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Comment by masterponomo | Hacker News Reader

I had a similar experience when I (a gent) took my grown daughter to a NKOTB reunion concert as a nostalgia trip. The audience was at least 95% female, and the arena restrooms were re-purposed accordingly. I asked an usher and he told me it was common practice to adapt to the gender mix of the audience. I observed many groups of women noting this reallocation with loud triumphant braying laughter. I doubt the Strange Loop men had a triumphal reaction to the bathroom allotment.

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There was probably triumphalism because in nearly all large arenas the lines for the women's room are routinely much longer than those for the men's room. So for the men at Strange Loop not having to wait was normal, but for the women at the NKOTB concert it was a highly unusual, pleasant surprise.

No, I don't have statistics to prove this, but it's been the case throughout my 30+ year life living in various places throughout the US. The only time there's typically a longer men's room line in my life is at tech gathering, and it's usually still not the kind of wait where people give up, as often happens to women I know.

That is not a similar experience at all. Even if we ignore that you completely missed the point of the article (she's not complaining about the bathroom situation at all, as seventy trillion other commenters have already pointed out - presumably you didn't read them either?) we still have:

First, you wouldn't have gone to a NKOTB (New Kids on the Block) concert if you weren't going with your daughter. You didn't actively want to be there. The author of the article was going to a programming conference of her own will.

Second, I don't think that NKOTB are important enough that it matters what the gender composition of their audiences are. Programming, on the other hand, is very important, and will only get more important in the future. Such a huge gender imbalance at the most important PL conference will be problematic for women in the future (and for men as well, if you can believe it).

Third, you "doubt" that there was a similar reaction at the PL conference. I presume you weren't actually there, then? I wasn't there either, so I wouldn't even begin to think about making up random suppositions and using them to support my argument.

Are you being ironic by using all random suppositions to refute my random suppositions?

No he is right.

The issue is something like this. Most people have a tough time realizing that 99% of the times their net condition on any day is result of their own doing.

You see the problem manifest here.

   1. Notice non equal participation of women.
   2. Blame men.
   3. Shift the onus of change on men not women.
   4. Wash your hands off the situation, and claim high moral high ground.

Now notice what women did when there was a non equal participation of men. They treat it as it is supposed to be. Which is that men didn't take the initiative to be there and hence laughter.

The first step to change the world is basically start by changing oneself first. Now if you do all this and still get limited by the environment around you, then you can start by blaming the other things.

But even before starting, trying and doing something. You have 100 people to blame you are not likely to see any improvement soon.

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