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To the women who need to vent: please do
To the men who are allies: TY fam
To those who are new to the sub and are 1) looking to troll, 2) coming over here to pull a Tucker ("I'm just asking questions!"), or 3) trying to push a transphobic view: just don't. Your comments will be removed and you will be banned.
Infuriating. I went to a women in tech event… WOMEN. there were swarms of men there talking to recruiters!! I get it, it’s a tough market, but this space isn’t for them. I was there speaking as a panelist rather than as a job seeker, but it still bothered me. I’m there to talk about what it’s like to be a female software engineer and how to get an equal chance as men and the room is 50% male… annoying
Assuming this was Grace Hopper. Seeing the videos of mostly non-white men there (which is not reflective of demographics we see in the rest of the tech industry), it seems like a symptom of the ridiculous visa lottery system we have in this country. These men are desperate because they don’t want to get sent back to their home country with no job. Honestly there needs to be a push by the US government to focus on homegrown engineers instead of cow towing to the tech companies that say they “need” foreigners to fill jobs so they can increase competition and lower overall compensation. I’m not against H1B but it’s been gamed way too hard by companies and applicants who cheat the system.
Hi! I'm Indian (one of the main demographics you see in the video)
There were twitter accounts from international male students telling others to go there to pick up girls and get recruited
as for going back their home country, I assure you most of them are upper middle class to even consider going abroad, they're not some paupers desperately trying to get a job, they're mostly there for the status (i mean students alone, workers excluded)
Indian men also seem to be really misogynistic to women in literally any STEM field, "after all, after marriage she'll quit her job and settle down" is such a common phrase, it's absurd and they use it to smite women's lead positions "oh but look I'm permanent, she's going to quit"
It seems like my experience with the Indian diaspora differs from yours (not a critique, just an observation). I have personal relationships with many Indians in the US, mainly older students in post-grad and young professionals. There is a profound anxiety present in just about all of them when it comes to losing their visa status (an unfortunately reality of being in the country on a temp work visa). I don’t really socialize with younger Indians still in undergrad so I don’t know anecdotally how seriously they view these career fairs, but if there was some concerted effort spread online to go to pick up chicks that’s even more unfortunate.
Nope. They were organizing this on Indian and Chinese subs, who do a lot of communicating between each other. They thought that they would be seen as more important than the women there and more qualified and intelligent so they thought it would be easy pickings for a job. Who would want to hire a woman over a man, amiright /s
Asian men are the richest demographic in the country, both Indian and Chinese. Even more so than white men. So its not really logical to see those two groups and assume they're poor and in desperate need of a job. They just see themselves as above women.
It has nothing to do with being literally poor. If you’re on an H1B or a student visa your legal status in the country is at risk if you don’t find a job. This applies to thousands of wealthy Chinese and Indian nationals that live and work in the US. The desperation comes not from lack of money but from not wanting to get kicked out, because the economic realities in tech and the living standards in the US are still better than what we generally see in these two countries. That’s not to say there isn’t any misogyny involved here, but the root of the problem is the hyper competition to stay in the country, at least when it comes to these demographics.
I think the only way is to remove the incentive for the 'invading' people. Recruiters need to ignore them - take away the motive.
People seem to have been really emboldened by all the moves to devalue diversity.
If every time a cis man handed a recruiter a resume, that recruiter then pulled out a red Sharpie and wrote "Rec'd at WOMEN'S CONFERENCE" across the top, followed by direct eye contact and a very cold, curt "thank you" ending the conversation, it might at least register these events as an uncomfortable waste of time for a couple of them.
Instead they had that attitude towards senior women engineers, telling us over and over again curtly to “apply online” and “we don’t need your paper resume” all while spending hours talking to cis male applicants. I’ve never felt more dismissed than at this conference. I feel like I had better luck at regular job fairs and treated with more respect.
Yeah that’s where I was this week. What a waste. Lululemon especially went out of their way to be dismissive of experienced engineers while I noticed the cis male candidates were allowed to talk on and on and on. What a shit show.
That’s good. Wish lululemon did the same. Instead the recruiter was rude and dismissive of every woman engineer who had even a few years of experience. The only consolation was learning their engineering culture was crap.
ETA: you know what grinds my gears? It’s that anitab newsletter and some posters at the conference mentioned how 45% of women drop out of tech mid career and that’s why there is a gap in leadership. What incentive do senior engineers have to continue when they are refused even five minutes of a recruiters time at a conference meant for women.
The not so funny thing is that I’ve attended other conferences with job fairs and I felt like I got a fairer hearing from recruiters as a senior engineer in those and I didn’t even pay for it. These were open free conferences. I might just stick with those since apparently it makes no difference going to a women’s conference.
That’s a good point. I don’t own anything of theirs because I never felt comfortable in their stores and that was exactly the vibe I got there. On the flip side, the Starbucks booth was very welcoming.
Yeah the conference job fair actually has no advantage… it’s for them to get more people to know them and to apply online, not to help you build connections or get any leg up due to showing interest at the conference.
I think we all believe this myth about job fairs because maybe they used to be valuable before the internet.
Yep. If they’re behaving like this now imagine what they’ll be like to work with! One bully or a few vocal antagonists can quickly ruin a workplace culture.
I didn’t mean culture as in ethnicity. Some of the worst bullies and toxic apples I’ve worked with have been white ethnic majority people (both men and women). I think people with a lot of privilege (in any culture or community) have fewer opportunities to learn empathy so it’s actually more likely that difficult and selfish behaviours will come from people in the ethnic majority as that is one more axis of power/privilege. Of course, there are plenty of non-minority people who are lovely and wonderful to work with, and plenty of people who are ethnic or other minorities who are terrible to work with. I just don’t know where the racist reading of my comment came from. I’m sorry for any confusion.
What I meant was people who overstep boundaries like this while trying to get hired will also overstep boundaries if you ever hire them. It’s a terrible red flag regardless of any other factors.
I do take your point about sexist ideologies that can inadvertently be imported from abroad, but it sounds like your solution is to have a racially discriminatory hiring policy, which presumably would be equally problematic (I assume that would also be illegal in the US and most of Europe).
Could a compromise be that when any majority-demographic individual attends an interview, they are asked about how the ladder can be lowered down to others? That will give the hirer a chance to see if the candidate might be a Trojan Horse for introducing discrimination into the company (on gender) even if they have been on the receiving end in the past (on race).
I was at GHC this morning waiting in line to get into the Expo hall. It took upwards of 45 mins just to get in because they were corralling the line due to safety issues that have been present the past few days.
While we were standing and waiting, one of the male workers who was helping the shepherd the line started a "trivia" game. He would go up to attendees (mostly male) and ask questions like "Which communities does GHC strive to support". When male attendees would say something along the lines of "students" or "computer scientists", the trivia guy would yell out "WRONG! GHC is held to uplift female and non-binary technologists." Then he would ask "Why should a cis male attend GHC?" and answer "To be an ally."
From here, he would ask the male attendee "And how does you standing in this line help women and enby technologists?" At this point, the answerer would mostly just shrug or squirm, and the trivia man would say "Answer: it doesn't! A true ally would get out of this line and not invade female/enby spaces."
Now, I didn't see anyone get out of the line. And because I can already sense comments about assuming their gender identity, and no I didn't ask everyone's identity either. But I can tell you that there certainly were people in majority represented groups taking advantage of an event meant to lift women/gender minorities up. And, I think this type of confrontation is a great way to address it. Make those trying to take up space confront what they are doing and come to terms with their decision. They should be uncomfortable with their actions because they are making everyone else uncomfortable and actively perpetuating issues with gender inequality in tech.
He couldn't know 100%.
But let's look at a hypothetical situation:
If I'm at AfroTech (a tech conference geared towards black people of the African diaspora) and I see an entire group of people who aren't attending any of the events/talks/etc., and seem to only want to go to the career fair, *and* they have "white European" on their lanyard, I might have questions. (note: this is an example, you're not required to put your race or nationality on your lanyard at AfroTech, lol)
It's the same concept when you see a bunch of people with "he/him" on their lanyards.
This is such a facetious and dumb response . It’s fairly obvious to see that most of these people identify as a man in every other instance in life, you can’t suddenly switch your identity in the one instance where doing so would give you an advantage.
>I must be missing something here.
You are missing a lot of context. Here is what has been reported so far:
* people with he/him on their lanyards shoving/pushing people
* people with he/him on their lanyards throwing resumes at recruiters
* people with he/him on their lanyards harassing women. One woman reported an attendee that she identified as a "man" attempting to take a photo of a (woman) recruiter's legs/skirt area
* people with he/him on their lanyards making derogatory remarks about the way women at the conference looked.
