Do You Even Code, Bro?

I'm avoiding social media and gaming because I don't want to see Star Wars spoilers. Which makes me realise how little I do outside of those things (mainly Dota and reddit). So what is there left to do but Netflix and Write?

A strange thing happened yesterday. One of my co-workers popped his head up over the partition separating our desks and asked me, "Hello colleague, do you code?" (His exact words.)

I was pretty puzzled by what he meant. He and I are both developers. Sure, he only joined about half a year ago, and we aren't assigned to the same applications, despite being on the same team, so other than if he was looking at my screens over my shoulder, he hasn't seen any direct evidence of me coding. However, I attended all the same developer team meetings as him, I'm the co-lead for the Java community group at work, and I even helped him set up his IDE!

Unfortunately, I don't have a very good brain for quick wit, so the only response I could think of was to ask, "Is that some kind of euphemism for something?"

He replies, "No? Do you write code?"

I did want to snarkily reply with what I wrote in the third paragraph, but that wasn't going to help anybody, and I didn't want to risk getting pissed off at work. I should have just said yes, and then let him respond with whatever he was going to respond with. However, I ended up just ignoring his question the second time, and asked him if he was having a problem.

I solved his problem for him (which wasn't even code related in the end - turns out our webserver had stopped), but I was completely flabbergasted. I have the word "programmer" in my email signature. OK, he might never read any of my emails, I don't know, but I don't know how you can go to developer meetings with someone and not have a lightbulb moment saying, "Hey, this other person in the meeting with me, who shares the same boss as me, must be another developer."

To be honest, I am really reluctant to write this part, because I hate jumping to the conclusion that someone in a male-dominated industry is treating me poorly because of my gender, but I really feel like this is a gender issue here. I can't think of any other reason why it hasn't occurred to him that I write code. Before you ask why he didn't just ask one of the other people he knows to be a developer, I was the only one there at the time, other than a couple of testers who he works with and knows are testers.

I'm hoping that maybe my brain is just fried from the heat, and someone else can come up with an alternative explanation for his question. The possibility that someone would be doubtful that I'm a developer based on my gender just makes me feel sad.

Stronger By An Order of Magnitude

Graham got me to watch a supercut of the episode of Law & Order: SVU (YouTube video - has some graphic violence) which seems to be inspired by the whole Gamergate incident. I found the episode kinda hard to watch with all the gaming terms shoe-horned in to make it seem foreign, and it seemed to really go for the whole gamers can't tell the difference between games and reality, and they're all violence-obsessed males who just want to feel up girls and kill people (note: I haven't seen the whole episode).

Gosh, I don't know where to begin. I'm sure there are tons of essays online about how it's just the loud, crazy minority of gamers making all the others look bad, and they're probably much better written than something I could ever write. Even though I do care about the perception of gamers, and I try to give people a good impression when I meet them and tell them that I play games, I wouldn't consider it a huge passion of mine anymore. Haters gonna hate, right? Instead, I'd rather channel my energy into finding other like-minded people.

I've been tossing up the idea of streaming, although our current Internet connection doesn't have enough bandwidth for me to do it and for MrMan5.5 to be able to play his games, so this is probably something that'll have to wait until we get the NBN or something like that. The reason I want to stream is that I want to find others who would play with me. I'm super paranoid that people hate me, and so whenever I play with strangers, I just try to fly under the radar and not be noticed so that they won't yell at me. It's actually pretty funny, during lunch at work, I was about to ask whether one of my co-workers thinks the new guy hates me, and I got about half the question out when he said, "He doesn't hate you!" I guess I must say it a lot. (Turns out he doesn't hate me, and we are now whiskey buddies, where whiskey buddies = me constantly reminding him that I'm never drinking whiskey again.)

I figure anyone who can put up with watching my stream must be able to put up with playing games with me, so it'd be a good place to start. And I think it'd be really awesome to push myself to do something fun. Intern Daniel posted a link to my Facebook wall with a Dota 2 fitness regimen, but I think it's a lame low-tier workout, since it's just like a drinking game except with push ups, where you do push ups if X happens in your game, and I think the things on the list happen rarely when people are playing seriously.

