Comment by raganwald
11 years ago
I would like to hear from first hand sources -- not a bunch of dudes on a software forum who claim to know what women want.
How very odd that despite all of our behaviour being so non-offensive and non-exclusionary, we don't seem to have any women who want to hang around this forum with us, and especially don't want to engage in discussions about exclusion where the immediate response to any questioning to for the questioner to be shouted down in vituperative terms.
"How very odd that despite all of our behaviour being so non-offensive and non-exclusionary, we don't seem to have any women who want to hang around this forum with us..."
Correlation -> Causation?
Is that seriously why you think there aren't more women on HN? Because it's offensive and exclusionary against women?
Having seen this happen in a number of internet communities, where women have described the reasons they would no longer visit, and having watched these communities change from reasonably well represented by both sexes to almost exclusively male-only: yes. It's almost certainly because the community at HN is offensive and exclusionary towards women.
This seems to be something of a hot button issue within the community at the moment, probably spurred on by pg's comments taken out of context, but the last few threads on similar topics have been filled with bile, reverse sexism claims, and general attacks against women. It's sad to see, because at this stage it's essentially too late for this place. The last community community I was (and still am) a part of made a conscious effort to change its moderation and terms of use to be more inclusive and punish individuals who stepped over the lines, but it was too late for them too - the sense of community was already destroyed for most of the visibly female members there. I haven't noticed them come back.
Due to the Internet being anonymous, it seems much easier for people to just dismiss people outright. Making dismissive comments about women in the workplace is difficult when you have to actually deal with the fallout of your actions. Meanwhile, the Internet enables everyone to just say whatever comes to mind.
I live in Arizona. When someone cuts me off on the freeway, my instinctive response is to look at the license plate. If the license plate is from a northern state, my reaction is "Fucking snowbirds. Goddamn." I'm in my car, and I'm just reacting - I'm not thinking. Five seconds of thought calms me down, but until that happens, I'm making a pretty nasty comment about the elderly.
The Internet is similar to my car - it's a consequence-free space where people can just say things without thinking. The difference is that unlike my car, where I could spout off the worst racial profanities I can come up with, the Internet actually has people reading the posts.
As for Internet communities being devoid of women, I can think of exactly one general community that has women. It has three things that I think are vital - a small community, a draconian moderation team, and a userbase that calls out bullshit very quickly.
I don't see a single attack against women in this entire 600+ post thread.
I haven't read the entire thing, however.
Would you mind sharing a link?
I can think of a number of my colleagues who specifically avoid HN because of that very reason, so, yes.
Is this the part where I should say something about how they need to "toughen up" and they must be "too sensitive"? jk. That's actually a real shame. I'm not going to venture a guess at the % of threads that any woman would find offensive but always thought HN was roughest on people's work when seeking feedback, etc.
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Have you considered that, if women are uncomfortable around techies, maybe it's because people make such a big deal about them being around in the first place? Like maybe it's really uncomfortable being treated with special status when you just want to fit in?
I'm not a car guy, but if I went to a meetup of car enthusiasts and all the sudden they dialed back everything they said so that I didn't feel like an "outsider", I would feel incredibly self conscious about being there. I probably wouldn't show up again. Whereas if they just treated me as a noob and gently brought me up to speed, I'd feel included.
Maybe it's the same thing with tech? Maybe all these social justice warriors going "ERMAHGERD SAVE THER GERLS" are just making women feel really fucking uncomfortable by highlighting the fact that they really are outsiders at this point? Maybe the nicest thing you could do for women in tech is just, you know, treat them like regular people?
I don't know if that's the case. But I will say: I have just about as much proof as you do on your theory that women aren't in tech because men are exclusionary jerks.
No evidence? Because "we already scared them away"? Okay champ.