Anyone who says that sexism doesn't exist is sexist. I think it's that simple, and engaging with most of them will usually be a waste of time because they are willfully ignorant. However, in the process of making your point, you may enlighten the ones you don't think there is sexism because no one has educated them yet. But I think all you'd need to do with those guys (or women) would be to send them here, rather than make new arguments for them..

I'll be sure to relay this information to my older sister, the federally-employed optical engineer. My sister who, for the third (fourth... maybe fifth?) time in her 2-decade career, had to transfer to a new project because of yet another creepy engineer stalking her... rather than having said creepy engineer removed from said project. The sister that's always had to bust her tail twice as hard as all the guys.

She'll be really happy to hear that sexism no longer exists.

I shall notify her, immediately. She is free. Free at last! Free at last!

=|

if you try to point out sexism, you are told that it doesn’t exist, that you are imagining things, that you are trying to create trouble and piss people off

Even more than that -- you get the "hysterical madwoman" paradigm thrown at you. You're "oversensitive" and you're "overreacting" to a situation. Men who bring up these issues, however, are generally not told that they're "imagining" things. These kinds of responses to women are sexist not just because they deny that sexism exists, but they deny it in a way that is sexist itself.

brick walls are a waste of time.

they crumble in obscurity, too, because those of us who notice them there in the way help each other get over and around and off to where we want to go. who wants to hang out with a stupid old brick wall?

Not only is there sexism but there are even women who perpetrate that sexism on other women!.

When I went to discuss my concerns about my job level with HR and when I might be eligible for a promotion, I not only received little more info than I already knew, but then the conversation was turned on me to indicate that I should consider wearing tops with higher necklines since I work around a lot of men!

I was stunned! I did manage to answer that whether or not I wore higher necklines, men would still look since there are a number of men who can't help looking at not just me, but other women as well.

I asked several individuals, men and women, whether my clothing on that day or any other was inappropriate, they all agreed that there was nothing wrong with what I wore or tend to wear.

But clearly I was having my cleavage used against me when I discussed my job level! Arggh.

Speaking as a straight white male in the tech industry, I have a few comments.

First, please try not to generalize too much based on what you see in Slashdot comments. They are typically the lowest common denominator. I read Slashdot because I am almost always interested in the subject matter they link to, but I loathe even glancing at the comments. It's the kind of place where it seems like you can actually feel your IQ dropping the longer you stay. Not even the highly scored comments are exempt from this (the same idiots doing the commenting are doing the scoring, and they vastly outnumber those who might be able to partially redeem the community). I suspect this is mostly the result of an ineffective scoring system combined with a sufficiently large community -- the wackjobs float to the top and are much more easily visible, and everybody else is just encouraged to ignore them and not bother commenting.

Second, I agree that brick walls are a waste of time, but plenty of people who are not brick walls could nonetheless use an education on the subject. As you pointed out, straight white male privelege means many people don't even see the inequality problems that many people face every day, but that doesn't mean every one of them is a brick wall. I know I've had to have things pointed out to me before, and it wasn't because I refused to believe they existed, but simply because I hadn't thought about it from the proper perspective yet. Being obvlivious to a problem doesn't necessaryily mean one wouldn't care about it (or believe in its existence).

I suspect that the dilemma isn't entirely over whether sexism exists in the tech industry, or anywhere else. (For the record, I'm quite sure there are sexist assholes in San Jose, as there are in San Antonio.)

Part of the problem, it seems, comes from people failing to focus on the right question: whether or not a certain incident, or behavior, or pattern, is due to sexism, or to something else. I agree that there's probably little of value to gain from arguing with people who deny that sexism exists. But I think that too often discussions over particular examples get turned into debates on that larger question, a response that is as unhelpful as it is off-the-point. In that sense, I think it is very important to remain engaged and open to debate, and not to try and build up a brick wall of one's own, behind which one won't be challenged.

As a "techie" myself (straight, married with children) I can say that "sexism" may not be as blatantly visible as in some other professions, but it's still there.

As evidenced by a question I got from a peer-interviewer for a position at a software house. She asked if it would be a problem for me taking direction and training from, or reporting to, a woman.

My answer was that if that were so I'd be shorting myself on a lot of jobs because of the number of professional women in the field of software design.

But, when you think about it, it's telling that she thought that she needed to ask that question (and, yes, she probably violated all sorts of workplace rules by asking)

First of all, sexual harassment and sexism are obviously two completely different problems. (I am sure that harassment is still a problem in many workplaces, as there are still many boorish men who don't get it on the planet.)

Just so you know, the brick wall thing cuts both ways. Personally I have found that it is mainly close-minded feminists who are unwilling to argue their points. They become so emotionally invested in their position that they are determined to ignore any evidence that undermines it.

The problem is that you can't prove that sexism is a widespread problem with anecdotal evidence. And you can't simply point to the "wage gap" as evidence either. As many people are discovering, women tend to put themselves (via their own personal choices) on less lucrative career paths, and look for work in less lucrative fields (less greedy?).

This site recently linked to an economist article based on an in depth British study that concluded just that.

The problem is with the feminist assumption that all things being equal men and women would have equal social and political power. This is simply not true, because women (on average) are less ambitious than men and more likely to choose to stay home with the kids.

Trygve: "Second, I agree that brick walls are a waste of time, but plenty of people who are not brick walls could nonetheless use an education on the subject."

People who are earnestly interested in learning something about sexism and feminism would be better off picking up one of the many fine books on the topic and reading it. Quite frankly, feminist activists have enough to do already without having to spend more time trying to educate the well-intentioned but clueless. There's lots on this topic that men can look up on their own time, and indeed they ought to be expected to look it up before they go around making confident pronouncements about the existence of sexism, or about where it is or isn't an active force. If they have not made the effort to make themselves less than ignorant about something before flapping their yap about it, then I can't see why it would be obligatory or even useful for feminists to treat them as anything more than a waste of time and energy, unless and until they actually do make some effort to learn the basics on their own time.

Personally I consider myself reasonably well read on the subject, as I enjoy dipping into the occasional feminist text. But many of them start from the same (wrong) assumptions.

I think Stephen Pinker has the best summary of feminism's current problems in his chapter on gender in The Blank Slate. (No one can call him uniformed.)

I am currently reading Female Chauvinist Pigs, I enjoy Naomi Wolf, Natalie Angier, and I really like Christina Hoff Summers.

I do not consider Boingboing a feminist blog.
Though purportedly hip and cool, it still puts forth a fair amount of the same sexist crap that can be found all over the Internet and pervading the culture.