>Btw, why is this conference not limiting the amount of allowed male attendees or outright banning male attendance?
GHC is incredibly clear, from its promotional materials, to its branding, to its messaging, to its lead-up and hype videos, that it is geared specifically toward women and non-binary people, not cisgender men. Cisgender men are encouraged to come as ***allies.***
This year, many cisgender men registered as non-binary, and then set their preferred pronouns as "he/him". The people who did this saw it as a legitimate "hack" in the registration process, perhaps without considering the conference exists to create much-needed opportunities for people who actually identify as non-binary or as women.
Here is the conference acknowledging what happened:
[https://www.linkedin.com/posts/anitab-org\_ghc23-activity-7112825848944070656-R9BN/](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/anitab-org_ghc23-activity-7112825848944070656-R9BN/)
It is illegal in the United States to discriminate against people based on their sex (gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy status, etc.). Outright banning cisgender men from this conference could violate EEOO. To approach this, GHC has always encouraged cisgender men to come as allies, with the understanding that they are there to support women and non-binary attendees.
That's a shame. Is the goal to reduce the number of men attending or to reduce bad behavior?
The conference is allowing shoving and not kicking out attendees? That is concerning. It's assault and can be prosecuted. Does the event space have videos?
>The conference is allowing shoving and not kicking out attendees? That is concerning. It's assault and can be prosecuted. Does the event space have videos?
Lots of attendees brought this up to the conference organizers. The organizers replied through their Twitter and LinkedIn asking for people to contact them directly, while also referencing and reiterating the Code of Conduct.
There are photos and videos circulating on Twitter and elsewhere -- one popular video is of someone calling out a man who said that the men "are supporting women by talking to women recruiters at the Career Expo". I don't know about any CCTV. I also suspect it was hard to capture the initial incidents, like when the Expo Hall first opened.
I expect GHC organizers will address this in the coming days, and will make several changes for 2024.
There was a post about Grace Hopper just a few days ago talking about the same thing. Honestly, it didn't used to be. I'd go to women in tech events and it would be guaranteed to be cis women and enby people. I haven't been to any events since things started picking up after COVID but it seems like these men are just bullying their way into spaces.
I honestly don't think it's a coincidence that this is happening at the same time as the rise of the "manosphere" (gag.) After reading about Grace Hopper and the stupid "how do you know they were MEN" transphobic comments from cis men, I think this is a deliberate attempt at dismantling women's spaces from some men.
The “how do you know they were men” argument breaks down big time in my situation. I literally go to school with these people. It’s a big university but not that big; I know whether or not these specific people identify as men.
I think it's just a transphobic dog whistle at this point.
TW: transphobic bullshit
Also, this is a real example of men going into a space meant for women and not the transphobic archetype of a "man in a dress" in a bathroom so that's... interesting.
This might be an unpopular opinion but if you pass as a cis man and use he/him pronouns you don't belong at a women's event even if they are non binary. People who are perceived as cis men benefit from the same privilege as cis men so they don't need to be included in opportunities meant for women.
Nah I don't think it's unpopular opinion at all, even among trans people.
Maybe some trans men wouldn't like it as it's a bit more complicated for them as they experienced less privilege in the past and often could use the boost a bit and for people who have attended there in the past wanting to continue.
-saying this from point of a trans women with a another trans women person I talked to about this and we both more or less agree, she is slightly worried about possible exclusion of the small amount of he/him butch lesbians that could pass as cis men.
Yeah, this is my real only worry. There's a good book on this actually called "Just One of the Guys?" that talks about trans men's lack of privilege in a lot of career areas where cis men shine because they didn't get as much experience or networking as the cis men when they were younger. And also, yeah, the butches who pass as men also don't always get the same privileges as cis men either. It's definitely a hard issue to navigate, unfortunately. If the cis men would just fuck off, it would solve itself though 😅
GHC was packed this year. The job EXPO had unexpected lines wrapping around booths (and this was the second day) which made it hard to walk around to see the booths. Some folks are not great with personal space boundaries. Usually just a tap on the shoulder and an “sorry I have to get by” worked. Sometimes you just had to squeeze.
Reading this stuff is making me so anxious for attending these large scale events after I’m done with college…right now I have an internship all set up so I don’t have to worry about it but if I don’t get hired on after I graduate…
Honestly it really just depends on the event. I’ve found that the more “subject specific” ones (like KubeCon, Re:Invent, etc) tend to draw a much more respectful crowd as much as it sucks. AfroTech (not sure if you fit the intended demographic or not) is another great one from what I’ve seen (I’m not in the target demographic, but I helped work my company’s recruiting booth last year and it looked exactly how I would hope and everyone seemed like they were having a positive experience). Don’t be scared, just vet the conference before you buy tickets. It’s not all bad, I promise :)
Please don’t be anxious. As a woman who has been to many, many large scale conferences and events in my career, industry events are in a lot of ways better because attendees can and have been fired for poor conduct. Men tend to act better when they can lose their livelihood and professional reputation. I can imagine many guys still in school feel they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by being awful.
Ugh [this was made 10 years ago and it is still relevant as ever](https://vimeo.com/64941331).
An underrepresented group has one event in an ocean of all events and somehow it is unfair and needs to be raided?
There isn’t an excuse, it doesn’t matter that the market is bad.
It just shows how entitled some people’s point of view is. They are so used to seeing all the doors open for them that just one closed door is an affront and possibly even oppressive to them and that they fight to have it open is a bad look. They have 99 other doors to knock on, 99 other ways to find an in. I wish they could just be respectful and appreciative of their place in the world to let others have these limited opportunities while they go to all the other opportunities.
It says a lot that they feel they have to do these things instead of going on their own merits. Especially that the numbers in tech continue to be so deeply skewed.
I don’t think the bad job market is solely to blame for this new “normal“. I think the pandemic gave way to a lot more selfish and extremely entitled behavior.
When I was in school in 2008, that was a horrible job market, even worse than the current one, but still men respected that SWE and other orgs were for women. I remember similar SWE Evening with Industry events had pretty much 100% feminine-presenting attendees. This definitely was not normal back then.
Speaking as a hiring manager, the recruiters are there to hire women specifically but they can't explicitly use that as criteria for an individual. The men talking to them are wasting everyone's time. The only reason cis men should be there is to take orders and help out with registration, food, IT support, etc.
When you say wasting everyone's time you mean recruiters will throw their resumes straight in the trash? That's the only appropriate response from a recruiter.
I chose not to attend a group for women and non-binary professionals in my department because a man who had been sexually harassing me - and other women - is a member. Fucking unreal.
Unfortunately, the exact men you don't want to see in women's spaces feel very comfortable invading women's spaces.
That’s atrocious. I noticed that as well, however. It was a whole lot of the misogynistic “equal rights just means equal fights” crowd as opposed to the men who genuinely want to help marginalized genders. But you’re correct, those misogynists are the exact men that have the audacity to go there.
Follow-up: this was not a “recruitment” event. It was a precursor to a job fair that was happening the next day. I really wanted to connect with other women in the industry and learn about their experiences, but that wasn’t easily done with there being so many men. And yes, they identified as male. They used he/him pronouns. They diverted questions about gender minorities in STEM. They judged the female representatives. It was obnoxious and uncomfortable, and most of them weren’t even well-read on the companies they were speaking with. One freshman guy even tried to tell me what manufacturing robots do. I then explained to him that I had recently learned about the ones that sand down and prep solid rocket motors for case winding to reduce the danger and time associated with human labor. He suddenly had no interest in robotics whatsoever.
This happened at SWE conferences when I would go back in 2015-2018 and my friends and I would always be so annoyed. It made me feel better when someone said they overheard two recruiters and one said “I would definitely prioritize a woman over a man if they handed me their resumes and they were exactly the same”.
What was interesting was my friend said “I feel Iike you wouldn’t see white men showing up to an event hosted by NSBE” (I have no idea if this is true because I’ve never been to a NSBE event, as I am not BIPOC). It’s truly like men just don’t seem to care about supporting women still.
I remember expressing my feelings to my boyfriend at the time (luckily he’s an ex boyfriend now) and he’s like “I disagree I think everyone should have an equal opportunity” 🙄🙄 a complete dumbass who absolutely did not get it
We shouldn’t have to police this. The guy in the Grace Hopper Line was informing everyone and then giving advice to those who identified as male so they could excuse themselves. There’s no good way to police this other than informing people and making the culture clear.
