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Comment by blackhole | Hacker News Reader

Half the comments on this page attack the following quote:

"For instance, once I was accused of being emotionally attached to my code"

Despite the fact that in the very next paragraph she points out that this was an irrational response provoked by her situation.

The comments here are completely and utterly missing the point of this article. It is about perception, and the subtle, agonizing torture that sexism inflicts on a subconscious level that is ingrained in the tech world on such a deep level that it is extremely difficult to properly reason about.

I do not have very much faith in your conclusions when you are pretending an entire paragraph of the article doesn't exist.

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Sexism is a problem in many places, especially in tech, on many levels, degrees and for many reasons. I'd like to focus on one, which is the lack of representation of women in tech, programmers especially. Some of the best programmers I met in school were female, some of my best teachers were female, and some of the most amazing people I've met in the industry are female. I've never been at a company or place where there is only one female and I imagine this is very hard. I also think that it is the root of the problem. Rather than go into detail, I hope someone would chime in because I cannot directly relate to this problem both because I am male and my past experience. I think information from someone with a better perspective on why it is hard to be the lone female, and what prevents other females from becoming programmers.

I would like this opportunity to reemphasize how important women have been to the field of computer science. My mother studied computer science and is the reason I chose to pursue it as well. One of my favorite "bad-ass" (for lack of a better term) contributors was Grace Hopper (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grace_Hopper) who created the first compiler as well as the COBOL programming language. I hope that people respond with some of their favorite females in CS from the past or recent years.

Wait did you expect people to read the whole article before jumping up and saying "SEXISM ISN'T A PROBLEM!"?

Oh, also be sure you read that phrase in a male's voice. Because there's no way it would ever be uttered from a woman's in this day and age.

<i> she points out that this was an irrational response provoked by her situation.</i>

It's about perception all right, but you're missing the point: she as much as admits that it is her own perception of the situation that might have been the problem. That is, even if the comment wasn't sexist - "just as likely to be said to a man" - she felt shamed because she believed that it was in fact sexist. Then we have commentators on tech sites who'll use her narrative to bolster the women-in-tech-are-victims-of-sexism narrative. Which you can imagine is all very self-reinforcing when scaled up.

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