Is Computer Science Education Racist and Sexist? 612
theodp writes "What's wrong with this picture?" asked Code.org at its launch earlier this year, lamenting the lack of Computer Science students in a race and gender reference-free infographic. But as the organization has grown via public/private partnerships and inked agreements to drive the CS curriculum for the Chicago and NYC school systems, the same stats webpage has adopted a new gender and racial equity focus, positioning Computer Science education as "a chance to level the playing field" for women, Hispanic and African American students. The new message is consistent with the recently-forged Code.org partnership with the NSF-funded Exploring Computer Science (ECS, "a K-12/university partnership committed to democratizing computer science") and Computer Science Principles (CSP, "a new course under development that seeks to broaden participation in computing and computer science"). According to The Research Behind ECS, an "insidious 'virtual segregation' that maintains inequality" is to blame for keeping the number of African Americans and Latino/as CS students disproportionately low. So, what might the future of Code.org's proposed equity-based U.S. K-12 CS education look like? "Including culturally relevant instructional materials represented a driving focus of our course development," explained ECS Team members who now advise Code.org. "Cultural design tools encourage students to artistically express computing design concepts from Latino/a, African American, or Native American history as well as cultural activities in dance, skateboarding, graffiti art, and more. These types of lessons are important for students to build personal relationships with computer science concepts and applications – an important process for discovering the relevance of computer science for their own life." And — ironically for Code.org — it could mean less coding."
Is Computer Science Education Racist and Sexist? (Score:5, Insightful)
Is Computer Science Education Racist and Sexist?
Well, no. Unless there are roaming gangs of white nerdy kids beating up anyone with the wrong color that I haven't heard of.
Re:Is Computer Science Education Racist and Sexist (Score:5, Funny)
Betteridge's Law of Headlines.
Re:Is Computer Science Education Racist and Sexist (Score:5, Insightful)
Wrong race. In my experience, whites are one of several minorities in Computer Science. Both in my B.S. and M.S., more than half of my classmates were Hindu males.
Re: Is Computer Science Education Racist and Sexis (Score:5, Informative)
Re: Is Computer Science Education Racist and Sexis (Score:5, Insightful)
It's wrong but it's easier to understand what is meant without having to mention "with the dot not the feather".
Ethnicity overloading can be a bitch.
Re: (Score:3)
Wow, I just had a flashback. My grandmother used to call anyone with a certain color of skin "hindu", and didn't seem concerned at all that she was almost always wrong. (We had a fairly large Indian population where I grew up that were mostly Sikhs, not Hindus.) Of course, she was a profound racist. Some people exist to be a warning to others.
Re: Is Computer Science Education Racist and Sexis (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Is Computer Science Education Racist and Sexist (Score:5, Funny)
Is Computer Science Education Racist and Sexist?
Well, no. Unless there are roaming gangs of white nerdy kids beating up anyone with the wrong color that I haven't heard of.
Yesterday a roving gang of white nerdy kids pummeled me for a half hour. I think I broke a nail.
Re:Is Computer Science Education Racist and Sexist (Score:5, Insightful)
Racist and Sexist?
The labels "Racist" and "Sexist" are like ketchup . . . you can put them on anything.
Even where it is neither appropriate nor warranted.
University CS programs will now be required to include these "culturally relevant instructional materials" . . . otherwise, they will be judged "substandard" by the government, and the university will lose any government funding.
Re: (Score:3)
but everything is better with Ketchup! Is everything better with Racism and Sexism?
Re:Is Computer Science Education Racist and Sexist (Score:5, Insightful)
What concerns me is that the assorted 'multicultural' bullshit described in TFA sounds more like some kind of racist farce than like an actual inclusion strategy: "Hey, black kid, you 'urban' types like skatesboards and graffiti, right? How about some programming with skateboards and graffiti?" and will do absolutely nothing to address the 'entire class looks you up and down, because you are not one of us and/or we are interested only in fucking you' school of dissuading people from taking up technical subjects.
It's not as though pasty white guys take up comp sci because it "expresses their anglo-saxon heritage".
But wait, there's more! "Unlocking the Clubhouse" (Score:3)
That was the title of a book looking at attrition among CMU CS students. It's a death of a thousand cuts for women, and remember that we're talking CMU so these are bright motivated people.
Getting a programming assignment about football scores is a hint that you don't belong. It's not an assault, more like a paper cut, but what happens to you after a thousand paper cuts?
Re: (Score:3)
A hint to whom? Geeks who never even thought about trying out for football, and were held in contempt by those who did?
Re:But wait, there's more! "Unlocking the Clubhous (Score:4, Insightful)
And yet nerds who would sooner gargle ground glass than go to a football game don't seem to have any problems with it.
Re: (Score:3)
Its sort of the chicken and egg problem here. Is it that a particular set of occupations is preferred by particular set of people because that particular set of people like it more or is it because others find it harder to get into it.
I don't seriously think any specific changes need to be made for a specific outreach to other diverse groups of people, but if getting in is contrastingly hard for those diverse groups, perhaps looking into why might be warranted. If it comes down to the general course load fo
Colors of computer science (Score:5, Insightful)
When I started learning programming, back in the early 1970's, there were 3 main races that I could see - Indians (from India), Caucasians (from Europe/America) and East Asians (Japanese, Koreans, Chinese, Vietnamese)
As the years gone by, more races were added, from the African continent and from South America (mainly Argentine, Brazil, Chile and Peru)
As for those "hyphenated-Americans" such as "Latino-Americans" or "African-Americans", yes, I saw them too, but their number is small.
Their number is small not because of racism - as far as I know, we in the tech field treasure people with skills, not people with a particular skin-hue - the main cause of their number is because of their culture do not care for people with brains.
I have had co-workers from the Latino-American and African-American communities and they told me of their struggle to "survive" the daily gauntlet from their own people - taunts, bully, threats and physical assaults.
It's okay to be a nerd if you are a white, an Indian, a Japanese, but if you happen to be an African American, a nerd is someone to be stepped on, to be pushed around, to be beaten.
If there is "racism" related to computer-science, the "racism" came not from the nerds, but from those who want to kick the nerds around.
Re: (Score:3)
From what I've seen the problem is not Computer Science as a curriculum but the precursors to someone pursuing computer science as a career option.
