It's funny. Those who've disagreed with Laura have come down to name calling and such.

Faruk's a good guy. But because he worked for Apple means nothing. Absolutely squat. If you judge people's worth on who they've worked for, then that's worrying. It's not who you've worked for - it's what you've done (Modernizr was a good link in this.) I know many Googler's, Appler's who spend a lot of time writing minor code for example.

But how does working for Apple and writing Modenizr qualify him to speak about sexism? That's got nothing to do with the topic at hand.

Laura's not the only person who's expressed this view. Many people in the comemnts have agreed (and disagreed)

I think it doesn't say volumes about the sexist attitudes. It says volumes that people agree with her more. I'm sorry it doesn't fit in your belief box, but that doesn't make it trolling, nor does it make it wrong.

> Laura's not the only person who's expressed this view. Many people in the comemnts have agreed (and disagreed)

I think gets at precisely the point. Your average HN reader, the one who's making these agreeing or disagreeing comments, is probably a cis man who doesn't think of himself as sexist, and understandably doesn't want to think that his industry is sexist either.

The criticism here is that a relatively thin article denying sexism is being given more weight and credence than a much more exhaustive article documenting sexism, because 1) it's saying what we want to hear, and 2) its author is a woman, which-- well, I shouldn't need to point out the irony there.

There are people on both sides of the fence, as you'd expect. But the the original commenter was so blindsided in her views about how she thought the OP was blinded in her views, she didn't even stop to smell the irony.

There may be people on both sides of the fence, but there aren't two sets of facts. It's "great", if we can apply that word to what should be normal, that some women today haven't had personal experience with sexism, but that doesn't constitute a point of evidence against women who have.

Our culture as a whole has some very deep-seated not-so-subtle problems with gender politics. Our industry, with its absurd gender disparity, should be assumed ceteris paribus to be at least that bad, though I'd wager it's a little subtler and a little deeper-seated. We, all of us, are basically good people who really wish we didn't have an actual problem, that there's some benign explanation for the gap. We wish all the blog posts and articles about endemic sexism were overblown from a few freak occurrences, regrettable but not something we need to concern ourselves with discussing or fixing.

We should be deeply suspicious of anything which promises to fulfill that wish without evidence.

She has had personal experience with sexism. But her argument was also that according to the original .net magazine article; every woman fears being raped all day every day. It was sensationalist.

I agree with a lot of what you have to say. She generally doesn't concern herself with posts like these but she felt the need to considering a man (I know you don't care about gender but it's important factor that a man is telling her how she feels) is saying what sexism is to EVERYONE. Name calling EVERY man on it (almost as if saying he knows better.)

I contend that this is a sensationalist statement. The source for this claim, if I understand it, is this:

  ...our world has a history, spanning thousands of years, of 
  violence as a means to silence and control women. This is
  simply not the case for men, and never has been. Every 
  woman carries that historical weight with her wherever she
  goes, whereas very few men even have an understanding of
  how heavy that weight is.

Because women do fear rape. No, not the way a hyperbolic strawman fears being knocked down, but day by day in little ways the fear of violence becomes another part of your life.

That creepy guy on the bus who said you looked pretty? He's probably just a harmless old dude. But then he moved to sit next to you and didn't say anything and you were worried he was going to touch you. So you get off at the next stop even though you aren't home yet, because the last time something like this happened that guy found out where you worked and took the same bus as you for a week... And you know he's probably harmless and you feel like an idiot waiting for the next bus except your best friend was raped at a party and had to get an abortion and never told anyone but you and God, why are you even thinking about that? Why is it so hard for men to just leave you alone?

Since we're avoiding generalizations, I will be specific: Every single woman that I have known intimately enough to know such things has such stories. Those who had not been victims of rape themselves, that is. Of course, they don't complain about it, because complaining about it has never, ever helped.

Does that mean "every woman fears being raped all day every day"? Stop talking like that. You know what it means.

> She generally doesn't concern herself with posts like these but she felt the need to considering a man (I know you don't care about gender but it's important factor that a man is telling her how she feels) is saying what sexism is to EVERYONE.

I will charitably grant she mistook his speaking in generalities to be making pronouncements. For example, he says "A group of all men just doesn't seem as welcoming to women," to which she retorts "in general I find that men are in fact, more welcoming". They're plainly speaking past each other; he spoke of a statistical fact, such as "Black men are more likely to be arrested", and she responded with a personal fact, such as "I'm not a criminal."

It's obvious why these sorts of general statements are so dangerous, since they're so easy to misinterpret or use for evil (and tacking on some kind of IMHO doesn't help at all). In general, I'd avoid making them in the first place, except there are questions we need them to answer: "Why are so many black men being arrested?" or "Why are so few women entering tech?"

So I think I'd be a lot more charitable toward her position if I saw some indication that she got what the original article was actually about: "I'm concerned about the gender gap in tech. I think it's an important thing for us to be talking about."

Then we can all work to figure out a way to talk about it that doesn't leave some people feeling unrepresented.

The example of African Americans carrying the legacy of slavery with them is not a fair comparison to women. African Americans are a group of people who, whilst now large and diverse, mostly share a common history which in the grand scheme of things was not all that long ago. You could use Native Americans or Jewish people as similar examples. Women don't have a shared history in the same way. Women have suffered terribly throughout history (and in some countries they still do now) by either horrible violence, being treated by second class citizens or both. However there was no one cultural atrocity which affected all women.

