[fred_durst]

I absolutely agree. I was only relaying that maybe if we focus more on the jerk part, and less on the specifics of the brand of jerk we might help solve the problem of all the people who have to deal with jerks in this industry, not just one specific group.

[anuleczka]

Sure! But I guess my point is that by embracing the voices of marginalized groups, we can solve a huge chunk of that at once. If you think about it, jerks usually act the way they do because of a perceived power differential. The guy with enough insecurity to harass a woman (or POC, or LBGTQ person) is likely to try to power trip other men, too.

[fred_durst]

I think I understand your logic here. It does make some sense to use the harassment of a marginalized group as a sort of "tell" that this person is a jerk. I do worry though that it is a bit divisive. A lot of terms like "white male" and "feminist" are very loaded at this point and it feels to me like focusing on specific groups might be a distraction.

For example if I were to say that one of the most arrogant and aggressive people I've known was a self described feminist, it starts to distract from the fact the in reality this person is just a jerk and the feminist part really doesn't have anything to do with that. And any of the hateful gender specific things that person said to other people didn't really have to do with gender issues as much as this person was a total jerk to almost everyone around them.

[anuleczka]

Yeah, it's sad how those terms ("white male", "feminist") have become loaded. But again, I think it's because of perceived power differences. For some reason, the term "feminist" has come to mean, in some circles, "person who wants to take away my power". When in reality, promoting an egalitarian world benefits both women and men, since it reduces jerk behavior. Promoting equal rights for women does not take away rights from men, you know?

I feel you on the second paragraph, but I think what's really distracting is the unnecessary stigma of the labels. What if more women and men, especially those with influence, openly identified as feminist? It's like the xkcd comic about girls being bad at math (https://xkcd.com/385/). If one self-described feminist behaves poorly, you'd probably blame that on her personally, instead of writing off all feminists (and feminism, at the same time).

[fred_durst]

Personally speaking, I think feminism is a benefit to the world. I think it has helped, and will continue to help make the world more inclusive place and increase the understanding of the unique issues women face in society. I hope I am not coming off as saying that I think feminism should go away or that I'm speaking generally about the world at large. I was only using the self described feminist as an example to show that it might distract. I've met plenty of jerks, only a couple of them considered themselves feminists. ;)

I was more specifically talking about tech, especially the more app/web side of things as that is my personal zone of experience. There just seems to be a lot of jerks in general. That said, there are also a lot of inspiring, compassionate and incredibly intelligent people that I feel so lucky to have worked with and learned from. I only brought that aspect up as I wonder if maybe some of the issues with tech is that some women and other people who might typically face discrimination and harassment in other aspects of their life, do not realize that in a lot of ways its just a jerky place. That they might not realize that plenty of tech workers are made fun of, talked down to and even sometimes outright yelled at. For example all of these things I've just mentioned have happened to me personally on multiple occasions. The yelled at was only once a long time ago fortunately.

So maybe we might focus on making tech less jerky in general? Because there are plenty of people, not just a few specific groups that are treated pretty poorly in this industry.