Comment by dsuth
11 years ago
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?