Sexism in Silicon Valley

I would like to make a comment on your discussion of “Sexism in Silicon Valley” in the wired.co.uk podcast of Friday 7^th July.

At the outset I would like to state that I believe sexism in the workplace is unacceptable and indefensible.

However, turning to your discussion of the matter you appeared to take this big target and proceed, unsurprisingly given its size, to hit it over and over and over again.

Please, if you have time, give your podcast another listen and hear yourselves flying lazy circles over the points raised, while counting the times the same point is made. 

I am loath to criticize anyone in the creative industries because it takes a talent I don’t possess to be creative but this was journalism at its laziest and gave me the horrible feeling that each member of the team was simply grandstanding how right they were and stumbling over themselves to agree with the others.  Radical stuff it wasn’t with such an easy target to hit. Playing whack a mole on the same mole meant also that the balance skewed badly along the lines of, women hooray: men boo!

There is more depth to discrimination as a general topic than any of the presenters were prepared apparently to acknowledge. 

At one point to general chuckling a presenter said that all discrimination was wrong but white straight males didn’t seem to suffer or to need protection (or something to that effect). 

I beg to differ. Have a butchers at this.

http://www.oneinthree.com.au

If you are pushed for time let me just copy/paste some stuff from the home page for you.

• At least one in three victims of family violence is male
•  One male is a victim of domestic homicide every 10 days
• Almost one in four young people are aware of their mum/stepmum hitting their dad/stepdad
• Male and female victims of reported domestic assault receive very similar numbers and types of injuries
• Men who have experienced partner violence are 2 to 3 times more likely than women to have never told anybody about it
•  Post-separation, similar proportions of men and women report experiencing physical violence including threats by their former spouse

Oh yes, and on a less extreme level I imagine that it was an average week in the family courts in England and Wales this week as children of divorcing parents were horded, by and large, to their mothers’ arms and homes and fathers who love and care for their children began a long process of forced separation and slow estrangement from their children irrespective of their parenting abilities.

If you need a quiet, sleeping, institutionalized discrimination story to investigate and discuss you could do worse than choose this, I think.

Bad journalism this week, folks.