Veering dangerously close to sexist behavior there—make an extra effort to think about what you're saying when you talk about women in our field. Regardless of what you think of her, it's demeaning to reduce her from a CEO on par with any male in the industry to a "Cupcake Princess"—LOL, they aren't qualified to lead!
Seriously, though, don't be a douchebag, there are more than enough in our industry without this shit leaking onto HN.
You imply that we can't speak ill of Marissa Mayer because she is a woman. I've had the misfortune of finding myself in several meetings with her to experience first hand that she wasn't a very good VP. Or a very nice person. Or even embodying Google values.
On the other hand, I do believe in her as a CEO. I think she is precisely the kind of CEO material Yahoo! needs. I don't think she is VP material. The day Marissa Mayer took over as CEO I sold my Amazon stock and bought Yahoo! stock. And I don't even like her.
Now, you, on the other hand, reduce Marissa Mayer to a gender. Someone weak that needs to be protected and treated with care in comment fields.
>You imply that we can't speak ill of Marissa Mayer because she is a woman.
No, you can speak all the ill of Marissa Mayer you want. Effectively saying, "She's a woman," as a way to speak ill of her is bogus, though.
>Now, you, on the other hand, reduce Marissa Mayer to a gender. Someone weak that needs to be protected and treated with care in comment fields.
Nobody is being "protected," least of all Marissa Mayer. Women who aren't in the industry because of pervasive sexism obviously can't speak for themselves to combat that sexism, so other people have to do it.
No, having to double check that whatever I call her is gender-neutral to not offend overly sensitive people who look really hard for sexism, is bogus. And sexist. It fosters the impression that any female professional is a damsel in distress dependent on acts of chivalry from people who go to china and call the people there "asian-american" because they have grown up in a culture where more and more words are dangerous, frightening and forbidden.
To be quite honest, I really do not give a damn about your mental hangups and I am truly sorry if I have ever given the impression that I do. But it does bother me when people have the cheek to tell me what I meant when I said something. I know what I meant and when I say that it wasn't meant in a sexist way, then only an idiot would persist in trying to tell me what I meant.
Thanks for taking the time to stand up for yourself. I probably wouldn't have called Mayer a cupcake princess in my comment, but people are taking it a bit too seriously. The comment was mainly about frivolous Google UI changes, which have also been irritating me recently (and I imagine since you brought it up, many others). Why can't we keep talking about that rather than point fingers and try to out-PC each other?
> Why can't we keep talking about that rather than point fingers and try to out-PC each other?
Because ultimately I care more about sexism than a social network UI, and people in this field care shockingly little about it compared to most fields.
> Nobody is being "protected," least of all Marissa Mayer. Women who aren't in the industry because of pervasive sexism obviously can't speak for themselves to combat that sexism, so other people have to do it.
Presumably Marissa has better things to do—being the CEO of Yahoo and all—than wandering around the internet defending her reputation. I'm confident she needs no protection, I'm trying to protect HN from becoming as misogynistic as the rest of the industry is.
Veering dangerously close to sexist behavior there—make an extra effort to think about what you're saying when you talk about women in our field. Regardless of what you think of her, it's demeaning to reduce her from a CEO on par with any male in the industry to a "Cupcake Princess"—LOL, they aren't qualified to lead!
Seriously, though, don't be a douchebag, there are more than enough in our industry without this shit leaking onto HN.