Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

Comment by belorn | Hacker News Reader

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Take an example from the python founder. He directly said during a talk that he will not mentor any males, with the implied goal of furthering inclusivity.

In my views, refusing to help people because of their gender is maliciously. Making decision about the worthiness of helping a young individual should not be about their gender. Call it a principle.

From reading about the science of discrimination and In-group and out-group thinking, there exist some key finding of human behavior and rationalization. "Us" are individuals and "them" are a homogenic group, and if you treat people like individuals you are automatically treating them as a part of "us". When someone of "us" do something wrong, it is about individual faults and circumstances. When someone of "them" do something wrong, it is a inherent trait of the group and fundamental aspect their kind.

The attack vector can only exist when a set of people are treated as a homogenic group rather than individuals. Inclusivity initiatives should in theory never do this, but defining people as a homogenic group is sadly what most of them end up doing. Maybe it because it easy and quick, or because it makes for good signaling to the in-group. The result is usually the same with the out-group feeling abused and attacked, especially for individuals who been moved from being in-group to out-group and now instinctual feel more vulnerable to attacks.

> The attack vector can only exist when a set of people are treated as a homogenic group rather than individuals. Inclusivity initiatives should in theory never do this, but defining people as a homogenic group is sadly what most of them end up doing

I feel that you've summarized the issue perfectly here with these two sentences.

However I feel that it's not exactly problem of diversity/inclusivity but problem of tribalism itself, though I'm not sure how practical it is to separate these two topics here.

We can hope that tribalism will go away eventually but if anything modern culture seems to be actually encouraging it instead. This in particular really perplexes me. The world is as global as it has ever been and yet people push and actively create tribes — it's this ugly human primitive nature poking it's head out and there really isn't any cultural push against that. In fact every time I try to point this out I get down-voted.

We need more anti-tribalism awareness.

Is Guido choosing to tip the scales really a malicious use of inclusivity? It's not like young men interested in Python have nowhere else to go.

I think how Guido wants to spend his time is up to Guido.

> It's not like young men interested in Python have nowhere else to go.

It tells them that inclusivity is against their interests. Boys growing up where they are explicitly barred from opportunities due to their gender are probably not going to be very willing to accommodate women in the future. Also things like this has shown to not move the needle, so all you accomplish is drive the wedge between genders even further down.

> I think how Guido wants to spend his time is up to Guido.

And we are allowed to criticize him for it.

This over-extrapolates though. Guido deciding to mentor women doesn't imply every Pythonista is or should be doing the same. And when the userbase is already mostly men, the existing pipelines are demonstrably working for men; making an effort to pull in women isn't shrinking anyone's pie.

So by that reasoning, if Guido said he'd never mentor females that wouldn't be sexist? Because if you think that I bet you're alone...

Not all sexism is a malicious use of inclusivity.

Yes, it's pretty malicious, both against the targets of his sexist policy and the broader movement towards inclusion. If young men come to understand that "inclusivity" means blocking them from certain opportunities, they're not going to be on board with proposals to make hiring or promotions more inclusive.

So is the argument that fewer men now have mentoring opportunities because Guido is choosing to exclusively mentor women?

I think that interpretation grossly over-values Guido's mentorship contributions.

The argument is that, when someone says "we're going to make this mentorship program more inclusive", people will have to wonder whether they mean normal inclusivity or Guido's sexist inclusivity. His actions alone won't radically shift the needle, but we'll eventually reach a point where inclusivity just means "there are a lot of women" and the original idea of fair opportunities for everyone is lost.

Note that this isn't a radical conspiracy - it's already happened in some areas. There are a lot of colleges with special inclusion resources for women, even though women are significantly overrepresented in the modern university system.

The statistic about higher education is less interesting when you factor in the stats on vocation-education programs (which are mostly men).

I don't follow. Why would you factor in stats from vocational education programs to determine whether universities are inclusive or not?

Because they indicate how, in general, men continue to have more educational opportunities. Whether universities are inclusive is a subset of the question of whether the idea of fair opportunities for everyone is lost.

Yes, words and symbolic acts alone can be malicious regardless if the practical effect is negligible. Since the parent post talked about running coding events, Guido public stance is an example of what to not do in such events.

I have participated in events for gifted children, including teaching python. One such child already had before they came to the event written up the whole game design, painted the different rooms and enemies, created most of the game logic and now needed help with hit detection in pygames. Hit detection is quite a bit beyond the tutorial part of pygames, but in the end we mostly accomplished the goal and they left quite happy. Did I care about their gender or even asked about it? Of course not. Here was a person who needed my help.

Maybe no immedient harm would have happened if I had rejected that child based on their gender or treated them as part of a homogenic group with unchangeable inherent traits. There is always other people, other resources, and they clearly demonstrated the ability to self learn. But what kind of person would I be if I did that?

> Did I care about their gender or even asked about it?

No. They were a boy though. I'll tell you why I'm saying that with confidence: because we know men are most of the Python userbase, and they're more comfortable approaching other Pythonistas for help because they're other men. Argument from statistical probability.

That's specifically the issue Guido is seeking to address, and he's not going to do it successfully by not caring about gender. Not caring about gender tends to get us more of the status quo, not something approaching more inclusiveness.

If the kid was a girl, good for her and I commend her forwardness and bravery. We know most women aren't interested in putting themselves in that position because it's uncomfortable for them (any more than most men are interested in stepping into a knitting circle to learn more from a group of women). And if Python as a community is to grow the pie, that situation needs to change. So that it's not just you who doesn't need to care about the gender of the student; it's the student who doesn't need to care about the gender of the teacher.

> Take an example from the python founder.

Sad. He had all the fun, was pretty abrasive back in the day while hordes of men built "his" language and submitted to him.

Then he did Python 3, weeding out several big names and getting fresh blood.

Now Python 3 is done, and suddenly he is inclusive. Some boomers get it all.

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