I find it strange that 50 years ago desegregation was so crucial but now resegregation is the new norm. Black-only colleges, female-only conferences, safe spaces.
It's incredibly disingenuous to compare civil rights with a voluntary conference attended by entrepreneurs. There's a huge difference between forced exclusion and voluntary inclusion.
Would you people not conduct this tedious flamewar for the twenty seven thousandth time? It's blatantly off topic and most of us want to sleep the sleep of the dead when we hear it.
This goes for both sides, insofar as continuing the argument only feeds it.
Many of us might say the same thing about the conference's divisive approach, said approach's root in intersectional theory and post-modernist-derived political ideology, and our perception of its nature as grossly deleterious.
It's not a flame war. We are not discussing whether it is right or wrong. Only that it exists. And apparently, nobody wants to acknowledge the elephant in the room.
God I'm really opening myself up for trouble by posting in this thread; but that fact alone makes me worried enough about the tone of discourse around these topics that I'll force myself to speak anyway.
If the parent is downvoted because it doesn't expound on its point, that's entirely fair; but frankly, I agree (the post was since removed, but the core thrust was that they disliked gender-separated events). Creating artificial separation in order to "help" separation-oriented bias/conflict seems to be fighting against its own ends. It's a well established concept in behaviorism that exposure without a punishing outcome is an effective step towards overcoming personal adversity. I don't believe keeping men and women separate will do anything but encourage more feelings of us-them vs. togetherness, less shared context and experience, and more more misunderstanding/bitterness. I truly believe good role models and non-punishing environments can be provided in mixed scenarios that also provide additional benefits of communication and understanding across the divide.
It's a little bit apples to oranges, but I was bullied _heavily_ most of my early childhood, regularly beat up/socially outcast/etc. If I had been homeschooled, pulled out of the system, kept only alongside other bullied youth, I hesitate to think I'd have developed ANY of the resilience or tools I now have to deal with unavoidable situations in real life. Don't read this as a justification of the negative, read this as a pragmatic response to trying to make productive adults who can both push for better interactions while not being unable to work in potentially pathological environments. Having examples of, "this is a popular kid who DOESN'T beat me up" was extremely valuable, and from talking to my wife (STEM, neurosci) at the very least, she's found similar strong mentors in her mixed gender workplace, despite (and sometimes because of) other workers who showed really distasteful behavior.
This was, as my posts so often turn into, quite a ramble. Take the following sparknotes: I think that separation only reinforces ingroup/outgroup thinking. We need to build effective social norms together, not in isolation.
(Hah, as expected, -2 by the time I even edited to fix some typos, I almost feel vindicated in my pessimism re: discussion on these topics. I'd appreciate if someone would at least rebut rather than just silence something you disagree with; I'd hope readers trust I'm going into this for the purposes of prompting discussion and not to be inflammatory)
It's really sad since you make a long, sober argument. Nothing off-topic or inflammatory but something that could be attacked with a counter argument instead of a cowardly, anonymous downvote.
EDIT: how was this flagged? The post was neither insulting, nor deranging nor inflammatory.
I don't have a problem with female only stuff. What I do mind is women thinking they are somehow special just because they have a vagina. Whenever it's a women only thing, they shamelessly and self righteously pat themselves on the back .
Whoever is meant by "the world", why do they "need" more companies and why should that need factor into one's career decisions?
Why "more" companies instead of working at existing companies? Given that the most obviously influential speaker at that event is an employee at a not woman-led company, isn't that a contradiction of the claim?
Why "women-led"? Why focus on biological sex? What about intersex? How about trans or non-binary gendered?
In my view, starting or leading a company is just about the single hardest professional undertaking. You should only do it if it closely aligns with your personal purpose, otherwise it will be a nightmare experience. Encouraging someone to take a career path simply because of their association with a group, without reference to their individual objectives, is improper and will lead to an unhappy life.
I think the quote is a valid point. How do you fix gender imbalance issues? Well, partly by balancing genders better in highly visible places. The "how" is very, very tough, but the goal is worthwhile.
Also, "the world needs more women-led companies" and "the tech industry needs more female engineers" are not mutually exclusive. "The world needs more women-led companies" also isn't mutually exclusive with "the world needs more ____-led companies". I know that's not explicitly what you said, but I want to address the inferred sentiment because it shows up every time one of these discussions happens.
