I wasn't talking about the article being stifling, rather the discussion (as witnessed by the downvotes). Can you list some of the articles/books about specifically male game developers? I haven't seen any yet (though I must admit that I rarely read anything about gaming, except technically oriented articles).
There are huge numbers of articles and books which exclusively discuss male game developers, almost every one I've ever read.
Did any of them say "This article will only be about men"? No. I'm not clear of your point -- do you wish all articles which only discuss men were labelled as such?
My point exactly; there are no articles saying "this article will only be about men" like this one is about women. Instead, they are saying "this article will be about great games" or "shitty games" or such. That's why I perceive this article as sexist.
That's because you're using a term you don't fully understand. Singling out men and women for gender-neutral praise ("great women in video games" or "great women in badminton" or whatever) isn't sexist.
"Sexist" is a normative term. It describes an "ought". Specifically: sexism points out instances where we "ought not" stereotype genders. So it would be sexist to point out that women as a class are inferior or superior at video game development. This post does neither of these things.
The term you're flailing around for is "gender biased". "Gender bias" is a descriptive term. It describes an "is". This post "is" about highlighting the achievements of women in the industry. It uses gender as a criteria for inclusion.
By itself, gender bias leaves you with too many unknowns to solve the system for a normative result. You can add intent and circumstances (for instance) to solve it for impact. If you think the intent of this article is to suggest that women are superior to men, you'll sound like a crazy person. If you suggest that the circumstances of gender balance in our industry are such that women's achievements are nonnotable, you'll sound like your head is in the sand. But you haven't even done either of those two things; you've got x, y, and z, one equation, and have just decided to leave y and z out and declare the system solved.
One example of this I've used in the past is a maternity ward. This is very clearly a health facility with a high level of gender bias. It is not sexist in the least though.
I haven't figured out a good example of something that is sexist that doesn't display gender bias though...
> Singling out men and women for gender-neutral praise isn't sexist.
I agree. However, this isn't a Wikipedia article (which should usually be accompanied by a similar article about the opposite sex). And this article has some issues (IMO) that a Wikipedia article wouldn't have; I won't list them, as I said in my first comment, but @pervycreeper list some of the issues he sees.
> The term you're flailing around for is "gender biased".
Possibly. However, in my mind "sexism" (along with every other "-ism") is defined as any (irrelevant) discrimination, including positive discrimination. Therefore, I perceive the current "more women in CS" craze (nor the general "more people in CS" trend) as inappropriate/(unfairly) biased/-ism. Of course, we might argue whether it's irrelevant or not; personally, I was brought up in a different society where everyone had to work, my mother was the technical person in the family, and if anything, I was discouraged from spending too much time behind the computer, so I'm convinced that in my country, in my generation, computer skills are the result of means (computers were much more expensive back then) and interest, and not gender at all; if I were brought up in the US, I might have a different view on sexism in CS.
Well, what's in your mind is interesting, I guess, but it has nothing to do with how the world works.
The reality is: people who talk about "reverse sexism" like this are, almost as a rule, trying to minimize discussion of sexism against women. I'm now discriminating against you based on that statement, but it's OK, because that discrimination isn't irrelevant: there's a search bar at the bottom of the page, and it's really easy to use it to see where you stand on this issue.
> but it has nothing to do with how the world works.
Possibly. But as they say, "be the change you want to see in the world".
> people who talk about "reverse sexism" like this are, almost as a rule, trying to minimize discussion of sexism against women
Well, there is sexism and there is "sexism". If we're talking about things like forced marriage (more specifically, older men marrying underage women), FGM, human trafficking/sex tourism, violent rape, etc., I'm all for it. Of course, these topics are rarely discussed, because there is no discussion necessary - pretty much all people agree that they are awful, and that they should be solved.
On the other hand, if we're talking about things like GitHub's meritocracy rug, "the patriarchy", that the female CEOs are paid less than male CEOs, that there should be more women/people in CS, or domestic violence against women, then I'll be pointing out a few things; (1) these topics are not really deserving of the attention they're getting (poor millionaire CEOs; why don't we talk about the homeless people instead), (2) they are sexist (why not talk about domestic violence in general - recent studies suggest that there is a huge number of male victims as well, and no support systems for them), (3) they often have a hidden agenda (noone wanted to be a programmer before geeks became cool and started earning a lot of money). IMO, these are all very valid arguments, but because they are comments about sensitive topics, they get downvoted.
If an article doesn't say it will only be about men, but is then only about men, is it sexist? (I don't really have a firm result here, certainly some articles just happen to be about men, and others which should mention men).
Depends on what's in it; an article about Nobel laureates that doesn't mention Marie Curie, or an article about the history of CS that doesn't mention Lovelace, Hopper or Liskov probably is. However, if history in a particular subject was made mostly by men, it's totally appropriate for an article about that history to mention only men. I don't know enough about history of gaming to judge this article on that merit (personally, I would only list 3 notable games programmers: Newell, Sweeney, Carmack, and a dozen or so games).