Here it is if you want (9gag link):

Game lost: 20 push ups
Russians in team: 10 squarts per Russian
GG called after firstblood: 20 cross punch sit ups
"Report XXX": 10 leg raises each time
5 Carry team: 20 tricep dips
No wards/courier: 20 jumping lunges
Pudge/Riki insta locked: 20 bicycle crunches


Not a huge fan of JennCroft's one either (Imgur/Reddit):

Pre-game:
30 squats
10 burpees
10 push ups

Every death (rotate):
10 jump squats
10 crunches
Plank until respawn
10 dips
10 push ups

Mostly because someone mentioned you're likely to be really dizzy after doing them, and it's just going to make you play worse, which means you need to do more of them, etc. I really like the idea of tallying them up, because in Dota 2, you can do what's called a "buyback", where you pay gold to have your hero respawn instantly, rather than waiting for the full death timer, and in some close games, this can mean the difference between a win or a loss. I don't want to let my team down by saying, "Sorry guys, I can't buyback, I need to do 10 dips first!" Also, I don't want to get sweat all over my rainbow keyboard! :(

Still, if I don't work out more, I'll be at 66kg for the rest of the year, gotta try harder! Intern Daniel laughs at my really bad push ups and burpees. He also told me about how his coach gets them to run laps with their hands in the air above their heads as a punishment, which I thought sounded stupidly easy, so I said I'd carry a box over my head all the way to the train station. So much pain, so so much pain, and he was laughing the entire time. He has challenged me to do one proper push-up by the end of the year.

Julian says people would be willing to watch a stream featuring someone doing push ups and stuff because of Dota deaths, so maybe that can be my thing. A push to make myself stronger, but also to meet new people.

Fodder's Dota 2 Work Out/Punishment

Starting set:
5 x sit ups
5 x push ups
1 x support rotation (front support, left support, back support, right support - 20s each)
1 x glass of water (gotta keep hydrated!)

Set modifications:
Additions
Death: + 1 sit up/push up
Enemy gets first blood: +5 sit ups/push ups
Enemy gets godlike streak: +5 sit ups/push ups
Enemy gets Roshan: +1 support rotation
Enemy buys a divine rapier: +1 support rotation
Enemy hero gets a rampage (kills all 5 of us): +1 support rotation

Subtractions
Kill: -1 sit up/push up
I get first blood: -5 sit ups/push ups
Assist: -1 sit up/push up for every 5 assists (rounded down)
Gold per minute: -1 for every 400 (rounded down)

The modified numbers for sit ups and push ups can be assigned however you like. If you are feeling the burn in your core, then assign extra push ups. If your arms are starting to shake, go for the sit ups.

I don't know how unrealistic this is, and I hope that the people I play with will be OK with waiting for me to do all of these things between each match. The support rotation will take at least 80 seconds. Maybe I should shorten that one down to 10s each. I think I'll run this by Intern Daniel on Monday to see what he thinks. If you have any feedback, feel free to leave a comment or email me!

But back to the original topic (I do seem to like being side-tracked), am I worried about being harassed online? A little bit. I don't think I have a thick enough skin to be able to handle lots of abuse. Requests to show my boobs and stupid stuff like that I can handle, but I think if people started telling me that I'm really bad and that I should stop playing, it would start to get me down. But to be honest, I think it's something I really need to work on. I can't keep relying on validation from others to give me confidence, I need to find it within myself.

This is especially true in the workplace, as people aren't going to constantly tell me that I'm great. Everyone is just expected to do their job without needing their hands held. If I ever want to be respected by my co-workers, I need to be able to be confident in my own abilities, even when it seems like everybody is so much better than I am that I feel like I must be the worst person in the world. As I tell people who flame new players in Dota, everyone was new at some point. Though I'm starting to get past the phase of being new, and I can't hold on to that excuse anymore either. My boss thinks that I should start working towards becoming a senior developer, so I've been trying to convince myself that I'm worth it.

Double X

This post came up in my Facebook feed today:

I felt really compelled to point out that it was Jean-Luc Picard in the image, not Charles Xavier, though both are portrayed by Patrick Stewart, so the confusion is understandable. I guess that's the same as calling Daniel Radcliffe Harry Potter, or Arnold Schwarzenegger the Terminator, since they're very well known for those roles. Note that she didn't tag anyone when she said Charles, so it's unlikely that she's referring to a friend of hers called Charles who is also bad at maths.

