The problem with this woman's story is that she takes a few cases of explicit sexism and extrapolates them as the reason why everyone is saying rude things to her. Or at least that's how I see it. Perhaps she is just commenting on the general douchebaggery of the community, but even then much of the criticism she received could be seen as fair if she was actually in the wrong.
Although sexism is clearly an issue in the hacker community that needs to be tackled, the story makes me wonder if the author's behavior didn't initiate some of the vitriol directed at her. There was certainly plenty of it without any sexist connotations.
She says "I’ve gone from being a Facebook user to running OTR, PGP and Tor all in under a month." Perhaps she is not as knowledgeable or as experienced as she thinks she is, and so she is receiving criticism from those who know what they're saying/doing.
Yeah, it's all just a few bad apples, there's no underlying problem. Just like all the other women with appalling experiences of sexism in the tech community.
Seriously, if you can't see a fundamental problem, I seriously doubt you're looking very hard.
If you are going to use that expression, you should use it in it's entirety. A few bad apples spoil the bunch.
A few sexists are creating a a negative situation that permeates the community/industry. Not everyone is to blame, not everyone is guilty of this sexism, but the problem is everybody's.
> Seriously, if you can't see a fundamental problem, I seriously doubt you're looking very hard.
If you missed the line where I said that "sexism is clearly an issue in the hacker community that needs to be tackled", then I seriously doubt you read my initial post very carefully.
>Yeah, it's all just a few bad apples, there's no underlying problem. Just like all the other women with appalling experiences of sexism in the tech community.
Except without the sarcasm, that isn't all that an unlikely hypothesis. HackerNews makes a big deal about sexism in the tech industry, but for all the evidence that's actually been presented and isn't anecdotal, it could actually be just a few bad apples influencing each of the victims that explains it.
And as jiggy2011 alluded to, the links you posted aren't meaningful statistical proof of sexism in the industry in the first place.
It is all trolls doing these things. If a troll notices someone is female, they posy sexist things to troll her and make her react for the "LULZ". If she was a man, they'd troll him by calling him gay or saying racist things to him for the "LULZ".
There is an Internet MEME that "There are no women on the Internet" that trolls use. I think it originated on 4Chan, IIRC. It has multiple meanings. One in that it claims women in real life use the fact that they are women to get free things and benefits, and that does not work over the Internet unless she shows some nudity in a picture. Another meaning is that women on the Internet use feminist tactics for attention on how sexist men are towards them and then act unlady-like (arsehole?) towards people and then cry 'foul' when they react and reply back. Not my definition, but ones the trolls use to justify their behavior and actions towards women.
I was once on Kuro5hin, it was another Slashdot clone, and was striven to be like Hacker News before there was a Hacker News. The trolls got on it and scared people off of it. Yes they targeted women using sexist remarks and harassment and bullying, even called some of the women as men pretending to be women. One by one the trolls picked on and bullied the users and ganged up on users by downrating their comments and stories until they quit. The editors refused to act and the owner thought it was funny that they did that to "people who deserved it" and so many users left Kuro5hin and it turned into a troll site. The trolls had scripts and web robots to control the comment ratings and story voting with sock puppet accounts and directed things on IRC. I was asked to join them one time and I refused, so I was made a target. Eventually I was no longer at that web site either. Yes I spoke out against the trolls and protested only to have my account deleted/anonymized so my account no longer worked. They put up a $5 paywall to keep the trolls away, but it seems the trolls don't mind paying for new accounts after they burn their old ones. I've never seen a technology or policy that effectively deals with trolls yet.
Look a majority of the users are not this way. It is only a small minority that are this way because they are anonymous trolls who only do it for the "LULZ" and to see reactions to the troll.
It is really a troll problem that we should address. Yes I do feel sad for women who have to put up with those trolls. Yes something should be done, refuse to feed the trolls and vote down their comments so they learn not to troll hacker news and other places.
Look I've seen trolls ruin web sites like Kuro5hin and then just plain take over as the majority and turn it into a troll site. It may seem like a lot of people, but usually it is just several people on an IRC channel directing the trolls and then Tor, VPN, and Proxy servers to hide IP addresses and make it look like a lot of people via sockpuppet accounts. They'll even conspire to downvote a target's comments and stories to drive them off the site, and then post nasty things about them after learning their real name or something. Yes it is a real problem and yes it has to be addressed.
