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Comment by apetresc | Hacker News Reader

I hope this observation doesn't come across as bigoted or insensitive in any way, but I find it interesting how common transgender people (like the star of this article) are in the emulator/rom dev community. I can think of four or five other very prominent examples just off the top of my head – and it's not a very large community. It's certainly a greater proportion than the general population. Honestly I can think of more trans-women coding emulators than biologically-born women. I just wonder why such an unrelated-seeming correlation occurs.

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Intuitively i'd guess it's something to do with the way children are 'socialised'.

It seems very common for children living as boys to immerse themselves in video games and computers if they're dealing with social isolation or anxiety/depression. It's almost actively encouraged for them to do so — their parents and teachers treat it as normal, most of their male class mates dabble in it, and when i was growing up in the '90s at least video games and computers were depicted almost exclusively as the realm of boys. For trans people in particular i imagine the (semi-)anonymous community aspect also offers some degree of freedom of expression/identity that they often don't have in real life.

Children living as girls are not encouraged to get into games and computers to anywhere near the same degree, and for historical reasons they don't really have anyone to look to as an example or role model in that space.

I've noticed that all of the trans women i've heard of who had supportive parents and were able to start living as girls early on aren't really interested in games or computers. Admittedly, it's a very very small sample size filtered through the lens of what the mass media consider interesting — Jazz Jennings, that girl from Germany, and a few others — but it's a pattern i've seen anyway.

I was an awkward kid with few friends, and turned to computers because they were fascinating and more fun than interacting with people.

Could be that people with [insert unusual trait here] are naturally drawn to computers for similar reasons, be they autistic, transgendered, disabled, or just plain weird.

Spending the afternoons with a computer also allows one to avoid more physical activities where one may not perform as well as ones peers.

seriously, my scrawny ass was never good at sports, I had one or two friends growing up at any given time until I was in highschool and starting smoking, which apparently made me cool enough to get to know.

before that, school was misery.

I spent many teenage hours in front of my computer, making friends, some 15 or so years long friendships were born during that time, people I still regularly talk to and spend time playing games with.

I discovered that I did have a skill, when I thought myself directionless and skill-free: I knew how to fix a computer, because I spent so much time troubleshooting my own issues.

Not only that, but when I moved to competitive gaming on my computer, I suddenly realized I was good at competition in some field.

Sure, it wasn't your traditional competitive outlet, but it was one I wasn't picked last in.

Games like Counter-Strike I could come out on top in and feel as if I just won the regional championships, the feeling the kids who were good at physical sports must have felt regularly.

I saw the appeal of regular sports, suddenly. The value of competition and watching someone so much more skilled than you could ever be play a sport at the absolute top-level.

I'm not disabled, transgendered, or anything else. Just a socially awkward red-head who spent most of my elementary and middle school years either embarrassing myself or wishing I wasn't so goddamned awkward.

In and after high-school, that all changed. I had a circle of friends during this time, something I had never had before. Something I still cherish.

> Could be that people with [insert unusual trait here] are naturally drawn to computers for similar reasons, be they autistic, transgendered, disabled, or just plain weird.

This seems reasonable.

But why the lack of biologically-born women? Surely they can be weird, too.

I can't back the statement right now and do not even remember where I read it, but I do remember reading that autism spectrum women (who are rarer than autism spectrum males) tend to be drawn to fantasy setting and express themselves in fan fiction far more often. It would be interested to see the gender breakdown in fan fiction and related interests.

Maybe it's more like the weirder people are pushed away from things they find awkward. They're pushed to the easiest alternative. Social cues come into play; males are cued that technology is acceptable for them, females are cued that it isn't. More transgendered people than cisgendered people may not identify with those gender-based social cues, and disregard them.

What are those social cues? I don't know, in general. In my case, my father used the computer much more than my mother did. He built and maintained it. "Computer people" in the late 80s and early 90s were almost all male. My grandfather taught me, but not my sister, about electronics and soldering. My sister certainly played computer and video games, but not nearly as much as me or my brother.

Anecdotally, I was also a member of a small, online, gaming focused community for a long time. It wasn't as directly tied to emulator/roms, but there was definitely a focus on Japanese console games. Over the years, a number of those members have come out as transgender, which has similarly made me wonder what it was about that community that attracted so many people that probably felt ostracized in real life.

In tech in general. The thing that seems most particular about games is the preference for pseudonyms, usually picked from game lore. There was an interesting talk during Pycon 2014 about being transgender in tech:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4R6FXtZl154

If you check the Filfre.net series of articles, you will find that a number of people involved in early game development would change gender later in life.

