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Comment by smacktoward | Hacker News Reader

> An alternative reading of the magazine is that it is celebrating young creators

Who are creative within a narrow, conventionally "girly" band of creative endeavors. Teen Boss would not be interested in a 15-year-old girl who invented a revolutionary new type of automotive engine, because it is not a magazine about girls with grease on their hands.

Girls who want to should be free to engage in those kinds of "girly" pursuits, of course. To each their own! But by focusing only on those pursuits, Teen Boss sends the message to girls who are interested in other things (like STEM!) that they're weirdos who are walking away from success instead of towards it in their own way.

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> Who are creative within a narrow, conventionally "girly" band of creative endeavors. Teen Boss would not be interested in a 15-year-old girl who invented a revolutionary new type of automotive engine, because it is not a magazine about girls with grease on their hands.

Perhaps not, but then you're being reductive by equating engineering with 'grease on their hands'.

There's plenty of STEM careers that don't involve any grease - such as materials science, fashion design, sound engineering, to stuff that this magazine would wholeheartedly endorse, like developing your own make up line. 'I made thousands building a FaceTune competitor' certainly would.

For that matter, how many people on Hacker News deal with grease in their day to day work? And is the kind of thing being discussed here that different from 'I made $32k a month recurring revenue' IndieHackers story, the likes of which regularly gets voted to the top of HN?

That's not the point. A software engineer would work perfectly well for the example in the parent post.

Slow down and process the metaphor.

If fashion design is STEM, then there's nothing that isn't STEM.

Materials science isn't STEM?

I said fashion design.

Obviously the content of these young girls' entrepreneurial pursuits don't appeal to you. They don't appeal to me either, the target audience is 8-14 year-olds. It's celebrating a new generation of girls who are interested in business or entrepreneurship and want ideas to get into that business.

It's a new magazine, how can you say that a 15 year-old girl that does something revolutionary couldn't be featured? I'm reading this as, it's a new magazine that's focusing on the low-hanging fruit and could eventually gain enough traction to feature other things. Who's to say the lessons learned from these "girly" ideas couldn't also be applied to STEM-related pursuits (after all, a specific section is called out where someone pitched a roomba-like idea).

Not to butt in, but nothing is stopping other women from making their own STEM girl themed youtube channel? I think that's what the beauty of youtube and the internet gives people, the ability to create their own niches. Yea if you want to be a certain type of success you may need to fake it like what everyone else is doing, but there's nothing stopping people from carving their own place in the world.

Wasn’t there an article here a while back about a Chinese woman who had a STEM/Maker YouTube channel who got harassed, heckled, and called a fraud because she also happened to be good looking? There seems to be at least some forces out there discouraging STEM girl themed channels.

That person made videos of STEM + soft-core porn that she said he did specifically to get attention, so it's more to parent's point about portrayal of women in media imagery, not against.

I don’t think we are talking about the same thing. I don’t recall seeing any porn in her videos but I think I saw some very hot soldering irons. If you’re having a hard time disassociating “females on the Internet” from porn, I’m sorry but I don’t think I can help ya there.

Her professional name is "SexyCyborg", so you can lay off the concern trolling.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Naomi_Wu

The name alone is enough for you to accuse her channel of being soft-core porn? Come on. Reading her Wikipedia page, I see nothing objectionable and a lot that's admirable. It sounds like the channel subverts the traditional appearance and role of women.

> she is notable for her strong advocacy of women in STEM, transhumanism, open source, and body modifications,[1][2] variously challenging both gender and tech stereotypes with her flamboyant public persona[3][2][4] which turns objectification on its head.[5]

I don't think there's any Youtube channel out there that hasn't been the subject of harassment or heckling. I don't think there's any special agenda against STEM girl channels.

This is my general response to most criticisms of other's efforts: What is stopping you from doing something better? In other words, don't talk about it, be about it. Lead by example. The world has enough critics.

> Teen Boss would not be interested in a 15-year-old girl who invented a revolutionary new type of automotive engine, because it is not a magazine about girls with grease on their hands.

How sure are you of this? I think there's a good chance – I'd bet even odds – that they'd publish a profile of a girl like you describe.

It's incredibly sexist to say that girls are only acceptable if they are acting like stereotypical boys. Please stop.

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