Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

There's a lot of egos in these communities, there are a lot of young people with adolescent hormones and something to prove. The communities themselves are pretty insular, and distinguish themselves by being exclusive.

Girls are outsiders, for whatever reason. I wont speculate as to how this started, but it can perpetuate by staying hostile to girls. These communities strive to maintain some exclusivity; you're something special, better than others, smarter than others. You can't just let anyone new in, then you won't be so special.

So in this article, you have a girl (outsider) who is non-technical (going to get ridiculed whether you're a boy or a girl) trying to exert her will (which is going to get you into fights regardless).

Sexism is a thing. It's not a good thing. However, I don't think that removing sexism from this kind of community is a possibility, because sexism isn't the basic issue here. I think that the basic issue is the general exclusivity of the community. It's not a group to educate new people. In fact it's a group that is hostile towards "noobs". It's a group that is trying to restrict membership to those who are similar, who think similarly, or who can bully their way to the top.

I think that the better situation is to recognize that this crowd of douchebaggery does exist. The way you fight it isn't to try and get into it and start shouting at people to change it. That's at best going to make you hoarse, and at worst going to make you one of them. I think that to deal with this is to do the kind of things that the author did.

The wiki creation, the creation of the cryptoparty. These are the things that should be focused on. This is actually some cool stuff, and the author, a woman, was instrumental. Now the thing about the idea is it's not something that is owned by the author, it's just a good idea, and douchebags can make use of good ideas.

I think the problem was that the author gets herself wrapped up in trying to control and maintain the purity of her idea and in the end gets drawn into pissing contests with other people trying to prove something. This is going to happen whether you're a girl or a guy, however when you're a girl, the guys have that knife in the wound already and they just need to twist it.

Naw, I think instead the way to do it best is to endeavor to make this knowledge available to more people. Make it harder to be exclusive. Make it something that anyone can learn. People can be douchebags when it's them vs. the world. They can't be when it's just knowledge.

So I guess the question is, are you trying to educate, or are you hoping to get people to accept you into their exclusive club? If you're trying to do the former, then I wish you all the luck and support in the world. If it's the latter, then even if you get your wish, you'll end up treating others how you hate being treated, whether by race, age, prior knowledge, whatever or else it will stop being an exclusive club.

I agree that sexism is a problem. But it's a big problem. It's a problem that demands a lot of attention. You set up, or helped set up, a framework, and then put yourself under pressure to control how that framework is being used and abused all over the place; all the while still feeling responsible for fighting sexism within this framework. I think that's far too much for one person to handle, and I can promise that if a guy were to try it he wouldn't have any better success just because the other guys respected his testicles.

Anyways, I commend the author's efforts, and I think the best way to combat that form of general douchebaggery is to make the thing that they hold above everyone else available to the mainstream. You don't stop sexism by going to the men's club and ranting at them to treat women nicely. You stop sexism by letting women vote, by training them to be doctors and engineers, and otherwise giving them, (and further, any other excluded parties) access to those things that were held over their heads before. And it's not a fast process, it's a very slow and hard one. But don't be discouraged, I think she did something good. Small, but good.

The hacker culture has always been about being a better version of itself than it currently is and inequality in the community is just another hurdle to overcome.

If you are going to use that expression, you should use it in it's entirety. A few bad apples spoil the bunch.

A few sexists are creating a a negative situation that permeates the community/industry. Not everyone is to blame, not everyone is guilty of this sexism, but the problem is everybody's.