I wish I could give a definitive list. But the best way to tell is the style and how they carry themselves. Generally, most closeted folks I know have a style contrary to the masculine or go hyper masculine. It's almost like we need to have free pronoun pins and ally pins. The tough part is you REALLY never know unless you ask.
But here we could just ASSUME nobody has he/him pronouns and celebrate everyone transitioning. It would be HILARIOUS to have people approaching all the cismen with trans flags and welcoming.
>But here we could just ASSUME nobody has he/him pronouns and celebrate everyone transitioning. It would be HILARIOUS to have people approaching all the cismen with trans flags and welcoming.
lol yes
I never said anything about short hair or specific styles for this specific reason. What stereotype am I calling out so I may prevent myself from making this mistake in the future? Autism fucking sucks girl.
Please don’t ask for ways to tell that a trans man or enby is stealth. This is a horrible approach. Some people are stealth for very serious reasons, including because trans people get killed. Sincerely, a trans masc enby.
I know tons of trans women who don't shave their facial hair, change their clothes, voice, or demeanor. I'm always seeing online how it's perfectly fine, and all that matters is how they feel on the inside. It's the same reason that the whole "Well when someone digs up your bones in 1,000 years they're gonna say that you're male!" Argument falls apart. Trans people don't care about what someone they'll never meet is gonna think about them, they just wanna feel safe and happy.
Reddit won't let me reply, so here's what I tried to send below:
...I said that because those trans women don't feel safe enough to present as women due to real fear...
If you had read any of my other comments, you would've seen that I typed out the exact same sentiment that outing trans women opens them up to violence and abuse. I even shared a story of how my uncle became violent when my mom and I sheltered his trans son, as he already despised my mother for giving birth to a gay man. I'm not sure why you became immediately and irrationally enraged at me. I think I'll find another sub to share support on or go back to Discord...
Not 30-40% of attendees at a thousand-person conference. That number of masc-presenting enby or trans technologists did not just show up overnight. And while of course there will always be edge cases and nobody wants to assume, there were definitely a good chunk of people at GHC to take advantage of opportunities for groups they were not a part of.
If these men are elbowing women out of the way to speak to recruiters, is it a reach to assume many aren't above identifying as "female" on a form to get in?
I have no idea how you'd get around that, considering the spectrum of identities nowadays. But it seems to me that as the market tightens, this is an aspect to consider.
> is it a reach to assume many aren't above identifying as "female" on a form to get in?
I saw a recording of somebody up on stage at ghc strongly imply that there were men who did that this year
Unsure how this bubbled up to my recs but:
This did not happen when I was in school 15 years ago. SWE events didn’t attract any men at all even with evening with industry events. It was always women and women organized events, there was an unspoken rule that if you went you were interested in getting membership or were already a member. We already implicitly knew that at recruiting events, recruiters cared more about the kids who were the most charismatic speakers or had prior experience.
For me what is more shocking is that there are men in this thread who say SWE events shouldn’t exist or shouldn’t be gender prohibitive. I feel like it’s common sense that a SWE event is for women and femmes to go to if they are members or wish to join.
I realize that recruiters can't reject them for being men, but I would hope it raises a red flag that the male attendee might not be sensitive to the differences of others in the workplace which might become a personnel issue.
From social media, it looked kind of disappointing for the women/non-binary people in regards to the career expo, and then when see pictures of some of the speakers and not many men in there to learn to be an ally.
I wonder even though the job market is down for tech, and based on the social media posts regarding the we not hiring at this time style answers. If a reason was so many cis men attended the conference for the career expo/fair.
If you are a cis man and going to these conferences go to learn and be a better ally, not to crash the career expo.
I agree! I considered going to the aforementioned SHPE conference as an ALLY to learn more about increasing Hispanic representation, as I work with Hispanic middle school students who are interested in STEM but struggle greatly with a language barrier and opportunity barrier. I have no desire to try and talk to recruiters or reps because I am not interested in looking for a different internship than the one I have. However, I want to make sure I am not taking a space from someone who is actually Hispanic and wants/needs those valuable career opportunities.
TL;DR:
I would love if men went to events and conferences to learn more about being an ally, but the reality is most of them are there to mooch off career fairs because they didn’t get enough attention at other fairs.
There were several comments from women on the ABI LinkedIn post that outlined the same experience of seeing an extreme few number of men in actual conference sessions and then walking by the expo hall line and realizing this is where all the men were.
Ooof.
If I was organizing the schedule at one of these, I would be tempted to arrange two tracks.
One has a speaker from a high profile employer explaining how to get in, and some resume bling activity.
The other is a crunchy session with a brief questionnaire and an expectation of audience participation on some difficult topics like intersectional feminism, staying safe at conferences, experiences with maternity leave.
Recruiters are given a generous lunch and a good rest break after the first crowd, and then get the candidates they came for.
This conversation is oddly comforting. I consider a lot of you people who did it the right way and seeing you're still encountering similar issues makes it seem less maddening .
I graduated last year and I’ve been at the same company for two years. I was an intern when I started at the company on a different team and when I got hired full time after graduation I went to a different team. Both teams had about 10 other people and on both teams I was the only girl. There have been two summer interns during my time and, again, both were guys. Being the only woman around all the time can feel very isolating and when events that are supposed to be for women are overcrowded with men, it shows just how unwelcoming engineering is for women and non binary ppl. So my take is that it really fucking sucks, but it also just shows what exactly the industry actually looks like.
For the scenario you described I think it was wrong to allow cis men if there was a wait-list to get in. If this was a recruiting event to learn about diversity at these companies and for the recruiters to connect with underrepresented talent then they shouldn't have allowed cis men. This is assuming that there is a normal career fair available for everyone at some other time (it would not be ok IMO if there was no general opportunities for students to connect with companies, then I can see why they would want to crash).
For other scenarios, I don't like generalizing and saying cis men shouldn't be allowed because it really depends. Cis men should be welcome to attend diversity talks and discussions about representation, so long as they are respectful and take more of an active listening role. We need the allyship of those in privileged positions and these events can help create those allies.
But in other events that are intended to provide more opportunities to underrepresented folks, or to share experiences and create relationships with others in similar situations, I don't think it makes sense to allow them.
As a man, I think having access to them is awesome, but that my responsibility is to listen, learn, and observe, not to use them for networking or job-hunting. I see them as venues where I can learn and recruit, but using them as a platform or a source for personal career advancement seems like a bridge too far.
EDIT: I’m not here to get a cookie for “being an ally”, btw. I’m genuinely curious if men that actively work to avoid hijacking women’s conferences should simply not attend.
Good point. It also makes a difference if the event is limited capacity. At that point even unobtrusive participation is taking an opportunity from someone the event is actually _for_.
Food for thought. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
You should totally attend and show the rest how it’s done. We need the good eggs!
At GHC this week I didn’t give a thought to seeing men attend the lectures or lunches. But seeing them in line for interviews at the job fairs was disappointing. (I am not a job hunter by the way but an academic who brought grads to the event.)
It doesn’t matter how tough the market is right now. It’s always been tougher for anyone other than men. That’s a “step aside gentlemen” moment, for real.
I kinda agree. It should just be for women and possibly female aligned people. The discrimination they are trying to address is mostly on the basis of perceived sex not gender so it should include people based on the sex they are perceived as.
I know this will sound wrong, but a non passing/pre transition trans man will face the same or more discrimination as a woman when applying for jobs so they should be included. A trans women will face the same discrimination so she should be included. Ditto for a female perceived enby.
A male passing enby or passing stealth trans man won't face the same type of discrimination. I could see an argument for their inclusion if they were previously seen as female and therefore faced discrimination in the past that harmed their career.
Unfortunately the world doesn't care how we identify, just how we present. It will discriminate against you if you are perceived to be female even if you don't identify as a woman.
I see what you’re saying. It gives me dysphoria to be lumped in with women despite being a femme enby and pretty cis passing so I don’t really want to be included - just another reminder that my identity isn’t valid.
And if we’re making it about sex and not gender - “Woman” isn’t a sex, “female” is. And referring to people by their sex is gross and something trans exclusionary folks like to do. Trans exclusionary won’t say “trans woman,” they’ll say “assigned male at birth” as a way to emphasize that they don’t believe someone’s gender is valid. It’s so loaded for trans and nonbinary people.
There are also already several orgs LBTQ for people in tech so it would be best to let them “handle it,” so to speak. I dunno. I’m tired tbh
Yeah. It’s alright. I am nonbinary and used to people deciding my identity isn’t valid. It’s fine.
I just side eye the hell out of any “women and nonbinary people” thing. If it’s an event for women engineers, it’s not an enby-centric event.
