday experience of women in IT -- which is to say their experience, not your picture of their experience.

> - be able to read vague complaints about general sexism with out thinking they're targeted at me

Yeah, man up. Don't take it personally. Maybe instead of getting defensive, ask, "Have I ever done anything to make you feel like that or disempower you? Please let me know in private if I ever do or anyone else working here does. I don't want to make you feel that way, I don't want to implicitly model that behavior in front of other people, and I don't want other people to feel they have the license to do it."

When feminists talk about "allies" they mean folks who both say and inhabit this sort of thing.