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The blind-upvoting of celebrities on HN is sometimes appalling. This comment totally sidesteps the point of the article. OP is not asking for advice.

You are not being helpful here. She clearly points out "That no matter how tough I get, how thick my skin, the paper cuts still hurt." So telling her to get thicker skin really just adds one more papercut to the pile (and the rest of this thread will heap on a few more).

OP your post is well done and paints a clear picture. Hopefully you and others like you will continue to inspire folks to change.

He is allowed to share his life experiences and offer his advice to the readers of an online discussion forum, even if the author of the article linked at the top of the thread didn't solicit personal advice. He doesn't need anyone's permission.

Women aren't fragile creatures who need constant protecting. The author of the article is not your personal damsel in distress. She is a human who feels she has faced challenges.

So is edw519.

He's using his life experiences to explain how "if I can pull myself up by the bootstraps, you can too." He's essentially denying her experience, and he even implies that the two of them have had the exact same experiences in tech when he says that death by 1000 cuts wouldn't be his choice of analogy.

I don't think he's denying her experience. I read it as advice on how to deal with how things currently are.

The problem is change in the industry takes time, and so without changing how she personally deals with things currently, she is going to continue to be unhappy. Obviously this is a bad situation and we need to make things better in our industry, but arcing up at people trying to help other people cope with current conditions is hardly helpful.

> The problem is change in the industry takes time, and so without changing how she personally deals with things currently, she is going to continue to be unhappy.

Yeah, I'm not going to argue with an obvious concern troll. Next time, try to be more subtle.

> He is allowed to share his life experiences and offer his advice to the readers of an online discussion forum

Of course he is, but it's embarrassing that HN has voted his comment to the top.

He has one of the highest karma averages. I doubt it took many votes, if any.

> You are not being helpful here. She clearly points out "That no matter how tough I get, how thick my skin, the paper cuts still hurt."

I find this strange. He is potentially suggesting a way for her to avoid around 99% of the paper cuts.

If it's death by 1000 cuts, then it could well be survival by 10.

From the Geek Feminism Wiki:

Clawed my way up is an excuse for sexism used in some geek discussions: "I clawed my way up all on my own, why can't you?"

Essentially, this argument is a denial of the effect of privilege on success. The person making it argues either that:

they, despite being oppressed in some way (often but not always experiencing poverty in childhood), are now very successful, and anyone who isn't is lazy

they, despite being oppressed in some way, never took advantage of any scheme designed to ameliorate oppression (such as scholarships targeted at certain groups)

there is no such thing as institutional privilege, there's just people who work hard and whining people who don't that natural selection operates at the level of success in society, and by attempting to ameliorate oppression, society is in fact doing itself harm

There are various problems with these arguments:

oppressions don't map perfectly to each other: someone who experienced, say, poverty can't map their experience onto someone who isn't white or is a woman, etc (see Oppression Olympics)

the experience of people with intersecting oppressions is generally discounted

it is unlikely in the extreme that the person speaking did not in some way benefit from privilege: for example, access to enough resources for the child to have a computer (perhaps a cheap secondhand one, but nevertheless), access to a library and time to read any books borrowed from the library, household members who did chores while the person speaking studied, etc.

it is at least unlikely that the person did not in some way benefit from schemes designed to ameliorate oppression, examples include but aren't limited to: free or cheap public schooling and free or cheap healthcare.

> I'm not going to try to compare my pain with your pain or anyone else's;

He goes on to do just that, though. His comment is claiming that because he was able to tune out his problems, he just knows that whatever she's going through, she can too.

You're responding to a point he isn't making. He's not claiming that one's circumstances don't contribute to one's success; obviously, we're all "privileged" to be living in the first world in the 21st century.

You took this opportunity to dismiss his personal experiences, and bizarrely, you implied that one's insight regarding a situation is entirely unwelcome without having personally experienced that exact same situation. If that's the case, take your own advice and leave him alone.

You're poisoning this discussion. Just stop.

The difference being where the discussion started.

