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Comment by crabasa | Hacker News Reader

I am very confused about this event. My initial reaction was horror, and I think Twitter agreed [1].

Then I looked into who was behind this, assuming it was a hoax. One of the organizers appears [2] to be Sarah Herbert [3] the CEO of Curious Pixel, a brand/design shop in Kansas City. It seems that Sarah and Curious Pixel are very supportive of women in technology [4].

So, I think this is just a sad case of a well-meaning person creating a tone-deaf message and ultimately being devoured by the Internet.

[1] https://twitter.com/search/realtime?q=hackofthesexes&src...

[2] https://twitter.com/hackofthesexes/status/300007467759304706

[3] https://twitter.com/SarahSHebert

[4] http://www.curiouspixel.com/investing-wisely-in-the-success-...

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A predictable response, but while I see the point regarding the "tone-deafness" of the message, I think it's also indicative that the attitude behind our "culture" has gone too far towards "holy crap anything that could possibly make anyone feel left out or even appear discriminatory to even the most oversensitive individuals must be utterly terrible and unconscionable."

Your research, to me, makes that a pretty safe bet. A woman who's big on females in tech helps organize it, and without bothering to find this out, everyone screams horrible endemic life-ending sexism at the sight of it. Oops.

I'm not suggesting we shouldn't decry discrimination. I am suggesting we should think and ask before we decide to burn people at the stake for attempting to have a little fun at the expense of a topic some people can't seem to deal with in a moderate and rational manner.

I find it fascinating that you don't seems to think your own advice applies to yourself. Shouldn't you think and ask before you decide that every negative response to this is baseless?

I would respectfully ask you to drop the word "offensive" from your vocabulary. There are people who get offended at things, but that is not about feminism, that is about feeling superior. And arguing with someone who is just trying to feel superior to you is pointless. Ignore them¹.

What we are concerned about here is not offense, but harm. I can see this event going one of two ways: 1) the women "win" and sexist men write it off as rigged/a fluke, or 2) the women lose and sexist men use it to justify their beliefs. There is a significant chance that this event could make women hackers' work harder. That's harm. I know a bunch of women hackers. Their work is already made unreasonably harder by sexism.

I think this world where there are so many barriers to people hacking is harmful. Like, there will be more good meals, and more happy time with family, and more love, and more cool shit, and more justice if we break down some of those barriers. "Offense" has nothing at all to do with it.

¹ I also respectfully ask you to look more closely when people seem "just offended" to you, and think and ask about whether they might be concerned about legitimate harm.

The fact that a woman who otherwise champion females in tech was behind the poster does not excuse it.

Sexism, like many complex issues exists as a continuum, degrees of which can be perpetrated by anyone, including women.

Even assuming the best of intent w.r.t. to tech gender relations, promoting (cis) women in tech at the expense of intersex/genderqueer people in tech is simply not cool.

I suspect the focal point is probably a matter of statistics as much as anything else - addressing 51% of the population, vs ~0.1-0.3% of the population.

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