How to Criticize Women in Technology | Hacker News Reader

How to Criticize Women in Technology

quinnnorton.com

6 pointsjerrya6 comments

Quinn Norton wrote an article for Wired describing cryptocat and headlined "This Cute Chat Site Could Save Your Life and Help Overthrow Your Government" http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/07/crypto-cat-encrypti....

Chris Soghoian criticized that article and articles like it here that overly hype their subjects. He compared it to the unwarranted hype for Haystack. http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2012/07/tech-journalists-stop-hy....

Ryan Singel, editor of Wired's Threat Level, called Soghoian's article a sexist attack on Norton here: http://www.wired.com/threatlevel/2012/08/security-researcher...

Soghoian replied here: http://paranoia.dubfire.net/2012/08/responding-to-wireds-ad-...

This is the news.ycombinator thread that discussed Soghoian and Wired's responses: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4354959

This is Quinn Norton's, the original reporter's, response.

I disagree with Norton (and Singel) and believe if Soghoian' original response had been sexist, Norton would have been able to quote from it. As it is, she can only make a tone argument.

She lost me on this particular quote:

>> I can explain that a hosted Javascript application is vulnerable to a deep structural attack better than any of them — I explain things for a living.

Doing something for a living doesn't necessarily imply that you're good at it.

Conversely, not doing something for a living (i.e., "explaining things") doesn't mean you're not good at it either.

"Explaining" things that they don't understand is a hallmark of journalists, especially the so-called professional ones. Their knowledge of firearms, to take a really long-running example, was apparently acquired by watching made for TV movies.

One of my biggest takeaways from biz school (sadly, that should destroy all of my credibility here) was something a professor told my class.

"You'll find that anyone who calls themselves an expert at anything probably read a couple of really good articles".

This hit piece is just reprehensible. Shame on you Quinn Norton. No, obviously not for being a woman. For being a terrible journalist, and playing this card. At no point did he say anything remotely sexist. Is there any possibility that statements were criticised because they were wrong, and not because a woman wrote them? Or are you so arrogant that you consider yourself infallible, and any disagreement must obviously be sexism?

tl;dr?: Don't criticize women in technology.

No I'm not being dismissive, that's the tl;dr.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com