I was a bit reluctant to say anything, because it seemed really mean to make fun of someone in a public place like Facebook. Plus, I don't know this person well enough to be able to judge whether she'd take it badly or not. I couldn't think of a nice yet funny way of phrasing it without sounding like a bitch. I asked MrMan5.5 whether it would be mean to point it out, and he said no, but I think he was trolling because he wanted me to say something and start a flame war. Since we are both friends with this person, I told him that he could post it instead, to which he replied that it would not be OK for him to post it, as it would look like girl-bashing (as the OP is female), but it would be OK for me to post it, as I'm also female.

To that point, I completely disagree. There seems to be even harsher scrutiny towards females criticising other females. The general response seems to be, "You're a girl, too, you're supposed to support me against this world which oppresses women!" or some kind of rubbish like that. I do not agree that you should side with someone, just because you share some kind of minority characteristic with them, in order to support them. If you believe they are wrong, then you should say so. The only exception to this rule is when the other person happens to be your significant other, and not doing so would result in you sleeping on the couch. Oh, another exception is if the person is family and they are going to make your life hell. OK, the exception is, you shouldn't need to side with them, unless not doing so would result in severe repercussions towards yourself.

Anyway, for that reason, I decided that it would also be bad for me to post on her wall, as I imagine she'd see it as the start of some cat-fight over who is the bigger nerd. I consulted with the only person I know who is an expert on both X-Men and Star Trek, and who would also reply relatively quickly, and his response was to reply with the Picard facepalm meme to see if she got it. An alternative to that was to post this image:

As funny as I thought it would be, again, I was hesitant as this would also fall into I'm-a-bigger-nerd-than-you cat-fight territory. Note: I don't think I'm a bigger nerd, I didn't even know he was Captain Jean-Luc Picard until I looked it up in IMDB - I just knew it was Star Trek and not X-Men. So in that sense, I'm also a fail nerd.

Still, it felt wrong not to say anything at all, as she would continue life thinking that it was Charles Xavier in that picture, and perhaps someone who was not as nice as I am (hahahaha) would make fun of her for it. So I decided to privately message her to let her know.

Was it a joke? I don't know. But at least now I shall rest in peace knowing that she knows the difference between Charles Xavier and Jean-Luc Picard. I avoided a cat-fight, and am now taking the opportunity to explanabrag about it in my blog.

Motive and Opportunity

An acquaintance was telling me about how she doesn't play in Magic: the Gathering tournaments anymore. She said that she hates it that the guys who play in those tournaments spend so much time staring at her boobs that she constantly has to tell them, "My face is up here". She also said that she doesn't get much respect, and that a lot of the players will ignore what she says or tell her that she's wrong, just because she's a girl - even though she does know the rules. I had never experienced anything like that myself, but ever pre-release I went to was with my cousin, and so I had the benefit of being able to hang around him.

During the Easter/Anzac break, I played in the Journey into Nyx pre-release. This was the first MtG event that I had attended since the Fifth Dawn pre-release (June 2004), that wasn't something with only friends. Stupid as this sounds, but based on what the acquaintance said, I was keeping an eye out for the notorious boob stare. I've always wanted to have a "My face is up here" moment, as it seems like a quintessential part of being a female. I had a close call once, but it turned out to be nothing. Unfortunately for me, I did not manage to catch anybody staring at my boobs. Part of that might have been because I went with my cousin, a gay guy, an engaged guy, and an ex, but there were still two people that I played against that I hadn't met before, so it wasn't like I only played with people I knew!

The first guy was super serious about the game. We had three pretty close games (bo3), and I ended up losing 1-2 in the end, but he was definitely way more interested in my cards than in my chest. There was never really an opportunity in either of those games for tricky rules, as they were both fairly straightforward, so I can't really judge him on the respect for me aspect as we barely talked about anything other than the games we were playing. The second guy seemed very much like the stereotypical socially-awkward nerd. He was very shy, and mumbled his words a lot. Still, I did not manage to catch him in the act. As far as respect goes, I think we both respected each other. I pointed out a mistake that he made, and he pointed out a constellation trigger that I had missed - although both times, it wouldn't have affected the outcome of the game, so it wasn't a big thing. (Side note: even though we were playing against each other, tournament rules state that both players have an obligation to point out something their opponent has missed, e.g. if a Zombie creature enters the game, and one player has a Zombie creature enters trigger, but they don't realise. Obviously, it's impossible to enforce, because it might just have been that both players missed it, you can't just accuse the opposing player of not pointing out something. So it's just considered good manners.)

