Introducing Passion Projects

Affirmative action does not necessarily mean segregation either. The NFL's "Rooney Rule" requires a minority candidate to be interviewed for head coaching vacancies but doesn't require one be selected. We'd still call that affirmative action.

Rather it means merely that instead of just stopping the negative action applied against a minority and letting history take its course, that some positive action is taken to repair the damage done to the minority group, in order to actually have a chance at real equality in the future. This could include means such as segregated advocacy groups but encompasses much more.

So...having a series of talks that is for women by women cannot possibly be sexist. You can say it discriminates by not allowing men to be speakers, if you so wish. I can't say I'd find it to interesting to listen to a man tell me what it's like to be a woman in tech, though, so you could also just say that they're just featuring people who are interesting to their audience: women.

Also -- who said anything about hostility? What I meant was, "This is about women...why are you bringing men up at all? Don't they have their own spheres which they already dominate?" I just get tired of all this "reverse sexism" nonsense.

Edit: To be clear, I agree with your last paragraph. I don't think it's limiting the audience to feature women speakers, unless you don't think that men can find women interesting. ;)

Most don't fully exclude men, but they have legitimate reasons to want to make it feel like a female space, and if that means taking measures that prevent some men who would like to attend from attending, that's not necessarily a problem.

I say this as a male who has attended campus women in CS dinners and talks. These events are open to all, but aimed at giving women interested in computer science a community, role models, etc. When I go, I am always prepared to leave if I feel that my presence is hurting the overall atmosphere, because I realize that the events are a powerful force against inequalities in society, and the least I can do is stay out of the way. And when you ask the organizers if men can come, they say yes, but they do mention that it's important for it to feel like a female space, and that if it got to the point that so many men attended that this compromised that feeling, they would start discouraging men from attending.

Not every event needs to serve everyone in the industry. There are probably some language-focused meetups where you wouldn't feel especially comfortable or welcome because you don't know the language, or maybe even actively hate it. I understand that you feel it is different because you'd at least be allowed to attend a meetup for a language you don't know, but it still illustrates that not all events in the industry have to cater to you. When they're catering toward a disadvantaged group, they deserve even more leeway to make sure they achieve their goals. As long as the network of women-focused events doesn't become so large and meaningful that it is systematically disadvantaging men, I don't see any problem with some events excluding men in various ways.

You're concerned about sexism in the small--in this one event. Others are more concerned with sexism in the large--the pervasive social environment that systematically discourages women from entering an extremely rewarding and lucrative industry. Both are suboptimal. In the ideal world, there wouldn't be any women-only tech events. But in the ideal world, there wouldn't be any cultural problems in the industry that make women feel less welcome and free to speak at an event with significant male attendance than at an event that is all or nearly all women. Understand that if organizers choose to, say, split the tickets so that at most 25% of tickets may go to men, they're not doing it because they want to discriminate against men, but because they worry that allowing too many men to attend will make their event less effective at correcting an injustice that we all believe is worth fixing.

  > Women exclusive groups, though, do send a very 
  > conflicting message that it's okay to exclude a gender.

All this line of thinking does is shift attention towards men, thus reinforcing a male-centered culture.

I call bulltwang. Please provide evidence of this supposed systematic selection of 'minority' candidates, because I'm sure as heck not seeing it where I am.

You assert that the wage gap is myth. Please also provide evidence for this statement, because everything I've read suggests that it remains a problem across the board - and for the record we're talking about IT specifically here, and we're not talking about the wage gap, we're talking about the abysmally low rates of entry into this sector by half the population as defined by gender identification.

It's all well and good to say "NO ENOUGH IS ENOUGH MERITOCRACY NAO PLZ", but who decides what is meritorious? The entrenched majority? This is why that term was coined in derision.

I say, enough will be enough when there's no longer a problem (c.f. uptake of science/engineering/tech by women). Until then, we have a problem, and we need to do things to fix that problem.

You have to ask why women are more under represented in this particular field than others which used to be just as male dominated in the past. But people don't like to think about such deep large hairy societal problems.

None of this is to say that what's described in the OP is a bad thing.

I'll admit I had not read the link before I posted that comment, but looking at it now I still believe that the language used is overly emotional and I think that it has been used just because this is a series on women.

A definition of the word passion involves, among other things "strong and barely controllable emotion" and I think this may be an obvious case where a gendered stereotype has been blatantly applied.

Some sentences taken from the link:

"celebrate the work of some of the most passionate women in our industry."

"share one of their nearest and dearest passion projects with our community."

"to hear about some positive experiences from other women in our industry doing what they love."

It doesn't occur to the OP, apparently, that they are trying to create something that is decidedly different from the ordinary tech experience -- a conversation dominated by awkward-to-arrogant, entitled males who think that their very important opinions need to be heard everywhere and at all times.

I wonder if the OP (presumably male) insists on attending (female) rape survivor meetups, or if he could understand why attendees thereof would not feel totally comfortable with his attendance.