She does explicitly acknowledge her own lack of technical knowledge (e.g. where she notes that she was not qualified to evaluate the technical components of the cryptoparty manual). And still, we should hope to be a community that embraces a willingness to learn regardless of current technical knowledge.
And learning is great. But there are cases where I think the author was expecting too much. For example, she applied for a speaking spot at a conference despite her lack of experience. She said that her family offered childcare only if she got a speaking spot, but that doesn't mean she should have just applied for it or expected to get a spot when she didn't have the necessary experience, just so she could participate in the conference.
In essence, she should have applied for a speaker spot because she has experience and knowledge she wants to share with other people, not because her family agreed to watch her kid if she got the spot.
Now if her story is true, the "Sydney-based male Cryptoparty organiser" was being douchebaggy by not contributing to the application for the panel. But perhaps he had more experience and felt that it wasn't fair that this newbie (regardless of gender) was turning a speaking spot that he (perhaps rightly) deserved into a panel, just so that she could be on stage as well (since if she believed that she really had the knowledge/experience to get the spot over the other guy, why didn't she just apply for the speaker spot?). I don't really know what happened, but there tends to just be a lot that you miss out on when you only hear a story from the perspective of just one person.
Even if that is the case, it doesn't change the fact that she clearly felt the other guy would have a better chance of getting the spot. Otherwise, why didn't she just apply like the other guy had already done, and let the best (by whatever standards they want, whether it be experience or perspective) person be selected by the conference organizers?
Tell me, how would you feel if you had already prepared and turned in an application, and then some random person asks you to instead help with an application for a "panel" to replace the individual speaking spot you had already applied for? That man had absolutely no obligation to indulge the author's desire to have a panel.
I agree with you, but I give her a bit more benefit of the doubt. There's definitely an element of negativity in some areas of hacker culture. As a white male it's easy to accept it as impersonal, but if you're in the 0.6% of women at an infosec conference, it's easy to see how a few instances of subtle or not-so-subtle sexism could make the negativity seem much more personal.
As a non-victim, it's easy to conclude that just about 1% of the people have some random bad behaviour. As one of the 0,5% that are victims, it's quite obvious that there are 2 jerks for each one of your kind, and they have nothing better to do.
I do not believe that was the point of the article. Extrapolations and technicalities aside, she is showing her perspective of why she is pissed at the cryptoparty community. Personally, I find that somewhat interesting.
"The problem with this woman's story is that she takes a few cases of explicit sexism and extrapolates them as the reason why everyone is saying rude things to her. Or at least that's how I see it."
Yes, that "because I don't see it, it doesn't exist." attitude is a definite problem.
"She says "I’ve gone from being a Facebook user to running OTR, PGP and Tor all in under a month." Perhaps she is not as knowledgeable or as experienced as she thinks she is, and so she is receiving criticism from those who know what they're saying/doing."
This however seems more plausible, no kneejerk dismissals necessary.
This is perhaps the most cunningly dangerous thing you could allow yourself as a response. In the case of any kind of discrimination or behavior that is experienced by someone else, please start working to taboo your acceptance of and reliance on "how you see it". It won't help you understand someone else properly. It won't help you spot this kind of situation as clearly whenever you might run across it in the future and could perhaps be the sole person able to speak up and stop it.
Also, it is most helpful to orient your mind in the trajectory of the article--a reading of all the events leading up to a big event. It's a mini-history. It has a linear progression from the founding of CryptoParty to the Creeper Card bullshit at 29c3. Then she breaks. It makes an incredible amount of sense when you allow yourself to experience it as the author did--this isn't some here's "a few cases of explicit sexism" article and then an extrapolation of "the reason everyone is saying rude things to her." This is a here's-all-the-bullshit-I-experienced-in-rough-chronologically-incessant-order-until-I-broke article. Now, add to that that CryptoParty only started up about four months ago. She experienced all of this in FOUR months time. Judging by that timeline, I find it highly unlikely that one could so easily chalk it all up to being in the wrong, other people knowing what they're saying/doing, and still have all those other experiences. I think this was a case of a bunch of men who didn't know how to be led by a woman who came up with a really badass idea.
> Perhaps she is not as knowledgeable or as experienced as she thinks she is, and so she is receiving criticism from those who know what they're saying/doing.
