>I want inclusivity, not exclusivity. Thank you. I find myself feeling the exact same way as a black man in this industry, and cringe at "minority only" events and clubs. We don't need token inclusion and separate praise for being "brave" and "fighting against the odds". We need a world where those things are irrelevant.
Yes, of course in an ideal world these things would be non-issues, but they aren't. People are discriminated against, and there are barriers from culture that won't change without intentional scruity.
Of course, everyone should be able to just do their job and no more. If you aren't interested in being a role model or trying to push for that equality, that's absolutely fine, no one is obligated to do so. Some people do, however, and they will be trying to find others that do, I don't think that's unreasonable.
If, for example, women are routinely excluded from male-dominated clubs, for example, maybe they never get an interest in programming. While in an ideal world everyone can attend those clubs and it doesn't matter, if that's not the reality because of societal expectation, until that expectation has changed, maybe girl's clubs allow girls to get involved without fear of the societal stigma of doing "boys things" (if they don't happen to be one of the IDGAF people who do it anyway), resulting in more women in tech, which normalises it, eventually removing the need for girl's specific clubs.
This isn't exactly a new idea. It's the same idea behind things like women's-only chess - if the culture has excluded a group for a long time, it can be hard for talented individuals to get started because they get excluded inherently. If you can create a separate culture to get them interested, then merge the cultures over time, you can fix that.
To me, saying "we should just have everyone together" is like proclaiming racism was done the day slavery was abolished. Things don't magically get fixed culturally and socially - that takes an integration.