When a discussion starts with the experience of sexism, then a post that basically says, "well my life as a guy was also hard" derails the discussion.

Your criticism would be valid if this were a discussion that had started with Ed's personal experiences. It didn't.

Do you know this guy? Perhaps there other other unprivileged issues he has had to deal with by being a member of one or more of those groups.

her experiences, maybe? i believe the poster in question is more likely than not to be female Edit: ah, it seems most people are saying "he" so I suspect prior knowledge of a known poster (though still unclear). My "male assumption" sexist lights were flashing pretty heavily though.

I think she would find it more encouraging if you said something like, "damn, sexism sucks," rather than, "I struggled with a difficult life and made it, and you can too." I know you want to be encouraging, but ignoring the greater gender issues she was bringing up makes it seem like you're missing the point. I'm sure she is capable of getting encouragement from her friends, but publicizing sexism in the tech industry is for, well, the public, which includes men like you.

But he's right, and this isn't sexism...and God I'm so tired of hearing about sexism in tech...this is life. If you are different, people probably won't understand and will react negatively towards it.

My wife isn't a math and science person, and she does not have the aptitude to be a programmer. Does that make me a sexist? Does that mean that all women are just like her?

The answer is no, it doesn't.

People focus on what they want to hear in order to validate their opinions. Who among us that is ambitious hasn't grown up with the pain that is going against the grain?

It sucks to be different, but that's the way it goes.

Edit: Here is an example of what I mean.

"For those of us who aren’t, it’s a regular signal that we’re not considered, that maybe we don’t belong."

Absolutely not true. It's just a speaker trying to build rapport with their audience by talking about something they understand.

"The heavy drinking makes some of us feel unsafe."

So only guys drink heavy? First of all, if you don't want to watch heavy drinking, don't go to an after party at a bar? Second, I've seen just as many wasted females as males at conference parties.

"A paper cut for every conference."

I've been to maybe a dozen conferences in the past 2-3 years and I haven't seen any of this. Maybe I've missed it, or I'm not looking, who knows.

The problem is when it gets institutionalized. What's more likely, that your wife just happens to be someone who's not good at math and science, or someone who didn't receive enough encouragement to think she could do well in those subjects? Honestly, I have no idea, since I have no idea who your wife is. But the question cannot be dismissed outright.

Studies that find things such as "Women perform better in math when tested without men"[1] are an indication that something is very wrong at a very fundamental level.

[1] http://brown.edu/Administration/News_Bureau/2000-01/00-023.h...

She just wasn't interested, and still isn't. We've been together since school, and I watched her grow up...it had nothing to do with the teacher or institution.

I know it probably isn't popular, but men and women are biologically different. I find it arrogant to believe that humans of the past decade are so intellectually superior that human physiology is of no consequence.

Like I said, I don't know your wife, so I can't comment.

But she's not the point, anyway.

The point is that you hear of "girls not being good at math and science" much more frequently. But when you control for societal factors, there's nothing that really separates male and female math abilities.

my girlfriend was miserable in her grad school program. it was becoming more and more apparent to her that she should have taken economic development but she'd avoided it because she was 'bad at math'. we spent the next three months doing a crash course of all the math she was 'bad' at and she went from barely understanding algebra to having a better grasp of statistics and calculus than i do. she was only 'bad at math' because she'd spent the first 25 years of her life around people who had let her be bad at math because she was a girl

I honestly don't understand your comment. It is very difficult for me to parse properly. How is it not sexist towards women for them to hear comments like this? "If I had a dollar for every time someone suggested that some demographics just aren’t biologically predisposed to be good at programming (even though research does not support this argument), I’d be rich."

I grew up hearing my father tell me that I wasn't good at math because I was a girl. Yes, he's fucking sexist, and so is everyone else who thinks that women can't be good at STEM fields. Props to you for apparently taking the time to carefully study your wife and decide she sucks at STEM because of who she is, and not because she's a woman, but there are plenty of engineers, like my father, who are not so kind. It's a constant, constant thorn to women in STEM, all the time, and I for one believe it is a miracle that they do not complain more.