Reading this after the article seems as if you missed quite a few of her disclaimers. For example, she admits repeatedly that she is neither as knowledgeable or experienced in a number of technical areas, but that is not the point here. She's not criticizing the technical aspects of things (at least, not to any degree that reads as more serious than asking questions that any organizer would ask to have clarification and understand the reasons for doing X over Y). I see few, if any, examples where she, as the organizer, faced off against someone on the technical merits of anything at all--the only way knowing "what they're saying/doing" would actually have any weight.
In fact, most of the account reads as someone who was actually smart enough to recognize the limits of her skill set and not try showboating well beyond one's level as so many men in tech do.
Let's call her the non-technical founder, shall we? It's a term everyone on HN seems to understand and, usually, respect.
So here we have a non-technical founder who is also a woman. And not just a woman, but a single mother. That's effectively three strikes against her in the tech world, as far as I can see. I'm a technical, male, single-parent and I don't ever have to deal with shit from anyone. I'm not cross-examined in a project meeting or a conference because I am the daddy-type. Nobody questions my experience or the soundness of my advice because I have to leave by a certain hour to pick up, feed, bathe, and play with my kids. I have never seen a woman treated that way--much less a single mother who is non-technical--while working in or engaging with the tech world.
> ...she takes a few cases of explicit sexism and extrapolates them as the reason why everyone is saying rude things to her. ... but even then much of the criticism she received could be seen as fair if she was actually in the wrong.
Did you actually read (and maybe re-read) the opening where she states quite plainly that she is not chalking everything up to sexism? "Some parts of this article deal with misogyny, sexism, and harassment, while other aspects of it respond to experiences of down-right douche-baggery."
How about the bits where she talks about criticism she experienced? She lists several instances of it. She doesn't extrapolate that it's all sexism purely, but that there is behavior that is gender-targeted, douchey, harrassing, etc., occurring when she is questioning or reacting to decisions that were made (e.g., the no-laptop rule, the logistics of writing a manual that received shit planning from these people who supposedly "know what they're saying/doing", publicly taking the blame when others' shit-brained ideas blew up, the shitty dickhole creator of CryptoCat, etc.). She didn't say each instance was sexist.
But even that doesn't matter. She's the founder. She busted her ass to organize the whole thing. It seems she involved a number of smart technical people to cover the gaps in her skill set. That's what a founder does. And when the technical people are criticizing the founder, that's some pretty dangerous ground. The non-tech founder isn't held to the same standards as the tech co-founders & team. When the founder asks questions about whether something is a good idea, or whether someone is doing the right thing for the org, there's not much wiggle room here to try and assuage the problem by throwing her into the "she was wrong" camp.
> I thought if the gap between cryptographers, hackers and users could be bridged...
Here's the core of CryptoParty, directly from the non-technical founder. Bridging the gap between these disparate segments of the population who could benefit from the party. And who better, from my standpoint at least, to get on your team for achieving this goal than a semi-technical single mother who is passionate about bridging this gap and has a lot of energy and life she wants to live outside of her parenting duties?
She came up with and organized the idea of the CryptoParty, with very specific goals in mind--both for the group's aim, as well as its community standards and practices. She repeatedly brings up multiple situations where she objected or questioned others involved about actions that were going against those goals. As the person who appears (by her account) to pretty much be the first-mover, I was left with the expectation that as I read through the rest of the article, I would read the experience of someone who wanted to shepherd a community in light of its goals while being admittedly non-technical, and how everything went awry in a way that was very personal (founders are usually the ones we expect to have the most personal investment, right?).
> There was certainly plenty of it without any sexist connotations.
You can't rightly judge from a distance the degree to which vitriol was directed at her with sexist intention. Note I say intention and not connotations. Connotation is a deceptive thing that, when focused on, makes one think s/he is successfully spotting discriminatory, sexist, racist, what-have-you acts. You have to look beyond the connotations because it's much too easy to hide a predisposition to reject anything a certain gender says behind a litany of jargon and adequate explanations, smartly avoiding trigger words that connote the sexist intention. Plenty of good ideas are rejected because of their source of origin, not their technically sound qualities.
Moreover, there are things that are said that seem to me would not so frequently have occurred had the organizer been a man. If the organizer had been a man, technical or not, the tone of disagreements would have been very different. His reactions may not, as the organizer, been very different from hers--but the key is that they would have most likely been interpreted very differently. Nobody would tell a male founder that he wasn't being "level-headed", or tell him to quit, or call him emotional, or anything else that frequently is launched against women. I've seen men in screaming matches over ideas, passionately and intensely convinced they're right, shouting obscenities and hurling personal attacks that have nothing to do with the issue, and nobody ever busts in and calls them a bunch of emotional basketcases who aren't level-headed enough to lead or make decisions. And yet women don't have such privilege and protection.
