Instead I was met with accusations that I had slept with the professor in order to achieve my grade - when if I had done worse or average nothing would have been said. I guess I could have just gone to the professor which starts a whole "denying" chain on a fictitious event while makes me look like... well.. someone that does sexual favors for grades. Why would I want to put myself through that?

I worked hard on my project - putting in much more effort than my peers, and I was rewarded. To be told that I just had the professor write the code for me and sleeping with him for the grade.. it honestly really hurt.

In this instance the only two options I have are deal with it and hope it gets better, or change majors. Changing majors seems silly because I honestly love programming and computers. So dealing with it currently seems to be the best option as I believe that after school it will not be this way. Sure some companies will always discriminate against groups or individuals, but that just comes down to me doing research on companies before applying.

Having been bullied pretty constantly in school as well, just knowing that that kind of thing happens pisses me off to no end. In a workplace that takes sexual harassment seriously, this kind of thing is grounds for serious warnings and even immediate termination of the person doing the bullying. If I were the guy in charge of handling a complaint of this nature, anyone doing that at my company would get one extremely strong warning and then be fired immediately on the next complaint. Hopefully you find a place to work that DOES take this kind of thing seriously, because I know that some places have terrible people running the company and they will try to cover these things up.

One argument I see regularly, that personally I think is wrong, is that "women aren't interested in technical fields". People that argue that throw out numbers showing the percentage of women in the industry claiming it is proof. When I show the report that shows a lot of HRs may overlook female applicants, I was told that it wasn't a peer reviewed study so it didn't give a valid reason why women weren't in the industry. Seems anything or anyone that argues for women in the industry quickly gets called a feminist supporter. Guess that makes me a feminist supporter since I think women should be welcome into the industry with open arms rather than open ignorance.

[quote name="BHXSpecter" post="5189018" timestamp="1414205546"Seems anything or anyone that argues for women in the industry quickly gets called a feminist supporter. Guess that makes me a feminist supporter since I think women should be welcome into the industry with open arms rather than open ignorance.[/quote]

The people who use 'femninist' pejoratively are the kind of nutjobs leading the gamergate crusade. Feminism as a niche movement is over (just like gaming as a niche pastime is over). We're all feminists by default now -- if you believe in equality, then you're a feminist.
It was a niche movement in the days where women couldn't vote and suffered other forms of legal discrimination. They won, and now it's normal for women to be considered equal.
What used to be normal back then is now misogyny.

The difference between an average feminist and someone like Sarkeesian is that she studies feminist issues as an academic pursuit.

So when you see people ranting about the "feminist agenda" etc, they're just outing themselves as a conspiracy nut, a misogynist, or just very ignorant*.
If someone calls you a feminist, there seriously insulting and discrediting themselves.

* or occasionally, they're actually engaging in intelligent academic discussion...

@Aiive: That's a rough story. That's what the GG types don't aseem to get. By misogynist standards there is no way for a woman to be right. What's a girl to do?

The gist of my point with masculinity is. A failure is not someone who fucks up or messes up something. A failure is someone who quits trying. No one is going to hand you a success in life. You yourself have to go and take it. And of course, you are gonna fail. But then you try again, and again and again and again and just keep tying till the day you die.

So, instead of hugging and comforting the females on this issue, you should be telling them: "Waddaya wailing here, eh? Oh you want to do a video game. What are you waiting here then? Go and do it. If whatever you do, fails, you do it again and again until you succeed. Sitting and wailing is never going to help you. Accepting the state of failure is the true failure."

Persevering is not a masculine trait. It's a human trait that's been shown equally by men and women throughout history. I can respect people who don't give up, but that doesn't mean that I'm against people who do. If someone looks at their options and thinks "hey, this industry seems to discriminate against me, maybe I'll become an accountant instead so I can feed my family and have a pleasant life"... well, I'm sad they lost their dream but I understand their point of view. Is there something wrong with wanting the odds to be fair? If the system makes life tougher for you than other people, maybe "not quitting" is trying to change the system to be more fair.

I stretched some points too far, and you're doing the same. Nobody said the women are "wailing". They're saying "stop being a d***, cut the sh**!". And what on earth is wrong with comforting someone? People have bad things happen in their lives, sometimes a little understanding is good before they go back out into the fray.

