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Comment by dgzl | Hacker News Reader

... so you say that "A whole lot of this BS is rooted in the idea that a woman's sexuality is a prize to be won by ... a man who earns enough to take care of her," and you'll entertain the idea that it comes from women more than men, but you want to justify it by saying "women need a man's income to not be dirt poor."

Do you realize how poor of an argument that is? Even reading "most women need men's income" as a legitimate statement just makes me cringe.

I really hope you don't carry this attitude and entitlement to your job perspectives, because I wouldn't want to imagine that you're missing such a glaring red flag.

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I was homeless for nearly six years. During that time, random men who realized I was homeless would either offer me cash for sex or ask if I needed a place to live.

Meanwhile, attempts to figure out how to earn an income were met very dismissively. Attempts to figure out how to network on HN got me essentially nowhere.

I have written pieces that did well on the front page of HN. My Patreon remains underfunded and I get damn little in the way of paid work.

Those experiences inform my opinion.

My previous handle was Mz. It was briefly on the leader board, then I changed handles.

Between the two accounts, I have more than 45k karma. If it were under one handle, I would be respectably high on the leader board.

You can go ahead and act like I'm just some bitch with an attitude problem, but I appear to be the only woman to have ever made the leader board here. Surveys suggest HN was as much as 98% male at one time. There do not appear to be scads of other women successfully fitting in and advancing their careers here the way men routinely do.

This forum is run by the most powerful business incubator on the planet. It is essentially the global old boys club of our era.

Being able to adequately fit in to make the leader board still fails to make it a networking opportunity for me.

So if I'm some bitch with an attitude problem, where are all the "good" women doing it right? All the evidence seems to be I fit in here better than most women and it still is inadequate to help me establish a middle class income.

I can't really help you with networking, and I'm not the kind of person who thinks things like being high-ranked entitles you to something other than bragging rights. I certainly don't know enough about the blogging scene to help you there.

I don't see the justification in calling HN a Boy's Club either, as there are zero barriers to participate other than a computer. That term is usually used when people exclude women from the group because they are women, but nobody here knows or cares what sex you are.

I'm sorry for your situations, I really am. My mother and I used to be homeless and now she's entirely dependant on the government for survival. It's heartbreaking because as I grew older, I realized she had essentially done it to herself.

Yes, I think your attitude is a direct contributor to some of your problems. No, I don't think it's easy to have a good attitude when you're in the gutter. I wish I had more advice, but my options about these things are pretty comprehensive and this isn't the best place to dig into it.

It is overwhelmingly male. There is plenty of evidence that women would like to participate more but are put off by some of what goes on here.

Yes, I think your attitude is a direct contributor to some of your problems.

Yes, this is typical. And it's maddening.

I made the leader board. That accomplishment doesn't get credited to me. But my failure to achieve my goals gets blamed on me, conveniently hand-waving away all evidence that sexism is a real problem.

Let me reiterate my original point and then try to walk away from this ridiculous debacle:

Men don't have to treat women like property. All they have to do is silently exclude them professionally, thereby making sure women have little hope of a comfortable life without marrying a man with a good income.

If men would like to stop being targeted by gold diggers and start finding lovers who want them for reasons other than their money, they should start making more of an effort to find ways to bring those barriers down.

When women can make their own money and can have sex to meet their own sexual needs, we might see frivolous accusations of rape to preserve female pretense of chastity and virtue go way down.

> I made the leader board. That accomplishment doesn't get credited to me.

I don't know if this really means anything, but: I've been here for years off and on, I had idea what the "HN leader board is". I couldn't find it by navigating through the site UI either, I had to google it to find it.

Looking at it, it's barely identifiable information. Some profiles have more identification, but many didn't. How is this even remotely close to a useful networking tool? If there's a correlation at all between "HN leaderboard status" and career success, I think that's a secondary correlation.

> men would like to stop being targeted by gold diggers

> When women can make their own money and can have sex to meet their own sexual needs, we might see frivolous accusations of rape to preserve female pretense of chastity and virtue go way down.

Researchers commonly test such theories by comparing countries where earnings and minimal standards are different. The common result in gender studies is the gender equality paradox, so I would expect more gold digging and false accusations in places with more equal wages.

One theory to explain that is that when gender equality goes up you also get a corresponding increase in gender expression. If everyone earn enough money on the own then men is recognized by society as men only if they earn a lot of money. It is not enough to simply have enough money.

In order to move beyond that we would need as a society to dissociate wealth with gender identity and then we are no longer talking about minimal standards, wages or employment rates.

> I made the leader board. That accomplishment doesn't get credited to me.

How should such an accomplishment be credited?

I'm trying to step away from what feels like an ugly pile on.

But for the record: it's not uncommon for men on HN to say things to other men like "You've got a lot of karma on HN. You must be smart."

No one says that about me. When I comment on it, I am invariably dismissed and attacked, told I'm bragging about and obsessed with meaningless internet points, etc.

That's the essence of sexism right there: When a man does it, it counts for something. When a woman does it, it counts for nothing and she will be ROFLstomped if she dares to point out the discrepancy exists.

> But for the record: it's not uncommon for men on HN to say things to other men like "You've got a lot of karma on HN. You must be smart."

I've never seen that on the site personally.

How often would you say this happens? Can you offer links to it occurring?

> I'm trying to step away from what feels like an ugly pile on.

Could be the time, identity politics and feminism has a very different form in Europe.

I seriously doubt that.

If I had to guess at a cause, I would say the recent debacle where RMS was forced to resign from two prestigious positions.

People get cranky. They feel threatened. They take it out on a convenient target, regardless of how unjust it is and never mind my track record here.

That sounds like it was intended as supportive. If I've not misread your intent: Thank you.

Anyway, really trying to just walk away from this one.

I think you're very wrong, and I'm going to leave it at that.

global old boys club of our era

Interestingly, I believe you're the only participant in this forum whose gender I'm aware of.

I don't read that as an attempt to justify at all, it's expressed as a statement of a sad reality for a lot of people, with lamentation.

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