People who insist on relitigating this from first principles every time anything in the category comes up are trolling, whether they mean to or not. Why? Because they force everyone else to either (a) cede the battlefield or (b) suffer the soul-crushing boredom of engaging an argument they don't want to have, one that is always the same and never leads anywhere but nastiness.
Here's a first principle that really does apply here: Hacker News exists for the gratification of intellectual curiosity.
There is no intellectual curiosity in this battle—only resentment and repetition, the chocolate and peanut butter of tedium. You can agree with either side ideologically, or with both, or with neither, and still know that such flamewars are off topic here, because they violate the core value of the site.
Imagine a 2x2 matrix in your head. "Angry tedium" is the quadrant we most want to avoid.
Does the conference not gratify your intellectual curiosity? That's cool; there are 29 other things on the front page that might. (Ok, 28 and a job ad.)
Dan, the purpose of the relitigation is the same as it is everywhere else online -- to make the topic itself so toxic that it can't functionally be discussed (this works particularly well on HN because of the flamewar detection).
The way out is through. Acknowledge, recognize, and do something about the pervasive misogyny and bigotry that appears here every time topics like this are brought up.
I would word this differently but I think this is fundamentally correct. What we have now isn't quite as bad as it would be if HN were unmoderated, but our current policy concedes a hecklers veto on stuff like this.
What's to be done? They ban people where bans are deserved. Almost every comment that's off-topic has been flagkilled. The system seems to be working pretty well.
The comments are unpleasant for the ~8 or so minutes they're active, but they go away swiftly. It's hard to imagine a solution other than pg's "all comments start dead and need a vouch to come alive" idea from several years ago. Reddit deals with this situation by locking threads entirely, which many people wish wasn't a feature. Do you have any other suggestions?
You mean like the heckler's veto that saw yummyfajitas leave? Because if you see a heckler's veto in the treatment of feminism here and I saw the death of hope for US politics in dang telling Stucchio to shut up about controversial topics the moderation team has a hard job.
He did? Well, good riddance. He's a person who reveled in wrapping overt sexism and racism in a cocoon of what can only very generously called 'scientism'. 'This isn't bigoted, you're just not following my axiomatic logic/fearless inquiry/bayesian maths' is a trope that even the most charitable moderator eventually catches on to.
that seems like a pretty unfortunate way of viewing what should be discussion on a discussion forum. I agree that there does tend to be a certain amount of misogyny that these discussions draw, but criticisms like "I don't think gender segregation is a good thing" don't fall into that category. For me, the problem seems to be that both sides want to shout and neither want to listen, but simply banning one side of the argument widens the valley further.
Well dang, sincerly you have a rather poor track record on only attacking one side of the argument.
Just above we have a comment by some blhack that is clearly flamebait but from your side of the fence, yet you don't take any issue with that, just like you usually don't take any issue with similar comments that defends your rather obvious personal points of view (something fine for a normal user but not for someone trying to pose as neutral).
Then you proceed and ask that one side (yet again) of the argument just shuts up when this kind of posts gets to the front page and you (like you already did in many similar cases) remove their flagging to force them to stay in the front page.
Well dang, I'm pretty sure you can see that you are forcing everyone that disagrees with your particular view of the world "to either (a) cede the field or (b) suffer the soul-crushing boredom of engaging in an argument they don't want to have".
So, either stop removing the flags the users attribute to these kind of posts or at least allow people to conduct a discussion as long as it remains civil (like it was in some comments - all from the same side - you just flagged and/or adverted against).
I know it feels that way, but every side of every passionate argument feels that way.
Classic flamewar topics are boring because they're always the same. Even though no one whose passions rise above a certain level believes us when we say it, we moderate HN the way we do because it's an anti-tedium site. I'm not saying we do that perfectly (far from it, there's much that is tedious) or that the topics that gratify intellectual curiosity are the most important ones (they aren't, not by a long shot). I do think that a site dedicated to intellectual curiosity is a good thing to have, and if you agree with that then you should agree with the things that follow from it, such as that flamewars are off topic.
The only comment I killed is the one marked [dead] by the user we banned (edit: plus one reply of my own to a comment that was flag-killed by users). All the others are being affected by user flags.
I don't believe I've commented on a more-women-in-X topic before, here or anywhere else.