On a different note, manga and anime seems to more often have protagonists of diffuse gender by western norms.

A similar observation on my part that corroborates this: as I started reading the piece, saw that the hacker being interviewed (Myria) was described as female, my immediate intuition (while knowing no other details about the person) was that she was rather more likely to be transgender than biologically-born female.

Similar to you, I have little provable intuition as to why this correlation apparently exists, though.

Many online communities historically have been bigoted and misogynist.

If the effect you observe is real, perhaps it's just the reflection of a community that attracted and kept more people over the years because it wasn't (as much) like that?

Why are there so few biologically born women in those same communities, then?

I have no direct experience, but I would be surprised if that were true. Emulator development is the perfect intersection of, like, three different communities (low-level tech, video games, and open source) that are (at least on HN) perceived as extra-unwelcoming to women. I don't see why combining all three would cancel that out.

I would also note that writing an emulator is not something you just stumble into because the people are friendly or whatever. It requires an extremely honed set of quite niche skills. I think it takes something more to become successful at it than just "I guess I'll stick around because everywhere else is even meaner."

Is that really the case? I think Silicon Valley is perceived as _specially_ unwelcoming to women, not necessarily every computer subculture out there.

My personal guess is that as a traditionally underground community the ROM/emulator scene was more welcoming to certain groups due to the use of pseudonyms. It's easier to not draw attraction when you don't walk into an office every day and meet people face to face.

At this point i find it hard to separate honest problems from SJW shit storms over bike sheds.

That said, the valley's VC fueled death marches, and the resulting bravado and "machismo" probably do not help.

I would also add that with the number of online communities there are, you could almost 'expect' to see at least one community that's largely made of transgender people even when it doesn't really have anything to do with stuff related to being transgender. Emulators probably aren't the only scene like this. That said, it's not like there can't be other factors as well.

I found the opposite was true - People in gaming communities and on anonymous message boards (such as 4chan) are usually very egalitarian.

Most conversations do not require any information about a person's identity, so every idea stands on it's own merit.

The perceived hostility emerges when a person tries to support their viewpoint by irrelevant factors (gender, sexual orientation, race, etc.).

This works fine if you're willing to let everyone believe you are who they assume you are. If you correct someone, you're likely to "perceive hostility."

By correcting someone, you are breaking the unspoken rule of anonymous communities - ideas standing on their own merit, regardless of who you are.

It's the equivalent of walking into an anonymous alcoholics meeting with booze, telling everyone how great it is to drink.

There is no reason for them to cater to you, therefore they want to get rid of you in a fast or fun way. Hostility can be both funny and gets rid of people who do not fit in.

In the words of the /b/east itself:

(Warning: VERY harsh language)

>If I can pontificate a bit for your edification, one of the rules of the internet is "There are no girls on the internet". This rule does not mean what you think it means.

>In real life, people like you for being a girl. They want to fuck you, so they pay attention to you and pretend what you have to say is interesting, or that you are smart and clever. On the internet, we don't get a chance to fuck you. This means the advantage of being a "girl" does not exist. You don't get a bonus in a conversation just because I'd like to put my cock in you.

>When you make a stupid post like "hurr durr i'm a gurl" you are begging for attention. The only reason to post it is because you want your girl advantage back, because you are too vapid and stupid to do or say anything interesting without it. You are forgetting the rules, there are no girls on the internet.

I would guess that communities of introverts are more likely to commit acts that are deemed socially unacceptable, or at least socially disparaging. Could it just be easier to express yourself in such a community?

I didn't notice that the subject was trans-gender until I read your comment. It's good that the article doesn't highlight the fact: as soon as someone is presented as transgender, this trait becomes their principal trait, even if they have other interesting accomplishments.

> as soon as someone is presented as transgender, this trait becomes their principal trait

I don't feel this way at all.

Okay, I don't feel this way either. Unfortunately, most of the world is not as liberal as the community on hacker news, and as soon as you mention 'gay' or 'transgender', the discussion turns to gender / sexual orientation rather than the original topic at hand. The article sidesteps this issue by not mentioning it until much later, that is all.

I don't think that's true of all trans people, but - anecdotally, as with many comments I make on here - several trans people I've met have been the type where being trans is their entire identity, as in it's the only real defining characteristic about them that they show. Obviously the majority are likely not like this, but those few who are seem to be the vocal ones as well.

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