Comment by hbd | Hacker News Reader

Comment by hbd | Hacker News Reader

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These discussions on HN tend to spiral to the point where I don't really want to be a part of them. But I guess talking about something is always better than the alternative, no matter how uninformed or flawed the discussion is.

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 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".

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 wouldn't say that the statement is meaningless, but I would say it's both false and irrelevant to the lack of women in technology. I also think this is a view which is common among people who don't know the subject very well and is similar to to what has been used to explain why women couldn't do other things which are now commonplace.

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.

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