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Comment by hacker789 | Hacker News Reader

Let's improve Hacker News by adding an empowering point multiplier to women's posts. The overwhelming majority of posts are by men, so isn't this the only just action?

Also: Why are women more valuable than stutterers at conferences?

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That first part would be a hilarious application of ~affirmative action.~ Most people like AA until you apply it equally to other things, which is when the sense of how ridiculous it is becomes hard for even the most determinedly discriminatory person to ignore.

I think you're trolling, nonetheless... I have a Stutterer friend, and he does present himself at conferences. And I think it may have others, because actually when Stutterers are very concious of their talk (like in a conference) they stutter a lot less, so it becomes more subtle...

I'll ignore the first line, since I'm parsing that as trolling, but the second line bears some thought.

The basic answer to that is that they're not - if you know someone who stutters, I would like to think that you'd encourage them to present at a conference if they had something valuable to present.

However, imagine that that conference is a brofest - they're not going to feel very included, are they? Bros are assholes after all, and they probably won't want to participate if they feel that they're going to be mocked or not listened to.

I'm being sarcastic, but I'm not trolling. What's wrong with empowerment points?

There are more potential women participants than potential stutterer participants? Also being a woman isn't like having a speech impediment.

Stutterers are disproportionately unrepresented as speakers at conferences, despite potentially having extremely valuable information to share, just like women.

Stuttering is, by definition, a hindrance to speaking. Being a woman isn't.

It isn't?

Being on stage in front of an audience who are tweeting about your physical attributes, not what you are saying; who are snarkily commenting about you being the token blonde; who are assuming you got there because of your birth, not your brains -- that's not a hindrance to speaking?

Even if none of those things are true, they can be running through the speaker's head, just as a stutterer is incredibly self-aware of their impediment. We create our own barriers.

Stuttering: "Talk with continued involuntary repetition of sounds, esp. initial consonants"

The definition of stuttering involves having problems with physical speech. The definition of woman doesn't involve having problems with physical speech.

Stutterers are underrepresented in most conferences; even if you could get them up on stage, it would be a difficult presentation to listen give eloquently (and probably hard to listen to). Women are underrepresented at conferences, but it's not because they would have a problem presenting. Some people might have a problem listening to it, but that'd be largely because of their own issues.

Comparing stutterering - a physical (or perhaps mental) impediment - to females is insulting.

You've missed my point entirely. To restate it more bluntly, being a presenting female at a conference can cause a mental impediment. Would I prefer to listen to a female speaker than a stutterer? Not if she were so paralysed by self-doubt that she gave a halting, unconfident, impossible to listen to talk.

I didn't miss it at all. It's just not a good point. What about male presenters who get paralysed or nervous or have self-doubt in front of crowds?

I've seen few female presenters bomb, and the ones that did - there were much easier explanations - no or little experience public speaker, didn't understand the topic, etc. The ones I've seen who know the topic and the audience and have spoken before in public are fine - no better than men. I do have occasion to listen to male speakers who stutter, and while I know they're smart people - they know their subject well - they can not present.

In your example, it seems obvious that the speaker's gender isn't the source of the hindrance - instead, shouldn't it be the audience of misogynists that are at fault as the hindrance?

The gender infers the audience whether it in fact exists or not.

Can you please show some statistics to back that up? I've been at a conference with a stuttering speaker, and I'm not sure that it's true that the preponderance of stutterers in conference speakers as compared to the general public is as disproportionate as that of women.

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