Much as girls were not encouraged to help their dad's tinker about the car in the 50's and 60's I don't see them tinkering on their parent's computer as much as boys. I don't know if it is a society induced thing due to commercials and stereotypes or an actual difference in preference of interaction. Most CS majors I've known had significant interaction with c
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Not beer, but social norms and the male/female preferences. While the social norms were covered above, I noticed in a lab for which I was an assistant director that the women in the lab were social beings that needed much interaction to feel at home. The males were typically laconic and wanted to do their own thing. The mathematical sciences prize individual achievement and so attract males. The other sciences value more communal research because it takes a team to get it done, and women naturally gravitate
Re:Colors of computer science (Score:5, Insightful)
What utter crap - your statements that certain races behave in certain ways is by its very nature racist.
The observation was that different CULTURES behave in different ways.
And it's not a racist observation. It's an inescapable one.
Re: (Score:3)
Women are no less sexist than men. So is it a problem? We are not selecting or encouraging exactly the best people. This has economic and scientific consequences, and it has social consequences. If the work "sexism" doesn't apply to this, then you need a word that does, because there's plenty to discuss here.
Basic interest? Gender based interference by ones own gender? It really isn't as easy as the blame game might seem at first
Having participated in many "take our son's and daughters to work day" events at the University I worked at, we did try to encourage young women to look at the technical fields. Keeping in mind that this was originally "Take your daughter to work day", it was the underlying purpose of the whole thing.
Working in an overwhelmingly technology and science arena, these were by and large,
sexist? pah! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't see anyone complaining that nursing or primary school teaching is sexist, yet those professions have a definite bias towards one sex.
So men tend to like computers more than women, does anyone seriously think this is somehow the industry keeping women from participating? (well, ok, but only because a lot of the "men" in the industry tend to be about as mature as the primary school children I referred to earlier!)
Racist? I can't answer that so readily, but I know a lot of foreign chappies working in IT, and my last company actively discriminated against white guys by only hiring Indian developers - though admittedly they were located in India, and cost a lot less. The one previous to that recruited a lot of Lithuanians, so they could hardly be said to discriminate against the usual native causcasian population.
Now ageist... that is definitely a problem in IT.
Re:sexist? pah! (Score:5, Funny)
Unix guide - unzip ; strip ; touch ; finger ; mount ; fsck ; more ; yes ; umount ; sleep
That is all.
Re: (Score:3)
What they really care about is getting more workers, so they don't have to pay as much. They saw women as an easy demographic to target, large and untapped. This 'sexism' is the way they decided to market that would be most effective, that is, most manipulative.
"These types of lessons are important for students to build personal relationships with computer science concepts and applications"
WTF does that even mean? Her? [youtube.com]
The mote in god's eye. (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't see anyone complaining that nursing or primary school teaching is sexist, yet those professions have a definite bias towards one sex.
If you haven't heard any complaints, it can only be because you haven't been listening:
Why Men Don't Teach Elementary School [go.com] [ABC News, March]
Men in Nursing [nurse.com] [October]
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
Men avoid working for public school systems because their policy is now dictated by feminist trained soccer moms who think all men are potential rapists/pedophiles.
Re: (Score:3)
Not exactly. But that does show how the larger society will influence/dictate what careers are "acceptable" to which genders/sexes.
As a male, you will have fewer problems and more social support as an engineer than as a teacher (except college professor).
Re:The mote in god's eye. (Score:5, Funny)
all men are potential rapists/pedophiles.
Potential? I'll show 'em!
Wait, that came out wrong.
Re:The mote in god's eye. (Score:5, Insightful)
Some feminists are misandrists, in particularly some really famous ones are(the press loves misandry all the drama of misogyny with none of the backlash). Feminism and feminists in general are generally not. Overall in my life I've encountered far fewer misandrists than I have misogynists, casual or otherwise, you're a pretty good example for instance. You get your hate on for feminism because a few members are a bit misandrist and you use it as an excuse to denigrate attempts to genuinely improve the lot of women because you can tar those efforts with the "feminist" label and then push it back.
There are a hundred thousand reasons why there are very few men in teaching, particularly primary school teaching, the most important being that it's incredibly poorly paid. There's also the fact during the second half of the last century male teachers religious and otherwise actually being kiddy fiddlers was tragically common. It's not feminists pushing men out of primary education it's parents and they have some justification, not all men like to abuse children, but for decades men who do have been gravitating to school teaching.
Re:The mote in god's eye. (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as I can tell, when an attack is made on men in tech about the gender imbalance in tech, it tends to come from feminists who espouse the views I described.
Opposing feminism as I have described it does not make me a "misogynist". Not being willing to accept the reasoning that "There are relatively few women in tech, therefore you horrible male nerds are discriminating against them and must be punished and/or discriminated against to level the playing field" also does not make me a "misogynist".
Re:sexist? pah! (Score:5, Insightful)
Hey! Most people in the hospital are SICK! Hospitals make folks sick!
Most people in $FIELD are ( $GENDER | $RACE ), that field is sexist to folks not of ( $GENDER | $RACE ).
I agree, it's moronic to endorse these simplistic and ignorant notions. Especially since they have no evidence. [youtube.com]
Are romance novel publishers sexist towards men because there's not 50/50 male:female ratio? Why not ask men if they want to be romance novelists. Oh, look at that, a resounding, "No." Should we force folks to do shit they don't want to do? Want to be a teacher? Sorry, we need more female coal miners. Want to be an engineer? Sorry we need more male counselors. Of course it won't play out like that. There will be a rule saying you just can't accept more men than women, and fields that women don't want to work in will just be under employed -- maybe H1B visas can do something about it? It'll start with minimum quotas for gender ratios ignoring any evidence of the percentages of sexes applying for the positions... Hmm, wait, don't we already Title IX? Ah, everything is going according to plan.
OH! I know! It's that romance literature as a medium is sexist towards men and needs to be changed to be more accepting of male male authorship! Let's mandate that every other page a visual depiction of sex -- Wha? That destroys the current medium? Ah. I see. If folks want to make visual romance novels they already can... right. So, no one's being prevented from doing a job, just that men and women like different things? THAT'S SEXIST! Brains should be heterogeneous lumps of mush! Variety is the poison of life!
