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Comment by bdcravens | Hacker News Reader

Professional athletes and drug use. Police officers and violence. Clergy and child sexual abuse. As a percentage, those situations are extreme minorities, but it's important to aggressively address serious issues that exist in an industry, and not shy away for fear of generalizing.

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Interesting point. But if I rephrase things a little bit, I don't feel it is becoming better:

"A reminder to Clergy people: no sexual abuse on children are permitted."

I think if I was a member of that profession, I would feel insulted.

EDIT: rerephrased according to comment (that may invalidate the commentors' opinions).

Well, putting it that way, it is an insult. This is why companies have someone who is intelligent craft delicate messages.

There are a lot of common sense things in this world. Washing behind your ears, changing your sheets... etc.

If it was anything other than a blanket "don't do this," maybe. It's also like a crowd of new software engineers being told on day one, "By the way, you probably know this, but don't hack the payroll server to boost your paycheck." It's something the average person would never seriously consider, but in the event someone is boneheaded enough to actually do it, it negates the "I didn't know I couldn't" excuse. You can feel insulted if you want, but it's not a message _personally directed at you_, it's a general warning that, because of a few extreme incidents, needs to be explicitly stated out loud.

But one of the especially insidious things about sexism in tech is that it is often followed up with "it's just a joke" or "you're being overly sensitive". For a _lot_ of men in tech, it's just seen as boy's club fun and any discomfort it causes can easily be passed over.

I'd compare it to police corruption: the problem isn't so much the few corrupt cops, but the fact that the rest of the police will cover for them.

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