Claiming that those who make certain types of comments on certain topics are always trolling, and that other factors (like politeness, etiquette, or larger points raised) are not relevant, is conceptually similar to claiming they suffer from original sin.
In other replies to your comment, I'm indirectly being accused of contributing to "pervasive misogyny and bigotry", while others are trying to devise mechanisms to ban points-of-view they disagree with. I have said nothing to warrant such a claim and those who make such claims are bullies. I suspect the style and tone of your moderation on this topic is encouraging the bullying.
I don't envy your job and the trash you have to deal with, and I generally appreciate your approach to moderation. In particular, the previous trial moratorium on partisan political discussion was an encouraging experiment.
This kind of topic suffers from the same problem because two different branches of philosophy are at play:
A "founders conference" would likely be classified as a discussion of morality, and you can guess the topics: what is the best approach to starting a company, what lessons were learned, and so forth - all topics that relate to the question "how do I make the best decisions for my life and career aspirations?"
A "female founders conference" more likely belongs to politics: what is the relation of the individual to society, what rules should govern those relationships, and (implicitly) how do females counter/exploit unjust bias against women in order to be more successful founders? These are questions ill-suited to online discussion.
I've skimmed through the talk and nearly all of the content relates to the moral question, not the political one. I think this means the conference organizers themselves don't even take the "female" part of the title seriously.
And so I think the fundamental source of disagreement, the "[insistence] on relitigating this from first principles", stems from the (imho accurate) perception that this is an attempt to force a political view on an fundamentally apolitical topic.
Pretty cool lineup. Even just a few speakers in, it's clear for as much commonality as exist between companies and founders, there are also a lot of differences in how to successfully approach different industries. It's validating(?) to see how different companies' & founders' personalities interpret and make good on otherwise simple aphorisms, "be tenacious", "measure, achieve, repeat", "just start". I like seeing that different interpretations are in themselves successful when applied to the appropriate domain.
There are at least several comments in this thread right now that are some version of "I don't like this because it is segragatory".
Here's why I do like this: because I have young nieces, and I want them to have role models that look like them. I have a 12 year old niece that I try to expose to as much positive encouragement around her ability to create things as I can, and things like this are a HUGE help.
So good. I'm glad this exists, and I hope this continues to exist for years so that when my nieces start getting older, I can show it to them.
I think if you don't have daughters, or don't have young girls in your life, it's really easy to overlook how powerful the zeitgeist is. Music, movies, pop culture, business, everything seems to be wanting to steer these people in a specific direction, and if that direction is something you disagree with, it's REALLY difficult to get around it.
I think his whole comment begs exactly the downvoted thread's critiques: it's merely saying the popular stance on the same topic (without actually engaging with those others!) and doesn't really address why he thinks it's beneficial.
I'd love to live in a world where women were just equally represented at these things as a matter of course without making a big deal about it but until that world actually exists we need things like this.
I like it for exactly the same reasons as you, and I'll recommend some highlights to my young nieces.
But at the same time I am struggling to figure out my own feeling that a good speaker is a good speaker regardless of race or gender (although a strong accent can put me off an otherwise good talk) so maybe I'm patronising my nieces.
I really appreciated the insight by Poppy CEO Avni that pursuing your passion might lead you to think you know what you're doing and not be open to feedback, whereas pursuing a combination of curiosity and frustration is much healthier. Food for thought.
An important nuance between the idea that you should be trying to solve a problem vs your problem. Identifying your problem gets you aimed correctly and can be a significant insight, but if you don't accept feedback by dint of determined (unselfish?) curiosity you're likely to overshoot what is actually marketable.
To me, it is one of the feminist headfakes that looking similar is what matters most. Like suppose a girl is interested in maths and another girl is interested in dolls, and a boy is interested in maths and another boy is interested in football. Feminists have us believe that the maths boy and the football boy have more in common than the maths boy and the maths girl. That's just nonsense.
When I was a kid, I liked books with female heroines just fine - there are actually a lot of them because one of the most famous children's books authors was a woman who wrote books like Pippa Longstocking. Now feminists have taught me that I should consider the gender of the heroes, and they ruined the books for me to some degree (especially the new ones that are obviously written especially to appease the feminists, giving girls unrealistic superpowers).
