" I didn’t create Cryptoparty just so a bunch of privileged white boys could.."
Why did she drag race into it? Completely unnecessary. She has valid points without this.
Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk
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Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk
#12The problem with this woman's story is that she takes a few cases of explicit sexism and extrapolates them as the reason why everyone is saying rude things to her. Or at least that's how I see it. Perhaps she is just commenting on the general douchebaggery of the community, but even then much of the criticism she received could be seen as fair if she was actually in the wrong. Although sexism is clearly an issue in t…
She does explicitly acknowledge her own lack of technical knowledge (e.g. where she notes that she was not qualified to evaluate the technical components of the cryptoparty manual). And still, we should hope to be a community that embraces a willingness to learn regardless of current technical knowledge.
Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk
#13They (big bad men) gave you trouble for seemingly valid difference in opinions, deal with it. And please don't imply that the HN has any hand in fostering misogyny or sexism because it's a completely false characterization of the community at large. In fact if you haven't picked up on it yet we're actually one of the more "progressive" and or liberal industries. But that doesn't mean we're going to hold you to any le…
At no point does she explicitly cite HN. The post is directed to all "hackers."
Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk
#14I think there will be a lot to learn by how people respond to this. (There's already been quite a few revealing comments.)
Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk
#15This article is so big and confusing that I do not understand a thing... Besides the fact that someone is pissed because of the way they treat her in the tech community?
The real problem is that she thought she was an exclusion to RTFM and trusting some random person to make a website for her. That really stands out to me... she seems to make such an effort to learn crypto but just writes off reading a wiki tutorial? I don't buy it.
Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk
#16I submit that like most socially active voices, her method of appealing to emotion will win no converts and will probably receive the praise of people who agreed with her before she made the post.
I sympathize with her in regards to harassment, but I don't think there's anything wrong with a headless female (or male) body made out of "creeper cards" (a poorly thought out endeavor since, after all, not one of us is righteous enough to hand out the cards in the first place).
My advice: nobody likes "we need to talk" conversation. Or, at least nobody on the opposition does. The art of persuasion is still an art, no matter how obviously correct you think your side of the argument is. Collect more facts, provide more details that relate to harassment, edit better, don't preach. The data and the details will be enough.
Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk
#17If you are a man reading this, I invite you to:
a. Resist the urge to pick apart the OP's life and criticize how/what she said.
b. Honestly reflect, without shame or blame, about what you know of sexism. What do you understand of it? What do you understand it's roots are, and how it works? What do you think your responsibility is, as a man, and as a member of this community?
I invite you to do this, because it's a charged topic, but an important one. See if you can look past the hurt feelings and accusations, and sincerely reflect on what you can do to understand how sexism works a little better, and address it.
EDIT: I am by no means an expert on the topic, but I've spent the past few years earnestly looking at how oppression works and keeping an open mind. I was truly astounded by the magnitude and difficulty of the problem.
Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk
#18The problem with this woman's story is that she takes a few cases of explicit sexism and extrapolates them as the reason why everyone is saying rude things to her. Or at least that's how I see it. Perhaps she is just commenting on the general douchebaggery of the community, but even then much of the criticism she received could be seen as fair if she was actually in the wrong. Although sexism is clearly an issue in t…
I agree with you, but I give her a bit more benefit of the doubt. There's definitely an element of negativity in some areas of hacker culture. As a white male it's easy to accept it as impersonal, but if you're in the 0.6% of women at an infosec conference, it's easy to see how a few instances of subtle or not-so-subtle sexism could make the negativity seem much more personal.
Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk
#19Moral of the story: focus on the damn hacking and stay on your computer, at least until you've achieved something worth having a conference speech or "Cryptoparty" about. The thing about the hacker community is that people won't like you if you draw unwarranted attention to yourself. Hoping that people would accept her, the author just keeps on hitting herself with "creeper cards" and social media outbursts that draw more unwarranted attention, feeding the feedback loop.
Your life will be easier once you realize emotions and human relations only get in the way, at least when it comes to hacking. If you want acceptance, invent something good.
Re: Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk
#20The problem with this woman's story is that she takes a few cases of explicit sexism and extrapolates them as the reason why everyone is saying rude things to her. Or at least that's how I see it. Perhaps she is just commenting on the general douchebaggery of the community, but even then much of the criticism she received could be seen as fair if she was actually in the wrong. Although sexism is clearly an issue in t…
She does explicitly acknowledge her own lack of technical knowledge (e.g. where she notes that she was not qualified to evaluate the technical components of the cryptoparty manual). And still, we should hope to be a community that embraces a willingness to learn regardless of current technical knowledge.
And learning is great. But there are cases where I think the author was expecting too much. For example, she applied for a speaking spot at a conference despite her lack of experience. She said that her family offered childcare only if she got a speaking spot, but that doesn't mean she should have just applied for it or expected to get a spot when she didn't have the necessary experience, just so she could participate in the conference.
In essence, she should have applied for a speaker spot because she has experience and knowledge she wants to share with other people, not because her family agreed to watch her kid if she got the spot.
Now if her story is true, the "Sydney-based male Cryptoparty organiser" was being douchebaggy by not contributing to the application for the panel. But perhaps he had more experience and felt that it wasn't fair that this newbie (regardless of gender) was turning a speaking spot that he (perhaps rightly) deserved into a panel, just so that she could be on stage as well (since if she believed that she really had the knowledge/experience to get the spot over the other guy, why didn't she just apply for the speaker spot?). I don't really know what happened, but there tends to just be a lot that you miss out on when you only hear a story from the perspective of just one person.