If you post a submission on a forum and expect everyone to blindly agree with you or you else you consider it as "hate", then the problem is perhaps with you.
I've missed them. Can you aggregate links? I honestly find this interesting. (You can "cheat" this using the reply links.)
I'm not gonna do your work for you.
So, I just tried it, and I found exactly one match for "unatt" that fit the sentiment discussed from the 1st person. I only found one person who said he, personally, couldn't be friendly to women because he is unattractive. The rest are talking about people in general, and aren't necessarily attached to the ability to be friendly. From what I saw, the issue of being friendly with women is more attached to the problems of risk, and this risk is correlated with relative attractiveness.
And by unattractive, they don't necessarily mean "ugly" but rather geeky, asocial, with niche interests, no fashion sense, little in common with most women, etc. It can be the way they carry themselves, their posture, the way they walk, the sound of their voice, stuttering, lack of vocal control... For someone like that with poor social skills and a lot of anxiety, it's not at all uncommon for a woman to misconstrue their efforts at friendship as a romantic overture or worse. It can also just be shyness due to inexperience interacting with women.
This is not necessarily the fault of the women; they likely do receive a lot of uncomfortable romantic overtures from socially awkward people like this. The commenters aren't placing blame on anyone, but describing the reality of their situation.
Some of the commenters have a rather rude and selfish attitude about it, but this is a genuine issue for a lot of men and explains part of the reason why some women in CS may feel isolated. If anything, I think people should try to have more empathy for this particular predicament, so that men and women can hopefully become more comfortable fostering professional and platonic relationships in the workplace.
Young men and women in their 20's usually don't have a very good self awareness of their own inherent attractiveness. There's that which Iain M. Banks termed, "the elegance of the newly matured." By that, I mean something which is natural, and of the natural world and natural beauty. That cat over there might have a slightly squished face and a weird toe, but hell, it's still a cat. You don't have to have much in common with women/men. Dress neatly and be well groomed. Genuinely have fun with something and genuinely be yourself. Do socialize, but don't limit yourself by thinking that bros or sociopaths need to rule your life. Do try dancing and see if you genuinely have fun with that. If you do, then know that it's very potent, but you have to be in the moment to let the real magic happen. Actually, that last part applies to everything else as well.
Most 20-somethings, males and females, are too mired in their preconceptions and their contention in the social hierarchy competition to have a full appreciation of their own natural beauty. (And often, each other's.)
You say "genuinely be yourself", but many people are unable to be themselves without unintentionally and unknowingly creating aversion and discomfort in others.
Of course many of these people can and do improve themselves and gain a lot more confidence, but the reality is that in tech careers, they exist in large numbers and will continue to exist. Many will have experienced situations where a woman feels uncomfortable or threatened despite purely good and platonic/professional intentions. Many will choose to limit all interactions with women to a minimum as a result of this, if for no other reason than instinctive and learned fear.
And on the flip side, many women will probably have experienced romantic/sexual advances, stalking, and harassing behavior from awkward people like this (perhaps sometimes from people who don't realize they're coming across that way and sometimes from people who know exactly what they're doing), so they've been conditioned to have this reaction as well.
This is not to put blame on either party, but just to describe the reality of the situation and one of the potential reasons why women may feel less connected to their coworkers at such jobs. Many women also struggle with anxiety, awkwardness, isolation, and the other issues listed, but on average it tends to be less common and less severe than for men, especially in CS-type fields (as the article describes).
That would also have been me, to some extent. Many things that are worth doing have an element of challenge. Easier said than done.
They don't know how to dress in a fashionable or appealing way. They probably don't know proper grooming beyond the basics.
Those are big ones, and they are fairly easily fixed if you have the resources of a white collar worker. Isn't that what happens in those 80's movies? The awkward one gets cleaned up and turns out to be a hottie?
You say "genuinely be yourself", but many people are unable to be themselves without unintentionally and unknowingly creating aversion and discomfort in others.