As far as I can see, it is mostly feminists who tell girls that they would have a hard time in tech. I don't want anybody to tell that to my daughter, as I believe it to be very wrong. I want my daughter to be able to learn from everybody, not just from women.
Please don't create accounts to use HN for ideological battle.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14667450 and marked it off-topic. That comment could have done a better job of staying on topic, too, but at least it was closer to the topic and not primarily ideological.
I am quite glad for heavy moderation on these topics, look at reddit for example, this kind of talk would quickly go off topic and devolve into mud slinging.
There is certainly an odd dynamic on the "nerdy" websites when it comes to promoting the under-represented gender.
That said, comments like yours (and mine) are only adding to that problem. I guess I'm a hypocrite.
Totally agree about the need for moderation. I am not complaining!
I am not sure how our comments are adding to the problem. We should not act as if there is no problem with prejudice and bigotry in society generally. Sexism and misogyny in technology in particular.
Would they be afraid of a "Black Founders Conference"?
What about men tackling issues like work/life balance and getting connections to their families? A "Men as Parents" conference?
I am a long way away from San Francisco so I really have no idea what the ins and outs of the local culture are, but I see this same fear here. Not a nostalgia for old gender roles, but some sort of fear about being left out. It is changing, but has a long way to go.
Not taking any sides, but this whole "HN is more mature than reddit on these topics" meme is wrong and out-dated. I mean, goodness, look at this thread (well, if you have showdead on at least).
If you go into your profile settings and turn on the [showdead] option, you'll be able to see all of the comments that were flagkilled. That will give you a better picture of just how nasty a lot of them were.
And, in my observations, similar toxic conversations and people acting in bad faith are downvoted on reddit.
Who cares? My point was more that "at least we're better than reddit" is tacky. I don't think either of us are likely to objective make an assessment here either way on "toxicity of a topic on HN vs reddit".
>And, in my observations, similar toxic conversations and people acting in bad faith are downvoted on reddit.
I suppose I disagree with you there, as someone who hasn't used this website super much (about a year maybe?)and has been using reddit for about 5 years, HN seems much better to me in providing a longer, more concerted discussion. I didn't realise it was a meme though.
> they are clearly exactly what the community rejects
aka. "HN herd mentality." It feels me with sadness when I see the same trend over and over. People who have different opinions on certain political/social matters are being silenced by this whole "community rejects" bullshit.
This is an excellent point. Sadly, people who share less popular opinions will (probably) never get to the point when they can start up/down voting. So the only way to get these "superpowers" is to join the HN circle jerk.
That's only True if you constantly make unpopular opinions, such that they outweigh your regular ones. There are all sorts of neutral comments that can be made, a point a piece..
The fact that I'm seeing your comment at all suggests they've improved in the last few years. This is the first time I've bothered to comment on HN, as a woman interested in the topic of "Women in Tech" in ages, because it was such a barren hellscape here not long ago.
As always, comments on stories about feminism prove the need for feminism.
> Why does women organising together create such hostile excitement?
I believe the primary reason is that creating similar exclusionary venues for men is considered ethically and legally beyond the pale. It's the kind of thing that tickles the "equality" bone for MRA types.
It is a shame that men's rights activists cannot spend time advocating for men in areas where men need it.
I would assert that is clearly not in tech! But in areas such as family law, societal expectations (fight, fuck and make money), violence, prisoner's rights... These are all areas that arguably men's rights are a thing.
Instead men's rights activists spend their time pushing back at feminists.
Why do the topic create such polarized environment where any disagreement is seen as hostile and everything else must be in full favor? Can't we have a moderate disagreement in regard to political events?
Let me present a moderate disagreement. I dislike events like this because it can't be made universal. Let say we had a common rule that said: any industry has this bad gender segregation should have exclusive events for the minority gender. Given a 80/20 ratio, this would result in around 30% of all industries which employs about 40% of all people in my nation. A significant amount of events would turn either exclusive male or female, with the majority being exclusive male, and I personally doubt it would have a positive outcome on society. I am open to be convinced otherwise.
I agree that whenever these political topics arise on HN, you generally get the same situation - a few politically unpopular comments being downvoted to oblivion, even if the comment was well formed and wasn't snarky, unnecessarily cruel, etc. Simply saying "I think that this isn't an event that should be encouraged because X, Y, Z reasons", should not be downvoted if they provided interesting insight, reason, logic objective angles, etc.