I see this same gendered preference when asking women if they enjoy or even stand doing the work I'm doing: Being ditch diggers, construction workers, even indie game developers -- Not if they think they would like to be these things, but if they actually enjoy it (I have done so at these jobs). At my local gamedev group we're open to all and friendly, not hostile, we're about 20% women. Geme development is zero-barrier-to-entry, we have free engines, free assets, free tutorials, free assistance. We went out of our way to recruit more female developers, because some social justice warrior folks thought maybe other societal restrictions were keeping the women from signing up. OK, so we repeatedly got 50% of new attendees as female. Guess what? Nearly all the women quickly quit their projects, and far more men stayed. They said they just didn't feel it was a good use of their time. Some women LOVE game developing, and we celebrate them, but most women don't like doing the unglamorous thankless tedious work of developing games that no one will play but other devs.
Everyone wants to be a prestigious game designer, but the folks more willing to do what it takes to get there in general are men. I hypothesize this is because women value their time differently than men. There's evidence to suggest women are better at multi-tasking in general [wikipedia.org], so perhaps sinking a large portion of your time into a hobby that has low likelihood of yielding money or social standing and eats into the time you'd spend with your friends and family just isn't women's thing -- Or, maybe that men care less in general about the social impact and are more suited to the introversion it practically requires to produce a successful game in a reasonable time frame, as the science of personality trait distribution among sexes would suggest?
NOPE! Gamers HATE women! GAME CULTURE IS SEXIST! Ugh.
No one taught me how to write code. The Apple IIe in the computer lab booted to a BASIC prompt, and I figured that shit out despite having to turn it off and go back to Oregon Trail or Number Munchers when they looked my way. No one could prevent me from learning computer science: I was too youn
Re:sexist? pah! (Score:5, Interesting)
For them, it's just another opportunity for career advancement. If calling someone racist or sexist will help them land the job, that is all that matters!
Funny enough, that's probably closer to the truth than you'd expect. In Canada we went through this with policing back about 15 years ago, and it's completely messed up the management and general way things are handled. We're of course now reaping this politically correct mess, with peace officers who won't touch or do jobs because it "might inflame the minority groups." Different south of the border, back when a lot of places needed cops bad, they would hire anyone who could pass the basics even if they had a criminal past(Detroit was famous for this).
And of course this also swings into various things like fast tracking promotions and so on. An example: Let's say you, and a female cop are at equal terms for the moment in seniority, and qualifications. She gets pregnant...well what do you think will happen? If you think desk job you're half right, in most cases they'll get shuffled to ident, or something similar. In the year that she's not "working the beat" she'll get to sit there and twiddle her thumbs. In two years, because she's already worked at a job that requires a fair bit of smarts to do, she'll get a chance to pick and choose where she goes next. Now in the males case, let's say you get injured -- say serious spine injury, or some other form of a year or two long recovery process where you can still work. You think you're going to ident? Hardly, you my friend are being sent to the front desk to deal with people, and maybe go work in the cage(either weapons, or evidence). And when you're done and recovered, you're going right back to your old job. Enjoy that fast track process.
Re:sexist? pah! (Score:4, Insightful)
oh no, I'm fine - although I'm an old white guy, I have moved my career towards more consultancy where its an advantage - nobody wants to hire a young kid who will tell them how do to things, especially when management paying for such are old white guys too.
Still, its a well known problem for the industry that anyone with experience and skills are passed over in favour of kids who are cheaper and only know the cool new stuff, and end up having to re-learn things the old guys figured out and fixed decades ago. Until that situation gets sorted out (ie the industry becomes more professional rather than a hobby filled with flavour-of-the-month technology that never quite gets to mature) software will continue to be bugged, insecure and perform poorly, if it performs properly in the first place.
I would have hoped that upper management would be filled with guys who used to be the techies, but it seems management are getting younger (and less experienced) too, especially the ones brought in who can only talk the talk but do nothing else.
PC means Personal Computer,not Politically Correct (Score:2)
Give me a break. So tired of all this bullshit. Hey I know since Asians have higher representation than Europeans in CS, let's put them in the óppressed' pile too.
Re:PC means Personal Computer,not Politically Corr (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:PC means Personal Computer,not Politically Corr (Score:4, Insightful)
There's nothing wrong with helping women (and other minorities) deal with actual bullying and dismissive attitude that does, in fact, exist.
The problem with this program is that what they propose instead is basically to sugar-coat CS itself to attract more people from the desired minority groups. Which is not really solving the problem, and is going to backfire big time when a guy who went into the program because it let him "artistically express his cultural background" faces a manager who wants him to write some mundane piece of code by the end of this week.
Re: (Score:3, Interesting)
It'll bite him sooner than that, when the compiler or interpreter responds to his attempts with pages of error messages. It turns out that it's not practical to handicap the computers such that white males must write syntactically perfect prog
No. (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:No. (Score:5, Interesting)
That's not to say women can't do CS. Plenty can. Most choose not to do so.
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Wrong. You can't change advertising. Advertising comes in many forms: novels, television shows, films and so on. No matter how hard you attempt to shield your children, girls tend to want to be pink princesses because that's how women are portrayed in a majority of children's media. It's not a matter of bad parenting either, you can actively ignore mentioning this stuff and little girls still want to be pink simply because their friends do and everywhere they look it's ingrained in society.
Re:No. (Score:4, Informative)
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
Less than 100 years ago, the obvious-accepted colors were reversed:
"In 1918, an article in Ladies Home Journal advised: 'The generally accepted rule is pink for the boys, and blue for the girls. The reason is that pink, being a more decided and stronger color, is more suitable for the boy, while blue, which is more delicate and dainty, is prettier for the girl.' ... In 1927, department stores like Filenes and Marshall Field were still suggesting pink for boys. The current fashion didn’t get established until the 1940s."
http://brooks.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/04/22/pink-and-blue/ [nytimes.com]
Now think about how many other behaviors which are "obviously" biological may not be.
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
I don't know how much of girls liking dolls, and boys liking building blocks is due to genes or culture, but your blanket statement that demonlapin's statement is false, is itself false. We known it isn't entirely cultural because primate studies show that our closest non-human relatives also display this tendency. However it seems less that females like certain things, and males like certain things, but that males tend to like certain things to the exclusion of others, and females don't have as much exclusive preference.
Primate Study [doi.org]
Additionally, in girls with with a disorder that increases androgen production to be more like boys, toy preference also shifts, despite social pressures.
