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Comment by moomin | Hacker News Reader

Yeah, it's all just a few bad apples, there's no underlying problem. Just like all the other women with appalling experiences of sexism in the tech community.

Seriously, if you can't see a fundamental problem, I seriously doubt you're looking very hard.

http://therealkatie.net/blog/2012/mar/21/lighten-up/ http://www.huffingtonpost.com/cerian-jenkins/the-tech-indust... http://geekfeminism.wikia.com/wiki/CouchDB_talk http://bitquabit.com/post/seriously/ http://farukat.es/journal/2012/10/669-kathy-sierra-primer-se...

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"a few bad apples"

If you are going to use that expression, you should use it in it's entirety. A few bad apples spoil the bunch.

A few sexists are creating a a negative situation that permeates the community/industry. Not everyone is to blame, not everyone is guilty of this sexism, but the problem is everybody's.

This.

So many upvotes.

> Seriously, if you can't see a fundamental problem, I seriously doubt you're looking very hard.

If you missed the line where I said that "sexism is clearly an issue in the hacker community that needs to be tackled", then I seriously doubt you read my initial post very carefully.

>Yeah, it's all just a few bad apples, there's no underlying problem. Just like all the other women with appalling experiences of sexism in the tech community.

Except without the sarcasm, that isn't all that an unlikely hypothesis. HackerNews makes a big deal about sexism in the tech industry, but for all the evidence that's actually been presented and isn't anecdotal, it could actually be just a few bad apples influencing each of the victims that explains it.

And as jiggy2011 alluded to, the links you posted aren't meaningful statistical proof of sexism in the industry in the first place.

It is all trolls doing these things. If a troll notices someone is female, they posy sexist things to troll her and make her react for the "LULZ". If she was a man, they'd troll him by calling him gay or saying racist things to him for the "LULZ".

There is an Internet MEME that "There are no women on the Internet" that trolls use. I think it originated on 4Chan, IIRC. It has multiple meanings. One in that it claims women in real life use the fact that they are women to get free things and benefits, and that does not work over the Internet unless she shows some nudity in a picture. Another meaning is that women on the Internet use feminist tactics for attention on how sexist men are towards them and then act unlady-like (arsehole?) towards people and then cry 'foul' when they react and reply back. Not my definition, but ones the trolls use to justify their behavior and actions towards women.

I was once on Kuro5hin, it was another Slashdot clone, and was striven to be like Hacker News before there was a Hacker News. The trolls got on it and scared people off of it. Yes they targeted women using sexist remarks and harassment and bullying, even called some of the women as men pretending to be women. One by one the trolls picked on and bullied the users and ganged up on users by downrating their comments and stories until they quit. The editors refused to act and the owner thought it was funny that they did that to "people who deserved it" and so many users left Kuro5hin and it turned into a troll site. The trolls had scripts and web robots to control the comment ratings and story voting with sock puppet accounts and directed things on IRC. I was asked to join them one time and I refused, so I was made a target. Eventually I was no longer at that web site either. Yes I spoke out against the trolls and protested only to have my account deleted/anonymized so my account no longer worked. They put up a $5 paywall to keep the trolls away, but it seems the trolls don't mind paying for new accounts after they burn their old ones. I've never seen a technology or policy that effectively deals with trolls yet.

To be fair , a handful of blog posts (some with a feminist bent) could be as much a confirmation bias as anything else.

Technical people are more comfortable publishing online than those in other professions.

Look a majority of the users are not this way. It is only a small minority that are this way because they are anonymous trolls who only do it for the "LULZ" and to see reactions to the troll.

It is really a troll problem that we should address. Yes I do feel sad for women who have to put up with those trolls. Yes something should be done, refuse to feed the trolls and vote down their comments so they learn not to troll hacker news and other places.

Look I've seen trolls ruin web sites like Kuro5hin and then just plain take over as the majority and turn it into a troll site. It may seem like a lot of people, but usually it is just several people on an IRC channel directing the trolls and then Tor, VPN, and Proxy servers to hide IP addresses and make it look like a lot of people via sockpuppet accounts. They'll even conspire to downvote a target's comments and stories to drive them off the site, and then post nasty things about them after learning their real name or something. Yes it is a real problem and yes it has to be addressed.

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