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"Meritocracy" annoys feminists

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softwareNerd

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post-1227-0-09010200-1398696421_thumb.jp This is a picture of a rug that used to adorn an office floor at tech company Github. It says:
"Offical seal of the Octocat"
"United meritocracy of Github"

 

Seems innocuous enough? 

Turns out that some "feminists" think that "the word 'meritocracy' glossed over the struggles of minorities trying to join the tech community."

 

After some back and forth the company changed the rug. Now it says: "In Collaboration We Trust".

 

More here.

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This is hardly current events.

 

The lady who got the rug thrown away made a loud exit later.

 

It turned into a PR nightmare for GitHub.

 

There seems to be some wrongdoing but the claim of sexism is yet to be substantiated.

 

I said this then, and I'm still behind my words:

 

GitHub should never have ditched the rug. They have sanctioned what's been coming at them by doing that.

 

 

More gems of modern feminism here and here.

 

And of course misogyny doesn't exist, so kill all men!

Edited by muhuk
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I don't like the wording, but it is true that the tech world is far from a just place. It is simply wrong to suggest sexism doesn't exist there, so is anything but meritocratic. You can rephrase criticism to be "meritocracy is misleading here, Github is acting as though sexism doesn't exist by saying skill is all people care about here".

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"Up is down, red is blue, meritocracy is sexism."

It's not GitHub's responsibility to right all the world's wrongs, which is basically what this "outrage" demands since there is no direct link between that rug and the disparity of opportunity between the two sexes. What about those poor painters who didn't get the opportunity to paint a mural about meritocracy for GitHub? The rug makers had more opportunity, and that ain't right.

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I don't like the wording, but it is true that the tech world is far from a just place. It is simply wrong to suggest sexism doesn't exist there, so is anything but meritocratic. You can rephrase criticism to be "meritocracy is misleading here, Github is acting as though sexism doesn't exist by saying skill is all people care about here".

They wanted a rug promoting meritocracy removed because Github isn't meritocratic enough?

Methinks not. They were upset with the rug because it's promoting meritocracy over equality in outcome among the races and genders. Their evidence for "sexism" isn't actual discrimination, it's women making less money than men.

Edited by Nicky
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... ... the tech world is far from a just place. It is simply wrong to suggest sexism doesn't exist there, so is anything but meritocratic.

This is not my experience -- after over 25 years in IT. I've come across a few more traditional programmers in traditional IT shops where some biases showed through. They've never been places I'd want to work. They're typically not just old-fashioned about sexual roles, but also about technology. Apart from this minority, I've found no effective bias against women programmers or women project leaders.

I don't see it as an issue any woman programmer needs to be concerned about.

The more geekier types of programming roles seem to attract many more men. However, this is a world where people are quite focused on competence, technical and intellectual issues.

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