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Comment by Davertron | Hacker News Reader

I think what he's saying is when you're upvoting/downvoting someone, you don't actually know whether they're male or female based solely on the username.

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Exactly (though my username might be the one exception to that…) – the post I replied to specifically said that apparently only female voices were getting up-/downvoted or that this was only a concern for female voices, so I am a little confused about it.

I interpreted it as which kind of female voices got up-/downvoted: the ones that go along with general consensus or those that are critical of male privilege.

People who try to accuse a society with generalized claims like "male privilege" get down voted because they are non-specific, non-discussable "facts", negative, and non-constructive in nature. Comments with those attributes are in direct contrast to a discussion board or for that matter, a scientific mind.

Comments that are specific, who's facts is discussable, are constructive in both identifying with facts what is wrong, and suggest solution in a scientific manner will be up voted.

It doesn't matter if its male or female voice doing this.

I used the general term as just that, a general term to describe a class of voices. I wasn't referring to posts that used that exact generalized claim.

As for scientific manner; there's a lot being discussed on HN that isn't scientific. Although related, hacking is broader than science.

As mtrimpe says, there's plenty of discussion that goes on here which does not have a scientific basis. It's a rigorous standard which is unrealistic to apply across the board.

And I'm sure it's just a coincidence that we as a male-dominated community get especially skeptical whenever feminism comes up.

There many people here with skepticism on this board when argument based on anecdote is stated as facts. You might think that this is because of the male-dominated community, but I see the same skepticism when people bring up claim about security by obscurity, the speed of statics vs dynamic languages, flat vs non-flat design and so on. As long the arguments are demanded to be taken on faith, people here rejects them most days.

Why normally demand performance tests and security validation on claims regarding software, but I hear people argue that somehow we should not demand any proof for anything related to sexism? In what way is it unrealistic to demand that people test and confirm statements such as "irc comments are the major reason why women don't participate in software projects". I for one would like to see the average number of sexist comments on 100-2000 observed IRC channels over a set of months, and compare that to a control group of irc channels not related to software development. More or less?

Testing and verification is not unrealistic. Its is unrealistic to demand that we don't ask for it.

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