Hacker News Reader

Comment by DoreenMichele | Hacker News Reader

I am going to assume you are unaware that I both appear to be the highest ranked woman on HN and also achieved that status while homeless for nearly six years, in spite of having about six years of college, etc. while I bitched about how my gender appeared to be a barrier to networking here and got told I was imagining that.

So you will have to excuse the hell out of me for being a hair skeptical about the possibility that banning this practice will somehow immediately lead to women having better options and wonderfully middle class lives on their own efforts from their gratifying careers and yadda.

View on HN

There's probably enough people arguing with you already, I'd like to just say that I respect you're sticking to your guns. You are mostly right. That said, nothing of my response had to do with your gender or status, and I'll not dig into that any further.

Thank you. I certainly didn't mean to suggest that you had done any such thing.

I'm just saying that I'm an educated woman in a first world country who absolutely was not being forced into a relationship with a man and that failed to get me the middle class life I desired and was willing to work towards. So there is a lot more that needs to happen in order to solve such problems. Merely banning this one thing will not somehow automatically give women empowered, moneyed lives.

That simply is not how it works. If I thought it would, I would be the first to say "Hell yeah!"

You are attacking some argument, but certainly not one anybody was making.

As for the rest, you seem rather to be rather proud of karma points on the Internet. As someone with almost as many of them, I am somewhat intrigued. Do I get access to some secret club that I never even dared to dream about before?

FWIW I have never had as much as an email conversation that started on HN. I actually doubt anybody even notices usernames. Personally tptacek(?) is the only name on HN I remember, and that’s only because he tends to make exactly my arguments, only better.

As someone with almost as many of them

My other account, that I retired shortly after it hit the leaderboard last year, has 25k karma.

I will refer you here and then say no more on the matter cuz Reasons:

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18466918

I've seen your posts frequently here and I think you make HN a better place. You provide a different perspective than many of us are used to hearing.

Thank you.

(My general policy, developed over many years of being me on the internet, is to upvote comments of this sort and not reply to them. In part because it's Thanksgiving, I've decided to make an exception.)

Reply on news.ycombinator.com