Androgen Study [doi.org]
Re: (Score:3)
Look, if you want to make sure that blatant sexism is out, then I'm all for it. Nobody should have to work in a hostile environment. I'm a doctor, not a coder, though, and I'm looking at it from a different angle. Of my practice group of twelve, three have wives who are also physicians. One is a stay-at-home mom, one works part-time (that's my wife), and one works a
Re: No. (Score:5, Informative)
The barrier for entry in learning to code is virtually nil. You need a computer - it doesn't even have to be a good one - and access to the Internet.
That's it. If you have that, you have all of the resources, tutorials, books, exercises, and help documentation needed to start learning CS.
Oh yes - and the motivation to do self-start and learn something yourself.
Re:No. (Score:5, Insightful)
no.. Girls innately prioritize socialization, which, for whatever reason, is given more respect these days than abilities (like computer programming) that actually accomplish something. Give girls toy trucks, and they treat them like dolls, anthropomorphizing them.. Give dolls to boys and they'll treat them like space ships, or have them fight or whatever..
Gender is not a social construct. Society is a gender construct.
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
Girls innately prioritize socialization ... Give girls toy trucks, and they treat them like dolls, anthropomorphizing them.. Give dolls to boys and they'll treat them like space ships, or have them fight or whatever ...
To you, and all the others on this thread arguing for either the nature or nurture side, a simple question: how do you know this? I'm not interested in your personal observations, because they're horribly biased. If it's based on scientific work, please cite it. As an exercise, then proceed to cite the scientific work that says the opposite. The whole question is far from settled.
Re: (Score:3)
Unfortunately, personal observations and theories are all anybody's got on this issue. Scientists can't ethically experiment on children, so they're left to try to tease causality out of statistical regressions. There might be a data set out there from some longitudinal study that happens to suggest the causality for women's lack of interest in CS. But either nobody has looked, or someone did look but then didn't publish it because the truth wasn't politically correct.
Meanwhile, I'll be giving my daughte
Re:No. (Score:5, Funny)
My dad tried with my sister.
When she was 16 she could change an alternator herself, admittedly only to prove her little brother wrong.
Then she learned how to stand on tip toes and then drop her heals to the ground, causing her boobs to bounce...it was over in six months. Learned helplessness.
BTW once you notice the, tip toes, drop heals to make boobs bounce thing, you see it everywhere. Anybody got any alternative explanations for this body language? It's always related to a girl wanting to get her way.
Re: (Score:3)
First the obvious - it's an anecdote. Even putting that aside ...
Learned helplessness.
No, she learned to pretend to be helpless. That she already knew how to change an alternator proves she wasn't helpless.
When I first learned to work on cars I thought it was interesting and it gave me a sense of accomplishment. Many years later, I still do some of my own work, but I hate it. If I could pull your sister's trick I probably would. Don't blame women for doing it though - blame men who are dumb enough to fall for it.
BTW once you notice the, tip toes, drop heals to make boobs bounce thing, you see it everywhere. Anybody got any alternative explanations for this body language? It's always related to a girl wanting to get her way.
I'll have to wa
Re:No. (Score:4, Informative)
A quick search got me:
http://www.newscientist.com/article/dn13596-male-monkeys-prefer-boys-toys.html [newscientist.com]
same study (I think) with a pro-feminist women-are-smarter-than-men spin near the end
http://www.livescience.com/22677-girls-dolls-boys-toy-trucks.html [livescience.com]
Not sure about its pedigree because it's pushing a political narrative, but here's more corroborating evidence suggesting biological basis for gender role/behavior
http://www.parentingscience.com/girl-toys-and-parenting.html [parentingscience.com]
Each of these has varying amounts of placative language to satisfy the PC crowd, so, as always, skepticism is the rule of the day when investigating research that's been contaminated with political correctness. I think it is obvious that masculine/feminine traits, both physical and behavioral, boil down to levels of different hormones as one matures.. They manipulate aspects of temperament and behavior that drive people towards some directions and away from others. The reason this is so politically charged is that it conflicts with the liberal dogma that says gender typical behavior is based on social conditioning.
Re:No. (Score:5, Informative)
Here's a classic, often-cited study. To summarize it, some boys are born with an abdominal defect that leaves their bladder or genital organs exposed and malformed. Years ago, surgeons weren't able to reconstruct male organs, so they "converted" the infants at birth to females. They told the parents to keep this secret from the child, and bring them up as girls. So this was a scientific experiment of bring up boys as girls, to the greatest extent imaginable.
As it turned out, most of the boys rebelled against being brought up as girls, and followed male rather than female behavior. Even as infants of a few months of age, they preferred male toys, such as weapons, and male playing, such as aggression and fighting. As they got older, the preference for male behavior, such as fighting and construction toys, was even more noticeable. Boys played with toy guns. They didn't play with tea sets. And they had strong preferences for male clothing.
Any reasonable person would have to admit that this is strong evidence that sexual behavior is largely innate, not environmental.
If you can surgically change a boy to a girl, bring him up as a girl, and have him insist on following male behavior instead, then you could expect the same results from a similar experiment with bringing up girls as boys. If girls have an inherent preference for (or against) certain careers, you'll find more (or fewer) women in those careers, even without discrimination against women, and even despite all the affirmative action and encouragement in the world.
I don't object to women studying engineering; I encourage it. But I would expect that even with the best gender-free STEM education in the world, you're not going to have equal results of as many women in every discipline of engineering as men. It seems to max out at 10%.
Science magazine has also published a lot of work on gender in science and science education. There are some efforts that succeeded and other efforts that failed. Women in biology and medicine, success. Women in engineering, relatively rare.
The evidence goes against somebody suing an employer and saying, "There are more male than female engineers, therefore you're discriminating, and not giving us opportunities, and you should pay us hundreds of thousands of dollars." Which happened in many industries in the 1970s.
********************
Discordant Sexual Identity in Some Genetic Males with Cloacal Exstrophy Assigned to Female Sex at Birth
William G. Reiner, M.D., and John P. Gearhart, M.D.
N Engl J Med 2004; 350:333-341
January 22, 2004
DOI: 10.1056/NEJMoa022236
Background
Cloacal exstrophy is a rare, complex defect of the entire pelvis and its contents that occurs during embryogenesis and is associated with severe phallic inadequacy or phallic absence in genetic males. For about 25 years, neonatal assignment to female sex has been advocated for affected males to overcome the issue of phallic inadequacy, but data on outcome remain sparse.