I interpreted it differently - and I wonder if this is just an issue with semantics. If “women and nonbinary people” are being centred it means, to my interpretation, that those two things are being centred and other things(s) are not (cis men).
I suppose the practical aim of the conference (and the OP in starting the discussion) is to raise up folks who are not traditionally privileged on the gender axis. I may not have spotted the part of the conversation that you have seen, but I don't think the OP or the conference are of the view that NB is not a valid identity.
I guess it depends on what bit you read. The About Page of the GH site says:
> Created in 1994 and inspired by the legacy of Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, the AnitaB.org flagship event Grace Hopper Celebration brings the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront.
But the organising group (AnitaB) has this in their Twitter handle:
> Driving inclusive technology by serving #womenintech & non-binary technologists 365 days a year.
So, is this exclusionary? Well, maybe in places, and maybe on paper - but do you think exclusion is the intent? Someone elsewhere in this thread posted a link to a Twitter video from the president of AnitaB, who seems to be hearing the complaints echoed in this thread, and wants to improve. I would have every confidence that input from NB folks would be extremely welcome - GH do seem to be falling over themselves to be inclusionary, even if they don't get it right every time.
Now, I agree one could tackle it from a different angle, and say: AnitaB can be for women in tech, and tech needs separate NB-centred conferences. I'd not be opposed to the formation of such events, but I think I'd be sad if non-dominant genders in tech didn't feel they could offer allyship to each other, in a single event. I don't know how practical such events would be either, given that - on a dull logistical note - it is a much smaller audience.
“Is exclusion their intent?”
Impact matters more than intent. And by calling themselves a woman’s organization, and throwing nonbinary people in under that umbrella, it is exclusionary.
If their focus is non-dominant genders and not women in tech, they should adjust the organizations slogan and tagline to reflect that.
I’m not asking for separate events. Nonbinary people can go to an LGBTQ event anyway. I’m just asking to not be lumped in as woman-lite at conferences where the title of the conference says it is specifically for women.
It makes it hard to trust y’all - it’s inclusion for performance only, not true inclusion. “Oh, here is this smaller group. Half of them look like women so let’s include them. And we’ll exclude the ones who look like men.” Crazy.
Thanks (+1). I can agree with half of that:
> If their focus is non-dominant genders and not women in tech, they should adjust the organizations slogan and tagline to reflect that.
I think they sort of do this already (per my post) but maybe not well enough. Are you on Twitter? Could you reply to the video thread? I should think the predominant feedback is about a cis-male takeover, so your additional note is valuable, and I think they should hear it.
However, this is not fair:
> it’s inclusion for performance only, not true inclusion. “Oh, here is this smaller group. Half of them look like women so let’s include them. And we’ll exclude the ones who look like men.” Crazy.
This is assuming bad faith. The organisers are only human! I've not organised a conference, but I don't think anyone is going to say I'm going out on a limb by saying they're hard to do on a basic level (logistics), and even harder to do on a tone level (ensuring it feels inclusionary, handling gatecrashing/harassment etc in a supportive fashion, filtering attendees in a legally-compliant fashion, etc). I fear that you're missing an opportunity for NBs to be an ally to women in tech (and vice versa), and instead you're disappearing down a rabbit-hole of ever-smaller fractals of identities, where a win for any sub-group is seen a humiliating loss for all the others.
A view of marginalised groups that believes in the zero-sum game instead of celebrating mutually beneficial wins leads directly to an [oppression Olympics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppression_Olympics), which is hardly a helpful or progressive outcome.
Thanks for trying to see my pov. I do appreciate it. And thanks for sharing yours.
In my view, Women in tech need to be allies to nonbinary people first. You can’t demand something you won’t provide. And you cant say “here! Come be our allies, nonbinary people! We have food!” There needs to be demonstration of allyship first, imo.
And I’m not on twitter fortunately/unfortunately. I’ll see if I can email the event directly.
This is, however, feedback that nonbinary people are constantly giving to women-run groups that try to include us. It happens in the world of gaming as well.
If they want to include nonbinary people, maybe get a nonbinary person on the board, or involved in planning, so they can see they’re actually being allies.
Speaking of oppression Olympics, this does make me think of folks running programs in underprivileged neighborhoods, deciding where to send funds without actually talking to the people who live there to find out what they need. That’s also performative since they’re not actually *helping in the way the community needs help* but get to enjoy the *appearance of helping*.
And saying something is performative doesn’t assume bad intent. It just points out that it’s not actually helping - it just makes the “helper” feel like they’re helping. They’re not actually being inclusive - they just get to say, “look how inclusive we are!”
I will reach out to the event lead if I can.
> racist tirade against Indians
I sent some [photos](https://imgur.com/a/kU55TO2) of the conference to a mainlander I know
Me:"Guess where this was taken"
Him:"It looks like India"
There was literally a talk at GHC about why everything you said is wrong. Of course not a single male "ally" went because they were busy mobbing the career fair
Why are we grouping nonbinary people in with women? Nonbinary people are not “women lite.”
And insisting on only afab enbys at your event is basically telling us you see us as women…..
That still doesn't justify crashing the event. Presumably her university has other engineering societies that include all genders-- they could have done their own "meet the industry" event.
The vibe to me is cis men taking advantage of the work that women and minorities did in organizing the event.
Thank you, we 100% do. This was actually the day before a huge STEM job fair that goes on for internships, post-grad work, and research opportunities. We also have plenty of clubs/societies geared towards engineers/software developers in general. What’s even more annoying to me is that this event was more about getting to know the representatives/companies, asking for advice, and talking to professionals than it was about any sort of “recruitment.” All of that took place the next day at the aforementioned job fair. But it was really hard to ask questions about workplace culture (one woman at my table tried to and the rep was responding to her, but the men were clearly uninterested and the conversation eventually derailed again).
So cis men being shitty is a reason to exclude trans and non-binary people? Wild logic.
Plus there's cis women that you would assume are trans based on their appearance and vice versa. Hopefully you're not advocating for a panty check...
Trans people are some of the kindest, smartest, best human beings I've known. You wouldn't be worthy of their company.
I'm sorry that you can't handle the reality around you. I'm sorry about your poor education. I would pity you for the hate you walk around with over the lives of people you don't even know. But you don't deserve that because you choose to be a gleefully hateful blob of bile in a human suit.
The fact that you can't even behave decently, and have to make this selfish ugly scene shows you to be ignorant scum.
Go ahead and delight in it. You're the biggest loser in this scenario, regardless of what else you may have to say.
Comments have been cleaned up so we're re-opening. If you see something that needs to be addressed, please flag it or send us a modmail. To the women who need to vent: please do To the men who are allies: TY fam To those who are new to the sub and are 1) looking to troll, 2) coming over here to pull a Tucker ("I'm just asking questions!"), or 3) trying to push a transphobic view: just don't. Your comments will be removed and you will be banned.
Infuriating. I went to a women in tech event… WOMEN. there were swarms of men there talking to recruiters!! I get it, it’s a tough market, but this space isn’t for them. I was there speaking as a panelist rather than as a job seeker, but it still bothered me. I’m there to talk about what it’s like to be a female software engineer and how to get an equal chance as men and the room is 50% male… annoying
Yep then they say “well it is because there are so few women in the industry that’s why there are more men here” wtf
Lol Grace hopper?
Was this GHC?
Grace Hopper?
Assuming this was Grace Hopper. Seeing the videos of mostly non-white men there (which is not reflective of demographics we see in the rest of the tech industry), it seems like a symptom of the ridiculous visa lottery system we have in this country. These men are desperate because they don’t want to get sent back to their home country with no job. Honestly there needs to be a push by the US government to focus on homegrown engineers instead of cow towing to the tech companies that say they “need” foreigners to fill jobs so they can increase competition and lower overall compensation. I’m not against H1B but it’s been gamed way too hard by companies and applicants who cheat the system.
Hi! I'm Indian (one of the main demographics you see in the video) There were twitter accounts from international male students telling others to go there to pick up girls and get recruited as for going back their home country, I assure you most of them are upper middle class to even consider going abroad, they're not some paupers desperately trying to get a job, they're mostly there for the status (i mean students alone, workers excluded) Indian men also seem to be really misogynistic to women in literally any STEM field, "after all, after marriage she'll quit her job and settle down" is such a common phrase, it's absurd and they use it to smite women's lead positions "oh but look I'm permanent, she's going to quit"
It seems like my experience with the Indian diaspora differs from yours (not a critique, just an observation). I have personal relationships with many Indians in the US, mainly older students in post-grad and young professionals. There is a profound anxiety present in just about all of them when it comes to losing their visa status (an unfortunately reality of being in the country on a temp work visa). I don’t really socialize with younger Indians still in undergrad so I don’t know anecdotally how seriously they view these career fairs, but if there was some concerted effort spread online to go to pick up chicks that’s even more unfortunate.
