Programmer privilege (x-post from /r/programming)

YetAnotherCommenter · 2014-01-17T08:39:36+00:00

Interesting article. I have to admit that I'm not particularly impressed at how "Asian male" was considered a "majority demographic" - Asian males aren't a majority.

But the thing I found really interesting? The article described benefitting from positive-stereotypical (i.e. "all people of group X are good-thing-Y") notions about one's group as "privilege."

Yet when women benefit from positive stereotypes of women ("women are more friendly, women are better with people, women are more nurturing and empathetic, women are innately valuable and deserve to be rescued, women should be treated as princesses" etc), most feminists call it "benevolent sexism" and refuse to accept that it is female privilege. I guess you could argue that "benevolent sexism" is okay for benefitting from negative stereotypes (i.e. "women are incompetent and therefore need men to open doors for them"), but plenty of positive stereotypes exist about women and yet most feminists refuse to describe benefitting from them as "privilege."

ILoveHate · 2014-01-17T03:45:31+00:00

I do feel bad for the girls when some people don't take them seriously. None of my CS teachers in the classes we had girls in ever made assumptions, so it might not be very common, or I just missed it. But this is also a double edged sword. Since this guy is Asian, he'll have it even worse. Everyone will expect him to be an expert, to have every solution, every plan, etc. And when he doesn't, he'll be seen as incompetent. It's kind of like how black guys are all expected to have big dicks, and when they don't, even if they're average, things don't go well.

SRSLovesGawker · 2014-01-17T01:26:58+00:00

TL/DR: Azn nerd privilege.

Piroko · 2014-01-17T01:32:50+00:00

For every undergrad woman in computer sciences who's told by an adviser that computer sciences isn't for everyone, there is also...

Another undergrad woman who's making the grade by riding on others, and...
Yet another undergrad woman who gets to participate in high profile technology research projects normally only open to grad students, on account of being reasonably photogenic and sleeping with one of the grad students, and...
Three Chinese girls who are taking their US funded education back to Hong Kong.

Note: 2 and 3 are generally exclusive to research universities like MIT, UIUC, ISU, VT, etc.

Title	Programmer privilege (x-post from /r/programming)
Author	[deleted]
Upvotes	9
Comments	8
Date	January 17, 2014 12:53 AM UTC (12 years ago)
Subreddit	Posted in /r/MensRights
Original Link	https://old.reddit.com/r/MensRights/comments/1vepwl/programmer_privilege_xpost_from_rprogramming/
Archive Link	https://theredarchive.com/r/MensRights/programmer-privilege-x-post-from-rprogramming.1004778 https://theredarchive.com/post/1004778

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