Methods
We assessed all 16 genetic males in our cloacal-exstrophy clinic at the ages of 5 to 16 years. Fourteen underwent neonatal assignment to female sex socially, legally, and surgically; the parents of the remaining two refused to do so. Detailed questionnaires extensively evaluated the development of sexual role and identity, as defined by the subjects' persistent declarations of their sex.
Results
Eight of the 14 subjects assigned to female sex declared themselves male during the course of this study, whereas the 2 raised as males remained male. Subjects could be grouped according to their stated sexual identity. Five subjects were living as females; three were living with unclear sexual identity, although two of the three had declared themselves male; and eight were living as males, six of whom had reassigned themselves to m
Re: (Score:3)
Some girls and some boys will definitely react the way you describe, but not all. I believe there are natural gender differences but they are re-enforced by society, so that the subset of girls who would prefer legos and tinkertoys get dolls instead. Of these a subset will fight their way out of the gender stereotypes to a STEM career, but certainly there are many that don't. Really what is needed is for parents to pay attention to what their child (of either gender) really wants and needs and help them bro
Re:No. (Score:4, Insightful)
"and poor children (which includes many racial minorities, although not because they're racial minorities) going to shitty schools where they're lucky if their education is only twenty years out of date."
tl/dr: Without a stable household with at least one educated or mature parent, poor children will fail regardless of their schools environment.
I would say many poor children do not have parents who actually give a damn if their child is educated or not. More often than not, public schools are used as baby sitting services. That is why public schools in bad neighborhoods look like they are war zones, no one cares, not even the faculty as they are powerless. After the kids get home its time to let them run wild in the streets so as not to bother mom, who is single any might have two or more kids from multiple men. There is also no male figure in the house nor someone who can provide a steady income.
So most poor kids don't care about school let alone a career path or genuinely becoming interested in something. If the poor minorities want education it must start at home with at least one parent who gives a damn and tries as hard as they can to ensure their child rises up above the ignorance and poverty to make a successful life. But having known many poor and ignorant "minorities"(mainly Hispanics), I see a huge a problem because the parents are often so ignorant its hard to distinguish their behavior from their own children. So without a parent who is educated or even mature, how can they possibly inspire their children?
This isn't true for everyone but for a majority, yes it is the truth. Even a 20 year outdated education would benefit them. They need English, writing, reading and basic math skills first. Then worry whether they will be the next John Carmack, Dennis Ritchie or Linux Torvalds.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: In all fairness... (Score:3)
Which is of course why they're now so fixated on the 'brogrammer'. Much like the manager class doesn't want to believe programmers are their equals, and thus do not deserve the kind salary the free market requires, the social justice types refuse to accept that those uncouth programmers deserve the salaries they do have, and must be knuckle dragging agents of the patriarchy to thwart the asocial introvert stereotype.
you know you are in a CS bubble when ... (Score:5, Interesting)
- People claim that everyone should write computer software including those with minimal STEM background and minmal interest in such.
- When crazy articles about computer science racism starting appearing.
Poor fit for leveling the playing field ... (Score:5, Insightful)
Certainly any group can have members that have such an interest in programming. Finding those individuals would be a good thing. I just have severe reservations against trying to push anyone into this field. I've seen too many programmers who got into the field not because they have any inherent interest or curiosity rather somebody told them it was a good career path. They don't do well.
Should some sort of CS or programming classes be availably to anyone in K-12 that is interested or curious? Sure. It would be a great elective class.
Re: (Score:2)
"Should some sort of CS or programming classes be availably to anyone in K-12 that is interested or curious? Sure. It would be a great elective class."
Mod this guy up 100. Remember though, kids only go for the 'exciting' classes.
Re:Poor fit for leveling the playing field ... (Score:5, Interesting)
Its not the sort of job you can do well if you don't have some sort of inherent interest or curiosity in.,
I used to think that too, but since I've met a number of people who don't really like programming but are still very good at it. YMMV.
Don't like assigned tasks or programming itself ? (Score:3)
Its not the sort of job you can do well if you don't have some sort of inherent interest or curiosity in.,
I used to think that too, but since I've met a number of people who don't really like programming but are still very good at it. YMMV.
Don't like their employer, job, assigned programming tasks?
Or if they were free to indulge in whatever project held some interest or curiosity they would not enjoy the necessary programming?
I can understand getting burned out on tasks that are devoid of challenge or interest. I would just be surprised to find a person who was truly good at programming who never wrote a piece of code that was not a school nor work assignment. Who never did any programming simply because they were curious or otherwise p
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I am (I would claim) good at it but I don't like it. Largely that's because coding for hire tends to boil down to the same few patterns over and over again. Put something fresh in front of me and it can be fun again.
How does advanced CS have any tie to culture? (Score:5, Insightful)
From near the end of the ECS Team Member [exploringcs.org] link:
The learning environment of the more advanced computer science classrooms has supported the culture of these students and often made others to feel as "outsiders," as if their concerns, perspectives, were not valued in the field.
So what exactly does that mean? I don't remember any CS classes having a "culture" of any kind. Unless they are saying that "dry and sometimes boring" is "white culture"?
The whole reason you TAKE a CS class is because you are a relative "outsider" to the concepts being presented and want in.
They talk about the solution being "vision of success" for all cultures. But in the end the only possible "success" from a CS class is a better understanding of how to build software. Not only is that not tied in to a culture, ideally it's not even tied to a language! It's totally abstract, yet they seem to want to make it more concrete somehow...
I don't understand how the deride access as "not being enough" when access is EVERYTHING. Grafting hip-hip or graffiti into a college CS class is way, way too late. You want to help people from "other cultures" - well then figure out how to get them something they can and will program on when they are five years old up until college age. Then if it takes they will happily end up at the "dull" CS classes years later to learn mastery of the thing that they love.
Re:How does advanced CS have any tie to culture? (Score:5, Insightful)
But perhaps the white males who thrive in CS do have one quality that enables them to succeed where others fail: the ability to assimilate into an alien culture without considering yourself a victim of its unfamiliarity. I suspect that all humans are born with this ability, but some people are taught that every difficulty they encounter in life is some form of victimization.
