[Noisebridge-discuss] XY Combinator

[Christopher Rasch]

Yes!  Exactly what I was thinking.  As one of the few guys in tech, it's 
really annoying when female coders objectify me.  I'm more than my 
knowledge of the Unix command line, ladies!  What about my rippling 
abs?  My luscious head of hair?  Sure, I like discussing the merits of 
Ubuntu vs. FreeBSD as much as next female coder, but when that's all you 
want to do, night after night,  I feel used.  Maybe if women started 
treating men as something more than a brain with legs, we'd see a few 
more men in tech.

Chris

On 5/23/11 11:02 PM, Liz Henry wrote:
> Obligatory feminist analysis.
>
> I don't think it's funny at all and will happily explain why. The joke
> rests on several stereotypical ideas -- that hardworking geeks are all
> men, that women are commodities, and that men are entitled to sexual
> access to women. I could unpack more but that's plenty to go on.
>
> That to me combines into a "joke" that is merely a re-stating of
> misogyny and in fact is one side of the coin of rape culture. Men are
> taught that women are commodities. Women and girls are positioned in the
> "joke" as if they hold immense power (here, actual "capital" which  is
> coded as "access to a vagina"). The rape culture aspect here is that men
> are also taught that they should and can feel resentment and rage for
> not "having" automatic access to women's bodies (and labor,
> incidentally). It doesn't do men any good either for geeky guys to be
> positioned as ungendered men who need to be taught how to be more
> masculine, because then we end up with geeks who are constantly trying
> to do macho posturing and prove even harder they're not like women --
> geeks who have to perform misogyny in order not to be the targets of it.
>
> I like to pretend sometimes that I get to be just human, but am sadly
> aware that no matter what, under patriarchy, I have a dual status as
> person and as currency. Since that's what I live under, I don't have any
> fucking patience with this sort of joke and with ironic hipster sexism.
> No... your ironic hipster sexism doesn't get a free pass to funny. It's
> actually just the same to me as previous generations' asinine har-haring
> over Dagwood or The Lockhorns in the funny papers...
>
>
>
> - Liz
>
>
>
>
> On 5/23/11 9:41 PM, Griffin Boyce wrote:
>> That is a pretty funny joke =)  The idea isn't bad though - lots of
>> totally-dateable guys have startups or tech projects but no
>> girlfriend/boyfriend.
>>
>>
>> "Testimonials:"
>>
>> "Before I found XY Combinator, I was lonely. Now I have a girlfriend!" Kevin
>> R [ose]
>>
>>   "Thank you so much for giving me a chance at a social life!" Mark Z
>> [uckerberg]
>>
>>   "That was the best rejection I've ever had. Very professional!" Richard N
>> [ixon]
>>
>>
>> On Mon, May 23, 2011 at 5:42 PM, aestetix aestetix<aestetix at gmail.com>wrote:
>>
>>> Looks like an interesting site. Are there any other similar "demo day"
>>> oriented dating sites?
>>>
>>> http://www.xycombinator.com
>>>
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>>>
>>
>>
>>
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