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You seem to have an extremely weird definition of "xenophobia".

Let's review it: "fear and hatred of strangers or foreigners or of anything that is strange or foreign".

And let's compare that with what you wrote:

1. homogenous

Nope. No fear or hatred there.

2. "IMHO, a lack of diversity certainly signals that something is going on."

"Certainly" is certainly wrong. It might signal that something is going on, and it certainly doesn't give any evidence what that "something" is.

Have you ever considered that the "fear and hatred" might be going the other way? Just the terms geek, nerd and hacker have highly negative connotations in the wider public.

3. "You might find the term "xenophobia" too strong"

It's not "too strong", it's completely wrong, victim blaming a group that is being shunned for being shunned.

4. "very palpable jock-nerd atmosphere that will turn off many folks"

And now you're completely off into the weeds. Doing things that causes other people to shun you is not "xenophobic" by the people being shunned. If anything, it's the other way around.

The CCC Congress would be a counter example from what I have heard.

The CCC milieu has a quite heavy political bias due to the history of the organization and its people. It's not a representative sample...

> a lack of diversity certainly signals that something is going on.

Various things can cause gender imbalance. For example, more men than women are colorblind, but the numbers themselves should not be enough to call those colorblind men sexist, reasoning that if women are underrepresented in this group, there certainly must be some sexism that drives them away.

Even if you would compile a list of sexist quotes by colorblind men, or a list of stories by colorblind women how they faced sexism in their life, it still would not be a proof that the greater numbers of colorblind men are caused by sexism.

If we accept this reasoning for color blindness, why not e.g. for autism? It seems like many IT guys are (some of them more, some of them less) somewhat inside the autistic spectrum. Spending your childhood playing with toys, as opposed to social activities with other people, seems like something that half-autists would do, and also like something that can contribute a lot to being good at IT stuff.

> A while ago i read a very thought-provoking book entitled "Unlocking the Clubhouse"

I am going to read this book, to see the other side of the story. But that will take some time. Meanwhile, I looked at some reviews of the book.

The reviews mention stuff like "male CS students are obsessed with computers from early childhood", "boys form friendships around computers and teach each other", "girls see their fathers more interested in computers than their mothers", "boys spend more time playing computer games" -- which is coincidentally also what we would expect to see if there was a statistical biological difference between the sexes. (I am not saying this proves the difference, only that it does not disprove it.) They mention that women that dropped out of CS said that they were "not that much interested in programming", but of course the authors of the book know better, and those poor girls simply don't understand themselves. The recommendations for schools to keep more women in CS include stuff like not focusing on CS too much.

I will give this book a chance, but I suspect it will turn out to be only convincing for those people who are already convinced.

The (several dozen) infosec people I’ve met have disproportionately included immigrants, gays, and trans people (both directions).

I have noticed a similar trend.

>groups of hackers have actually been much more on the homogenous side

>it's overwhelmingly white, male, able-bodied and middle-class, straight). And IMHO, a lack of diversity

Nice job. I think you managed to touch just about all the bases in the buzzword lottery.

These are not buzzword. The words have a precise meaning.

"You're wrong because you used buzzwords" is no better than a buzzword itself. Can you address their actual point?

What point? Let me inform you of something. When I was growing up, I remember quite clearly being teased and bullied because I liked to read a lot and I liked messing around with computers. The peer group I surrounded myself with were other people just like me who also put up with the merciless bullying. Everybody else self-selected out of my peer group and did everything they could to make me feel lesser because of my interests. But now all of a sudden the internet and smartphones catch on and now coding is "cool". And the same people that selected themselves out of my group now accuse me of being "xenophobic" and "homogeneous". The fucking gall.