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Leap: An Online Community for Women

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#291

Post by QAPereo »

beat wrote: post #238
fortythirteen wrote: post #127

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Disclaimer: not in any way attempting to diminish your experience. Only adding my own, to broaden the conversation. It can be a similar experience for men (although it's definitely not something talked about). I've had a female coworker walk up behind me repeatedly and give me unsolicited back rubs and ask me if I wanted to go to an empty office. I've been flirted with and hit on repeatedly. I've had a group of women…

It's not "broadening" the conversation. What you're doing is recentering the conversation as a "Men are victims of women too!" As a rhetorical device, it's so common it has a name. It's called "derailing".

It’s fascinating and telling that this comment was heavily downvoted, but not surprising. What’s a bit sad is that in that flurry of attempts to disappear your comment, no one had a reply.

This seems to be a pattern on HN.

Edit @ Brucephillips:

What beat is effectively saying is "Keep your mouth shut about your victimization. We're talking about ours right now." Is it surprising that that sort of callousness would be downvoted?

By the kind of people who would yell at an anorexic support group for saying that their attempts to derail said meeting with their traumatic history of obesity, was inappropriate? No. You’re a smart bunch, but I’ve figured out the reason that you all talk about “soft skills” like some kind of distant light you could never hope to approach.

Is it ironic that a discussion of women trying to establish a site for their own use leads to a subset of this site reacting badly? No.

Am I surprised that any time a group tries to address issues which disproportionately harm them, they get the “all lives matter!” attack? Also no.

I’m no longer surprised when people act like children because they don’t understand how to relate to others, or feel an overweening need to make any conversation about them.

Thanks for asking.

Edit 2: Rate limited.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#292

Post by brucephillips »

QAPereo wrote: post #291
beat wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "broadening" the conversation. What you're doing is recentering the conversation as a "Men are victims of women too!" As a rhetorical device, it's so common it has a name. It's called "derailing".

It’s fascinating and telling that this comment was heavily downvoted, but not surprising. What’s a bit sad is that in that flurry of attempts to disappear your comment, no one had a reply. This seems to be a pattern on HN. Edit @ Brucephillips: What beat is effectively saying is "Keep your mouth shut about your victimization. We're talking about ours right now." Is it surprising that that sort of callousness would be…

What beat is effectively saying is "Keep your mouth shut about your victimization. We're talking about ours right now."

Is it surprising that that sort of callousness would be downvoted?

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#293

Post by allergeek »

verylittlemeat wrote: post #245
mcintyre1994 wrote: post #206

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.

I'm not a woman so I'm not going to try and address what women do or don't feel about HN but I just want to say: >“I’ve found that some conversations online escalate to shouting matches quickly” How many people can find a group of people IN GENERAL (online/offline/anywhere) that doesn't rapidly devolve into power/politics/passive & active aggressive behavior? Go spend some time on a forum like metafilter where you ha…

Well, since many joined for networking purposes, and the identity stays fixed (no throwaways) and transparent (with rich personal profiles), I guess we are being mindful about our impression.

As there are things you won’t probably speak out at work, so there’re things and emotional responses you keep to yourself in a professional community. Is it good? Is it bad? Haven’t figured it out yet.

I got really sick from reading the neverending, overblown feminist headlines in YC Female Founders group on FB. Leap has been growing into something else, luckily, which I suppose is provided by the fact that it was built and nurtured by female engineers (thus partially sharing a certain mindset and culture).

Also, with a decent amount of supportive culture present, I still woudn’t call Leap an emotional support group. The responses so far have been consistently useful and constructive.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#294

Post by bloaf »

cirgue wrote: post #63

What problem is this intended to solve that isn't solved by moderation policies and forum culture? I ask because I think this is a cool project, but there is also the inescapable fact that at some point men and women will have to work together in engineering environments, and we still have a dearth of environments that foster those interactions.

Do communities need to justify their existence by reference to some problem that they solve?

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#295

Post by tptacek »

to_bpr wrote: post #289
tptacek wrote: post #228

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You are already welcome to create a man-only forum.

>You are already welcome to create a man-only forum. Any man taking such an action in 2018 would likely lose their career over it.

I'm not engaging with that, since it's not the question this subthread is addressing.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#296

Post by didgeoridoo »

adventured wrote: post #196
beat wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

So your argument is that men and women are exactly identical on all tasks for genetic purposes? Or are you arguing that such just happens to be the case as it pertains to programming? From my observation, women are frequently proclaimed to be superior to men in numerous ways. My entire life I've heard that women mature faster than men. Women are proclaimed to be more nurturing. Women have higher 'emotional intelligen…

Where women outperform men, that’s science.

Where men outperform women, that’s sexism.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#297

Post by cbcowans »

Crespyl wrote: post #218
cbcowans wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I expect moderation will evolve as the community evolves, but I don't plan to limit what people choose to talk about so long as participants treat each other with respect.

It's good to hear that you don't plan on being heavy handed, but as someone interested in online communities and governance, I'd still be interested in the answer to seany's question about moderator transparency. Do you intend to have admin/moderator actions visible in some way to the users? If posts are edited or removed (by users or mods) does that get indicated in any way? Different approaches to these issues can…

Thanks for the follow up. Leap is very young and I want the community guidelines to evolve as we learn and as the community changes. To that end – I don't plan to edit other people's comments, but I could imagine deleting an offensive one. If I do intervene in a conversation, I plan to do it transparently. That likely means posting on Leap about the actions I took.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#298

Post by neveroffensive »

fruzz wrote: post #80
turinapple wrote: post #54

I'm a woman that's worked in tech since 2011... at times the discrimination and treatment I've faced has made me want to quit the industry all together. But every time I reached that point I thought - no, I'm not the one who should have to leave, it's the people -- usually men -- who have not shown empathy, kindness or compassion. The ones who have bullied me and harassed me and made inappropriate comments or advance…

I really wish your experience was unique. A colleague was groped. She didn't report it. It would have likely diminished her future prospects. A friend was asked out on dates, unsolicited, multiple times by coworkers. She just had to laugh it off. Women at a previous employment reported not being taken as seriously as men in meetings, and being passed over for promotions in favour of less qualified men. A friend repor…

> A friend was asked out on dates, unsolicited, multiple times by coworkers. She just had to laugh it off.

So long as the solicitation did not continue after it became apparent it was unwanted, this is just typical human social behavior, there is nothing wrong with it.

> A friend reported sexualized posters of women up in the office. In the chat of my company, a sexualized video of women was passed around.

This makes you uncomfortable, it dose not make everyone uncomfortable. Your subjective view of comfort will not always be meat.

> I get misgendered at work by people who do it on purpose.

I doubt you're actually being misgendered. There is a chance they are just being bullies, in which case that is an unfortunate aspect of life. More likely, they conceptualize gender as biological sex. Their conceptualization differs from yours.

> I also get touched inappropriately by a coworker.

This could be illegal depending on the nature, and is certainly against any/all HR policies. Either way this should be reported and dealt with.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#300

Post by brucephillips »

QAPereo wrote: post #291
beat wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not "broadening" the conversation. What you're doing is recentering the conversation as a "Men are victims of women too!" As a rhetorical device, it's so common it has a name. It's called "derailing".

It’s fascinating and telling that this comment was heavily downvoted, but not surprising. What’s a bit sad is that in that flurry of attempts to disappear your comment, no one had a reply. This seems to be a pattern on HN. Edit @ Brucephillips: What beat is effectively saying is "Keep your mouth shut about your victimization. We're talking about ours right now." Is it surprising that that sort of callousness would be…

Why not just reply to me instead of editing your post?
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