Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

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It's too big for users to encounter eachother on a regular basis, so you never get to know anyone. It's just a bunch of strangers.

No, this is not true. Patio11 and tptacek were business partners at one time. People get work through here, make friends, make business connections. At least, men do.

Lots of evidence of HN being a career maker for people right here in this discussion from 4 days ago:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16409768

My highest traffic piece has over 40k page views. That is a lot more than the figures in the article. No, it didn't do anything at all for me professionally.

I have tried figuring out how to write for the HN crowd. For example, this piece about how HN works:

http://micheleincalifornia.blogspot.com/2017/08/hacker-news-...

It gets no traction, though I routinely see stuff like that posted here. Here is a discussion of a similar piece from just yesterday:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=16437973

It is a self post by the author. It has hundreds of upvotes and lots of good discussion.

I largely stopped self posting. It got me all kinds of bullshit personal attacks that were usually not rebutted by other members of the community. People do not vouch for me the way they do for guys here who have made the leaderboard.

I have done everything in my power to try to make this work under difficult circumstances. I don't need anyone's pity. I don't need to hear anymore bullshit explanations about how it just cannot be done -- because the guys here do it all the fucking time.

I need respect. I need to be taken seriously as a professional. I need people vouching for me, reaching out to me as a professional and cluing me as to how it's done.

I get compliments in comments. People tell me publicly that I write well. But no one ever hits me up with an email asking if I would write something for them for pay.

And I am ready to spit nails. How can 100k+ people all stand idly by and do not a goddamned thing to help me succeed professionally while pretending they aren't being sexist jerks? How do you casually watch a chronically ill homeless* woman starve and feel okay about what a good guy you are?

This boggles my mind. I don't get it.

* I am no longer homeless. But I was for a long time.

Have you ever tried doing all the same under a male handle? There is multiple evidence it works, maybe worth testing if you are sure that gender bias is the main problem?

No. And I find the suggestion incredibly offensive.

I can't get hired without pretending to be a guy? How does that work when it comes time to pay me? Assuming I can manage to actually get paid while pretending to be male, what happens when someone finally says "Let's do lunch"?

The cure for sexism is not for women to pretend to be men. That fixes nothing.

I didn't want to sound offensive at all, sorry if it happened. I agree that it fixes nothing in terms of curing sexism, but if it could fix the problem of not getting paid gigs I would try it, and I know several cases when it works for female freelancers. They just have male handles and don't contact their clients in person (offline or with voice).

I know you mean well. This is a non starter for me.

Thanks.

Knew I'd find that suggestion.

A slightly better one would be to use a nonspecific handle, because, as you're saying, it shouldn't matter.

If your writing stands out (and if you have the stats you claim, it must), using a gender neutral pseudonym (because you've identified discrimination is what's stopping you from eating well), and having clients pay an LLC could work.

Also, I work a shitty, barely above minimum-wage job at a gas station, and buy and sell old used crap on eBay and Craigslist, while (literally simultaneously, some nights), building my company. Curious to know if there's something comparable you're doing. Always interested in others' hustle.

I work for a writing service. It fits nicely with blogging as it helps me develop my writing for actual pay.

I am medically handicapped and I don't work full-time. I don't need a lot of money. I do need better per hour/item pay. Getting taken more seriously would help.

I wouldn't say the problem is discrimination per se. That isn't how I would characterize it.

The problem is that most men seem incapable of having a private conversation with me without mentally framing it as personally intimate, aka romance. When men on HN take an interest in each other's work, they routinely move from public discussion on HN to private discussion, usually via email. They also make friendly chit chat as part of the process of establishing trust.

When I make friendly chit chat, men routinely interpret that as a romantic opening. When I try to move things to a private discussion, most men interpret that as a romantic opening.

I honestly don't think it has anything to do with thinking "I would never hire a woman." I think when I talk about sexism that's what people think I mean and I don't mean that. I mean my gender is a barrier to success, yes. I don't mean "Because people are all sexist pigs."

I don't think we really have the language and mental models to make the distinctions that exist in my mind. I blog at times about such things, but the framing of the problem space in my mind is not a framework I see out in the world.

Because of how I frame it, I don't see trying to hide or obfuscate my gender as a solution. I see that as trouble I don't need.

When men get excited about each other's ideas or whatever, they don't interpret that as sexual excitement. When they get excited about my ideas or whatever, that seems to be what they do.

My feeling is that establishing a professional relationship on the idea that I am not a woman would be like a bait and switch operation. We have the expression that when people work closely together and are heavily invested, they are in bed together. And metaphorically I feel like if I hide my gender, then at some point some man wakes up "in bed" with me and realizes I am a woman and reacts to that differently than if I were male. To me, that sounds like trouble that I don't want. I also don't see myself successfully pulling off that kind of deceit to begin with.

I think the world needs some means to help people more clearly distinguish work relations from romance. I think the lack of such fuels a great many problems, including sexual harassment at work.

I have been celibate for medical reasons for more than 12.5 years. I don't harp on that constantly, but I am quite open about it. I am also 52 years old, chronically ill, and spent nearly 6 years homeless. I only got off the street a few months ago.

Being homeless put a damper on romantic interest in me. I think men were afraid that I would just empty their bank account. But the rest of those details seem to not put much of a damper on such interest. And I don't get it. It sounds incredibly unattractive to me. Who the hell in their right mind interprets toothless gray haired poverty stricken sickly old hag as "hottie -- I'd hit that!"

A recent incident: Some guy exchanging emails with me invested significant effort into trying to figure out how to get next to me and actively hid from me his age, marital status and intentions. After it became clear that his agenda was romance, I learned he was in his late twenties. I am literally old enough to be his mother. My adult sons are similar in age.

So I am at wit's end. Even men so much younger than me that I would never in a million years frame them as date material cannot be assumed to be viewing me in strictly platonic terms.

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