This, too goes for just about everyone, to some extent. Dancing or some other kind of physical activity can help. The point isn't to let all of your guts spill out. The point is to get you out of yourself, without being artificially impaired. Being artificially impaired actually never actually helped me one iota. Not even Ecstasy, at least not in the long run. In terms of good relations between men and women, I think it largely hurts on US campuses.
Many women also struggle with anxiety, awkwardness, isolation, and the other issues listed
I dated one for most of a decade and asked her to marry me. She said no. Didn't end well. I would say, that finding a partner who is well adjusted pretty much trumps every other concern. The first well adjusted partner who you'd trust to save your life: I'd say one should marry her/him.
One last thing I'd say: Don't be a nihilist. I'm an atheist, but I would also say that I have a purpose driven life. Go and see enough of the world, so you know how both ugly and beautiful it can be -- until it brings you to tears. Then you will be able to find and live for some meaningful goal. Getting past nihilism can be a huge leg up on finding good relationships. (College aged women can sometimes mistake nihilism for depth, but for me, I was too psychically beat up to "benefit" from that.)
Otherwise it just sounds like the pot calling the kettle black.
^ This comment is me being dismissive of you, and it's also true.
You are basically saying that women have never treated men differently based on their attractiveness, which is absurd.
Did you have a point? I missed it. The closest thing I've seen to you making a point in this thread was when you said "the problem is perhaps with you".
> You are basically saying that women have never treated men differently based on their attractiveness
That's not what I'm saying. But I'm tired of repeating myself, so please re-read my previous comments.
Julia Enthoven shared her experience as a Woman in tech, and this thread is filled with nitpicking, asking for sources, disagreement, alternate theories, debates, etc.
There is no empathy here. So I'll start:
Good for her for sharing her thoughts and experiences. It's a tough topic to talk about, and as we see here and elsewhere, people will immediately pick apart everything you say. Individual experiences like these are useful to read about for people like me who recognize that there is a problem but don't really know what to do about it. So thank you, Julia. I'm sorry it is such a difficult topic, but I hope you keep talking about this and that others are encouraged to do so as well.
So while your post has empathy, it doesn't really push the solution-finding process forward in the way that other, more active (vs passive), posts do.
For example, a key issue identified in this discussion is the perceived career risk of being friends with women at work. Stories have been shared about harmless comments that came back to bite innocent men years later, or being described as creepy, and of course, we've all seen the string of high profile men losing their jobs based on mere tweets.
An obvious action that could address this is for women to stop collectively insisting that they never lie and that they should be able to shoot down the career of any man based on nothing more than a complaint to HR. But there is no sign this will happen, why would people give up such power.
Not sure I'd call that empathy.
Machines don't have empathy. They do not care about feelings. Code is harsh. So are professional code reviewers. Therefore if you're a programmer, you will in fact spend a lot of time dealing with nitpicking issues, finding sources for claims you make, debating alternative theories and so on.
If women can't even do that in debates they start then they should give up in being programmers. They won't make it and they won't get along with their colleagues.
I don't think they are incapable of such things, as I always get the impression posts like this one ("why can't you just respect her opinion") are actually written by men. But her compiler won't give her opinions automatic respect. Why should anyone else?
So, I think there is a good deal of empathy here. We understand that women feel excluded and have offered insight into why they may be excluded, which in turn can help society figure out how to help the next generation overcome this.
Sounds fairly typical for a Hacker News thread on any topic.
The comments I've seen are on par with comments on other posts where the author was male. The fact that someone disagrees with the cause of some statistical result is not the same as not listening.
To carry your point a couple steps further, HN demonstrates the huge gender disparity in tech. Are there any women in this discussion? Even the parent assumes the reader is male, with good reason.
Most of the discussion is complaints about how hard it is for the commenter because of #metoo and other actions against sexual harassment and discrimination, and then other people agreeing. Imagine how different it would be if half the commenters were women.
Those voices are not only missing from HN, but probably from your workplace and classroom as well.
Fortunately we're also getting comments from men who enjoy talking to women at work (shock!) and don't have an ideology about it. Those comments take longer to appear because they only emerge as a reaction to the first kind of comment. Why would you bother to post such a thing unless some other comment denied it?