My other two games were against my cousin and the gay work friend, so I wasn't really trying to catch them out.

It just makes me think that sometimes someone does something, and the motive that you attribute to that action may not be the same as the reason for their action. For instance, imagine you are walking to get lunch, and someone crashes into you and nearly knocks you over, what is your first thought? I find that if I'm having a good or neutral day, my first thought is that it was an accident and they probably tripped. If I'm having a bad day, my mind immediately thinks that they were in a rush and just rude and inconsiderate, not looking where they are going or caring who they knock over along the way. It's funny how the same action can have different motives attributed to it depending on how you are feeling.

So back to the boob staring, I think that sometimes people staring while thinking, and it's unfair to just naturally assume that they are staring at your boobs. Unless it is making you uncomfortable, if it's just a quick glance or you're not entirely sure, isn't it safer to err on the side of caution and not just assume they are doing a boob stare? The reason I say this, is because it feeds into the second point my acquaintance made - about the lack of respect because she's a girl. How does she really know that's the case based on such short one-time encounters? What if they are not treating her with respect because she has lost their respect?

Let's look at 4 boob staring related scenarios:

1 - The guy was staring at her boobs and she tells them to stop.

2 - The guy was not staring at her boobs (but doing something else) and she tells them to stop.

3 - The guy was staring at her boobs and she doesn't say anything.

4 - The guy was not staring at her boobs (but doing something else) and she doesn't say anything.

In situation 1, the guy will feel reprimanded, but probably be slightly annoyed at being called out on it.

In situation 2, the guy will feel really annoyed, because he was just accused of doing something that he wasn't, and even if he were to deny it, nobody would believe him.

In situation 3, the guy will get away scot free.

In situation 4, nothing happens and the game continues as normal.

To me, it seems like situation 1 and 2 are the worst, 2 especially, and the both arise from telling him to stop staring. 3 is bad for her, as he is getting away with staring. But from a respect point of view, i.e. his respect, I'm pretty sure in both situations 1 and 2, any respect he had for her will have been lost. Well, at least in situation 1, he will be thinking negatively towards her.

I do think it's unfair that in order to be respected, or at least somewhat liked means that you have to ignore people staring at your boobs, but I think that it's something that's incredibly hard to prove. If you go in pre-disposed to think that there will be perverted boob staring people, then your motive attribution is going to hit a lot more false positives and you are going to end up pissing off more people. Then you are less likely to enjoy yourself at these events, and probably go in next time with an even more negative perception and it'll just be a positive feedback loop until you quit altogether. Which is also really unfair, if you can't do something that you enjoy because you feel ostracised from the community. 

My approach has always been, if I respect them enough to treat me just like any other player, and try not to go in with any pre-dispositions, then hopefully they will respect me enough to do so, and we can all just continue with playing the game. Or am I just setting feminism back another fifty or so years? :(

Star Whores: The Old Republic

Rather than say I've already waxed lyrical on this topic, here are a few of my previous posts on the topic of female gaming from various views (the older comments and posts got mangled during the Windows Live Spaces -> Wordpress transition, but you can still read them with a bit of effort):
Guy In Real Life
World of Whorecraft (read the comments for dramaz)
Sucks To Be Female (kinda serious with good comments)
Gaming Gender Wars, Revisited
(H) Is It A Bird? Is It A Plane? No, It’s A Girl on the Internets (actual post is really naive, read the comments)

When we joined a PUG to down Grandfather, the group realised that there was no /roll function, so they didn't know how to assign the loot. I jokingly said I wanted it for my companion (it was a belt with Cunning and Bounty Hunters need Aim), some people took me seriously, and someone said "he was a good healer". MrMan5.5 corrected that person and said, "You mean SHE was a good healer." I got angry at him, because I didn't want the entire operation group knowing my gender, especially when people were discussing distributing loot, but he said it doesn't really matter. (Olek ended up getting the belt though - they had to use an external random number generator to decide.)

I've even gone so far as to tell the people who know me in real life not to mention my gender, although I missed one person, who I sent a text to tell the guild leader that our power went out, and he ended up revealing it to the guild. Not that it really mattered in the end, as I have become a semi-operation leader, and need to talk a lot on Vent anyway (though nobody has called me a 13 year old boy yet, which is good!).