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As far as I can read, this is one hell of an account of how not to treat your non-technical founder/co-founder/teammate. It's just reprehensible and wrong. Especially the bits about the application to 29c3. I was reading that trying to imagine a world in which the Python community would behave that way if, say, Jesse Noller wasn't able to afford making it to PyCon or something. Or if Jacob Kaplan-Moss couldn't afford to make the trip to a DjangoCon. Or anything similar. Say there's one spot open to have a talk, like her situation. I can't see anyone from those communities acting in such a way as to throw shit in those guys' faces while they're trying to turn that talk into a panel that allows other applicants to take part with them or whatever -- and then turn around and not only succeed in keeping those guys out of the party, but talk about how great it's going to be to get together. It's just atrocious behavior.
Moreover, that image of the Creeper Cards is just disgusting. That kind of behavior isn't even appropriate when scrawling it on a desk in middle school, much less a conference. That looks like it would barely belong at the AVN Expo.
From what I read she is dealing with trolls on the Internet and in real life. They don't just target women, they target anyone to get a reaction out of them for the "LULZ".
Part of the reason why she is targeted by trolls is she has a position of authority and organizes events but doesn't have a detailed background experience or knowledge in them (she says so herself) which the trolls see her as just another "stuffed shirt" (or suit, a stuffed shirt implys that the person stuffs a shirt to make it look like muscle or something they are not to fool people, no sexist remark meant there, consider the alternative of a 'phoney' or 'scammer') pretending to be a hacker. (Their view not mine.) They would have done the very same things if she was a man. (Maybe call him gay or racist names instead of sexist remarks)
I see that she is into 'disruptive journalism' from my experience it is a different form of advertising and marketing. For example, Marvel Comics kills off Peter Parker in Doctor Octopus' body after a body-swap. They did it as 'disruptive journalism' or 'disruptive media' to get reactions from people who loved Spider-Man and Peter Parker to Tweet and Blog about it over outrage to make Marvel Entertainment and The Superior Spider-Man comic get more attention and free publicity. In the same way she is using 'disruptive journalism' to draw attention to her blog and herself by making people react to it. So now she makes front page at Hacker News (Edit people are voting this article down, good for you, no more front page) and it is blogged and Tweeted everywhere. 'Disruptive journalism' is really just another form of trolling, it is designed to get reaction for the "LULZ" for free publicity and free advertising and to get people to talk about her and her blog. While I feel sad that she is targeted by trolls, not much can be done to stop it. What she is doing is no different than what the trolls do, morally and ethically, as she exaggerates the situation into being worse than it actually is (trolls are a minority of HN not the majority) so she gets more reactions for promoting her blog and name.
> Nobody would tell a male founder that he wasn't being "level-headed", or tell him to quit, or call him emotional, or anything else that frequently is launched against women.
On that point you're wrong. Just as an example, look at how people responded to Nadim Kobeissi and his own responses to criticism. Nadim is male (the Cryptocat guy). Many of those criticizing him and his responses to technical criticism were female. "not level-headed" would probably be overly mild.
I can't help but notice how much you read into and objected to w1ntermute's statement "At least that's how I see it", and yet you end up with the very similar "as far as I can read".
Anyway, you would've made a hell of a TV detective.
> This is perhaps the most cunningly dangerous thing you could allow yourself as a response.
You're reading far too much into "Or at least that's how I see it." My sole point with that statement, as you can see in the following sentence, is that the author seemed to be suggesting that sexism was behind most of what happened to her, rather than just saying that sexism was an issue, along with other things that could have happened to her even if she were a man.
> She experienced all of this in FOUR months time. Judging by that timeline, I find it highly unlikely that one could so easily chalk it all up to being in the wrong, other people knowing what they're saying/doing, and still have all those other experiences.
Why not? She was the common factor in all these occurrences, not the other parties. It would be much more unlikely that a series of 3rd parties ALL chose to attack her because of her gender.
> I think this was a case of a bunch of men who didn't know how to be led by a woman who came up with a really badass idea.
