I think you just proved her point - your tone is itself evidence that sexism is a problem on sites like HN.

By using the phrase "big bad men" you are engaging in precisely the sort of gender-oriented down-talking that she is complaining about. You are not just criticizing her, you are implying that she's an emotional woman who can't play with the big boys.

I don't know anything about the author, but just reading her post and your response, it is quite obvious that there is a genuine problem here, and that problem is you and people like you.

How can you be so certain that her interpretation, or your interpretation, of what is happening is actually in line with reality? One cannot simply observe something and immediately react emotionally and simultaneously imagine that they've just completely nailed the core of the issue with complete accuracy and no misunderstanding has taken place whatsoever.

From my subjective perspective for example the OP you're responding to used the phrase "big bad men" to sum up the article case that the problem is sexism / men / external rather than her lack of understanding / expectations of unearned respect / internal. It's up for argument which one of these positions is valid, but I just don't grasp how people can immediately jump for the second one as if it were indisputable truth?

Of course we can't know the true motivation of any of the parties involved.

But as big a problem as this has obviously become, I'd rather err on the side of calling out apparent sexism when I see it rather than giving everyone the benefit of the doubt and giving sexists the impression that this shit is ok.

And if I'm wrong, oh well. Worst case, some people might stop to think about the language they use and how it affects others.

Worst case; in a field where logic is paramount, emotion trumping it on a political correctness card starts to creep into the culture, poisoning everything it touches and slowly bleeding it into just another mostly political, messy, emotional human endeavour.

Honestly, if that's what it takes for women to feel accepted in this field I would prefer they were not. I sincerely don't believe that to be the case though, it's just convenient for sideline histrionics to label their cause with something more mainstream like gender equality in order to advance their agenda.

You're gonna tell me you never got cut up about the way people treated you? You let cool logic rule you instead?

Bullshit! It's a basic fact that most people don't like being routinely belittled and side-lined. That's got nowt to do with gender. The difference is that women suffer it more often and gosh should they have the temerity to complain, suffer a further avalanche of abuse under the guise of cool, logical criticism.

"emotion trumping it on a political correctness card"

Political correctness is just short-hand for "don't be racist, don't be sexist, don't be a prick". Pretty simple.

It's naive to think that politics and emotion can somehow be kept out of any human endeavour. So, the _logical_ course is to have a open discussion about how we can maintain respect and encourage all who are interested and able to contribute. That's what is best for the field.

You've got such an undeveloped idea of gender equality that when someone directly talks about it, you want to label it 'sideline histronics'.

You, yes YOU, the individual using the handle etherael are part of the problem.

Sure, I've disliked the way people have treated me, on occasion I've disliked it even when they had a good cause, at the end of the day though the way I was treated wasn't at issue, the cause was. And yes, I throw away my immediate emotional response in any situation like that so I can get to the core of the issue and actually decide if there is valid information to take from the event rather than simply something to complain about.

And if there never is valid information to take from the event, and it's truly just an endless tirade of "you're a woman, shouldn't you be in the kitchen making me a sandwich?" level prattle, that in itself is a person telling you that they're not worth your time interacting with, which is useful information of another kind.

> Political correctness is just short-hand for "don't be racist, don't be sexist, don't be a prick". Pretty simple.

That's your definition of political correctness, but that sure isn't the universally agreed and undisputed definition thereof.

But even accepting it, it opens a whole lot of doors; What is it to be racist? simply acknowledging some statistics that are unfavourable to some ethnicities is by some definitions racist. What is it to be sexist? Not to swallow wholesale typical claims of gender discrimination from women's groups with skewed supporting statistics without looking at the entire picture, or even to be aware of certain information that skews the debate in the opposite direction than currently has the mainstream cultural high ground? What is it to be a prick? To acknowledge realities regardless of the fact that other people may find them uncomfortable?

All of these things are useful, You can't plan affirmative action programs or associated actions to address problems with ethnic groups unless you can quantify what those problems actually are. You can't address the real problems with gender equality if you simply swallow all the propaganda on one side of the argument and instantly think you have the whole story. And you can't fix your own problems if you're unaware of them because noone ever saw fit to tell you because doing so would make them a prick. That's my fundamental problem with it, political correctness promotes premeditated ignorance of various facts which are inconvenient to culture.

A taboo on the objective examination of reality is never a good thing.

> It's naive to think that politics and emotion can somehow be kept out of any human endeavour.

I actually agree with this, but I disagree with your prescription, as soon as you acknowledge the inevitability of it and set up political solutions as a prescription, you simply hasten the downward slide. If on the other hand you firmly allocate the entire pursuit into the waste of time category, any kind of politicking will be out of place, and it won't simply be an endless argument over which kind is appropriate and which kind is not.

> You've got such an undeveloped idea of gender equality that when someone directly talks about it, you want to label it 'sideline histronics'.

I'm not labeling this particular episode sideline histrionics, that's why I originally laid out the two possibilities. The poster doesn't provide enough information in my opinion to actually make a judgement as to which of these cases it actually is.

My statement about sideline histrionics was precisely that it is a tactically sound move for those that engage in them to attempt to frame them in a more mainstream way that makes it appear that their personal grievances are a real and widespread problem that requires addressing by everyone.

> You, yes YOU, the individual using the handle etherael are part of the problem.

I think that lumping people like me in with the "get back in the kitchen and make me a sandwich" crowd is simply allowing them to mask their own sideline histrionics with something much more rational and you do yourself no favors by doing so. But if you still see fit to judge me in such a fashion then I'd simply point out that by doing so, you move yourself out of the set of people whose opinions I take seriously.

"a field where logic is paramount" Which field is that? The field that produces Hacker News threads? The field where Academic Politics are vicious?

Any field where math is the final arbiter and emotion is just a distraction. Cryptography qualifies in my book. But to take it as a subset of the larger field of technology implementation in general works just as well, too.

>By using the phrase "big bad men" you are engaging in precisely the sort of gender-oriented down-talking that she is complaining about.

But that's absurd. He only used that phrase in response to a claim that men in tech are incorrigibly sexist and hostile.

Admittedly, the post is very ranty, but that doesn't take away from the the issue itself.

Picking apart the person behind the argument does not lessen the issue either. By doing so, you are only trying to detract from the seriousness of the issue via a borderline ad hominem response.

Finally, at no point in the post did Asher Wolf mention Hacker News, it was directed at the greater hacker community.

At no point does she explicitly cite HN. The post is directed to all "hackers."

Hence my use of the word imply. As in 'implicit' ... you know - the opposite of 'explicit'.

I also believe she changed the title.

I don't think there's anything implicitly linking the people in her article to HN, either. We don't have a monopoly on the word "hacker," after all.

In fact, quite the opposite. HN's use of the word is the tag-along.

"Progressive liberal" techies unfortunately can still be sexist