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Leap: An Online Community for Women

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#201

Post by etjossem »

fruzz wrote: post #141
sievebrain wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again! Your goal is not to create an inclusive community. Your goal is to create an exclusive community. Look, if want to create a female only website then go for it. But you have to own your actions. You can't exclude half the population then claim you care about inclusion. That is rank hypocrisy bordering on the delusional - you are doing the exact opposite of what you claim.

So here's the thing. No space is being taken away. A new space is being created. This space is to give a voice to a population who reports, as a group, being silenced and undermined in other spaces by the dominant group. This allows voices to be heard that weren't heard before. That's inclusion. Having those voices stay silent is exclusion.

Thank you. It's really common for the arrival of a women-only (or trans-only, survivors-only etc.) space to be met with alarm from men. On the surface, that's not even a bad reflex to have - identify things that seem exclusive, and try to make them more inclusive.

But what we don't always realize is that the internet isn't terribly inclusive in the first place. There's a prevailing atmosphere in well-populated tech spaces - Reddit, HN - that tends to shut down women's voices, especially if they're talking about an experience that men on the internet can't relate to.

I'm all for this project, hope it works out.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#202

Post by ambivalents »

cbcowans wrote: post #89
kdelok wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

(not for me, so I'm not sure how much I could respond to questions) Is Leap for people who are i) female, ii) identify as a woman, or iii) both? I ask because I have a few friends who are biologically female, but genderqueer (by which they mean that they don't prescribe to the cultural stuff that is usually attached to gender). Would this be suitable for them? As a more general note, since this looks to be a communit…

Thank you for asking. iii – My goal is to create an inclusive community. I'd say Leap is suitable for your friend. I am also learning as I go, so would love feedback!

I'd love to chime in on this particular question. I am biologically female, but am gender-nonconforming in how I actually present and identify. I still see tons of utility in a place like Leap. While I don't fit the traditional description of what a woman looks like, I still am very much treated like one in the workplace (not to mention all the years of socialization and cultural treatment as a woman)!

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#206

Post by mcintyre1994 »

Honest question, does HN feel unwelcoming or uncomfortable for women? In particular: “I’ve found that some conversations online escalate to shouting matches quickly” do female HN users identify this with HN? Not saying Leap shouldn’t exist or anything, I’m just wondering if HN has these particular issues that I haven’t personally recognised.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#207

Post by weberc2 »

beat wrote: post #152
fvdessen wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The measurable advantage men have in the tech community What is that advantage and how is it measured ?

Measurement is easy. Just look around you. The majority of people working in tech are men. An even larger majority of its leadership is men. Why is this? There are only two possible causes that I can see - genetic, or cultural. The genetic argument is basically that men are, by nature, better at being programmers and leaders than women - that women are inferior. The cultural argument is that there is a social advanta…

Genetics could explain the disparity without resorting to a "women are inferior" conclusion. For example, it's possible that the ability distribution is more varied for men than for women such that if you sample from either extreme, you'll find more men, and if you sample from the middle, you'll find more women. Employers obviously prefer to sample programmers and leaders from the high-ability extreme, and therefore end up with more males. However, the mean and median could be the same for men and women.

There are other hypotheses as well that have nothing to do with social advantages--maybe biology or culture has women preferring to elect into other career fields? We also know that (for whatever reason) women prefer flexible careers that let them spend time with kids, and that women are more likely than men to take time off to start a family and that they take more time off than men to start the family. Perhaps men and women are equal in their desire to spend time with family, but society expects men to sacrifice time with family to provide for the family? In this case, the disparity is the result of a social disadvantage to being male.

These are just a few hypotheses that I could come up with in a few moments. Some of these I think are probable and others improbable, but the point is that we have more hypotheses besides misogyny and patriarchy. We shouldn't feel the need to buy into the patriarchy explanation simply to avoid the misogyny explanation (especially because the people who favor the patriarchy explanation also tend to propose some scary reforms, like restricting due process rights for one gender).

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#208

Post by sp332 »

iamdave wrote: post #178
DoreenMichele wrote: post #158

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it is a setting where asking is potentially problematic -- like work -- it is best to either broach the subject more delicately or don't ask unless you are confident you know the answer is yes. Just asking cold calling style is not the only option for approaching such things.

If it is a setting where asking is potentially problematic -- like work This is cultural, no? I mean, I have a personal rule of never dating coworkers, but I have friends elsewhere in the world where this isn't such a strange notion.

According to various surveys, 10-30% of long-term relationships in the USA started when the people met at work. The downsides can be considerable though, since you have to go to work with someone you turned down/turned you down.

And tech has the additional problem that women are under-represented so they get propositioned a lot.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#209

Post by forgottenpass »

fvdessen wrote: post #138
rev_bird wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As I noted above, "advantage" was the wrong word, my apologies. There's tons of information out there about the disproportionate number of men working in tech, to say nothing of the salary discrepancies that cause so much drama here. At the end of the day, women say they feel that they feel isolated by an industry that is overwhelmingly male, and that being able to connect with other women and discuss their experienc…

> At the end of the day, women say they feel that they feel isolated by an industry that is overwhelmingly male. I would like to offer another point of view; A lot of the males who ended up in that industry are, to be blunt, social rejects. They were not the popular kids in high school, but those guys who were playing magic in the corner. Being a male in IT is a big stigma in the outside world. Nerd and Geek are stil…

You'd probably like this essay if you haven't seen it before: https://medium.com/@maradydd/when-nerds-collide-31895b01e68c

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#210

Post by prawn »

autotune wrote: post #185
cbcowans wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I put together a gif with some example content from Leap when I posted Leap on Product Hunt. You can check it out here if you like: https://www.producthunt.com/posts/leap-by-yc . I'd describe it as a hybrid. I'd love to hear which bucket you'd put it in.

Not OP but to me it looks like a Reddit clone with a few more "fun features" with the emojis. It could very well be based off of reddit considering it's open source.

I find it interesting that the reply button in the stream/index is so prominent. I'd view that as too dominant a design decision, but then perhaps fostering discussion/involvement at the cost of style or following an off-site link is worth the trade off.
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