I was wandering around Dromund Kaas questing when the following conversation occured:

(Apologies for the size and my fail cut+paste skills)

(I thought that "lfg Saving Face" was nicely placed - don't know if that person was making a comment about the conversation, or actually looking to do that quest.)

I can't really tell if that was an actual female, or a troll. It sounds a lot like a troll, but you would think that if someone were trying to troll people in general chat by being a female, they wouldn't be so bad at it. Which is what leads me to believe that she's a female (unless that is what he wanted me to think).

Dromund Kaas is the new Barrens and you have to wonder why someone would be whoring themselves out there. It's the second zone that people hit (not counting the fleet which is a "city"), and so is full of people between levels 10 and 16. Some of them are alts, but even then, most of them are unlikely to have masses of credits, or are able to powerlevel "her" through anything.

My guess is that she moved on after nobody took the bait and tried again on another planet. I was tempted to whisper her to ask if she was really a female to find out what she was trying to get out of the whole thing, but I didn't want to get reported for harassment.

Strange as it sounds, that whole conversation gave me hope. I think MrMan5.5 is right, and that it doesn't really matter anymore if people know that you are a girl, as long as you aren't trying to cause drama. Plus, it seems the male gamer population is so jaded and suspicious anyway, that even if you did say that you're a girl, they'll probably think you must be 30-year-old, male basement dweller with no life, multiplied by a factor of 10 for every piece of Rakata gear you have.

I think Diver really hit on something though, and I have to admit, part of the reason (I mean in the past, when I was still single) I don't want to chat up male players to get stuff is because it would give them the impression that I looked like this:

When the reality was more like this:

(Not that the stereotype is true, I know a lot of female gamers of various sizes.)

I thought what if one of them was "the one" and I had led them to believe something that wasn't true. Then if they ever met me, they would be super disappointed and that would overshadow everything that had happened between us. Though I get the feeling Jaqx wasn't looking for "the one" in General chat - unless that is her method of searching, to which all I can say is good luck to her. =/

Never the Bridesmaid

One of the things that comes with being engaged (yes, GP, this isn't some elaborate prank on you) is having to plan a wedding, which also involves choosing the bridal party (and groomal party?). We have to have 3 each, because MrMan5.5 has 3 really close friends, so I need 3 to be symmetrical. Being someone who loves patterns as much as I do, I had originally planned to have a good friend from primary school (Tash), a good friend from high school (Sharon) and a good friend from uni (QC), so they would represent me from different parts of my life. I kinda felt bad asking Tash to be a bridesmaid though, as she has been with her boyfriend for longer than MrMan5.5 and I have been together, and they seem to have hit a bit of an uncertain patch at the moment. I thought it might feel a bit too much like rubbing it in her face if I asked.

So to learn from the experiences of other brides that I know, I thought I'd just go with easygoing bridesmaids instead - people who won't cause drama, but people who have also played an important part in my life. Again, Sharon was the first one to jump to mind, but the next person to jump to mind was slightly unusual. Unusual because he is male. But I think he has played a very important part in my life, and I attribute a lot of my university life to him. From a chaos theory point of view, he was the butterfly that flapped his wings, and the hurricane was the events in my life that stemmed from that point. Sometimes I wonder what would have happened if we hadn't met, I think I probably would have spent all of my uni time at the chess club and then.... Pandy....

On a side note, I also invited him to my hen's night (when I have it), and he declined saying he couldn't because only girls are meant to go to the hen's night. So I invited him to the hen's night as the stripper instead. Perhaps I crossed a line in our friendship, as I now realise that was a strange request. He didn't seem to take it too badly, but he still declined.

Anyway, it made me think about how few female friends I have that I feel like I can associate with. I lost a large chunk of my life to WoW, and other than Charlotte, there are no females that I know in real life (I don't count Vamp, because we don't even talk) who can ever understand what that's like. I guess it was never really a problem for me, because I had plenty of people I could talk to about WoW. It wasn't just WoW, there were so many people to talk to in the game that it was pretty easy to find someone who was happy to have a chat about any topic I wanted to discuss.

Begin: my life as an inverted penis. Someone told me that it's a compliment that guys find me easy to talk to, but I disagree. OK, maybe it's a compliment, but I don't think it's a good thing. Back in the days of MrMan1 was when it first occured to me. We were at a LAN together and he farted. Not end of the world stuff, and I still liked him after that, but one of his friends was so surprised that he would fart in front of a girl. He said, "Nah, it's OK, it's just Anna." It took me a year to realise that I had been friend zoned.