I've heard those exact sentiments expressed on this very website, from people who were sitting at positive karma.

It really isn't hard to see sexism in technology. It's a shame every time this subject comes up, guys clamor to be the first to post [dismissive reason] or [request for extremely specific example of sexism]. I mean, this submission is about a woman chronicling sexism against her, and there are guys in here just flat out saying, "This isn't sexist."

It's the same for men that want to be nurses is it not? I agree that saying 'girls suck at math' is a bullshit comment, but ignorance is applied equally.

Entrepreneurs, especially, get it from all sides. Part of my frustration stems from being tired of the worst class in America - privileged white male that wasn't born in the ghetto, but the rest of it is just tired of people looking for negativity all the time. It doesn't matter who you are, what gender you are, or what the color of your skin is - if you seek to be better than those around you, or different than the paradigm from which they view the world, then they will seek to put you on your ass.

How about channelling your frustration into creating an environment for more women in tech?

Ignorance my be applied equally but thanks to privilege as a male you can afford to ignore or dismiss those ignorant comments in a way that a person with less privilege may not be able to. As a male you're told by society that you're allowed to go out, break all the rules and take what you want whereas as a woman you're meant to be quiet, demure and "proper".

Bringing up alternate social injustices is generally considered a tactic of diversion. It's not that these other injustices aren't important (they are very important) but it happens with such regularity that it's considered de-railing to the conversation.

You're just sick of hearing about sexism in tech. How do you think the people who receive it feel?

Sure, some regular shitty stuff applies to everyone and can get conflated with the sexist stuff, but there is still a clear strain of discouraging behaviour directed at women in tech.

> I'm so tired of hearing about sexism in tech > that's the way it goes. > I haven't seen any of this. Maybe I've missed it, or I'm not looking, who knows.

Or possibly you're predisposed to an opinion and only look to reinforce it instead of challenge it?

That could go both ways.

My point is that I look all around me and I do not see anyone in my circle being sexist to women about their role in tech(or lack thereof). I coach a mixed basketball team and the girls are the best and most poised athletes on the team. Not a single one of the boys has complained or made a comment about it.

I watch my daughter grow up, in her 2nd year of school, as she takes to reading/writing over math. She's good at both, but she prefers the former.

I'm not saying sexism doesn't exist, I'm just saying that I don't see it to the scale that has the entire industry freaking out.

If anything, the SendGrid situation proved that it can go both ways.

> I do not see anyone ... I don't see it to the scale

What scale do you see it? And what's the acceptable/unacceptable threshold? Right now you are jumping squarely into "this isn't an issue please move on and grow thicker skin", which is a lousy place to start a discussion.

> entire industry freaking out.

I really don't think my or your opinion matters, instead perhaps we should encourage more bloggers like this to speak out so we can see if there really is a problem. You know, encourage more data from the source instead of anecdotes like your wife and math?

Because if there is a problem then we should solve it, right?

The problem with heavy drinking is that it reduces females' safety far more than it reduces males' safety, even if both sexes are consuming.

> Try to tune out the negativity. I know it's hard, but just think of it as "systems analysis applied to people".

Hahaha... this is a joke, right? This reads like a caricature of someone being patronizing.

In case it's not a joke, let me be plain: you are being ridiculously patronizing. "I know it's hard, but..."? This is the way you speak to a child.

"Try to tune out..." Do you honestly think OP doesn't do this on a daily basis; that she hasn't been doing this for years? This is not a rhetorical question, I'm truly interested in whether you think that "tuning out negatvity" is a new, novel concept that never occurred to OP.

Ed: please take a moment to consider the tone of your post next time you are posting.

Forget about the conferences (you don't really need them anyway). Forget about Facebook, twitter, Hacker News, reddit, etc., etc., etc. They're definitely more of a distraction than a help. Learn how to separate issues from details (it's amazing how little really matters). Try to tune out the negativity

Now imagine that was on a techie job advert, or it was said to you during an interview. What would us hackers say?