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Comment by Jun8 | Hacker News Reader

Who do you think wouldn't click? This sort of condescending underestimation of the HN crowd just amazes me! As expected, it's currently #1 on HN.

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Not true, I didn't click the link because I feared it was about getting more female founders in development.

After reading namenotrequired's comment I clicked.

Yeah, same. :/ Funny, isn't? All the Adria Richards of the world claiming to want to increase the exposure of women in tech are actively discouraging exactly that.

You don't have to support things like this, but have you ever considered not constantly taking pot-shots at efforts to correct a really blatant inequality like this?

There isn't any blatant inequality except for the sex based discrimination being pushed on the field by feminists, which won't be corrected without pushback from egalitarians.

> the sex based discrimination being pushed on the field by feminists

I've tried to avoid this inane discussion, but realizing that you're probably misinformed rather than malicious, I thought I'd chime in.

Feminism is egalitarianism. Feminism literally means that women should be equal to men. I'm not going to argue with you about so-called "segregationist" policies, because it seems like we'd come to a stand-still. The only thing I'd like to point out is that we should all be feminists, because the only alternative is sexism. Seriously, look it up.

If you've had a bad experience with radical women who say "all men are pigs," please don't use that as a reason to not support true feminists (such as myself), who (among other things) are trying to rectify the atrociously low ratio of women in tech.

Yes, we all want a meritocracy. Yes, there's something that we're doing to prevent more women from entering the field. Yes, we need to change that.

To play devil's advocate, I think what he might be referring to is when we try hard to fight for equal rights, we tend to over extend and give more benefits at the same time. This would make us men feel the need to fight more.

Feminism doesn't know what it is. For every feminist who thinks it's about everyone, there's a feminist who thinks it's only about women. All of the legislation? The policies enacted and enforced? Created and aligned to the views of the latter. Feminist laws kept me in an abusive situation as a kid. Maybe if feminists didn't bully, send death threats, and kill the dog of the person who created domestic violence shelters for everyone, or never passed laws based on models saying that only men abuse, I'd have a different opinion.

Actions speak louder than words.

>The only thing I'd like to point out is that we should all be feminists, because the only alternative is sexism.

I have chosen to identify as an egalitarian. Please don't remove my agency. I have very good reasons not to identify with an ideology that cannot even agree on what it is, and has done considerable harm to both myself and many others in the past and present.

I think you can be a feminist and still be a good person. I think it's silly to imply that in order to be a good person, you have to be a feminist.

Btw, I use sleepyti.me all the time. Great work!

If you believe the sexes are equally represented in this field, you should probably try to learn more about a topic like this before forming such strong feelings on it, because the numbers show that not to be remotely true. I honestly have trouble believing you really think this, but I'll assume you're sincere but misinformed, which is kind of a relief. The claim that there are as many women in tech as men is as poorly borne out by the numbers as the idea that Topeka is five miles from Tokyo.

Please, do some cursory research and you will see that women really are badly outnumbered in tech.

They have equal opportunity. (Actually, no, women have greater opportunity than men do these days.)

That's not a guarantee of equal outcome, though.

"badly outnumbered". Should this be a contest? Where are hard facts on discrimination of women in our field?

It's an interesting point. I think it's discouraging young male entrepreneurs.

Hacker School has special funding for women wanting to apply and while I consciously ignore this, sub-consciously, I feel that I have a less likely chance of getting in so why bother applying.

Hacker School judges everyone the same way -- they'd love to admit everyone who's friendly and excited about becoming a better programmer.

Why does encouraging others discourage you? If I praise someone else does it make you feel less worthy?

Again, I'm all for achieving the same goal of equality, but maybe not in the same way that some places go about it. Hacker School is just an example institution, and I'm not trying to bash them or question their judgement - they really do seem like an amazing group of people, which is why I'd love to go there.

That said, I don't see why any man who isn't able to fully fund his stay, shouldn't be able to apply for a HS grant. If its for encouragement, then it would seem discouraging to those that can't apply for it. I'm not in this boat, but I can think of a few people who should go to HS but just can't afford to.

I feel deeply uncomfortable with it as well. Getting paid $5,000 for having a vagina is usually something associated with, err, other industries. I'd feel much better if it were on the basis of financial need rather than which set of genitals you have (and as a non-cis person, makes me wonder what they'd do with a trans person...).

I never understood this. Does hacker school think women as a demographic are less wealthy than men? If they are applying its because they are interested, offering to pay wouldnt make more women interested, it just favors the ones that are even !ore. There's a reason women get imposter syndrome so often, because they are given extraordinary benefits and attention.

Really? I would have guessed it was all the MRA assholes.

>a person disagrees with GFK >"must be one of those evil MRAs"

Sorry if that's condescending? It wasn't meant to be. I just know many men might understandably not be immediately interested in something that's clearly aimed at women.

Edit: Oh, and also because it didn't appear on the front page until ~30 minutes after it started (though it had appeared on new a few times).

No problem, it just seemed that you had a priori assumptions that may not be correct. If you want to sell to women, of course you would be interested, e.g. the great scene where Darcy first meets and teaches Nick this point in What Women Want (great movie all through, btw). As an edge case, think of people in Mattel not being interested in what girls think!

You're right, I'm happy to see I was less correct than I expected after it seemed to be ignored initially. The new page is a funny beast.

Sorry, I'm afraid that reference is lost on me :(

I guess you haven't seen the normal shit that comes up whenever people try to encourage women to do stuff.

Nope, this is in fact one of the topics that I feel strongly (and try to work on with high school prog teams). Yet, I feel there's a bit of hysteresis effect on that discussion, with HN flooded with such posts. Most of the "normal shit" on HN you refer to stems from the above.

This one is quite different though, it's actually about female founders, not just targeting girls for coding.

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