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Comment by tjic | Hacker News Reader

> We wanted to increase the likelihood of attendees seeing people who they share something in common with

Great. Steel City Ruby Conference thinks that the color of someone's skin or the shape of their genitals is the way that audience members might share something in common with a speaker.

Personally, I care a lot more about whether a speaker shares my interest in coding, entrepreneurship, etc.

Beyond that, sharing interests in reading materials, history, woodworking, or gaming might be nice.

But, no, what we get is racism and sexism: "We think the only commonality worth talking about are the superficial physical ones".

I think Martin Luther King would be sad about how far short these folks have fallen from the goals he set out.

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Way to cherry pick words to make your argument. You didn't just pluck a sentence out of context, you plucked a small part of a sentence that ends with precisely what you are trying to argue for.

For those whose reading comprehension skills are not blinded by anger, here is the full sentence:

We wanted to increase the likelihood of attendees seeing people who they share something in common with, provide some new people with the opportunity to speak at a conference, and (most importantly) have great people give presentations that inspire others.

(italics mine)

When the problem is murder, and you adopt a policy that condemns murder, you don't call the policymaker a murderer. The first action (murder) constitutes taking someone's life, and the other (the policy) amounts to a prohibition on that. They're opposites. See?

> But, no, what we get is racism and sexism: "We think the only commonality worth talking about are the superficial physical ones".

You do realize that there is a very real problem with sexism, right? That is, there are people who are already behaving badly on the basis of superficial physical differences. If you can step back from what you've written, maybe you can realize the absurdity of labeling an anti-harassment policy as "sexism and racism."

In short: chill out. If you're at the conference for the speakers, then this policy isn't about you. If you're there for the booth babes, then you're the type of brogrammer being targeted, and your comment would then make complete sense. I don't think that's who you are, though, so seriously: chill. This anti-harassment policy isn't sexism.

>When the problem is murder, and you adopt a policy that condemns murder, you don't call the policymaker a murderer. The first action (murder) constitutes taking someone's life, and the other (the policy) amounts to a prohibition on that. They're opposites. See?

When the problem is not X, and your main policy is "condemn X", then you aren't addressing the real issues behind conference attendance, etc.

So I'd argue the whole "harassment"/"sexism" thing is an overblown out of proportion thing, and I'd rather hear about your bloody actual content.

Not to mention that the me-too emphasis on "inclusion"/"sexism-fighting" etc fad sends people away. I want to come there to learn about Ruby and have some nice chats with other developers, etc, not to fight social ills the presense of which I might not even agree with in the first place ("Oh, someone show some slides that included some humorous sexual innuendo in a programming conference, we must stop this sexism and condemn it for all eternity"). If someone stomps an ant or bites a bat a la Ozzy in his next presentation, will we also get the obligatory PETA references in every conference program?

>You do realize that there is a very real problem with sexism, right? That is, there are people who are already behaving badly on the basis of superficial physical differences.

Superficial as regards to programming and intellectual capacity. Because, in other ways not only are they not superficial but an extremely powerful biological mechanism is at play regarding those differences. I.e men are attracted to women and vice versa, and this is even how the whole species (including conference organizers) currently exists.

As the blog post author I'd like to add some clarification here. By "seeing" I meant see them speak at the conference, not necessarily that the things they share in common are things you can see. Commonalities can cover a very wide range of things including, but certainly not limited to, sex, gender, and race. That being said, people who fall into some of these visible minority groups often have a hard time finding role models in the programming community. I think it is awesome if conference organizers can help with that, and do not feel that it is in conflict with also providing the best speakers possible.

This is a stock reply from the privileged group against policies that try to be inclusive. "You're not really anti-sexism, because you're making references to sex!! I'm a real anti-sexist because I didn't mention it".

Sometimes members of the privileged group think that only individual words are the only thing that can make things sexist, and if you don't have those words, you're a-ok! However there can also be a culture, memes and practices in a group that can result in less people of the oppressed group from taking part. That's what anti-sexist things are designed to approach.

(Likewise with race/ability/etc.)

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