That's a statement completely lacking proof. Whoever said she came up with this idea on her own? In fact, she said herself in the blog post:
> Cryptoparty was created one very boring evening, in a very open and inclusive conversation on Twitter, a little over four months ago.
And being "led" by a woman? Again, she said herself:
> Decentralised, DIY, psuedo-leadership.
So she wasn't "leading" the men. Again, your statement conflicts with the author's own statements.
> Reading this after the article seems as if you missed quite a few of her disclaimers. For example, she admits repeatedly that she is neither as knowledgeable or experienced in a number of technical areas
And reading this seems as if you missed the point I was trying to make. I'm not saying that the others were in the right by criticizing her or putting her down. I'm just saying that it might have more to do with her lack of experience than her being a single mother. After all, I can imagine if that if any other random newbie were to enter the community and start throwing around his weight, things wouldn't be received too well either, even if that newbie were right. And I'm also not saying that such a situation should exist - it shouldn't. But it has nothing to do with sexism.
> Let's call her the non-technical founder, shall we? It's a term everyone on HN seems to understand and, usually, respect.
No, we shall not. Cryptoparty, as a community project with "pseudo-leadership" is not at all comparable to the tightly controlled, profit-oriented, founder-driven environment of a startup.
> That's effectively three strikes against her in the tech world, as far as I can see.
All I can do here is quote you, from earlier in the very same post by you:
> This is perhaps the most cunningly dangerous thing you could allow yourself as a response. In the case of any kind of discrimination or behavior that is experienced by someone else, please start working to taboo your acceptance of and reliance on "how you see it".
Really? You just violated your own taboo.
Have you ever stopped to think that your personal experiences might not be applicable to all other single fathers, because anecdotal data isn't all that useful? Have you ever stopped to think that raising a child is a serious task that requires a significant amount of time, much of it unplanned, and that many jobs/projects may simply not be able to accommodate that for logistical reasons?
> Did you actually read (and maybe re-read) the opening where she states quite plainly that she is not chalking everything up to sexism? "Some parts of this article deal with misogyny, sexism, and harassment, while other aspects of it respond to experiences of down-right douche-baggery."
Again, did you actually read (and maybe re-read) my initial post? My point was that despite her statement that it wasn't all about sexism, that seemed to be a common thread in the whole post. Following the bit about the poor Cryptoparty decisions that you mentioned, she says that she "got emails telling me to stick to motherhood and tweeting."
> But even that doesn't matter. She's the founder. She busted her ass to organize the whole thing.
> She came up with and organized the idea of the CryptoParty
Once again, she said that there was only "pseudo-leadership" and the project developed on Twitter during an open conversation. You seem to have conveniently ignored that part of the post.
> Moreover, there are things that are said that seem to me would not so frequently have occurred had the organizer been a man. If the organizer had been a man, technical or not, the tone of disagreements would have been very different.
Again, you're just assuming things here. As you said yourself, "connotation is a deceptive thing that, when focused on, makes one think s/he is successfully spotting discriminatory, sexist, racist, what-have-you acts.
> Nobody would tell a male founder that he wasn't being "level-headed", or tell him to quit, or call him emotional, or anything else that frequently is launched against women. I've seen men in screaming matches over ideas, passionately and intensely convinced they're right, shouting obscenities and hurling personal attacks that have nothing to do with the issue, and nobody ever busts in and calls them a bunch of emotional basketcases who aren't level-headed enough to lead or make decisions. And yet women don't have such privilege and protection.
Once again, you're generalizing your personal experiences. If anything, I've seen women get treated quite nicely/equally by the vast majority of men in the industry. The problem, as someone else put it, is that when only 0.5% of the participants are women, it only takes 1% of the men harassing them to make life difficult for them.
> As far as I can read, this is one hell of an account of how not to treat your non-technical founder/co-founder/teammate. It's just reprehensible and wrong.
I'm not condoning any of the things that happened to her. If it really is as she says (usually the other side has a very different tale to tell), then she was treated quite poorly, regardless of her gender or children.
> I can't see anyone from those communities acting in such a way as to throw shit in those guys' faces while they're trying to turn that talk into a panel that allows other applicants to take part with them or whatever
Have you stopped to consider how that man from Sydney who had already applied for the speaking spot felt when some newbie comes along and says she wants to turn the speech into a panel? A speech and a panel are two completely different things, and serve different purposes.
The conference had previously decided there would be a speech, and the other applicant was under no obligation to agree to participate in a panel.