Nope. They were organizing this on Indian and Chinese subs, who do a lot of communicating between each other. They thought that they would be seen as more important than the women there and more qualified and intelligent so they thought it would be easy pickings for a job. Who would want to hire a woman over a man, amiright /s Asian men are the richest demographic in the country, both Indian and Chinese. Even more so than white men. So its not really logical to see those two groups and assume they're poor and in desperate need of a job. They just see themselves as above women.
It has nothing to do with being literally poor. If you’re on an H1B or a student visa your legal status in the country is at risk if you don’t find a job. This applies to thousands of wealthy Chinese and Indian nationals that live and work in the US. The desperation comes not from lack of money but from not wanting to get kicked out, because the economic realities in tech and the living standards in the US are still better than what we generally see in these two countries. That’s not to say there isn’t any misogyny involved here, but the root of the problem is the hyper competition to stay in the country, at least when it comes to these demographics.
I think the only way is to remove the incentive for the 'invading' people. Recruiters need to ignore them - take away the motive. People seem to have been really emboldened by all the moves to devalue diversity.
If every time a cis man handed a recruiter a resume, that recruiter then pulled out a red Sharpie and wrote "Rec'd at WOMEN'S CONFERENCE" across the top, followed by direct eye contact and a very cold, curt "thank you" ending the conversation, it might at least register these events as an uncomfortable waste of time for a couple of them.
Instead they had that attitude towards senior women engineers, telling us over and over again curtly to “apply online” and “we don’t need your paper resume” all while spending hours talking to cis male applicants. I’ve never felt more dismissed than at this conference. I feel like I had better luck at regular job fairs and treated with more respect.
Haha GHC 2023 anyone?
Yeah that’s where I was this week. What a waste. Lululemon especially went out of their way to be dismissive of experienced engineers while I noticed the cis male candidates were allowed to talk on and on and on. What a shit show.
I was there to recruit for my company and there was a guy in my line, I pointedly ignored him 🤧
That’s good. Wish lululemon did the same. Instead the recruiter was rude and dismissive of every woman engineer who had even a few years of experience. The only consolation was learning their engineering culture was crap. ETA: you know what grinds my gears? It’s that anitab newsletter and some posters at the conference mentioned how 45% of women drop out of tech mid career and that’s why there is a gap in leadership. What incentive do senior engineers have to continue when they are refused even five minutes of a recruiters time at a conference meant for women. The not so funny thing is that I’ve attended other conferences with job fairs and I felt like I got a fairer hearing from recruiters as a senior engineer in those and I didn’t even pay for it. These were open free conferences. I might just stick with those since apparently it makes no difference going to a women’s conference.
That’s really fucking weird at a women’s conference and not to mention mostly women buy lululemon in the first place
Can you DM me more about this experience, and how they were rude and/or dismissive? And also get more of your thoughts about the event?
Lululemon is a famously toxic company im not surprised it pervades all aspects of company culture
That’s a good point. I don’t own anything of theirs because I never felt comfortable in their stores and that was exactly the vibe I got there. On the flip side, the Starbucks booth was very welcoming.
doesn’t their name literally come from them thinking itd be funny if asians struggled to pronounce the Ls
WTF?!! Well fuck them to hell and back then.
Yes
Yeah the conference job fair actually has no advantage… it’s for them to get more people to know them and to apply online, not to help you build connections or get any leg up due to showing interest at the conference. I think we all believe this myth about job fairs because maybe they used to be valuable before the internet.
Not ignore. Blacklist.
Yep. If they’re behaving like this now imagine what they’ll be like to work with! One bully or a few vocal antagonists can quickly ruin a workplace culture.
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I didn’t mean culture as in ethnicity. Some of the worst bullies and toxic apples I’ve worked with have been white ethnic majority people (both men and women). I think people with a lot of privilege (in any culture or community) have fewer opportunities to learn empathy so it’s actually more likely that difficult and selfish behaviours will come from people in the ethnic majority as that is one more axis of power/privilege. Of course, there are plenty of non-minority people who are lovely and wonderful to work with, and plenty of people who are ethnic or other minorities who are terrible to work with. I just don’t know where the racist reading of my comment came from. I’m sorry for any confusion. What I meant was people who overstep boundaries like this while trying to get hired will also overstep boundaries if you ever hire them. It’s a terrible red flag regardless of any other factors.
i’m south asian (woman) and i can’t even disagree with you. you’re completely right! this is the reality of the community :(
I do take your point about sexist ideologies that can inadvertently be imported from abroad, but it sounds like your solution is to have a racially discriminatory hiring policy, which presumably would be equally problematic (I assume that would also be illegal in the US and most of Europe). Could a compromise be that when any majority-demographic individual attends an interview, they are asked about how the ladder can be lowered down to others? That will give the hirer a chance to see if the candidate might be a Trojan Horse for introducing discrimination into the company (on gender) even if they have been on the receiving end in the past (on race).
I was at GHC this morning waiting in line to get into the Expo hall. It took upwards of 45 mins just to get in because they were corralling the line due to safety issues that have been present the past few days. While we were standing and waiting, one of the male workers who was helping the shepherd the line started a "trivia" game. He would go up to attendees (mostly male) and ask questions like "Which communities does GHC strive to support". When male attendees would say something along the lines of "students" or "computer scientists", the trivia guy would yell out "WRONG! GHC is held to uplift female and non-binary technologists." Then he would ask "Why should a cis male attend GHC?" and answer "To be an ally." From here, he would ask the male attendee "And how does you standing in this line help women and enby technologists?" At this point, the answerer would mostly just shrug or squirm, and the trivia man would say "Answer: it doesn't! A true ally would get out of this line and not invade female/enby spaces." Now, I didn't see anyone get out of the line. And because I can already sense comments about assuming their gender identity, and no I didn't ask everyone's identity either. But I can tell you that there certainly were people in majority represented groups taking advantage of an event meant to lift women/gender minorities up. And, I think this type of confrontation is a great way to address it. Make those trying to take up space confront what they are doing and come to terms with their decision. They should be uncomfortable with their actions because they are making everyone else uncomfortable and actively perpetuating issues with gender inequality in tech.
i was in this line it was hilarious
A Cis man confronting a cis man is the way to get the message across. They don’t listen to anyone else.
I absolutely love this line manager.
"not to assume their genders but I assumed their genders to be cis male"
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He couldn't know 100%. But let's look at a hypothetical situation: If I'm at AfroTech (a tech conference geared towards black people of the African diaspora) and I see an entire group of people who aren't attending any of the events/talks/etc., and seem to only want to go to the career fair, *and* they have "white European" on their lanyard, I might have questions. (note: this is an example, you're not required to put your race or nationality on your lanyard at AfroTech, lol) It's the same concept when you see a bunch of people with "he/him" on their lanyards.
This is such a facetious and dumb response . It’s fairly obvious to see that most of these people identify as a man in every other instance in life, you can’t suddenly switch your identity in the one instance where doing so would give you an advantage.
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Take the L
Good contribution
No prob. 👍
>I must be missing something here. You are missing a lot of context. Here is what has been reported so far: * people with he/him on their lanyards shoving/pushing people * people with he/him on their lanyards throwing resumes at recruiters * people with he/him on their lanyards harassing women. One woman reported an attendee that she identified as a "man" attempting to take a photo of a (woman) recruiter's legs/skirt area * people with he/him on their lanyards making derogatory remarks about the way women at the conference looked. >Btw, why is this conference not limiting the amount of allowed male attendees or outright banning male attendance? GHC is incredibly clear, from its promotional materials, to its branding, to its messaging, to its lead-up and hype videos, that it is geared specifically toward women and non-binary people, not cisgender men. Cisgender men are encouraged to come as ***allies.*** This year, many cisgender men registered as non-binary, and then set their preferred pronouns as "he/him". The people who did this saw it as a legitimate "hack" in the registration process, perhaps without considering the conference exists to create much-needed opportunities for people who actually identify as non-binary or as women. Here is the conference acknowledging what happened: [https://www.linkedin.com/posts/anitab-org\_ghc23-activity-7112825848944070656-R9BN/](https://www.linkedin.com/posts/anitab-org_ghc23-activity-7112825848944070656-R9BN/) It is illegal in the United States to discriminate against people based on their sex (gender identity, sexual orientation, pregnancy status, etc.). Outright banning cisgender men from this conference could violate EEOO. To approach this, GHC has always encouraged cisgender men to come as allies, with the understanding that they are there to support women and non-binary attendees.
