I'm not a Woman in Tech

She left her engineering job to raise her children. My mother was completely against this move though because my mother (also originally a software engineer) thought it was bad form that an educated female engineer would leave the workforce and 'waste her life as a stay at home mom' (paraphrased), and that my sister needed to set a good example as a professional woman or something.

I kind of think it's all silly that my mother would push for this, but I do understand it, because when my mother was a software engineer things were pretty bad. However, I think these days it's pushing the point too far.

Personally abrasive escalation takes threads into flamewar, so please edit such things out of your comments here. As a bonus, the signal/noise ratio of your comments will get higher.

Edit: fixed now, so I've detached this from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14703776 and marked it off-topic.

The "black lives matter" movement is a great example of a movement being required because they have been shut out of a "community" that already exists. That community being their actual community they live in. The community is the problem. All those things you have listed -- fear, disgust, resentment, contempt, despair -- are things black people have experienced against them at the hands of our government/police and that is why BLM exists, and that is why a movement is needed to change the community. Just like the civil rights movement, which is not over.

I agree many movements do not have clear goals, but that often speaks to their poor leadership (e.g. occupy wall street), not a problem of movements in general or their grievances. Look at the civil rights movement. I think movements often arrive because the community has failed them.

I would be interesting in hearing more practical examples of how a community would better solve some of these problems (or historical 20th century problems) over a movement, or what that distinction truly is or means. Definitely curious!

> it is unclear that a "fast-and-overshoot" is any 'better' than "slow and steady" vs any other strategy

Nowhere did I say it was unqualifiedly better. I was refuting your absolutist position that "never overshoot" should be a requirement.

> essentially saying, 'get with the program' is unhelpful

Never said that either. The point I was trying to make is that the OP's own "program" is not globally applicable or sufficient, therefore that she (and you) should consider other strategies as well.

> pay the [moral] price of intentionally discriminating against someone

Again, never said. Confronting one's own privilege does not inevitably lead to discriminating against others. All I'm suggesting is that we consider programs and policies that have some risk of creating outcomes that are inequitable in some way other than the inequity we already have. It should be obvious - and I think was to most people - that I'm not saying we should deliberately create inequity in any direction, or fail to address it when it occurs. I'm just saying that "never risk harming this group" is too limiting of the things we might try, and noxiously so when "this group" is the one already enjoying substantial unearned advantages.