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Comment by polarix | Hacker News Reader

Something is twisted in all these discussions of gender in tech, it really seems like we're just going around in circles over and over again. I've never read anything that felt like a particularly insightful explication of the cause here.

Is it possible there's something more fundamental in society that this phenomenon is merely a symptom of, and that the fix is not going to be something like "just challenge yourself to detect and resist unconscious bias"? Could there be something inherent in the structure of our framework of social interaction that incentivizes this kind of behavior?

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Perhaps the average/typical "nerd" type male has experienced (either directly or indirectly) some form of rejection from members of the opposite sex sometime during adolescence and the rejection was mostly based on the type of person he is (i.e. computer nerd), so somewhere deep in his mind there lays a thought of "pretty/attractive/feminine girl" type being the polar opposite of the "programmer/nerd" type of person.

This is actually the first gender in tech article I've really liked. A lot of them off no solutions or advice, this one did. As for detecting and resisting unconscious bias, I've worked hard to lessen the anger I feel day to day and know it is possible to correct subconscious reactions.

Humans are awesome at categorizing information and making assumptions. I'm sure the ability to recognize patterns helped us to survive up to this point, but this skill isn't needed when having a conversation with someone. For the majority of us, our decisions are not life and death ones, we can take the time to disregard assumptions and learn specifics. I don't think it's the framework of our social interactions more so than it is just us. It's something we need to work actively to overcome.

Your appearance is a form of communication. If you communicate message X to me I'm going to respond accordingly to X until you somehow communicate you'd prefer response Y. As soon as you do I'm happy to adapt and give you what you want, but it's unfair to chastise me for giving you a response appropriate to X first.

The gender issues in wider society are the same as those in tech, except tech has a toxic culture and a horrifically skewed gender ratio

I've been in the tech industry, and worked with both women and men for 10 years.

I have never encountered toxicity in this industry.

The only place I encounter true toxicity is on forums, message boards and comments, and in these mediums the toxicity not at all limited to the technology industry.

It's also worth noting that the toxicity, even in these mediums, is limited to a tiny (but vocal) minority, in ratios of which correspond to the larger population's percentage of mentally disturbed individuals.

And if you've not seen it yourself in 10 years, of course it must not exist.

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