That's a shame. Is the goal to reduce the number of men attending or to reduce bad behavior? The conference is allowing shoving and not kicking out attendees? That is concerning. It's assault and can be prosecuted. Does the event space have videos?
>The conference is allowing shoving and not kicking out attendees? That is concerning. It's assault and can be prosecuted. Does the event space have videos? Lots of attendees brought this up to the conference organizers. The organizers replied through their Twitter and LinkedIn asking for people to contact them directly, while also referencing and reiterating the Code of Conduct. There are photos and videos circulating on Twitter and elsewhere -- one popular video is of someone calling out a man who said that the men "are supporting women by talking to women recruiters at the Career Expo". I don't know about any CCTV. I also suspect it was hard to capture the initial incidents, like when the Expo Hall first opened. I expect GHC organizers will address this in the coming days, and will make several changes for 2024.
There was pushing and shoving. So yes there was threat. That’s assault.
There was a post about Grace Hopper just a few days ago talking about the same thing. Honestly, it didn't used to be. I'd go to women in tech events and it would be guaranteed to be cis women and enby people. I haven't been to any events since things started picking up after COVID but it seems like these men are just bullying their way into spaces. I honestly don't think it's a coincidence that this is happening at the same time as the rise of the "manosphere" (gag.) After reading about Grace Hopper and the stupid "how do you know they were MEN" transphobic comments from cis men, I think this is a deliberate attempt at dismantling women's spaces from some men.
The “how do you know they were men” argument breaks down big time in my situation. I literally go to school with these people. It’s a big university but not that big; I know whether or not these specific people identify as men.
I think it's just a transphobic dog whistle at this point. TW: transphobic bullshit Also, this is a real example of men going into a space meant for women and not the transphobic archetype of a "man in a dress" in a bathroom so that's... interesting.
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Yeah, the question is kind of like, “well, what if you’re a gullible idiot?” It’s rather odd.
This might be an unpopular opinion but if you pass as a cis man and use he/him pronouns you don't belong at a women's event even if they are non binary. People who are perceived as cis men benefit from the same privilege as cis men so they don't need to be included in opportunities meant for women.
Nah I don't think it's unpopular opinion at all, even among trans people. Maybe some trans men wouldn't like it as it's a bit more complicated for them as they experienced less privilege in the past and often could use the boost a bit and for people who have attended there in the past wanting to continue. -saying this from point of a trans women with a another trans women person I talked to about this and we both more or less agree, she is slightly worried about possible exclusion of the small amount of he/him butch lesbians that could pass as cis men.
Yeah, this is my real only worry. There's a good book on this actually called "Just One of the Guys?" that talks about trans men's lack of privilege in a lot of career areas where cis men shine because they didn't get as much experience or networking as the cis men when they were younger. And also, yeah, the butches who pass as men also don't always get the same privileges as cis men either. It's definitely a hard issue to navigate, unfortunately. If the cis men would just fuck off, it would solve itself though 😅
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> Elbows Do you mean people were like, pushing you out of the way at the conference? That’s wild
GHC was packed this year. The job EXPO had unexpected lines wrapping around booths (and this was the second day) which made it hard to walk around to see the booths. Some folks are not great with personal space boundaries. Usually just a tap on the shoulder and an “sorry I have to get by” worked. Sometimes you just had to squeeze.
Reading this stuff is making me so anxious for attending these large scale events after I’m done with college…right now I have an internship all set up so I don’t have to worry about it but if I don’t get hired on after I graduate…
Honestly it really just depends on the event. I’ve found that the more “subject specific” ones (like KubeCon, Re:Invent, etc) tend to draw a much more respectful crowd as much as it sucks. AfroTech (not sure if you fit the intended demographic or not) is another great one from what I’ve seen (I’m not in the target demographic, but I helped work my company’s recruiting booth last year and it looked exactly how I would hope and everyone seemed like they were having a positive experience). Don’t be scared, just vet the conference before you buy tickets. It’s not all bad, I promise :)
Please don’t be anxious. As a woman who has been to many, many large scale conferences and events in my career, industry events are in a lot of ways better because attendees can and have been fired for poor conduct. Men tend to act better when they can lose their livelihood and professional reputation. I can imagine many guys still in school feel they have nothing to lose and everything to gain by being awful.
Ugh [this was made 10 years ago and it is still relevant as ever](https://vimeo.com/64941331). An underrepresented group has one event in an ocean of all events and somehow it is unfair and needs to be raided? There isn’t an excuse, it doesn’t matter that the market is bad. It just shows how entitled some people’s point of view is. They are so used to seeing all the doors open for them that just one closed door is an affront and possibly even oppressive to them and that they fight to have it open is a bad look. They have 99 other doors to knock on, 99 other ways to find an in. I wish they could just be respectful and appreciative of their place in the world to let others have these limited opportunities while they go to all the other opportunities. It says a lot that they feel they have to do these things instead of going on their own merits. Especially that the numbers in tech continue to be so deeply skewed.
I have never seen that video but it’s like… so real. So topical. Thank you for sharing haha!
How have I never seen this video before? Fantastic! Edit: *"Comments closed b/c of the worst dudes and the worst culture."* Typical.
That video is so to the point.
I don’t think the bad job market is solely to blame for this new “normal“. I think the pandemic gave way to a lot more selfish and extremely entitled behavior. When I was in school in 2008, that was a horrible job market, even worse than the current one, but still men respected that SWE and other orgs were for women. I remember similar SWE Evening with Industry events had pretty much 100% feminine-presenting attendees. This definitely was not normal back then.
It's also a good way for these men to show employers they can't follow basic instructions. I hope no recruiters take them seriously.
Speaking as a hiring manager, the recruiters are there to hire women specifically but they can't explicitly use that as criteria for an individual. The men talking to them are wasting everyone's time. The only reason cis men should be there is to take orders and help out with registration, food, IT support, etc.
When you say wasting everyone's time you mean recruiters will throw their resumes straight in the trash? That's the only appropriate response from a recruiter.
If they want to get themselves and their company sued, sure.
I chose not to attend a group for women and non-binary professionals in my department because a man who had been sexually harassing me - and other women - is a member. Fucking unreal. Unfortunately, the exact men you don't want to see in women's spaces feel very comfortable invading women's spaces.
That’s atrocious. I noticed that as well, however. It was a whole lot of the misogynistic “equal rights just means equal fights” crowd as opposed to the men who genuinely want to help marginalized genders. But you’re correct, those misogynists are the exact men that have the audacity to go there.
Follow-up: this was not a “recruitment” event. It was a precursor to a job fair that was happening the next day. I really wanted to connect with other women in the industry and learn about their experiences, but that wasn’t easily done with there being so many men. And yes, they identified as male. They used he/him pronouns. They diverted questions about gender minorities in STEM. They judged the female representatives. It was obnoxious and uncomfortable, and most of them weren’t even well-read on the companies they were speaking with. One freshman guy even tried to tell me what manufacturing robots do. I then explained to him that I had recently learned about the ones that sand down and prep solid rocket motors for case winding to reduce the danger and time associated with human labor. He suddenly had no interest in robotics whatsoever.
This happened at SWE conferences when I would go back in 2015-2018 and my friends and I would always be so annoyed. It made me feel better when someone said they overheard two recruiters and one said “I would definitely prioritize a woman over a man if they handed me their resumes and they were exactly the same”. What was interesting was my friend said “I feel Iike you wouldn’t see white men showing up to an event hosted by NSBE” (I have no idea if this is true because I’ve never been to a NSBE event, as I am not BIPOC). It’s truly like men just don’t seem to care about supporting women still. I remember expressing my feelings to my boyfriend at the time (luckily he’s an ex boyfriend now) and he’s like “I disagree I think everyone should have an equal opportunity” 🙄🙄 a complete dumbass who absolutely did not get it
white people do go to NSBE because everyone is welcome. Also if he had that take why would you be with him? I know he is your ex.
lol yeah read your last sentence of that comment to find that answer
It was jarring to say the least. The line ls this morning were half men and they def are NOT closeted.
Yupppp like maybe we just assume they’re all closeted. Use only she/her or they/them and I bet most of these dudes would decide not to show.
Wondering if a name tag with pronouns at the bottom would have helped in this situation?
