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Comment by crux_ | Hacker News Reader

> Most geeks love women!

Yet so few respect them.

Upvoted, and while I agree (assuming this is referring to male geeks), I feel like most geeks don't respect anyone till it's well earned and deserved.

And why should we? Show me one craft where newbies are respected without proving their skills and I'll reconsider. I personally would like to see more women choosing careers in IT, not because we need something pretty to look at, but because they want to be in IT. No healthy industry can be all but exclusive to one gender.

Maybe you should offer respect because your perspective on the world is not the only valid perspective. Maybe your perspective limits you from seeing other aspects that could be worthy of respect.

I think the two sides are talking about different things. Parent (and its GP, etc) are talking about respecting someone as a person, and GP (and its GP, etc) are about respecting someone's technical opinion on the relevant subject. Not sure if I've interpreted them correctly, but if I have, I don't think those ideas are mutually exclusive.

Now, do some people think they're just not respecting a newbie's technical opinion but come across as/are actually disrespecting the person? Quite possibly.

For a long and thoughtful read on this subject, see: http://tldp.org/HOWTO/Encourage-Women-Linux-HOWTO/

and yet so few women respect geeks...

I'm not a woman; hell, I'm a geek myself.

But reading that little whine just made me respect "geeks" that much less.

not a whine, just an observation.

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