Comment by boken | Hacker News Reader

Comment by boken | Hacker News Reader

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There isn't a "fixed amount of negative feedback"; most people, men and women, will do their utmost to minimize that feedback, particularly when it comes from people who are otherwise decent to us or play a large part in determining the smoothness or roughness of our lives. And particularly when that feedback comes preemptively from an early age.

Reflexive political correctness on HN and other forums, meanwhile, is not preemptive. It is in response to the overwhelming amount of belligerence, innuendo, and offhand sexism that runs rampant when there is no such moderation. If you think it implausible that sexism is more noticeable and notable online than in schools or workplaces, I have to wonder how much time you've spent on BBS, IRC, etc., over the years. Or else whether you just don't notice it. This wouldn't be unusual; sexism is so embedded in most parts of the world that it takes either a great amount of reflection or a small amount of finding yourself on the wrong end of it to notice. (We are, after all, communicating in a language in which "gratify me, a man, sexually" is among the stronger insults.)

(Note that I've never seen sama or anyone else attack someone for "why would I use your lib over sqlite?")

I would not expect anyone to feel as strongly about libraries as they do about how other people are treated; in fact, I'd be glad not to know them if they did.

I have to disagree here a bit with your first sentence, or elaborate on it. I agree with the rest of your post.

Because many people mean well and want to smooth our life paths, many people, male and female, will tell women, "You know, tech is a really rough industry. I'm sure you'd be good at it, but you might not want to deal with trying to make it in such a male-dominated field. Are you sure you don't want to try medicine or advertising instead? Or be a librarian? Then you could use your skills but not have to ..."

"You know, research math is really competitive and your likelihood of getting a good tenure-track job is not high. Are you sure you don't want to focus on teaching instead? High schools always need good teachers and they're everywhere, and you could be such a good role model..."

"You know, a startup is a really risky endeavor that takes up a lot of time and really pulls you away from your family. Maybe you should consider an entrepreneurial role in a big company instead so that you could have the security..."

People rarely say outright negative things. They just want the best for a woman -- something a little less risky, a little less hard, maybe a little more nurturing. And nothing I said above was false, and if you are a guy reading this I'm sure you'll say "Someone said that to me once!", but you're not doing the constant swim against the current that a woman is doing (or not).

...most people, men and women, will do their utmost to minimize that feedback...

You clearly didn't even read what I said (hint: what I said was entirely based on this phenomenon).

It also seems likely that you can't think of a measurement that would refute your theory. If that's the case, then it's not even wrong.

Reflexive political correctness on HN and other forums, meanwhile, is not preemptive. It is in response to the overwhelming amount of belligerence, innuendo, and offhand sexism that runs rampant...I would not expect anyone to feel as strongly about libraries as they do about how other people are treated;...

The only person on this thread who treated anyone badly was Sam Altman. The belligerence is almost entirely on the part of the PC crowd. If you want to see more examples, browse my history. See, e.g. DanBC's comment from last week calling me a misogynist for asking a simple philosophical question (admittedly, a question that confounded the PC crowd).

Saying that someone was "the reason" YC had to build a page was a little tactless, but it wasn't belligerent. What you're doing here is projecting all of your own defensiveness/tribalism into Altman's words, and through that lens it's easy for you to see aggression. The charitable interpretation is "the fact that there are people like you with this misconception about gender parity in CS is why we wrote that page".

That's not belligerent or aggressive. It's like me saying "the fact that people like you choose unauthenticated Blowfish CBC mode for your cryptosystems is why we had to write the crypto challenges". Again not the most tactful way to say it, but it's not mean either.

That is a more charitable interpretation. Having been on the receiving end of far more obvious belligerence, it is possible I'm interpreting things less charitably than I should. Thanks for pointing it out.

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