Slashdot is a technology news site founded in the late 90s. Many people believe that Slashdot and the community of commenters there are sexist.
Contents
Issues
- Invisibility -- the readership are assumed to be male geeks, and women are frequently excluded in the language of articles
- Pigeonholing -- many articles pigeonhole women's contributions
- Essentialism -- many articles support the idea of innate differences between men and women when it comes to technical ability
- Online harrassment, Body image, Sexualized environment: comment threads, in particular, can be harrassing to women and often focus on their sexual availability or attractiveness
Slashdot articles about women
- Do women write better code?
- Women skip math/science careers to have families
- Book review: how to be a geek goddess
- Girls like Linux too
- "which no geek argues with in theory, we just never be able to find girl geeks of our own ;)" -- because all geeks are straight men, of course.
Sexist articles on Slashdot
- "Most recipes are designed for women, and their funny way of looking at the world. These are very different and instantly understandable for tech geeks like us." -- "tech geeks" are by definition men, of course.
- "Now I'm sure that no Slashdot reader will intentionally watch any "sport" that has judges determine the winner, but their wives/girlfriends might seize control of the remote because they want to know who is the best at that ribbon-twirling thing." -- again, "we" are men.
- April Fools Joke 2006: Pink pony slashdot
- Screenshot here
- Commentary on a blog post by Jeni Tennison (archive link): "It’s a joke that promotes a stereotype: that women are stupid, they are only interested in pink things, and ponies, that they all write like an idiotic high school girl. Being a joke doesn’t make it not sexist."
- How do I make my netbook more manly?
- Google: Teach Girls Coding, Get $2500; Teach Boys, Get $0
Articles about sexism on Slashdot
- The down side of slashdot (Annalee Newitz on Alternet)
- "A few months ago, an article of mine was Slashdotted. But instead of resulting in a lively debate about technology and social justice, it instead produced a popular thread in the "comments" area about whether I was too fat to be considered attractive. At that point, I vowed to stop reading Slashdot."
- The Slashdot Effect by Alice Tiara - response to the previous linked article
- I should have stopped reading comments on Slashdot years ago... by chromatic
Community content is available under CC-BY-SA unless otherwise noted.