I'm aware of ways in which women have been persecuted. I'm also aware of how people have been persecuted based on race, religion, sexuality, age. Those things all contribute to my understanding of history, and I think it's extremely important not to ignore them, but not ignoring them, and not being weighed down thinking about them every day are very different things.

Stories like you describe - I can honestly say that I don't have a story like that. It might be that I've been extremely fortunate and I'm in a small minority. It might also be that I try very hard not to jump to conclusions. I don't want to unfairly judge people based on what is probably an entire harmless gesture, but I completely understand why other women do. When writing my post I started to wonder if I was weird because I didn't fear being raped. If the article could have that effect on me, isn't it possible that articles and comments like this are actually detrimental to that problem?

Finally, I don't think that "I'm concerned about the gender gap in tech. I think it's an important thing for us to be talking about" was what the original article was about. It's probably what the original intention of the article was, but it's not how the article turned out. I actually see the gender gap talked about a lot (both by women and men). I barely go a day without seeing someone or other talk about it on Twitter. My Twitter feed clearly is by no means a representation of the whole industry as a) there is a definite bias towards UXers and designers, and b) it's an entirely self-selected list on my part. However it does show that these discussions are already happening, amongst some communities at least, on a regular basis.

I think that an article that was truly about the gender gap in tech would actually talk about the gender gap in tech. There were so many issues that the article actually could have talked about - disparity in pay, women being overlooked for promotions, women getting unfairly let go or not hired because of pregnancy, women finding that their opinions are ignored or not even asked for, women feeling left out because the guys go for drinks after work and they're not asked to go with. The article did briefly touch on speakers at conferences, but for me personally that's a less important issue. I go to conferences a couple of times a year; I go to the office 5 days a week, 48 weeks a year, and issues like pay and promotions affect my whole life.

That last paragraph is something I regret not putting in my original post as it helps to demonstrate that I was not criticising the intention of writing the article; I was criticising the way it was written and the things that it chose to concentrate on.

I do just want to comment on one tangent:

> However there was no one cultural atrocity which affected all women.

I don't think this is as big a difference as you do. There is no Holocaust, no singular event of great subjugation, in the history of African Americans.

The Atlantic slave trade and the ensuing institution of racial slavery wasn't an event. It happened day by day, one ship, one beating, one auction, one rape, one lynching at a time, generation by generation, for hundreds of years, well into the last century.

It is the same situation with women. No, no one ever decided to round up all the females and shoot them; but day by day, one gospel, one edict, one rape, one revisionist history at a time, backed up by very real violence, women have had their natural rights to life and liberty and property and justice neatly excised and kept in a box for safekeeping. In nearly every civilization for ten thousand years of recorded history.

If we don't call that an atrocity, it is only because the word is not large enough to contain such atrociousness.

It doesn't - it sounds like an appeal to authority. My guess is that had the roles been reversed, with Faruk as a male arguing how he didn't see sexism, and Laura as a female arguing otherwise, that the whole "but Faruk worked for Apple and wrote Modenizr" line wouldn't give his viewpoints on sexism more credence with the parent poster.

I'm sorry that you feel HN readers are upvoting the wrong things but maybe (just maybe) it's not so bad. The article you are defending used rape 10 times to make an argument about sexism. I think even Rudy Giuliani would think that excessive.

I also am disturbed by how dismissive you are, but my experience in tech is that when sexism comes up, it is always the women who are the meanest. Whether it's the experienced woman who insists she has never experienced sexism and you are a silly little fool for bringing it up. Or the woman who can't tolerate anyone questioning the latest politically correct spiel of the day like Faruk's.

So she doesn't have that much experience? How about actually rebutting her arguments? Or do you just not like the idea of someone questioning these things? How about writing your own article?

Faruk's was bland, academic, overwrought, and jargon-laden.

I can only assume that the 2 years as a movie usher you're referring to is the 2 years as a teenager I spent volunteering at my local non-profit cinema whilst also doing my A-level exams and working a part-time job. I'm pretty sure the only place this is even mentioned online is on my LinkedIn profile, at the absolute bottom, after you would have scrolled past the various jobs I have held in sales and marketing, and local government (where as I mentioned in the post, I did in fact experience some sexism).

As for the final comment, I did indeed reread the article several hours later, before I wrote my post, to ensure that I still felt the same way. I actually found MORE that I disagreed with on a second read-through.

The reason? Flagging. This has happened numerous times on HN when any discussion of sexism comes up- when I complained about it before I was told that the article were "not relevant" or "rehashes". It got to the point where a thread with 70+ comments was deleted because so many people flagged it.

Depressing- especially because it means that most people aren't even aware that it's going on.

When I've called out people over the years for being sexist or racist, often they don't even realize immediately they'd said something offensive because it usually is subtle rather than overt - off-color jokes, sexualized images or inappropriate topics.

The rebuttal may not have been of great importance, but we couldn't have written it. It's one person's experience (though there are probably a significant number like her) and it adds to our model of the situation. Also, it makes a significant meta-point: stereotyping is bad even when done by the self-proclaimed champions of the stereotyped group.

"And Laura, if you are reading this, a small bit of advice for you. Next time an article "enrages" you, re-read it and I guarantee you will see that it doesn't say what you think it does." I think you need to take your own advice.

Activist on megaphone: Let's all work together to end homelessness!

Tourist: There are no homeless people in NYC! I don't see any!

New Yorker: Um, what? Yes there are. How would you know, you've only just been here for 5 minutes.

Tourist's Sister: New York is a MAJOR city. It's got wonderful theater, and the Yankees.

New Yorker: [at a loss for words]