And as we've seen in this thread, the usual few HN snobs come in making insubstantial points-seeking comments deriding how toxic all those downvoted comments were. I'm rather tired of how a growing number of HN users like to play "morality-police" on these kind of topics.
If anything I found your comment rather insightful, and it's sad to see it downvoted. It has an interesting links to the ongoing Facebook moderation debacle where their ridiculous "minority-ness" rules have been complicated so much that they can be gamed so that you can hate on a certain group because they don't score enough "minority" points, but another very similar group gains "protection status" from hate.
I had never even heard of NIO before, probably because I don't watch Formula E racing. That EP9 electric supercar looks stunning. I look forward to watching the CEO's talk at some point (I don't have time for the live stream right now and I've probably missed it anyway).
So they seem to have the EV technology down. Their goal is an autonomous EV. I wonder how their autonomous technology stacks up, does anyone know?
What if they are biologically different in certain areas, and they do not WANT to be in that area? Do we continue to force them into roles that they don't want to meet a quota?
I am not saying that is the case in EVERY male dominated field, but it could be in some. For the reverse, I have no desire to be a nurse or a nanny or a elementary teacher. I know there are programs to get more males in the first and third of these, but not sure it can be that successful. Because I have 0 desire to do either. Perhaps many other males share my feelings. That could easily explain the imbalance, not discrimination.
I think the end game to equality is to not have a quote for every single thing. Oh the population if 49% female but this job only has 12% females, it needs adjusted. The end game of equality is to be race/sex/religion blind in all hiring decisions. Literally hire the best person for each job.
First off, if you want to see hostile excitement, go look at what happens when men try to get together to talk about real legal discrimination rather than just low representation. A skeptical internet thread is nothing compared to the protesting, fire alarm pulling, slander and career sabotage that occurs.
Second, people don't like it because it's special pleading, funneling disproportionate attention to a minority in the industry for the sake of the omnipresent boogieman of "cultural pressure". Of course coupled with heavy handed moderation that if you disagree, you're a bad person.
The fact that it is easy to get support for stuff like this is paradoxically used as evidence that it's hard. But coverage does not equal incidence, and equal opportunity has not lead to equal occupations in those countries focusing the most on gender equality. Thus the goal posts get moved again in search of a 50/50 utopia that will never happen.
Thank you for proving the point. Criticism must be punished, even when it's directly addressing raised questions. It is exactly these sorts of actions that create the "hostile excitement" OP was complaining about. Cause and effect is a bitch.
All you had to do was not treat the subject as sacred.
That's inaccurate. The problem is that people's passions about the hot generic things are so strong that they blast them into every remotely related context, obliterating the specifics that make a given post interesting. The term 'flamewar' expresses vividly how these dynamics consume everything in sight if allowed to. On HN we're trying not to let that happen.
104 comments
[ 3.4 ms ] story [ 178 ms ] threadWell, factually, this event forcibly excludes from the presentations panel anyone that is not a female.
We can discuss about some positive aspect we should or should not see in that, but you can hardly deny the fact.
This goes for both sides, insofar as continuing the argument only feeds it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
If the parent is downvoted because it doesn't expound on its point, that's entirely fair; but frankly, I agree (the post was since removed, but the core thrust was that they disliked gender-separated events). Creating artificial separation in order to "help" separation-oriented bias/conflict seems to be fighting against its own ends. It's a well established concept in behaviorism that exposure without a punishing outcome is an effective step towards overcoming personal adversity. I don't believe keeping men and women separate will do anything but encourage more feelings of us-them vs. togetherness, less shared context and experience, and more more misunderstanding/bitterness. I truly believe good role models and non-punishing environments can be provided in mixed scenarios that also provide additional benefits of communication and understanding across the divide.
It's a little bit apples to oranges, but I was bullied _heavily_ most of my early childhood, regularly beat up/socially outcast/etc. If I had been homeschooled, pulled out of the system, kept only alongside other bullied youth, I hesitate to think I'd have developed ANY of the resilience or tools I now have to deal with unavoidable situations in real life. Don't read this as a justification of the negative, read this as a pragmatic response to trying to make productive adults who can both push for better interactions while not being unable to work in potentially pathological environments. Having examples of, "this is a popular kid who DOESN'T beat me up" was extremely valuable, and from talking to my wife (STEM, neurosci) at the very least, she's found similar strong mentors in her mixed gender workplace, despite (and sometimes because of) other workers who showed really distasteful behavior.