Re:How does advanced CS have any tie to culture? (Score:5, Funny)
Weird Al basically covered the entire gamut of this culture in his parody White and Nerdy. The fact that he explicitly linked being "white" with "nerdy" leads me to believe that nerd culture in the US is viewed under the such racial spectrum at least in part.
That's a pretty solid citation. But you should know that Weird Al has also determined that girls just wanna have lunch and as a result are insufficiently motivated to study CS.
Re:How does advanced CS have any tie to culture? (Score:5, Interesting)
CS culture is the same any other cultural block - the sense that your peer group is superior because you believe or know something that other groups do not. You see it in Mac vs PC, Android vs iOS, Windows vs Unix, Debian vs Ubuntu, x86 vs MIPS, etc. It's the same thing that made the football team superior to the basketball team. Or Hondas better than Toyotas, or domestic cars better than foreign cars. Or vegan better than a regular diet. Or heavy metal better than pop. (Or vice versa for all of these)
In other words, it's just the way people are. It affects all aspects of society including CS. If there's one black mark I'd give CS about this, it's that it tends to have a greater percentage of socially mal-adjusted people, and so tends to hang on to this sense of superiority more than other cultural blocks. Most regular people eventually figure out that it's not really important whether the football team is better than the basketball team, or whether you bought a Toyota or a Ford. But people in CS tend to defend and promote their preferred systems with almost religious fervor well into adulthood. This can be very off-putting to regular people thinking of getting into CS. (To be fair, it's a minority of people in CS who behave like this. But they can be a very vocal minority.)
CS mixtures not different than other groups (Score:3)
Most regular people eventually figure out that it's not really important whether the football team is better than the basketball team, or whether you bought a Toyota or a Ford.
I totally agree with your point that CS becomes a peer group, which is just a kind of human thing that happens.
Where I disagree is that CS or programming in general gets any more people with social issues than any other. I've met lots of people who did NOT figure out the things you mentioned, who were fixated on something they assert
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You nailed it, friend. That one quote pretty much demonstrates the entire problem with all these BS "discriminatory profession" arguments, whatever the profession.
Someone's "culture" has fuck-all to do with programming; and their concerns and perspectives have no value to a co
Re:How does advanced CS have any tie to culture? (Score:4, Informative)
As a matter of fact, I can... But not your point, I know.
Your real point seems to fault CS for primarily using English, the second-most spoken language on the planet. Okay, fair point - Convince everyone to switch to Mandarin, and I'll play along for the sake of efficiency.
Because like it or not, this does boil down to efficiency; If everyone on the planet would just pick a single language and stick with it, we'd all have it a whole lot easier. Hell, let's even pick a designed language like Esperanto, so no one has "home court advantage" - $Deity knows I'd give my left nut to actually have everyone use a language without a million and seven historical irregularities.
But no, instead of learning from our mistakes in the real world, instead let's try to turn the most successful monoculture ever to arise in the history of humanity, into just one more polyglot disaster; where the ability to share earth-shatteringly good ideas becomes more a matter of imaginary lines on a map than of technical prowess.
Please, just watch Louis.
I've seen that one before. Pretty good, and really makes a person stop and think. Except... It kinda misses the point. Yes, my culture gives me something of an advantage in life - Because we won. And yes, we had our bad-old-days, when "winning" meant someone else lost. But we've moved past that, and have invited everyone to the party.
The problem there comes from everyone else still trying to "win" by dragging western culture down to their level. Yes, you can have capitalism. Yes, you can have democracy. Yes, you can have the role of religion marginalized in your political system (though sadly, we all still have quite some way to go in that regard). Yes, you can have English. That combination won, long long ago. Stop fighting it, rather than joining the winning team.
(which only exist because of pervasive systemic racism and segregation, by the way), your knee-jerk reaction is that it's just bullshit?
Okay, so moving beyond "language", what prevents any English-speaking American black/hispanic/female learning to program the same damned way any white male programmer did? And no, I don't mean "college" (I have yet to meet a single good programmer who didn't already have the fundamentals down well before college). I mean pick up a book on programming, read it, read it again, fall in love with the subject, and spend the rest of their lives honing their skills?
And for reference, before you say that I have an advantage because of the "culture" targeted by that book - For me, "that book" meant the GW Basic language reference manual (old-style three-ring binding and all). About as "culturally accessible" as your car's service manual. Nothing but the facts - This function takes these parameters and does whatever with them. And before you say "you had a computer and that book", I actually encountered that book and my first PC in my third grade classroom, spending as long after school every day as they would let me stay, to learn how to use it.
Re:How does advanced CS have any tie to culture? (Score:4, Interesting)
What do any differences that African American culture has with mainstream American culture have to do with computer science, though? You say:
If written without any sensitivity to a difference in inherited cultures, it is fair to say the material will be more easily absorbed by the kids who are products of the same culture to which the author caters.
But these words are meaningless without a concrete example. Can you cite some CS material that will be "more easily absorbed" by white kids compared to the black ones due to the way that it's written?
FWIW, I'm not American nor a native English speaker, and my native culture is significantly different. But I learned the trade largely from books written by American authors, and I didn't have a problem with any kind of "cultural difference", because any such does not reflect in CS (and other hard sciences). Computers and numbers don't care what your race, ethnicity, religion etc is.
Culturally Relevant == Irrelevant to CS (Score:5, Insightful)
This is totally bullshit and it's being done for bullshit political reasons. Nothing good comes from the politicization of science and yet the politicians cannot resist making a political issue of the lack of "diversity" in CS education. In my own CS experience nobody gave a shit about whether you were black, white, asian or latino and yes we had all of those races represented in the program. What mattered was whether or not you could hack it and continue advancing through the curriculum. The grades were always on a curve and the competition was intense. If you weren't smart enough or fast enough you washed out. In CS, as in other sciences, people respect knowledge, ability and intelligence, not the color of your skin or your cultural background. If you wanted to major in foo-fa the Humanities department was on the other side of campus.
Re:Culturally Relevant == Irrelevant to CS (Score:5, Funny)
Maybe we need to lower the standards so that everyone can get a fair chance to participate.
Equal opportunities for kids of English descent (Score:3, Funny)
Children of English or British ancestry are handicapped by their cultural heritage, so they deserve extra stimuli and attention in education.
Their language is fraught with an enormous vocabularity, which impediments their efforts to become literate. To make things worse, the spelling is arcane, non-intuitive, and non-phonetic, and then American, British, Canadian, etc. English have different spellings.
