Men took over a job fair intended for women and nonbinary tech workers | Hacker News Reader

Men took over a job fair intended for women and nonbinary tech workers

npr.org

13 pointsmikece18 comments

The question has to be asked: did the event organizers define what "woman" and "non-binary" means, and whether one can be fluid in one's identity, changing day-by-day (or even during the day) if that's what moves them?

The definition of 'woman' is irrelevant here, as the conference is not strictly limited to people who are women or non-binary:

>Earlier in the week, the organization addressed calls to ban men from the conference by saying that "male allyship is necessary" to work toward overall inclusivity and also that federal law prohibited discrimination based on gender.

So even if you made people get their vaginas out when they checked in, there is nothing to stop people who aren't women by any definition from being assholes and attending a conference that's clearly not intended to be a space primarily for them.

Thank you! This victim-blaming nonsense is so infuriating to see. As long as people are willing to be dishonest, this same thing can happen in any area where spaces are designated for certain people. The argument the parent is making is essentially akin to "maybe they should have changed the dress code if they didn't want people being raped" instead of blaming rapists.

We can simultaneously both blame rapists and have effective safeguarding policy that minimizes the risk of rapists getting access to victims.

As an example, prisons almost always have a policy of sex segregation, with separate estates for each sex. The female prison estate is designated solely for female prisoners, and the male estate solely for the males. This physical separation safeguards the female inmates from male inmates, many of whom are very dangerous and have already raped.

In recent years, a handful of jurisdictions have experimented with allowing some male prisoners in the female prison estate, which resulted in sexual assaults and rapes of women prisoners, and even some pregnancies. The rapist men are to blame of course, but they were enabled in their crimes by a set of horrifying policy changes that put so many vulnerable women at a hugely increased risk.

It's not victim-blaming to point this out and insist that this broken policy be changed.

You literally just said “they were enabled in their crimes”. That is victim-blaming.

Exactly

Doesn't matter, men are invited too. As a guy, I wouldn't go because it's clearly meant for women. But ...

> ..."male allyship is necessary" to work toward overall inclusivity and also that federal law prohibited discrimination based on gender.

I see the original error, back in 2022, as the event organizers opening the conference to people who call themselves 'non-binary', as this implicitly made the event centered around 'gender identities' rather than the female sex. As anyone, including men, can claim any 'gender identity', the organizers effectively stopped the conference being aimed towards women.

The other problem with centering the conference around 'gender identity' is that this redefines 'woman' to be some sort of unfalsifiable inner abstract feeling of femininity. But this doesn't make sense in reality, given that this is not the basis on which women are discriminated against in tech or anywhere else.

By trying to be more 'inclusive', all they've done is promote female exclusion - the exact opposite of what the conference was originally set up for, which was female empowerment and celebration of female achievement.

Amazingly said

How did you get anything amazing out of that when they're essentially victim-blaming?

The blame doesn't solely fall with the individuals that did this. Our policies and culture around how we handle this is the bigger issue. This isn't some one off event, it's happening worldwide. OP touched on this

Nonsense. The blame falls on the people being dishonest and malicious. Full stop.

This is a poor breakdown that blames the victims of peoples' dishonesty (and that includes the conference organizers). It is not the fault of the organizers that these men were dishonest. It is the men's fault that they were dishonest. Full stop.

By your own admission, they could redefine the policy to only include women and not include non-binary people and, as long as people are willing to be dishonest, it would fix nothing because they could just say they're women and still have the same situation.

How dare you give these dishonest men a pass and lay the blame at the people trying to better reflect the diversity of the people they're attempting to help.

Yes, this was mob of disrespectful, intrusive men taking advantage of the situation, as men often do. I agree with you on this and I'm not sure why you read my comment as acceptance of their behavior.

However, if the organizers want to avoid this mass incursion of males at next year's event, they need to learn from the policy failure that enabled it this time round. It's not like men are suddenly going to learn to behave themselves honorably, there need to be clearly defined boundaries that prevent abuse. As an important part of that, any policy that prioritizes declarations of 'gender identity' over the reality of being female really needs to be got rid of.

I mean, women at the event reported being pushed out of the way and hurt by men barging past them. So clearly everyone is well aware of who the men are despite whatever 'gender identity' they might claim.

But it's difficult to speak out about it when policy is actively working against you: the code of conduct for the event stated "unacceptable behaviors include ... offensive verbal comments including as related to ... gender identity" which effectively bans any attendee from pointing out the obvious, and pressures women to ignore their natural instincts, lower their personal boundaries, stay silent in their discomfort, and basically just be nice and tolerant and accepting of the injustice they see before their very eyes.

How would you propose to verify that attendees are ‘really’ women? You keep dodging this issue. Anyone can lie and say that they have a womb, a vagina, two X chromosomes, or whatever your criterion is. How are you going to check? And as the article points out, it would probably be illegal to ban men anyway.

Spare your righteous indignation. You can't suddenly act like there is a test or standard when self-id has been the rule all along, and furthermore is acceptable to change one's identity as often as desired.

It's acceptable to change your identity and presentation as often as necessary to accurately reflect your self understanding.

Lying about it to gain access to an event not intended for you is dishonest and asocial at the very best. And completely unrelated to norms around self-identification, except that it is crudely taking advantage of them.

From the article:

Some of the attendees had lied about their gender identity on their conference registrations, said Cullen White, the chief impact officer with AnitaB.org, the nonprofit that organizes the conference.

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