Alright, I'll bite I guess. So when a woman gets constantly harassed and stalked just because she happens to be a woman in who works in tech/games, she should...what? ignore it and continue to be harassed, after all it's her fault for being, uh, female? She should be more masculine and just what? What does masculinity have to do with not giving up? Are you saying that femininity means giving up? That's some pretty macho bullshit.

Just go. Go away.

You clearly have no reason to be arguing over here. Since, your only way of responding to an argument, is to spin a strawman and attack that. You feeling good about yourself right now? Eh?

If you had payed attention, you would perhaps had seen that my responses didn't talk about stalking and other kind of harassment. I didn't even touch that subject. So, trying to wiggle my point into a irrelevant subject so that you could attack it, is just a weak move, m8.

These women have mostly *not* quit, despite facing dismissal, harassment, and intimidation so much larger than you have ever experienced that you are not even capable of imagining what it might actually be like. You and I, because we were lucky enough to be men, have about as much personal appreciation for what its like to be a scorned woman in technology as we do for what it might be like to have been born into a Bangladeshi slum. You have no idea what its like for people to be over-critical of your every failure, to dismiss or conspiratize your every success, and to devalue your every opinion, despite a lifetime of your best, most-earnest efforts. You have no idea what its like to have some misguided male badger you into taking over your work to "help" or "protect" you from what must be your own inherent, inevitable failure as not-a-man, and worse-still, to experience the expectation of offering up yourself as some kind of reward in payment, or to be the victim of intimidation, slander, violence--possibly the threat or actuality of rape--for taking a stand and saying no to their expectant gaze.

Aiive's story is not the exception to the rule, it is the 'rule'. I do encourage her to not give up -- to not negotiate with or give in to the the status quo -- but I will not minimize or normalize the discrimination she and other women face all the time. All women want, all anyone wants, is to have a fair shake and to start at the same point as everyone else.

Dude, you do not share the same thought-space as I do. Only I know what I know and if I really heat up that thought-space, I might even know, what I don't know. Do not discredit my point on the mere grounds that I am a dude. That's called sexism, you know. ;)

"[background=#f7f7f7]These women have mostly *not* quit, despite facing dismissal, harassment, and intimidation so much larger than you have ever experienced that you are not even capable of imagining what it might actually be like."[/background]

[background=#f7f7f7]Well, here's a query: "Why care?" "Why care, what other people think of you?" "Why care, when some emotionally immature people gargle crap to stroke their own egos?"[/background]

The people who use 'femninist' pejoratively are the kind of nutjobs leading the gamergate crusade.

People who use any kind of pejorative term can spawn a internet crusade. It isn't constrained to only feminism.

Feminism as a niche movement is over (just like gaming as a niche pastime is over). We're all feminists by default now -- if you believe in equality, then you're a feminist.

How about, "No".

You or no one else have no authority to tell that feminism has the monopoly on equality. Being a feminist also means that you accept the remaining package that comes with it, whatever that is.

I prefer to be judged by the merit of my own character, not by the association of some group.

The difference between an average feminist and someone like Sarkeesian is that she studies feminist issues as an academic pursuit.

Sarkeesian is no more than a con-artist.

Even me, with my limited capacity of articulation, could come up with better "research". She just knows how to tap into the magic of "crowd manipulation".

Persevering is not a masculine trait. It's a human trait that's been shown equally by men and women throughout history. I can respect people who don't give up, but that doesn't mean that I'm against people who do. If someone looks at their options and thinks "hey, this industry seems to discriminate against me, maybe I'll become an accountant instead so I can feed my family and have a pleasant life"... well, I'm sad they lost their dream but I understand their point of view. Is there something wrong with wanting the odds to be fair? If the system makes life tougher for you than other people, maybe "not quitting" is trying to change the system to be more fair.

But, why should the odds be fair?
You either are cut out for game industry or not. This applies to any field there is.

After this sentence I'm afraid, that I should tie up a potential opening for a hyperbole.

Attributing mental skills to one or the other gender is meaningless. It may hold some vague statistical value, but in the end the disparity of mental skills in each gender is too wide to use that as a tool to weed applicants in the industry.

