Could you elaborate more on what you feel is "female-friendly?"
Just something as simple as more females? I'm interested.
Just something as simple as more females? I'm interested.
I thought the commenter went on to explain herself on that point (by discussing downvoting of sexist comments).
One could define female-unfriendly as a place where the conversation takes place as if no females are present (or could possibly be present). Think male-locker-room.
But: There are many guys who detest that kind of thing also, and judging from the downvoting of crap comments that goes on in HN, they are making their voices heard.
It's worth noting that I know more men who self-identify as feminist than women.
As far as your other points go, I've been in my shares of locker rooms and I certainly don't detest locker-room banter, nor do I self-identify as a feminist, but to each his or her own I suppose.
I think the "issues" category on the geek feminism wiki does a good job of summarizing the "female-unfriendly" things[1]. Objectification and a "sexualized environment"[2] is what the poster refers to can be common on other sites. Sexism[3] and essentialism[4] is something that generally takes the form of attitudes or opinions, and therefor is less obvious. I see this here on HN in various forms e.g. this comment[5] saying "women are less likely than men to engage in deeply focused solitary activities". "Othering"[6] is something you can see even on this page.
[1] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Category:Issues [2] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Sexualized_environment [3] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Sexism - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexism [4] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Essentialism - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Essentialism [5] http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/Othering & http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Other#The_Other_in_gender_studi... [6] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1550429
I don't understand this. Are you saying that statements like that are objectively and obviously false, that they're meaningless, or that their truth or falsehood is irrelevant because it's not something that should ever be discussed?
Really, "essentialism" being entirely false would be a surprising result. Men and women have these very different hormones flowing through our bodies, which have no effect whatsoever on our mental processes?
I think essentialism is problematic as a concept because of it's different usages and I only used it because it was featured in the wiki. I much more comfortable talking about sex and gender. Sex being your biological properties and gender being your cultural or socially constructed identity. I see a lot of argument offering flaws in the sex or gender of women as explanation, but not very many considering the flaws in tech culture.
I'm not saying there aren't differences in biology between women and men, I just think these are grossly overshadowed by the difference in gender. I also believe gender to be variable. For example I believe encouraging women to take risks, e.g. with an startup incubator, could change their social role even if it would be "based in" biology (which I don't think it is in this case).
For the record I do think these things should be discussed, I just wished the discussions were better. Like I've expressed before I find that when it comes to social sciences, the bar lowers significantly for what's considered a good argument.