Comment by Steuard

It's difficult for me to see how you read my post as suggesting that the awesome women I know (or women in general) are emotionally fragile. I really tried to go out of my way to avoid giving that impression; that's why I called them "unflappable", among many other things.

I do understand the point you're aiming for here. But when the premise of your objection is so explicitly at odds with my actual words, it might be a good idea to ask yourself whether you really understand the point that I'm trying to make. (And not entirely succeeding in making, clearly!)

The biggest problem with your objection, to my eye, is that you're only talking about this as one isolated joke, while I'm trying to consider it as part of a broader pattern. The really frustrating part of this discussion, for me, is that I already made exactly that clarification to you (in more detail) nine hours ago in this same thread (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7122412). You didn't address that point then, and in writing what you have here you make it clear that it's still not something you're thinking about.

The pattern is the point. The cumulative impact of culture is the point. It's not calling women fragile to say that a lot of them get awfully sick of being peppered with these little signals of not-belonging hour after hour, day after day. Some may be fine with it, but many others clearly aren't. So why is it controversial to say "Ok, let's not do that"?

For me that moment of realization came about three years ago, on an entirely different forum.

I came into a discussion (on a topic similar to this) between a female friend of mine and another guy a few hours after it started. Every post of his had me nodding: I probably would have said just the same thing if he hadn't beaten me to it. So it was frustrating and confusing to see my friend getting increasingly hurt and angry as they went: why couldn't she see how much this guy was making sense?

I was pretty intensely annoyed with her by that point. I decided that if I was going to be able to get through to her about why she was being unreasonable and this other guy was right, I'd have to dig through some of the links that she'd shared so I could make a convincing case that her position was unfair.

I read the articles she'd linked to, and I still couldn't figure out why she'd been so upset. Confused, I read them again. Then I read some of their links, and theirs, and began hunting for more. What had begun as a determined mission to convince my friend that she was blowing things way out of proportion gradually turned into a dawning horrified realization that I had been solidly and unthinkingly on the wrong side of this whole range of issues for years (despite thinking that I was very committed to gender equality).

Only those few hours of delay before I'd seen the original conversation had saved me from being the one saying totally insensitive and hurtful things to my friend, and I can still think of times in years past when I did say things that make me cringe today. Ever since, I've taken it as a sort of penance to try and share what little of this stuff I've started to understand whenever I see people talking about these issues the way I used to. I hope that it occasionally plants a seed of understanding for someone, even if it doesn't take hold right away.

I had a similar moment of realization about gender equality once. I used to believe that IRC was a very nice medium because the gender of the participants was not revealed (unless they wanted to), so (I thought) it was entirely free from gender prejudices.

Then, I discussed with someone on the channel of a hackspace I used to go to (but had just started attending so I didn'n know the people well); I had never seen the guy IRL but he said he would attend the next session so I could figure out who he was in real life.

But when I come, none of the participants were him. And then a female participant shows up and a while later it turns out that "he" is her, and I was shocked to see how unexpected this felt.

I'm not implying that the IRC user being female was in any way shocking, nor did I believe that the women who had joined us (and, this time, the only female participant around) could not be a "real" participant to a hackspace. It's just that, while I had wondered of every participant whether it was that IRC guy or not, I just hadn't made the connection for her.

And, thus, I realized that, without even noticing it, no matter my opinions about gender prejudices, I must have had a pretty strong mental image of that IRC user being male, for me to be so surprised when she turned out to be female. IRC wasn't gender-neutral. It was male by default.

I'm not sure how related to the discussion this is, but for me this was the moment when I realized that prejudices weren't just something that stupid people did, and that I was also influenced by them even if (especially if) I didn't notice.

The risk isn't that someone gets all huffy and makes a big deal about being offended. It's that people who you would want to participate silently think to themselves "I don't want to deal with this" and then go away. It's explicitly not the oversensitive feminists I care about here; it's the reasonable, intelligent women and men who have a number of options on where to spend their time and choose not to spend it in communities where they feel unwelcome.

"Anyone who's offended by this isn't someone I want to spend time around anyway" can be a very effective way to filter your friends, but you have to be very careful that you apply it in a way that actually offends the right people. As an early-30s male in tech with a number of female friends and coworkers that I respect highly, I'll tell you that there are many people who my life has been quite enriched by who won't go near "brogrammer" culture or anything that sounds like it.

In my experience, it's always about offending people. But only theoretically, of course.

See, this is pretty much exactly what I'm talking about. I share my perception of this issue and that of multiple people I know personally to explain that "offended" isn't the way any of us view the issue, and to clarify how we actually do view it as best I can. And then you, in your first sentence, reject what I've said and instead claim it really is about being offended after all. Are you suggesting that I'm deliberately lying, or that I'm deluded, or what? You don't say. And then even though I've made note of specific personal connections that have led me to my understanding of the issue, you suggest that my supposed fear of offending people is purely theoretical.

You aren't listening. Or if you are, it sure doesn't feel like it. And that's at the root of this entire issue.

It does say a lot about you and your friends that they assume that anyone who disagrees with them isn't coming from a legitimate experience of their own.

I would love to see any quote by me that supports this claim. I have never intended to suggest that "not observing gender bias" is not an authentic description of many peoples' experience in the tech community, even for some women. My assertion is just that it is not everybody's experience, and that the people who do feel strongly affected by gender bias deserve to be heard and respected.

Why is it only you and your friends that are Designated Spokepersons for All Women?

Again, I can't think of any time that I have claimed such a role, but I'd welcome evidence to the contrary. Now, "Volunteer Advocate for a Community that Feels Welcoming to More Women", that I'll own up to.

> since oversensitive feminists make life much harder for women in tech to be taken seriously.

Yep. In all political parties too, the oversensitive types discredit the other ones. Please fight for moderation from the extremists as much as you want us to care about your presence.

Wow. Thank you!