This was, as my posts so often turn into, quite a ramble. Take the following sparknotes: I think that separation only reinforces ingroup/outgroup thinking. We need to build effective social norms together, not in isolation.
(Hah, as expected, -2 by the time I even edited to fix some typos, I almost feel vindicated in my pessimism re: discussion on these topics. I'd appreciate if someone would at least rebut rather than just silence something you disagree with; I'd hope readers trust I'm going into this for the purposes of prompting discussion and not to be inflammatory)
EDIT: how was this flagged? The post was neither insulting, nor deranging nor inflammatory.
https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
https://news.ycombinator.com/newswelcome.html
This seems like a very broad statement.
What is meant by "the world"?
Whoever is meant by "the world", why do they "need" more companies and why should that need factor into one's career decisions?
Why "more" companies instead of working at existing companies? Given that the most obviously influential speaker at that event is an employee at a not woman-led company, isn't that a contradiction of the claim?
Why "women-led"? Why focus on biological sex? What about intersex? How about trans or non-binary gendered?
In my view, starting or leading a company is just about the single hardest professional undertaking. You should only do it if it closely aligns with your personal purpose, otherwise it will be a nightmare experience. Encouraging someone to take a career path simply because of their association with a group, without reference to their individual objectives, is improper and will lead to an unhappy life.
Also, "the world needs more women-led companies" and "the tech industry needs more female engineers" are not mutually exclusive. "The world needs more women-led companies" also isn't mutually exclusive with "the world needs more ____-led companies". I know that's not explicitly what you said, but I want to address the inferred sentiment because it shows up every time one of these discussions happens.
Here's a first principle that really does apply here: Hacker News exists for the gratification of intellectual curiosity.
There is no intellectual curiosity in this battle—only resentment and repetition, the chocolate and peanut butter of tedium. You can agree with either side ideologically, or with both, or with neither, and still know that such flamewars are off topic here, because they violate the core value of the site.
Imagine a 2x2 matrix in your head. "Angry tedium" is the quadrant we most want to avoid.
Does the conference not gratify your intellectual curiosity? That's cool; there are 29 other things on the front page that might. (Ok, 28 and a job ad.)
The way out is through. Acknowledge, recognize, and do something about the pervasive misogyny and bigotry that appears here every time topics like this are brought up.
The comments are unpleasant for the ~8 or so minutes they're active, but they go away swiftly. It's hard to imagine a solution other than pg's "all comments start dead and need a vouch to come alive" idea from several years ago. Reddit deals with this situation by locking threads entirely, which many people wish wasn't a feature. Do you have any other suggestions?
He did? Well, good riddance. He's a person who reveled in wrapping overt sexism and racism in a cocoon of what can only very generously called 'scientism'. 'This isn't bigoted, you're just not following my axiomatic logic/fearless inquiry/bayesian maths' is a trope that even the most charitable moderator eventually catches on to.
Just above we have a comment by some blhack that is clearly flamebait but from your side of the fence, yet you don't take any issue with that, just like you usually don't take any issue with similar comments that defends your rather obvious personal points of view (something fine for a normal user but not for someone trying to pose as neutral).
Then you proceed and ask that one side (yet again) of the argument just shuts up when this kind of posts gets to the front page and you (like you already did in many similar cases) remove their flagging to force them to stay in the front page.
Well dang, I'm pretty sure you can see that you are forcing everyone that disagrees with your particular view of the world "to either (a) cede the field or (b) suffer the soul-crushing boredom of engaging in an argument they don't want to have".
So, either stop removing the flags the users attribute to these kind of posts or at least allow people to conduct a discussion as long as it remains civil (like it was in some comments - all from the same side - you just flagged and/or adverted against).
Classic flamewar topics are boring because they're always the same. Even though no one whose passions rise above a certain level believes us when we say it, we moderate HN the way we do because it's an anti-tedium site. I'm not saying we do that perfectly (far from it, there's much that is tedious) or that the topics that gratify intellectual curiosity are the most important ones (they aren't, not by a long shot). I do think that a site dedicated to intellectual curiosity is a good thing to have, and if you agree with that then you should agree with the things that follow from it, such as that flamewars are off topic.