Their ascent in the scientific and computing subjects is further jeopardised by a labyrinthine system of ancient units of measurement, which drives even the smart to seek a career in the humanities.
Re:Equal opportunities for kids of English descent (Score:4, Insightful)
which impediments their efforts to become literate
Clearly that's true.
Graffiti? Really? (Score:5, Interesting)
"Cultural activities in dance, skateboarding, graffiti art, and more."
As a black software engineer I am tired of needing things dumbed down (or "hipped up") to be made more acceptable to minorities. We don't need skateboarding, "graffiti art", or dancing to teach a kid how to code. Just like we didn't need a substandard English (Ebonics) to teach kids how to properly read and write.
If under representation of minorites in computer science is racist, I'd love to know what they think of the under representation of non-Asian minorities in all science, medicine, and technology fields. By their metric there would be rampant racism.
Racism is a real thing, and a very terrible thing, and it's offensive to assume a lack of minority representation automatically means racism. I came from a culture that shunned academic excellence of any kind, and I think that's the reason there is under representation. But nobody wants to talk about the elephant in the room which is asking people to blame their perceptions and beliefs instead of their environment. Racism makes a convenient enemy when the enemy is within.
Spot the trends (Score:3, Informative)
Colleges Cut Men’s Programs to Satisfy Title IX [nytimes.com]
Sokal's Hoax [nyu.edu]
Yes, There’s a War on Boys in Schools [nationalreview.com]
What About Our Boys? [nationalreview.com]
The direction this is likely to go is easily predictable.
CS is Race/Gender neutral (Score:3)
It's applied mathematics how much more abstract and removed do you want it to be ?
What this is about is getting particular groups of people interested in the subject. That may be good or bad, but the problem is not with the material.
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Betteridge's law of headlines (Score:2)
Complete nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't have personal relationships with concepts and applications. I have an intellectual relationship with them. I have personal relationships with people.
Is Computer Science Racist and Sexist? (Score:4, Insightful)
Oh, probably, as much as anything is.
Can People Make Money Off This?
You betcha.
I find the premise laughable (Score:5, Insightful)
IT/Software Development is one of the rare, if not unique, fields where people can be very paid well, the job market is currently hot, and one can learn everything from inexpensive books(or even free online courses) combined with motivation. It's positively egalitarian. If the premise had to do with medicine and law, where there's required expensive schooling and potential for a "good ol' boys" club atmosphere, then I'd find it more believable.
When I've interviewed for development positions where the person went to school was of little importance. In fact, our CTO(who has his BS and MS in CS from Stanford) even jokes that it's the people straight from academia that sometimes seem the most incompetent. The only things we care about are if you know your stuff and have some body of previous work you can point to and talk about. But then I work in Silicon Valley where a competent developer can pretty much write his own ticket right now.
My experience in commercial development the last 13 years had me working with females. They were almost always foreign born, often with English as a second language. Yes, it's mostly males, but a large part of them are East Asians and Indians, not all white males.
In short, the bar of entry in my experience is low as long as you're motivated and competent. Why aren't there more women? Look at practically every engineering and scientific accomplishment in human history. Are you going to tell it's just culture that has kept those accomplishments relegated almost entirely to men?
Nonsense (Score:5, Insightful)
This is liberal political correctness run amok. It is a bunch of meaningless politically correct, victimization complex garbage. If the aformentioned groups fail to avail themselves of college education for these IT subjects, there is only one group for them to blame, themselves. No one is stopping them from doing so. The article is basically full of a nonsense, meaningless drivel and window dressing. The idea that they cannot learn what a b-tree is without a dicussion of graffiti and gang identification is absurd. The constant obsessive compulsive drive to find sexism and racism in everything is nauseating. Nowhere in computer science textbooks do I find anything that suggests that this field is off limits to the aforementioned groups. This is an example of someone inventing a controversy to both falsely accuse someone of non-existant infractions and create a scapegoating of people for whom are not responsible for whatever they are complaining about. I believe in personal responsibility, of group X or group Y feels they need a computer science education, do it, the fact computer textbooks do not have a discussion of hip hop music is not an excuse for them not being motivated to do so. Some wish to shift blame to others for these groups not doing X or Y, when these groups only have themselves to blame for not being motivated.
As a Hispanic Compute Scientist, my answer is (Score:3)
Is Computer Science Education Racist and Sexist?
No. No. No. Fucking no!
It is not. As a Hispanic, no one prevented me from getting into Computer Science, graduating from that field and making a good career out of it just based on my race, ethnicity or whatever. It was just me, myself and my efforts. My sister, being a Hispanic woman, she did not have a "racial" problem getting into Math (and graduating). There are no Jim-Crow-like establishments that prevents people like me from getting into STEM. So, no, Computer Science education is not racist.
Saying so is just bullshit race baiting designed to distract people from the actual social problems that pervade the African American and Hispanic communities. It is a lot easier to race bait than to actually fix shit. This is pretty much what this whole endeavor amounts to.
People choose STEM (and in particular Computer Science) based on a variety of social factors. In the US, women shy away to go into STEM, but you see this as less of an issue with the many Chinese and Indian female colleagues I have had the honor to work with. The same occurs with African American and Hispanic students.
To begin with (and I say this from the POV of a minority) our African American and Hispanic cultures have significant problems that lead students away from certain subjects and careers. This is in parallel with American society at large where women are conditioned to stay away from STEM fields.
Consider the following: it is well known that many African American kids (and Hispanic kids to a lesser) degree do not know how to swim. But we know that the causes are cultural as well as economical: African American and Hispanic neighborhoods are on average of a lower income than Non-Hispanic Caucasian and Asian communities, with poorer infrastructure and less amenities: that include pools. Furthermore, lower income means lesser variety of extra-curricular activities (including swimming.)
But we don't go and ask "is swimming racist"? It would be a stupid question for obvious reasons. But why is it then that when people ask the same about Computer Science (and STEM in general) we do not see this as a stupid question?
"Including culturally relevant instructional materials represented a driving focus of our course development," explained ECS Team members who now advise Code.org. "Cultural design tools encourage students to artistically express computing design concepts from Latino/a, African American, or Native American history as well as cultural activities in dance, skateboarding, graffiti art, and more. These types of lessons are important for students to build personal relationships with computer science concepts and applications – an important process for discovering the relevance of computer science for their own life." And — ironically for Code.org — it could mean less coding."