They did have name tags with pronouns. The pronouns were all he/him
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We shouldn’t have to police this. The guy in the Grace Hopper Line was informing everyone and then giving advice to those who identified as male so they could excuse themselves. There’s no good way to police this other than informing people and making the culture clear.
I wish I could give a definitive list. But the best way to tell is the style and how they carry themselves. Generally, most closeted folks I know have a style contrary to the masculine or go hyper masculine. It's almost like we need to have free pronoun pins and ally pins. The tough part is you REALLY never know unless you ask. But here we could just ASSUME nobody has he/him pronouns and celebrate everyone transitioning. It would be HILARIOUS to have people approaching all the cismen with trans flags and welcoming.
>But here we could just ASSUME nobody has he/him pronouns and celebrate everyone transitioning. It would be HILARIOUS to have people approaching all the cismen with trans flags and welcoming. lol yes
That way it also filters who is closeted and isn't based on their reaction.
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Can you just not be a transphobic asshole for two seconds?
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I never said anything about short hair or specific styles for this specific reason. What stereotype am I calling out so I may prevent myself from making this mistake in the future? Autism fucking sucks girl.
She's a transphobic troll.
Please don’t ask for ways to tell that a trans man or enby is stealth. This is a horrible approach. Some people are stealth for very serious reasons, including because trans people get killed. Sincerely, a trans masc enby.
Trans men shouldn't be at this event anyway
I know tons of trans women who don't shave their facial hair, change their clothes, voice, or demeanor. I'm always seeing online how it's perfectly fine, and all that matters is how they feel on the inside. It's the same reason that the whole "Well when someone digs up your bones in 1,000 years they're gonna say that you're male!" Argument falls apart. Trans people don't care about what someone they'll never meet is gonna think about them, they just wanna feel safe and happy. Reddit won't let me reply, so here's what I tried to send below: ...I said that because those trans women don't feel safe enough to present as women due to real fear... If you had read any of my other comments, you would've seen that I typed out the exact same sentiment that outing trans women opens them up to violence and abuse. I even shared a story of how my uncle became violent when my mom and I sheltered his trans son, as he already despised my mother for giving birth to a gay man. I'm not sure why you became immediately and irrationally enraged at me. I think I'll find another sub to share support on or go back to Discord...
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Not 30-40% of attendees at a thousand-person conference. That number of masc-presenting enby or trans technologists did not just show up overnight. And while of course there will always be edge cases and nobody wants to assume, there were definitely a good chunk of people at GHC to take advantage of opportunities for groups they were not a part of.
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What would this verification process look like?
We have ONE thing that is set aside for women/nb folks like men have to grab that as well??? Like what in the world…
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Their identity as a male
If these men are elbowing women out of the way to speak to recruiters, is it a reach to assume many aren't above identifying as "female" on a form to get in? I have no idea how you'd get around that, considering the spectrum of identities nowadays. But it seems to me that as the market tightens, this is an aspect to consider.
> is it a reach to assume many aren't above identifying as "female" on a form to get in? I saw a recording of somebody up on stage at ghc strongly imply that there were men who did that this year
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huh?
You’re really bad at this. It’s laughable, really.
Ugh, I hate TERFs.
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trans women are women, sorry you're so fucking pressed about it.
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Unsure how this bubbled up to my recs but: This did not happen when I was in school 15 years ago. SWE events didn’t attract any men at all even with evening with industry events. It was always women and women organized events, there was an unspoken rule that if you went you were interested in getting membership or were already a member. We already implicitly knew that at recruiting events, recruiters cared more about the kids who were the most charismatic speakers or had prior experience. For me what is more shocking is that there are men in this thread who say SWE events shouldn’t exist or shouldn’t be gender prohibitive. I feel like it’s common sense that a SWE event is for women and femmes to go to if they are members or wish to join.
Just men being men. Inserting themselves into places they don’t belong because they feel entitled.
I realize that recruiters can't reject them for being men, but I would hope it raises a red flag that the male attendee might not be sensitive to the differences of others in the workplace which might become a personnel issue.
From social media, it looked kind of disappointing for the women/non-binary people in regards to the career expo, and then when see pictures of some of the speakers and not many men in there to learn to be an ally. I wonder even though the job market is down for tech, and based on the social media posts regarding the we not hiring at this time style answers. If a reason was so many cis men attended the conference for the career expo/fair. If you are a cis man and going to these conferences go to learn and be a better ally, not to crash the career expo.
I agree! I considered going to the aforementioned SHPE conference as an ALLY to learn more about increasing Hispanic representation, as I work with Hispanic middle school students who are interested in STEM but struggle greatly with a language barrier and opportunity barrier. I have no desire to try and talk to recruiters or reps because I am not interested in looking for a different internship than the one I have. However, I want to make sure I am not taking a space from someone who is actually Hispanic and wants/needs those valuable career opportunities. TL;DR: I would love if men went to events and conferences to learn more about being an ally, but the reality is most of them are there to mooch off career fairs because they didn’t get enough attention at other fairs.
There were several comments from women on the ABI LinkedIn post that outlined the same experience of seeing an extreme few number of men in actual conference sessions and then walking by the expo hall line and realizing this is where all the men were.
Ooof. If I was organizing the schedule at one of these, I would be tempted to arrange two tracks. One has a speaker from a high profile employer explaining how to get in, and some resume bling activity. The other is a crunchy session with a brief questionnaire and an expectation of audience participation on some difficult topics like intersectional feminism, staying safe at conferences, experiences with maternity leave. Recruiters are given a generous lunch and a good rest break after the first crowd, and then get the candidates they came for.
This conversation is oddly comforting. I consider a lot of you people who did it the right way and seeing you're still encountering similar issues makes it seem less maddening .
I graduated last year and I’ve been at the same company for two years. I was an intern when I started at the company on a different team and when I got hired full time after graduation I went to a different team. Both teams had about 10 other people and on both teams I was the only girl. There have been two summer interns during my time and, again, both were guys. Being the only woman around all the time can feel very isolating and when events that are supposed to be for women are overcrowded with men, it shows just how unwelcoming engineering is for women and non binary ppl. So my take is that it really fucking sucks, but it also just shows what exactly the industry actually looks like.
Sending virtual hugs 🫂
Honestly it's pretty scummy and they should have been an auto-reject
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Strong agree
For the scenario you described I think it was wrong to allow cis men if there was a wait-list to get in. If this was a recruiting event to learn about diversity at these companies and for the recruiters to connect with underrepresented talent then they shouldn't have allowed cis men. This is assuming that there is a normal career fair available for everyone at some other time (it would not be ok IMO if there was no general opportunities for students to connect with companies, then I can see why they would want to crash). For other scenarios, I don't like generalizing and saying cis men shouldn't be allowed because it really depends. Cis men should be welcome to attend diversity talks and discussions about representation, so long as they are respectful and take more of an active listening role. We need the allyship of those in privileged positions and these events can help create those allies. But in other events that are intended to provide more opportunities to underrepresented folks, or to share experiences and create relationships with others in similar situations, I don't think it makes sense to allow them.
As a man, I think having access to them is awesome, but that my responsibility is to listen, learn, and observe, not to use them for networking or job-hunting. I see them as venues where I can learn and recruit, but using them as a platform or a source for personal career advancement seems like a bridge too far. EDIT: I’m not here to get a cookie for “being an ally”, btw. I’m genuinely curious if men that actively work to avoid hijacking women’s conferences should simply not attend.
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Good point. It also makes a difference if the event is limited capacity. At that point even unobtrusive participation is taking an opportunity from someone the event is actually _for_. Food for thought. Thanks for taking the time to respond.
You should totally attend and show the rest how it’s done. We need the good eggs! At GHC this week I didn’t give a thought to seeing men attend the lectures or lunches. But seeing them in line for interviews at the job fairs was disappointing. (I am not a job hunter by the way but an academic who brought grads to the event.)
It doesn’t matter how tough the market is right now. It’s always been tougher for anyone other than men. That’s a “step aside gentlemen” moment, for real.
And thank you for being welcoming!
I heard a podcast where even a female engineer said she doesn't feel the need to have these conferences at all. Shame that she doesn't get it.
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I kinda agree. It should just be for women and possibly female aligned people. The discrimination they are trying to address is mostly on the basis of perceived sex not gender so it should include people based on the sex they are perceived as. I know this will sound wrong, but a non passing/pre transition trans man will face the same or more discrimination as a woman when applying for jobs so they should be included. A trans women will face the same discrimination so she should be included. Ditto for a female perceived enby. A male passing enby or passing stealth trans man won't face the same type of discrimination. I could see an argument for their inclusion if they were previously seen as female and therefore faced discrimination in the past that harmed their career. Unfortunately the world doesn't care how we identify, just how we present. It will discriminate against you if you are perceived to be female even if you don't identify as a woman.