Claiming that those who make certain types of comments on certain topics are always trolling, and that other factors (like politeness, etiquette, or larger points raised) are not relevant, is conceptually similar to claiming they suffer from original sin.
In other replies to your comment, I'm indirectly being accused of contributing to "pervasive misogyny and bigotry", while others are trying to devise mechanisms to ban points-of-view they disagree with. I have said nothing to warrant such a claim and those who make such claims are bullies. I suspect the style and tone of your moderation on this topic is encouraging the bullying.
I don't envy your job and the trash you have to deal with, and I generally appreciate your approach to moderation. In particular, the previous trial moratorium on partisan political discussion was an encouraging experiment.
This kind of topic suffers from the same problem because two different branches of philosophy are at play:
A "founders conference" would likely be classified as a discussion of morality, and you can guess the topics: what is the best approach to starting a company, what lessons were learned, and so forth - all topics that relate to the question "how do I make the best decisions for my life and career aspirations?"
A "female founders conference" more likely belongs to politics: what is the relation of the individual to society, what rules should govern those relationships, and (implicitly) how do females counter/exploit unjust bias against women in order to be more successful founders? These are questions ill-suited to online discussion.
I've skimmed through the talk and nearly all of the content relates to the moral question, not the political one. I think this means the conference organizers themselves don't even take the "female" part of the title seriously.
And so I think the fundamental source of disagreement, the "[insistence] on relitigating this from first principles", stems from the (imho accurate) perception that this is an attempt to force a political view on an fundamentally apolitical topic.
it's not a battle. it's a conversation. humans can be good at both, but often not at the same time.
Here's why I do like this: because I have young nieces, and I want them to have role models that look like them. I have a 12 year old niece that I try to expose to as much positive encouragement around her ability to create things as I can, and things like this are a HUGE help.
So good. I'm glad this exists, and I hope this continues to exist for years so that when my nieces start getting older, I can show it to them.
I think if you don't have daughters, or don't have young girls in your life, it's really easy to overlook how powerful the zeitgeist is. Music, movies, pop culture, business, everything seems to be wanting to steer these people in a specific direction, and if that direction is something you disagree with, it's REALLY difficult to get around it.
It's entirely vapid virtue signaling.
Or you don't buy the "role models" concept..
When I was a kid, I liked books with female heroines just fine - there are actually a lot of them because one of the most famous children's books authors was a woman who wrote books like Pippa Longstocking. Now feminists have taught me that I should consider the gender of the heroes, and they ruined the books for me to some degree (especially the new ones that are obviously written especially to appease the feminists, giving girls unrealistic superpowers).
As far as I can see, it is mostly feminists who tell girls that they would have a hard time in tech. I don't want anybody to tell that to my daughter, as I believe it to be very wrong. I want my daughter to be able to learn from everybody, not just from women.
We detached this comment from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14667450 and marked it off-topic. That comment could have done a better job of staying on topic, too, but at least it was closer to the topic and not primarily ideological.
It is a valid question: Why does women organising together create such hostile excitement?
Perhaps it is an illustration of the need for such organising?
There is certainly an odd dynamic on the "nerdy" websites when it comes to promoting the under-represented gender.
That said, comments like yours (and mine) are only adding to that problem. I guess I'm a hypocrite.
I am not sure how our comments are adding to the problem. We should not act as if there is no problem with prejudice and bigotry in society generally. Sexism and misogyny in technology in particular.
Would they be afraid of a "Black Founders Conference"?
What about men tackling issues like work/life balance and getting connections to their families? A "Men as Parents" conference?
I am a long way away from San Francisco so I really have no idea what the ins and outs of the local culture are, but I see this same fear here. Not a nostalgia for old gender roles, but some sort of fear about being left out. It is changing, but has a long way to go.
"...look at this thread."
I am puzzled by some of the decisions. Whatever, up to the moderators how they moderate.
Who cares? My point was more that "at least we're better than reddit" is tacky. I don't think either of us are likely to objective make an assessment here either way on "toxicity of a topic on HN vs reddit".
I suppose I disagree with you there, as someone who hasn't used this website super much (about a year maybe?)and has been using reddit for about 5 years, HN seems much better to me in providing a longer, more concerted discussion. I didn't realise it was a meme though.
