This is what happens when you include `"non-binary" at a womens conference

[KnittedCardi]

https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-12595177/women-tech-conference-overrun-nonbinary-men.html

Basically hordes of men claiming to be non-binary pushed aside women at a tech conference, specifically set up to help recruit women as under-represented in tech.

Tsk, tsk everyone <wags finger>

Acceptance without question

I mean! Who would have guessed!!

I'm finding all this absolutely hilarious - the CV's we get from Grace Hopper are usually crap. Graduates or boot campers when we have graduate programs already.
I'm a female dev myself and have faced my fair share of sexism etc but it doesn't help that 99% of people in these 'women in tech' things are in non-technical roles. Most role models for technical women are not there, they are too busy contributing to open source, speaking at vendor conferences, etc.
I have no idea why Janelle Monáe Robinson for example is a keynote speaker she's a singer!

Rachel Kroll, Cornelia Huck, Julie Ralph these are true role models - there are also people like the woman who had a film degree and went on to work for GitHub, I forgot her name but she gave quite a few great technical talks always at proper conferences and never 'women in tech'.
I can never find any people like me at these women only conferences and other technical women where I work feel the same so we stay away. As @RealityFan alluded to these places are filled with touch-feely identity politics proponents. Is it any wonder that this happened?

Something that's actually GOOD:

People are very happy to support these ideologies and policies until it starts to affect them personally.

Many of the job seekers there will believe TWAW and non-binary, but then reality hits and they see that they are losing out. They can happily support men in women's spaces because they never think men are going to enter their spaces (like a female tech conference).

I've heard many women who believe TWAW until their husband suddenly decided that he was a woman.

The trouble with this ideology is that no one truly believes in it, but they will go to great lengths to pretend that they do. That's why they're now struggling to tell the truth over how they know a non-binary person is male.

Why were any of them surprised this happened...?

People are very happy to support these ideologies and policies until it starts to affect them personally.

Exactly. It’s the very definition of a luxury belief. Until you need, e.g. a job, a place in a refuge, etc..

This is predictably what “people are who they say they are” and No Debate leads to.
One day, the young women who fell for this will wake up. When they personally have been hugely disadvantaged by this ideology, and it’s too late to prevent the damage to their careers and earning power. It’s a new addition to the glass ceiling.

I think he made reference to their CVs not matching the registration form.

Either way - sex not gender!

Perhaps they are gender fluid? Male one day, non-binary or female the next? I thought that these companies were actively supporting this kind of thing in the workplace?

Then maybe Pip Bunce could organize something similar for the finance sector?

Thank for the useful link!

their CVs not matching the registration form

In my day, euphemisms were more colourful.

The major problem with the new kind if 'inclusiveness' is that it mostly doesn't seem to have asked if all the people demanding entry should be allowed to join.

For instance, the reason why there are so few women in tech fields has never been linked to having nose rings or blue hair or eye shadow, even.

It has been linked to being female (those who oppose women in STEM fields argue that women are intellectually less capable of the work in those fields and/or inherently less interested in the fields) and to having the reproductive female role in life (opponents/skeptics will ask:"Who is going to take care of her infant when we need her to code all weekend?" Or:"What if she goes on maternity leave and then won't come back?")

Once this organisation chose to redefine its focus to be about inner, abstract feelings about femininity or masculinity or neither, they lost the ball in the game, because the game really is about sex and sexism.

I know that this isn't really the point of the thread but companies don't give a flying f* about 'equal opportunity' for women. What they really want is a larger pool of cheap labour who are up to date on every new technology product invented 5 seconds ago and work 24/7 like robots without complaining. But D&I makes great headlines!

Apart from the usual sexism like talking over women, treating us like idiots etc there's a constant need to keep learning outside of work and the tendency to understaff. Many women leave after having children because they don't want to work unpaid, so much anymore, while I see my male colleagues with children still grinding. Especially as we are managed by people who have no idea what we do or how it works but they wanted it like, yesterday. If you need to know something for your job this should be baked into the role but that rarely happens.

Of course, as much as the above is an issue it's worse in other professions. Tech has higher earning potential. However, there are massive boom bust cycles and I know for certain quite a lot of companies, while going to GHC and 'hiring' as early careers are in the budget, are making other staff redundant.

Also... ageism..

IMO the constant 100% focus and commitment required to the extent of time for actual living is also an issue that pushes women out in academia. But tech's only getting focused on now because demand 'supposedly' has rocketed. In reality companies don't want to train people, those in charge don't understand the level of skill required because 'the internet has free stuff and this 16 year old managed to do it' so it becomes an endless treadmill.

Just watched my annual EDI video. All in the name of inclusion… including rewriting equality act as ‘gender identity’ because that’s ‘how it’s generally understood’ and all very likely done by external consultants. Who those are? God only knows.

One day, the young women who fell for this will wake up. When they personally have been hugely disadvantaged by this ideology, and it’s too late to prevent the damage to their careers and earning power. It’s a new addition to the glass ceiling

I used to hope for this, but lately I’m less hopeful. Once you believe something, anything, it’s tremendously hard to change your mind. Even as they get older and realise (live it) misogyny affects them they’ll still adhere to TWAW because to admit otherwise is too much cognitive dissonance eg Festinger’s 1956 Doomsday cult behaviour.

What if they actually are non-binary?

Do please explain to us poor simpletons what that means.

You see, from my 60+ years of life experience and ancient O level biology, supplmented by more recent reading, I am confident that not a single human being alive on this planet is neither male nor female. All mammals are sexually dimorphic. Why would humans be the only exception? Why would it be a good idea for female humans to be unable to identify male humans, or vice versa?

If non-binary actually means 'I don't like being stereotyped because of my sex', well, we already had a movement working on that! Feminism/women's liberation had made a lot of progress there.

What actually is non binary?

Maybe they are, given it’s absolutely everybody with a personality.

Not seeing the problem here. If you open an event to non-binary people then men are welcome. They were welcome so a lot of them came, hardly unsurprising in tech which is male-dominated field.

Obviously if the purpose of your event is to centre women then it is a problem. But if that's what you are trying to do, then why invite men in the first place?

Having preferences in styles of dressing basically 😂

The problem here is that the prize fund is not unlimited. There used to be prizes for the top women and prizes for the top men, and they would be similar in number, if not value. Now there are prizes for the top women and the top men and the top non-binary runners, who are always going to be male. Two thirds of the prizes are now going to males.

Wrong thread! I was talking about the Boston Marathon, and this belongs on another thread.

I’ve heard that there’s 10 types now …