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Comment by catshirt | Hacker News Reader

"The interactions in the AMA itself showed that gender does still matter."

does it really? it sounds like if their gender was omitted in the first place, the topic would not have been breached. i'm not saying their conclusion is incorrect, i'm just confused by how they got there.

say for example, a "gay computer scientist" did an AMA. some people would (rightfully) ask "why does your sexual orientation matter?". others will make fun of them for being gay.

the only thing i'm convinced of is that some people like to harass and provoke and troll. and for those people, minorities are easy targets. and the internet is the easiest and safest place to do it. and when you're dealing with an audience of 5000 people on Reddit, statistically speaking a subset of them are going to be that kind of stupid.

edit: the fact that my comment, and literally over half the other comments in this thread are grey, support my simpler conclusion that uncivil people exist.

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If someone did a 'gay computer scientist' AMA I'd be interested because it's a specific person talking about their experiences - just like most AMAs are. If someone asked why that mattered - I would really wonder why they bothered to click - just move on. I'm very interested in what women at MIT experience so the fact that people were so aggressive about a headline does point out a gender issue. And maybe the question is a real one. Maybe they really don't understand that women have different experiences in the science/tech field than men. If you care at all to have more women speaking out about their experiences in tech and on reddit, than telling them they're doing it wrong is probably not going to help.

I think people are incorrectly reacting to you questioning "does [gender] really [matter]?" It appears to me that you are questioning "does [the AMA] really [show]?"

I think you made sound questions in a civil way. I don't see why you should be downvoted. But HN is fickle at times.

thanks for a thoughtful response. your analysis is correct. but, given that the article convinced me of nothing, further posing the question "does gender really matter" seems fair as well.

i thought my intent was clear when i explained "i'm not saying their conclusion is incorrect, i'm just confused by how they got there." i didn't intend to disagree with their conclusion- i was simply drawing another conclusion from their data.

I thought exactly the same thing.

Their complaints fall into two: 1) People questioned why they brought up being female 2) Trolls asked stupid/offensive questions

We can all quickly agree on #2. It's 100% unacceptable but simply reflects (as you pointed out) that certain % of population are assholes, not widespread gender issue.

However - #1 seems valid to me. In the words of supreme court justice Roberts - "The way to stop discrimination on the basis of race is to stop discriminating on the basis of race". Ie if you want people to stop discriminating on the basis of gender, stop making it a deal.

One may agree or disagree with this logic - but it's silly to point at it as example of 'gender discrimination'. YOU may want to make your gender an issue, but others' not wishing to join you in it doesn't mean anything.

I am unable to copy and paste, but the article quotes a comment from reddit where someone pointed out that when someone included "I'm a male dog groomer" in their AMA, no one asked "Why does your gender matter?" So I think that is evidence that there is a double standard here.

As a woman who spends some time on HN, my experience is that, yeah, my gender is a problem here. Most men do not want to network with me. If I try to network, it seems to be interpreted as me hitting on them or threatening their relationship or something. Maybe I just do not know how to network. That's entirely possible. But I have done some of the same things that I have seen men here comment positively on that other men have done -- such as try to be emotionally supportive when someone is having a bad day -- and, coming from me, it is apparently interpreted completely differently. So far, Hacker News has essentially failed as a networking opportunity for me. I know for a fact other people have used it successfully that way. So I know it is not simply me wildly misunderstanding what the site is good for or something like that.

I am willing to consider the possibility that I am simply doing something wrong that compounds the problem. But I have had people try to tell me that my gender is not relevant to my failure in that regard and I am not buying it. I have been a member for more than 5 years. By now, I should have a few contacts from here, even after accounting for this, that and the other obstacle. But, I don't.

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