Besides, if this woman is as great as you're making her out to be, why didn't she just apply for the speaker spot? Surely she would have been selected over the other applicant, given her achievements.
> Moreover, that image of the Creeper Cards is just disgusting.
Yes, this shouldn't have happened. Unfortunately, it only takes one or two people for that sort of thing to happen.
I think you're missing firstly how dangerous the sentiment of your initial response was - it reeks of complete ignorance of what women face, and is at points flat our victim blaming "she brought some of it upon herself".
> and the project developed on Twitter during an open conversation. You seem to have conveniently ignored that part of the post.
No, they were pointing out that they were an organiser not a technical person.
> it only takes one or two people for that sort of thing to happen.
Does. Not. Matter. The fact is that when one or two people do it and it isn't met with outright condemnation and vitriol from the other 99%, it feels like this sort of thing is accepted or event silently celebrated.
> I think you're missing firstly how dangerous the sentiment of your initial response was - it reeks of complete ignorance of what women face
Well, your thinking is incorrect. If you had bothered to actually read my initial post, you'd know that I clearly stated that "sexism is clearly an issue in the hacker community that needs to be tackled".
> is at points flat our victim blaming "she brought some of it upon herself".
Yes, she did bring it upon herself in the sense that she was inexperienced, something that had nothing to do with her gender. If a male had the same level of experience as her and tried to pull some of the shit that she did, he would have gotten his ass kicked out, no questions asked. Such incidents just never get attention, since they're a regular part of the tech industry - you're incompetent, you're out.
To reiterate, I am not suggesting that she should be blamed for the sexist comments she was faced with. That is a separate issue and one that clearly needs to be dealt with.
> No, they were pointing out that they were an organiser not a technical person.
Wrong again, bobwaycott repeatedly referred to her as a "founder". There's a big difference between an "organizer" of a loosely organized internet project and a "founder". And the organizer of a loosely organized internet project can't claim credit for having come up with the idea for it, as bobwaycott credited the author with in his post.
> The fact is that when one or two people do it and it isn't met with outright condemnation and vitriol from the other 99%, it feels like this sort of thing is accepted or event silently celebrated.
Blatant strawman. I never suggested that it should be accepted or "silently celebrated". Do you actually bother to even read what you've written before hitting the reply button?
All I'm saying is that for men, when we're at a conference with 1% of the attendees being women, we may never even see this harassment going on, since the harassers and the victims together may only make up 2% of the total attendees. How are we supposed to stop something that we don't even see happening?
As a hacker, you should know that even a "small" statistical bias (10%-20%) can invalidate experimental results, or contribute to large problems in a complex system.
So why is a small but real bias against women in tech still not a huge problem?
And I apologize if you really do see this as an issue that needs to be tackled, and if you do something about it whenever you are in a context to do so.
But to often I see this same response to allegations of sexism online - admitting that it's a problem in the general case while undermining the woman's argument in the particulars. You could even possibly be right in this case, but by taking the approach of poking holes in women's complaints, you're undermining their point in general.
Worse, it strays dangerously near "blame the victim" mentality... "if only she hadn't been so inexperienced/emotional/womanly". Regardless of the truth of it, it's actively harmful to genuinely addressing the problem.
I'm confused. Isn't that page supposed to be holding those statements up for ridicule? I'm saying that although the person who made that page thinks that the statements are bullshit, they seem perfectly reasonable to me.
I think that either mburshteyn is sarcastically saying "that's the point" (perhaps to indicate that you thinking that is exactly the problem s/he is trying to highlight?), or mburshteyn has missed the sarcasm in the derailment page (it's not actually advocating 'derailment').
I'm saying these arguments may sound reasonable, but they can also be viewed as a tactic to derail conversations about oppression and marginalized groups. The fact that "it looks like a list of reasonable things to say," as part of our dominant discourse about topics such as gender, is exactly why they're such a powerful and effective tactic. Until a discussion can move past using derailing tactics in these conversations, marginalization and oppression won't really be challenged.
Although sexism is clearly an issue in the hacker community that needs to be tackled, the story makes me wonder if the author's behavior didn't initiate some of the vitriol directed at her. There was certainly plenty of it without any sexist connotations.
She says "I’ve gone from being a Facebook user to running OTR, PGP and Tor all in under a month." Perhaps she is not as knowledgeable or as experienced as she thinks she is, and so she is receiving criticism from those who know what they're saying/doing.