Computer Science is the field of computing, an off shot of Discrete Mathematics. This is not about artistic expression, but hard science of numbers and computing. We could also propose the same for Math and Physics because not that many Hispanics and African Americans and American-born women go into those fields.
The solution is not to plaster Computer Science education with multicultural trivia and singing kumbaya and shit. The solution involves solving the economic gaps that pervade in the African American and Hispanic communities (and let's be honest, to have those communities solve the systemic cultural issues that keep *us* from partaking in process of fostering technology and science.)
Anything less than that is lipstick-on-a-pig, sugar-coating bullshit.
Re:Question asked. Answer NO. (Score:5, Funny)
In computer related fields nobody cares how hot you are.
possibly the wrongest thing I've ever read on Slashdot! :-)
Re: Question asked. Answer NO. (Score:4, Funny)
We guys however, were unrecognized gems. 18 charisma, EVERY ONE.
Re: IQ (Score:5, Funny)
You don't need an above average IQ for CS, you just need to think you have one.
Re: IQ (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, you have to be able to think very logically. However, good logic skills also correlate with higher average IQs. There is also a bias in the black community that devalues education as it "trains you to be like the man" and ruins street cred.
As a manager in IT, I used to go out of my way to hire attractive women in CS, but they are just super rare. They hardly exist, and the smart ones are very expensive.
All in all, people need to relax and understand we are all different. Just like most pro sports are dominated by blacks because they kick ass athletically, the geeky "brain" sports are dominated by people who spend more time developing their brains (Chinese, Indians, and whites typically). If we would stop judging people for being "weak" or "stupid", humans wouldn't have such a big issue with this simple fact. Fact is, we make fun of dumb jocks and geeky nerds. For a long long time, it was totally uncool to be a weak geeky nerd (Revenge of the Nerds anyone??). It's only because geeks make the most money (on average) that we are cool now. Otherwise, we'd still be outcasts as we were for 30 years.
So, again - if you want to be great in CS, you have to exercise your brain. And it helps if you are introverted and truly enjoy sitting in front of a computer screen for 13 hours a day. Simple as that. If that isn't you, you aren't going to be a good programmer.
Re: IQ (Score:5, Insightful)
Interesting how biasing hiring towards women is not considered sexist yet biasing towards men, is? All in the name of 'equality' of course.
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I find it particularly interesting that these people want us to teach the girls until they discover we are young and male. [go.com] The irony is WE are the ones blamed for being gender biases.
You want me to teach your kids CS but then accuse me of being a pedophile for wanting to teach kids? Well then, fuck off. They can teach themselves, just like I taught myself.
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The whole 'diversity' program is patronizing. It was designed to be so that it inflames different groups over the differences that are supposedly irrelevant. After a few generations, society suddenly has a lot of people with strong, 'righteous' feelings over these supposedly irrelevant attributes which, unfortunately, is the best way to drive people to the polls..or to the streets in 'revolution.' Masturbatory pseudo-intellectualism like the links in this story are just a way to make this crapola appeal
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"an attractive candidate for the job" is a phrase that means different things than "an attractive woman", which is what the poster said. In any case, "attractive" would be an unusual word to apply to "candidate" unless one is speaking of physical attributes. Prospects are attractive, because you are drawn to them. Candidates are more likely to be called promising. Of course, that doesn't rule out just a slip of the tongue, figuratively speaking, but still, considering the rest of the post and everything, I
Re: IQ (Score:4, Funny)
As a manager in IT, I used to go out of my way to hire attractive women in CS, but they are just super rare. They hardly exist, and the smart ones are very expensive.
I've seen the job ads:
WANTED: COMPUTER PROGRAMMER
Job spec:
(Goodbye karma)
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You don't need an above average IQ for CS, you just need to think you have one.
Then thanks to the Dunning/Kruger effect [wikipedia.org], everyone can learn CS! :-)
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apparently this only applies when one of the state-chosen 'winner' groups shows proclivities for certain skillsets.. welcome to newspeak 'equality'.
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Which, predictably, chases plenty of women away. However, the men are damned no matter which choice they make -- if she leaves because they chase her away on purpose, it's their fault. If she leaves because they try too hard to keep her, it's their fault. And if they treat her the same as they would a man, and she leaves, well, that's their fault too!
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Which you can read all about in my article, "Is Betteridge's Law of Headlines true?"
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You would have a point with gamers, if anyone even knew who each other were. you cannot be sexist or racist towards "teabagger484", it is impossible.
Yet there are nicknames that do identify, or at least hint, at the gender - and when those appear, OP's observations are spot on.
I'm male, but I play online under a name that is not in and of itself gender-specific, but it can be interpreted that way when cultural stereotypes are applied (it has the word "kitten" in it). Every now and then someone will take it to mean that I'm female, and the way they start talking to you then is really very different, and often demeaning either explicitly or in its implica
Re: (Score:3)
Yes, but there is no reason to believe that their hints, or straight out telling, are correct/truthful.
Have you ever thought that you were demeaned because they thought that you were a man pretending to be a girl, or a girl looking for attention, in a place where her boobs do not give her a advantage. Not because these people are sexist. Sex does not exist on the internet, so sexism is impossible.
One quote I quite like:
"If I can pontificate a bit, for your edification. One of the rules of the Internet is:
Re: (Score:3)
Have you ever thought that you were demeaned because they thought that you were a man pretending to be a girl, or a girl looking for attention, in a place where her boobs do not give her a advantage.
Well, since I clearly weren't looking for any advantage of a sort, for those people to presume such would be sexist in and of itself.
Sex does not exist on the internet, so sexism is impossible.
This is plainly wrong, as is your quote. Just because there's no immediate possibility of getting sex doesn't mean that brains still don't get to behave as if it was there when dealing with what they perceive as a member of the opposite sex. That's because the brain was wired up long before such remote contact was a possibility.
The "white knight in shining armor" syndrome on t
Re:in no way is CS sexist or racist. (Score:4, Funny)
Show me one example where coding is sexist or racist. When I say an example, show me syntax, I program in C, C++, PHP, ASM, PERL, PYHTON, BASH, SH, a variety of web languages and other desktop languages. I have yet to see syntax which is racist or sexist.
Just a few off the top of my head...