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Comment by mynameisasdf | Hacker News Reader

This article is incredibly badly written and lacks any real thought about the matter. So he had one interview with some douche CEO and now jumps to the conclusion that:

>"Sadly, sexism is alive and well in my industry. "

>"Now I really empathized with all the women who were victims of assault or rape."

Fucking really?

I've been a developer for now over 11 years and must have met thousands of other devs from countless conferences and meetups. Only once, ONCE, have I ever met someone who made a women-bashing comment similar to what he is talking about. This is both infront of women and behind their backs.

The only real sexism prevalent in the tech industry are the groups of militant feminists setting up endless, patronizing, segregated "coding for girls" meetups.

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"The only real sexism prevalent in the tech industry are the groups of militant feminists setting up endless, patronizing, segregated "coding for girls" meetups."

ahahahahaha no try again

"The only real sexism prevalent in the tech industry are the groups of militant feminists setting up endless, patronizing, segregated "coding for girls" meetups."

It's easy for this kind of thing to be completely invisible when this is your attitude. Sexism in the tech industry is alive and well, and there are a lot of good reasons to have meet-ups for both girls and women.

When you immediately start lashing out about "militant feminists" the second someone suggests that sexism exists, you're saying that our experiences are invalid and that you know better than us how welcome we are in the industry. It should be completely unsurprising that this does not make us feel welcome.

I don't understand his post the same way. He said that the only sexism prevalent in this industry is the "girls code"-type sexism. Sure, sexism exists everywhere and always, as does racism and other -isms. Simply said, people will be jerks. However, it is unreasonable to draw conclusions for the whole industry based on the behaviour of one such jerk, that just happens to be a male sexist (I'm sure you'd find female sexists and black racists as well).

I don't need to base my opinion off of one guy's account of an incident in a blog post - I have a laundry list of my own very unpleasant experiences as a female developer to base my opinions on. I've also spoken to a great deal of other women who have a very similar list of very similar experiences. A lot of these experiences have aspects that are specific to the tech industry.

If you only have insight into industry sexism as far as one or two jerks, it's likely because you aren't a part of the affected demographic.

"A lot of these experiences have aspects that are specific to the tech industry."

Huh - how can the tech industry be more sexist than other industries? Please explain? I mean in what way can such an experience be tech specific? "Woman can't code" comments perhaps, but what else?

Apologies; I fat-fingered the down button when I meant to +1 your comment. Might someone reading along at home please help remedy that for me?

Only once, ONCE, have I ever met someone who made a women-bashing comment similar to what he is talking about.

I'm guessing you're not a woman. Now, I'm not trying to make judgement on the article either way, but I don't think you can really say "I've only ever seen sexism in tech once" when you aren't someone that actually experiences it.

Why not? That's like saying, "You have to have been shot by a gun to be able to say 'I've only seen someone get shot one time.'"

It's absolutely nothing like that. I'm not even sure where to start on breaking down how wrong that comparison is.

To attempt to mirror your example, it's actually like an Army general sitting in HQ saying "Well, I've only ever seen our guys get shot at once!" when his units are being decimated on the battlefield.

(Please don't read into that comparison. I am not actually attempting to compare women to battle-ready soldiers and men to lazy generals)

I get what you're trying to say now. My point is, if the OP has only seen it happen once, then they've only seen it once. You're denying that they've only observed it one time. That's what I have a problem with, not your sentiment.

You're trying to say, "just because you haven't seen it, doesn't mean it doesn't happen," right?

> Only once, ONCE, have I ever met someone who made a women-bashing comment […] The only real sexism prevalent in the tech industry are the groups of militant feminists

Next up, Hiram Wesley Evans explains he's only ever once seen a lynching as a child and how MLK is the real racist.

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