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Comment by dleslie | Hacker News Reader

It's possible to be passionate about technology while being young, female and prosocial. Hell, she's expressing herself using the technology platform most popular with her generation.

She should be taken seriously because many people erroneously believe that can't be true.

I've worked in tech for decades, and this doubt you express about a fairly typical-behaving young woman is not unfamiliar to me; and it's rarely proven valid, among my peers. Rather, it's almost always an expression of the jealous misogyny of the complainant.

_Every_ attractive woman I've known in this industry has had to suffer endless doubt about their abilities, beyond what I consider normal.

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Yes I was wondering how long it'd take you to start claiming anyone who doesn't fall over themselves to praise this layabout is "misogynistic". Three posts isn't bad, many would do worse. But it was inevitable.

The widespread scepticism you see isn't woman hating. It's directly created by people like you, who make blind deference of women an ideological imperative. Your defence of this girl is not any evidence of real technical skill or effort but that she's "pro-social". And then you claim - again without evidence - that anyone who points out the obvious (that she doesn't seem to be working very hard) must be motivated by generic sexist hatred. It's an absurd and deeply offensive slur that you can't recognize as such only because the left engages in it so often.

You're also conflating using tiktok with being passionate about tech, another switcheroo.

It's that exact attitude that leads to a decadent culture in which work and skill are devalued, people being hired because of their gender or ideology, and a large population of people who notice that. By the way, I've worked with women who are actually passionate about technology. They hate this stuff too, exactly because it devalues their own work and career. You aren't helping women with this sort of thing, you're hurting them.

> It's possible to be passionate about technology while being young, female and prosocial.

Absolutely it is. However there's no evidence that she is at all.

> Hell, she's expressing herself using the technology platform most popular with her generation.

That's an interesting take. Most people would say the _social media_ platform most popular. I know a lot of people who use social media extensively, and it doesn't appear to correlate with a passion for tech. Does your experience differ?

Whilst I don't disagree that sometimes this view is a jealous misogynistic one, I disagree with "almost always". I suspect you've seen the behaviour enough though that you're expecting it and looking for it.

This women having no identifiable technical skillset is a fair reason to question her. It would also be in a man. If you can indicate otherwise (rather than just hand wavey "this is misogyny"), I an very open to being proven wrong.

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