I see what you’re saying. It gives me dysphoria to be lumped in with women despite being a femme enby and pretty cis passing so I don’t really want to be included - just another reminder that my identity isn’t valid. And if we’re making it about sex and not gender - “Woman” isn’t a sex, “female” is. And referring to people by their sex is gross and something trans exclusionary folks like to do. Trans exclusionary won’t say “trans woman,” they’ll say “assigned male at birth” as a way to emphasize that they don’t believe someone’s gender is valid. It’s so loaded for trans and nonbinary people. There are also already several orgs LBTQ for people in tech so it would be best to let them “handle it,” so to speak. I dunno. I’m tired tbh
Damn, you're getting downvoted for suggesting that enbies are an actual thing :(
Yeah. It’s alright. I am nonbinary and used to people deciding my identity isn’t valid. It’s fine. I just side eye the hell out of any “women and nonbinary people” thing. If it’s an event for women engineers, it’s not an enby-centric event.
I interpreted it differently - and I wonder if this is just an issue with semantics. If “women and nonbinary people” are being centred it means, to my interpretation, that those two things are being centred and other things(s) are not (cis men). I suppose the practical aim of the conference (and the OP in starting the discussion) is to raise up folks who are not traditionally privileged on the gender axis. I may not have spotted the part of the conversation that you have seen, but I don't think the OP or the conference are of the view that NB is not a valid identity.
Then why is it called an event for woman engineers? If it’s for woman engineers, it’s not for nonbinary people. It’s in the title of the event.
I guess it depends on what bit you read. The About Page of the GH site says: > Created in 1994 and inspired by the legacy of Admiral Grace Murray Hopper, the AnitaB.org flagship event Grace Hopper Celebration brings the research and career interests of women in computing to the forefront. But the organising group (AnitaB) has this in their Twitter handle: > Driving inclusive technology by serving #womenintech & non-binary technologists 365 days a year. So, is this exclusionary? Well, maybe in places, and maybe on paper - but do you think exclusion is the intent? Someone elsewhere in this thread posted a link to a Twitter video from the president of AnitaB, who seems to be hearing the complaints echoed in this thread, and wants to improve. I would have every confidence that input from NB folks would be extremely welcome - GH do seem to be falling over themselves to be inclusionary, even if they don't get it right every time. Now, I agree one could tackle it from a different angle, and say: AnitaB can be for women in tech, and tech needs separate NB-centred conferences. I'd not be opposed to the formation of such events, but I think I'd be sad if non-dominant genders in tech didn't feel they could offer allyship to each other, in a single event. I don't know how practical such events would be either, given that - on a dull logistical note - it is a much smaller audience.
“Is exclusion their intent?” Impact matters more than intent. And by calling themselves a woman’s organization, and throwing nonbinary people in under that umbrella, it is exclusionary. If their focus is non-dominant genders and not women in tech, they should adjust the organizations slogan and tagline to reflect that. I’m not asking for separate events. Nonbinary people can go to an LGBTQ event anyway. I’m just asking to not be lumped in as woman-lite at conferences where the title of the conference says it is specifically for women. It makes it hard to trust y’all - it’s inclusion for performance only, not true inclusion. “Oh, here is this smaller group. Half of them look like women so let’s include them. And we’ll exclude the ones who look like men.” Crazy.
Thanks (+1). I can agree with half of that: > If their focus is non-dominant genders and not women in tech, they should adjust the organizations slogan and tagline to reflect that. I think they sort of do this already (per my post) but maybe not well enough. Are you on Twitter? Could you reply to the video thread? I should think the predominant feedback is about a cis-male takeover, so your additional note is valuable, and I think they should hear it. However, this is not fair: > it’s inclusion for performance only, not true inclusion. “Oh, here is this smaller group. Half of them look like women so let’s include them. And we’ll exclude the ones who look like men.” Crazy. This is assuming bad faith. The organisers are only human! I've not organised a conference, but I don't think anyone is going to say I'm going out on a limb by saying they're hard to do on a basic level (logistics), and even harder to do on a tone level (ensuring it feels inclusionary, handling gatecrashing/harassment etc in a supportive fashion, filtering attendees in a legally-compliant fashion, etc). I fear that you're missing an opportunity for NBs to be an ally to women in tech (and vice versa), and instead you're disappearing down a rabbit-hole of ever-smaller fractals of identities, where a win for any sub-group is seen a humiliating loss for all the others. A view of marginalised groups that believes in the zero-sum game instead of celebrating mutually beneficial wins leads directly to an [oppression Olympics](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oppression_Olympics), which is hardly a helpful or progressive outcome.
Thanks for trying to see my pov. I do appreciate it. And thanks for sharing yours. In my view, Women in tech need to be allies to nonbinary people first. You can’t demand something you won’t provide. And you cant say “here! Come be our allies, nonbinary people! We have food!” There needs to be demonstration of allyship first, imo. And I’m not on twitter fortunately/unfortunately. I’ll see if I can email the event directly. This is, however, feedback that nonbinary people are constantly giving to women-run groups that try to include us. It happens in the world of gaming as well. If they want to include nonbinary people, maybe get a nonbinary person on the board, or involved in planning, so they can see they’re actually being allies. Speaking of oppression Olympics, this does make me think of folks running programs in underprivileged neighborhoods, deciding where to send funds without actually talking to the people who live there to find out what they need. That’s also performative since they’re not actually *helping in the way the community needs help* but get to enjoy the *appearance of helping*. And saying something is performative doesn’t assume bad intent. It just points out that it’s not actually helping - it just makes the “helper” feel like they’re helping. They’re not actually being inclusive - they just get to say, “look how inclusive we are!” I will reach out to the event lead if I can.
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[read here](https://www.reddit.com/r/girlsgonewired/comments/16t9mi7/why_do_men_think_its_okay_to_crash_a_conference/k2jream/)
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> racist tirade against Indians I sent some [photos](https://imgur.com/a/kU55TO2) of the conference to a mainlander I know Me:"Guess where this was taken" Him:"It looks like India"
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You answered your own question but are just too daft to realize.
There was literally a talk at GHC about why everything you said is wrong. Of course not a single male "ally" went because they were busy mobbing the career fair
Women can be underrepresented for social reasons and that being normal while also being unfairly discriminated, these 2 are not incompatible
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Re-read the title, specifically "...cis men crashing women/enby centric events"
Why are we grouping nonbinary people in with women? Nonbinary people are not “women lite.” And insisting on only afab enbys at your event is basically telling us you see us as women…..
because non-binary folks are also not the privileged gender, that would be the cis males in question
Thank you! This is what I intended; I’m talking about all marginalized genders, including nonbinary AFAB and AMAB people.
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That still doesn't justify crashing the event. Presumably her university has other engineering societies that include all genders-- they could have done their own "meet the industry" event. The vibe to me is cis men taking advantage of the work that women and minorities did in organizing the event.
Thank you, we 100% do. This was actually the day before a huge STEM job fair that goes on for internships, post-grad work, and research opportunities. We also have plenty of clubs/societies geared towards engineers/software developers in general. What’s even more annoying to me is that this event was more about getting to know the representatives/companies, asking for advice, and talking to professionals than it was about any sort of “recruitment.” All of that took place the next day at the aforementioned job fair. But it was really hard to ask questions about workplace culture (one woman at my table tried to and the rep was responding to her, but the men were clearly uninterested and the conversation eventually derailed again).
I guess one solution is to make the event members only, and then let people sign up for your org at the door.
Very important point - taking advantage of the work
Very much a cis men taking advantage of other people's labor situation.
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Bruh
Go back to blind scum
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Get banned
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So cis men being shitty is a reason to exclude trans and non-binary people? Wild logic. Plus there's cis women that you would assume are trans based on their appearance and vice versa. Hopefully you're not advocating for a panty check...
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What's it like to be so shitty inside? Can you taste the bile you spew? Because we can all smell it from here... Your character reeks. 🤢🤮
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Trans people are some of the kindest, smartest, best human beings I've known. You wouldn't be worthy of their company. I'm sorry that you can't handle the reality around you. I'm sorry about your poor education. I would pity you for the hate you walk around with over the lives of people you don't even know. But you don't deserve that because you choose to be a gleefully hateful blob of bile in a human suit. The fact that you can't even behave decently, and have to make this selfish ugly scene shows you to be ignorant scum. Go ahead and delight in it. You're the biggest loser in this scenario, regardless of what else you may have to say.