During that time, I could never work out why so many guys were perfectly fine with opening up to me, but there was never anything more. "One of the guys" was pretty much the story of my life. One of RB's friends told me over MSN that I didn't have to worry about him trying to steal me, because he considered me one of the guys. I hadn't even met the guy and he was already friend zoning me (not that I was interested, but that's besides the point)!

It's something that I probably never will be able to prove without invading people's privacy, but I think there is the type of talk between guys that happens when it's just guys. Then there's the type of talk when it's an inverted penis and some guys (which is more polite than the only guys, but not that much more). Then there's the type of talk when there are guys and non-inverted penis girls. Oh, then there's the talk when there are girls and girls, I think it's the same regardless of inverted penis status.

I think that clan chat when Char was around was of the third type, and it was nice. Even though it had nothing to do with me, it felt like I was a girl! Although, it was probably because they didn't realise Char is an inverted penis as well, so they were probably being polite until her true nature came out. Either way, it was nice having another girl in the game. Everyone was so much better behaved. OK, maybe calling Char an inverted penis is not quite right, maybe she's more of a hybrid female/inverted penis. I think she has found a good balance between inverted penishood and being a female.

If I were a real girl, and not an inverted penis, I wouldn't have this problem of not being able to find a bridesmaid. I wonder if Auto took me seriously when I asked him....

Fifteen Minute Cast Time

Julian, Char and I were discussing how we could make money by creating a HoN stream commentated by a girl (Char). The idea seemed pretty straightforward, we play, stream the games while playing, and chat as we normally do on Mumble. The allure would be the fact that there is a female playing HoN, and people would watch just to see what's going on. Their views would generate income from ads, which we could split between the five of us (Char getting the biggest share, of course, as she is the one doing most of the work (I think the fact that the five of us have to play is work for us, although, Julian said Char could just stream on her own with randoms and get all the profit, which makes sense to me)). Besides, we play every night anyway, so why not profit from it?

So why Char and not me - after all, I'm also a female that plays HoN? I thought Char could do the cute, Asian girl over webcam thing, and get even more money, so that was my biggest reason. But a part of it was to do with the fact that I've focused a lot on recognition based on merit, not gender (i.e. I'd like to be good, not good "for a girl"). The idea of selling my channel based on the fact that I'm female isn't appealing to me at all. Though that didn't stop me from suggesting someone else should do it.

The last part that frightened me was the thought that we lose often. In fact, I have a 50% win rate, so we'd be expected to lose about half of our games. Losing between friends isn't a big deal. We think about what went wrong, blame the random person on our team, and queue up again. Losing when 500 people are watching seems really embarrassing. Not just that though, I'm afraid that every time we lose, it just feeds into the stereotype that girls are bad at games.

Which is so ridiculous. I avoid having my skill judged with a female bias in mind, but at the same time, I'm afraid that when I am judged, I'll end up contributing to that bias.

I remember at the HoN tournament we played in about a month ago, we were seeded against the Qlimax Crew. As soon as they saw us, they were so confident they were going to win, and as they were walking back to their seats, they were laughing that we had a girl on our team. They completely crushed us. Their strategy was really aggressive and it seemed like they didn't even consider us a threat. It was almost like they were playing a practice game and we weren't even there.

I watched a replay of one of their other matches in the tournament, and they were a lot more cautious. I kinda feel like I let the team down. Maybe if I hadn't been there, they wouldn't have been so arrogant, as the team was an unknown, and they might have played cautiously in the first match, which wouldn't have caused the strategy we had practiced to unravel so quickly.

Besides, I wouldn't want any bad reputation to come to LCF, as I still think of it as Simon's clan, even though I've been clan leader since the beta.

Sucks To Be Female

I'm becoming quite fond of James Devlin's blog, Coding The Wheel. I really like his writing style, and his posts are usually really helpful and easy to understand. I stumbled upon his post about the Matt Aimonetti/Ruby event, and when I read it, I was astonished that such a thing actually happened - not the part about a guy putting semi-pornographic images in a slideshow, but the part about people being completely outraged. Then again, I live in a country where we have the right to freedom of speech, and although we're sliding towards an era of super political correctness, we're mostly a free-speaking people.

