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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

On the one question currently in that section, they have a diversity of viewpoints from the panel. There's no evident echo chamber effect.

Anyhow, it would be rejecting the argument of the blog post to link to it there, and the blog post itself is a bit of an increase incoherent mess (the author proudly identifies as female, adopting one label, and seems to equally proudly adopt the tech worker label, yet rejects the woman in tech label with the argument that rejecting all labels is essential to inclusivity. This is both incoherent on a surface level, and deeply problematic in that labels are the interface the human mind uses to deal with the world; rejecting all labels is rejecting all ability to model and interact with the world.

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I didn't read her article that way. I read it as "Creating a new box to push people into defeats the purpose of opening up the boxes of 'Women' and 'Tech Workers'". She's alright with the labels of "Woman" and "Tech Worker" because they're (relatively) open groups. There's a wide range of people who fit into them. On the other hand, when people are talking about "Women in Tech", there's an image, and expectations surrounding that.

Embracing her identity as a woman gives her a place to build her character from. Being a "Woman in Tech", the way she's using the term, pigeonholes her into acting or looking a certain way, for fear of the dissonance it might create for someone else.

Sure, but overdoing it and confusing labels and abstractions with the things they represent can also keep a human from being more aware of the world and their deeds in it. I gladly reject the label "women in tech", but mostly because I actually do reject the label "tech" (and all stemming from that) to begin with, that's an umbrella so huge as to be meaningless. It's like "business", yeah I know what it is, just like I know what "technology" means, for any sensible use of these words, there's a million occurances where it's just padding at best, a cloak at worst, precisely a tool to not accurately model the real world, but a platonic simplified one that is easier to navigate than the infinitely fuzzy mess reality is.

> Sure, but overdoing it and confusing labels and abstractions with the things they represent can also keep a human from being more aware of the world and their deeds in it.

Sure, abstractions are not the underlying reality, the map is not the territory, and the Tao that can be told is not the true Tao. That doesn't mean that it is necessary to “reject all labels” as a fundamental requirement for inclusiveness, or even that rejecting all labels is useful or even possible given the way human minds work. It certainly means we need to understand that all labels obscure as well as explain, and understand where each is useful and where each is counterproductive.

But that's not what the blog post in question is arguing, or if it is intended to be it is not argued well.

When someone says "reject labels", I basically hear "don't think primarily in terms of them". I didn't take it as "don't ever speak it", but more "don't put it front, middle and last, 24/7". I can imagine it can be annoying/exhausting, part of feeling welcome is the understanding that it's perfectly normal for one to be there, I think.

> When someone says "reject labels", I basically hear "don't think primarily in terms of them".

I've yet to see a reason to believe that complex thought or communication is practical among humans, other than through manipulation of labels for abstractions over the underlying subject matter, so that doesn't change my objection to the argument one bit. You can recognize the limitations of the models underlying labels and be careful in choosing models (and thereby, relevant labels) that you have reason to believe are useful for the specific purpose and recognize that you're still subject to imperfect results in the best case, but labels are, ultimately, universally essential.

And that certainly doesn't mean you can't reject the utility of particular labels and their underlying model, either in general or for particular uses, but that doesn't get you to “reject all labels” much less that you must do so as a prerequisite for inclusiveness.

Labels, and words in general, while making it possible to communicate concepts to other people, also inherently make gross generalizations of those concepts, which confuses communication. Labels are therefore also used to “label” people, which is considered a bad thing. Therefore, some people really don't like labels.

http://egscomics.com/comic/2015-05-23

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