If some company doesn't accept you on the grounds of being a woman, take yourself somewhere else, some other game company. You can even take pleasure in the thought, that a company that does such flawed gender based weeding protocols, is just making life harder for themselves. They are artifictially creating scarcity and through that doubling the potential costs, by eliminating half of the potential candidates.

I stretched some points too far, and you're doing the same. Nobody said the women are "wailing". They're saying "stop being a d***, cut the sh**!". And what on earth is wrong with comforting someone? People have bad things happen in their lives, sometimes a little understanding is good before they go back out into the fray.

Compassion and competitiveness have their places. Bussiness has this funny little principle: "Succeeds the one with the biggest balls". It is figurative of course, but it is the truth.

By expressing compassion to a female that is a "fuck-up" in the industry, we are only dealing with the symptoms, a damage control, neccesary, but redundant alone. You must address the causes that cause her to mess up in the first place. Tilt and fertilize her "balls" so that they grow bigger.

Just go. Go away.
You clearly have no reason to be arguing over here. ... You feeling good about yourself right now? Eh?
If you had payed attention...
Dude, you do not share the same thought-space as I do.

This thread is straying away from its excellent beginning. I don't want to have to close it.

I don't want to close it, either -- this is a hugely important topic. But we need to attack ideas, not people. WARNING - this discussion will be closed next time people get personal with each other.

Let me just observe one basic fact of history that every coder who underwent any form of formal learning should know. The world's first computer programmer was a woman*.

There are many aspects to this entire debate about what can be done to resolve the "industry misconception", indeed a large part of the problem as shown by the multiple answers and opinions in this thread clearly demonstrate that it is even difficult to establish a common ground on exactly what the misconception is, who is responsible and what should be done about it. Are there injustices/inequalities inherent in the industry?...clearly there are or this debate would not have had the traction or emotion that it has had so far. But how do you fix a set of issues that no one agrees on fully in an environment that now encompasses a lot of stakeholders outside of the industry including the so-called consumer i.e. game players. To be blunt I have no idea. I earlier touted the idea of working to change the immediate environment of yourself i.e. where you interact in real life, but that's as far as I can get in terms of solutions.

Discrimination is a pervasive reality. Everyone has traces of it in them and at one point or another everyone will experience it personally directed at them for whatever reason i.e. religion, sex, age, weight, intelligence and so on. The scale of the discrimination experienced will differ from individual to individual as well group to group but it does not escape the reality that discrimination happens and will continue to happen. So how do you fight it? Any way you can...except that is not really true.

Gah it's 4.24am in the morning and I have work in 2 hours. So am just going to dump this unfinished post in the thread in the event that I find it closed when I return to the site

* I choose to ignore the debates about the historical reality

I don't want to close it, either -- this is a hugely important topic. But we need to attack ideas, not people. WARNING - this discussion will be closed next time people get personal with each other.

Since I was the first to do it, could I offer an alternative. Instead of closing a topic about serious issues, why not ban or temp ban the user that is causing the disturbance rather than shut down the whole thread due to one or two misguided remarks. Yes I realize it means I'm saying I should be banned, but I was the first that did the inappropriate thing so it is only fair. Why punish everyone for one or two people's mistakes?

"These women have mostly *not* quit, despite facing dismissal, harassment, and intimidation so much larger than you have ever experienced that you are not even capable of imagining what it might actually be like."

Well, here's a query: "Why care?" "Why care, what other people think of you?" "Why care, when some emotionally immature people gargle crap to stroke their own egos?"

Because its not just about egos, either the aggressors' or the victim's. Its about a person being devalued on something other than the basis of their merits. The default position of women in tech, wrongly, is less than the position of men. A woman's opinion, more often than not, will be over scrutinized even when its correct; a man's opinion, more often than not, will stand over that woman's opinion even when he's incorrect. If the playing field were even I would have some sympathy for your views, but such as things are, I have none.

We're not talking about weathering a few infrequent acute incidents, women face those, plus the constant daily reminders of "their place" small and moderate that keeps deeper wounds top-of-mind. Imagine the toll that must take over time. Those women who "give up" as you say, don't do it because they can't keep up with the work, they do it because they become mentally and emotionally exhausted over dealing with the discrimination while simultaneously realizing that change won't come quickly enough.