Seeing as this seems to be one of my "crusades", I'm sure I've gone on ad infinitum about the whole females in a male-dominated environment. What this made me think of, was a comment Paul made a long time ago, about how people should learn to speak English. I'm sure I blogged about it before but I'm too tired to search for it, and just saying it like that is completely out of context, so please don't think badly of him! It's not as bad as it sounds. Still, I'm starting to agree with him to some degree - if you want to go somewhere different, don't expect people to bend over backwards to accommodate you. Despite the fact that English is taught at schools in Japan, when I go to Japan, I am going with the expectation that people will speak Japanese, which is why I'm equipped with my trusty "Eego o hanasemasu ka?"

Ah, I tried to stop myself, but it seems like I'm going to go on my crusade anyway. I became an engineer with the knowledge that this is a male-dominated field. I didn't even pick chemical engineering, which is apparently starting to approach a 1:1 ratio of genders, I picked software engineering, which is stereotypically full of geeky guys, and based on my 151 class, probably holds true to the stereotype. If this were marketing, and some company designed an ad to appeal to a market sector which turned out to be predominately males, if such an ad were to feature scantily clad women lying around on sports cars, nobody would bat an eyelid. If a speaker wants to make his presentation more appealing to an audience of mostly males, and he adds similar images, it sparks debate. Why? Supposedly because the females in the audience felt that it was insulting to them and degraded them.

OK, I understand that. I would prefer to be treated as an intelligent (arguable) being, rather than a piece of meat. So this reminded me of something MrMan5.5 said to me at Manifest last year. I said that I thought it was disgusting the way that some of the people were looking at some of the female cosplayers. He argued that they dressed that way because they wanted people to look at them. Taken completely to the extreme, it leads to the whole, it's OK to rape girls if they dress like sluts, but that's not what he meant. He meant that these people put time and money into their costumes, with the intention of having people take photos of them and admire them. A bit like art. I disagreed with him at the time, but I see the point he was trying to make now.

What if pornographic images cause males to objectify those women who chose to be photographed and not every single woman in the whole-wide world?!

When my online gaming started involving more than tower defense maps in Starcraft, and I encountered more people, I was exposed to a large number of ways to be told to suck someone's balls, or something of that variety. At first, I thought, "What?! Did he really just say that?" and was curious as to whether this was how males really speak when there are no females around - which, admittedly, was part of the appeal of hiding my identity. Now it doesn't even phase me at all, and when someone drops the C-bomb, and if someone calls them on it with the excuse that "there are ladies present", I usually end up thinking that person is being oversensitive. To me, that kind of stuff is part of the "gamer lingo". Sure, it might be offensive and/or exclude people, but it seems the majority of people who are part of that community are fine with the way that it is.

Side note - the kanji for "bride" consists of the "woman" and "home" characters, which is meant to signify a woman moving to her new home after getting married. The kanji for "wife" consists of the "woman" and "broom" characters. Both of these seem pretty damn sexist, if you think about it, but nobody is up in arms about that!

All of this political correctness makes me want to cry. Sometimes I find myself censoring myself because I'm afraid of who I am going to offend (which is why I'm worried about posting certain things on Facebook, and given some of the things I've heard about that have happened due to Facebook posts, I might be right in doing so). What are you meant to call "black people"? I once saw some (I'm guessing) American tourists talking about a man playing a didgeridoo in Sydney. "We should give some money to this poor African-American man, he obviously looks like he's starving." Contrary to what some people seem to think, not all dark-skinned people are African or American! They seemed like kind people, but just wow...

Anyway, what I'm trying to say is:

- if you're going where no (wo)man has gone before, keep in mind that you're entering a place with its own culture and traditions

-political correctness is becoming too much

-if you feel really uncomfortable being where you are, perhaps you should consider moving somewhere else

Leaving you with something to think about, Violet Blue asks an interesting question in her article, "2010: The Year of Whining about Women in Tech":

Everyone, every single one of you who have whined about women in tech this year are full of it until you can tell me one thing. And then, I will believe you are of a worthy cause. Like so many women in tech, I will no longer avoid attending your “women in tech” events. I will stop despising this cultural segregation for being female. I will stop hating your pro-women-in-tech posts that single us out, all cloaked in goodwill that always feels like it has a darker agenda.

Tell me why we should have more women in tech.

If you’re telling me we should, then tell me why we should. Why it is better. What benefits it brings to business, to profit, to innovation. To development. To leading companies and advising them.