But that's just a personal opinion.
aka. "HN herd mentality." It feels me with sadness when I see the same trend over and over. People who have different opinions on certain political/social matters are being silenced by this whole "community rejects" bullshit.
dead comments are not representative in general of HN since the downvotes/flags outnumber the upvotes/vouches.
There have been plenty comments here discussing the "why", and the gist of it is the concept of "under-represented".
As always, comments on stories about feminism prove the need for feminism.
Just like comments by atheists prove the need for religion?
I believe the primary reason is that creating similar exclusionary venues for men is considered ethically and legally beyond the pale. It's the kind of thing that tickles the "equality" bone for MRA types.
It is a shame that men's rights activists cannot spend time advocating for men in areas where men need it.
I would assert that is clearly not in tech! But in areas such as family law, societal expectations (fight, fuck and make money), violence, prisoner's rights... These are all areas that arguably men's rights are a thing.
Instead men's rights activists spend their time pushing back at feminists.
Sad.
http://www.aamn.org/events/aamn-2017-annual-conference
https://www.naspa.org/events/2017CCM
http://blackmaledevelopment.com/about-2017-conference/
http://ndeo.org/content.aspx?page_id=22&club_id=893257&modul...
https://stopmalesuicide.com/national-conference/
https://directory.sdes.ucf.edu/article/3757
http://www.malepsychology.org.uk/product/male-psychology-con...
http://www.firstmensconf.org/f/Home.html
http://athomedad.org/convention/
https://www.partnershipfordads.org/fathers-conference/
https://www.fatherhood.gov/about-us/events/18th-annual-new-e...
http://theredpillmovie.com
Let me present a moderate disagreement. I dislike events like this because it can't be made universal. Let say we had a common rule that said: any industry has this bad gender segregation should have exclusive events for the minority gender. Given a 80/20 ratio, this would result in around 30% of all industries which employs about 40% of all people in my nation. A significant amount of events would turn either exclusive male or female, with the majority being exclusive male, and I personally doubt it would have a positive outcome on society. I am open to be convinced otherwise.
And as we've seen in this thread, the usual few HN snobs come in making insubstantial points-seeking comments deriding how toxic all those downvoted comments were. I'm rather tired of how a growing number of HN users like to play "morality-police" on these kind of topics.
If anything I found your comment rather insightful, and it's sad to see it downvoted. It has an interesting links to the ongoing Facebook moderation debacle where their ridiculous "minority-ness" rules have been complicated so much that they can be gamed so that you can hate on a certain group because they don't score enough "minority" points, but another very similar group gains "protection status" from hate.
Come get me downvotes, I'm ready!
So they seem to have the EV technology down. Their goal is an autonomous EV. I wonder how their autonomous technology stacks up, does anyone know?
I am not saying that is the case in EVERY male dominated field, but it could be in some. For the reverse, I have no desire to be a nurse or a nanny or a elementary teacher. I know there are programs to get more males in the first and third of these, but not sure it can be that successful. Because I have 0 desire to do either. Perhaps many other males share my feelings. That could easily explain the imbalance, not discrimination.
I think the end game to equality is to not have a quote for every single thing. Oh the population if 49% female but this job only has 12% females, it needs adjusted. The end game of equality is to be race/sex/religion blind in all hiring decisions. Literally hire the best person for each job.
> I'd love to live in a world where women were just equally represented at these things as a matter of course
What is that isn't the natural state? What if 50% of the people that want to do X aren't of gender Z?
How do we decide if we should do more to encourage X to do Z, or realize that Z doesn't WANT to do X, and focus on other issues?
Second, people don't like it because it's special pleading, funneling disproportionate attention to a minority in the industry for the sake of the omnipresent boogieman of "cultural pressure". Of course coupled with heavy handed moderation that if you disagree, you're a bad person.
The fact that it is easy to get support for stuff like this is paradoxically used as evidence that it's hard. But coverage does not equal incidence, and equal opportunity has not lead to equal occupations in those countries focusing the most on gender equality. Thus the goal posts get moved again in search of a 50/50 utopia that will never happen.
All you had to do was not treat the subject as sacred.
serious question: why? what would make it better?
to be clear: i am not opposed (in any way) to equal representation. i do prefer (real, meaningful) equal opportunity, rather that homogeneity.
Please read https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14667456 and https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14667379
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14668250 and marked it off-topic.