Dear Hacker Community – We Need To Talk

In this case, no one is allowed to question rachel's account because the user name rachelbythebay contains a name commonly associated with being female. It's likely if the username was "robertonthebus" we would be able to question robert's assertions.

But this being Hacker News, I am hopeful we can get past your attempt to speech police and get back to a constructive dialogue.

This is perhaps the most cunningly dangerous thing you could allow yourself as a response. In the case of any kind of discrimination or behavior that is experienced by someone else, please start working to taboo your acceptance of and reliance on "how you see it". It won't help you understand someone else properly. It won't help you spot this kind of situation as clearly whenever you might run across it in the future and could perhaps be the sole person able to speak up and stop it.

Also, it is most helpful to orient your mind in the trajectory of the article--a reading of all the events leading up to a big event. It's a mini-history. It has a linear progression from the founding of CryptoParty to the Creeper Card bullshit at 29c3. Then she breaks. It makes an incredible amount of sense when you allow yourself to experience it as the author did--this isn't some here's "a few cases of explicit sexism" article and then an extrapolation of "the reason everyone is saying rude things to her." This is a here's-all-the-bullshit-I-experienced-in-rough-chronologically-incessant-order-until-I-broke article. Now, add to that that CryptoParty only started up about four months ago. She experienced all of this in FOUR months time. Judging by that timeline, I find it highly unlikely that one could so easily chalk it all up to being in the wrong, other people knowing what they're saying/doing, and still have all those other experiences. I think this was a case of a bunch of men who didn't know how to be led by a woman who came up with a really badass idea.

> Perhaps she is not as knowledgeable or as experienced as she thinks she is, and so she is receiving criticism from those who know what they're saying/doing.

Reading this after the article seems as if you missed quite a few of her disclaimers. For example, she admits repeatedly that she is neither as knowledgeable or experienced in a number of technical areas, but that is not the point here. She's not criticizing the technical aspects of things (at least, not to any degree that reads as more serious than asking questions that any organizer would ask to have clarification and understand the reasons for doing X over Y). I see few, if any, examples where she, as the organizer, faced off against someone on the technical merits of anything at all--the only way knowing "what they're saying/doing" would actually have any weight.

In fact, most of the account reads as someone who was actually smart enough to recognize the limits of her skill set and not try showboating well beyond one's level as so many men in tech do.

Let's call her the non-technical founder, shall we? It's a term everyone on HN seems to understand and, usually, respect.

So here we have a non-technical founder who is also a woman. And not just a woman, but a single mother. That's effectively three strikes against her in the tech world, as far as I can see. I'm a technical, male, single-parent and I don't ever have to deal with shit from anyone. I'm not cross-examined in a project meeting or a conference because I am the daddy-type. Nobody questions my experience or the soundness of my advice because I have to leave by a certain hour to pick up, feed, bathe, and play with my kids. I have never seen a woman treated that way--much less a single mother who is non-technical--while working in or engaging with the tech world.

> ...she takes a few cases of explicit sexism and extrapolates them as the reason why everyone is saying rude things to her. ... but even then much of the criticism she received could be seen as fair if she was actually in the wrong.

Did you actually read (and maybe re-read) the opening where she states quite plainly that she is not chalking everything up to sexism? "Some parts of this article deal with misogyny, sexism, and harassment, while other aspects of it respond to experiences of down-right douche-baggery."

How about the bits where she talks about criticism she experienced? She lists several instances of it. She doesn't extrapolate that it's all sexism purely, but that there is behavior that is gender-targeted, douchey, harrassing, etc., occurring when she is questioning or reacting to decisions that were made (e.g., the no-laptop rule, the logistics of writing a manual that received shit planning from these people who supposedly "know what they're saying/doing", publicly taking the blame when others' shit-brained ideas blew up, the shitty dickhole creator of CryptoCat, etc.). She didn't say each instance was sexist.

But even that doesn't matter. She's the founder. She busted her ass to organize the whole thing. It seems she involved a number of smart technical people to cover the gaps in her skill set. That's what a founder does. And when the technical people are criticizing the founder, that's some pretty dangerous ground. The non-tech founder isn't held to the same standards as the tech co-founders & team. When the founder asks questions about whether something is a good idea, or whether someone is doing the right thing for the org, there's not much wiggle room here to try and assuage the problem by throwing her into the "she was wrong" camp.

> I thought if the gap between cryptographers, hackers and users could be bridged...

Here's the core of CryptoParty, directly from the non-technical founder. Bridging the gap between these disparate segments of the population who could benefit from the party. And who better, from my standpoint at least, to get on your team for achieving this goal than a semi-technical single mother who is passionate about bridging this gap and has a lot of energy and life she wants to live outside of her parenting duties?

She came up with and organized the idea of the CryptoParty, with very specific goals in mind--both for the group's aim, as well as its community standards and practices. She repeatedly brings up multiple situations where she objected or questioned others involved about actions that were going against those goals. As the person who appears (by her account) to pretty much be the first-mover, I was left with the expectation that as I read through the rest of the article, I would read the experience of someone who wanted to shepherd a community in light of its goals while being admittedly non-technical, and how everything went awry in a way that was very personal (founders are usually the ones we expect to have the most personal investment, right?).

> There was certainly plenty of it without any sexist connotations.

You can't rightly judge from a distance the degree to which vitriol was directed at her with sexist intention. Note I say intention and not connotations. Connotation is a deceptive thing that, when focused on, makes one think s/he is successfully spotting discriminatory, sexist, racist, what-have-you acts. You have to look beyond the connotations because it's much too easy to hide a predisposition to reject anything a certain gender says behind a litany of jargon and adequate explanations, smartly avoiding trigger words that connote the sexist intention. Plenty of good ideas are rejected because of their source of origin, not their technically sound qualities.

Moreover, there are things that are said that seem to me would not so frequently have occurred had the organizer been a man. If the organizer had been a man, technical or not, the tone of disagreements would have been very different. His reactions may not, as the organizer, been very different from hers--but the key is that they would have most likely been interpreted very differently. Nobody would tell a male founder that he wasn't being "level-headed", or tell him to quit, or call him emotional, or anything else that frequently is launched against women. I've seen men in screaming matches over ideas, passionately and intensely convinced they're right, shouting obscenities and hurling personal attacks that have nothing to do with the issue, and nobody ever busts in and calls them a bunch of emotional basketcases who aren't level-headed enough to lead or make decisions. And yet women don't have such privilege and protection.

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As far as I can read, this is one hell of an account of how not to treat your non-technical founder/co-founder/teammate. It's just reprehensible and wrong. Especially the bits about the application to 29c3. I was reading that trying to imagine a world in which the Python community would behave that way if, say, Jesse Noller wasn't able to afford making it to PyCon or something. Or if Jacob Kaplan-Moss couldn't afford to make the trip to a DjangoCon. Or anything similar. Say there's one spot open to have a talk, like her situation. I can't see anyone from those communities acting in such a way as to throw shit in those guys' faces while they're trying to turn that talk into a panel that allows other applicants to take part with them or whatever -- and then turn around and not only succeed in keeping those guys out of the party, but talk about how great it's going to be to get together. It's just atrocious behavior.

Moreover, that image of the Creeper Cards is just disgusting. That kind of behavior isn't even appropriate when scrawling it on a desk in middle school, much less a conference. That looks like it would barely belong at the AVN Expo.

You're reading far too much into "Or at least that's how I see it." My sole point with that statement, as you can see in the following sentence, is that the author seemed to be suggesting that sexism was behind most of what happened to her, rather than just saying that sexism was an issue, along with other things that could have happened to her even if she were a man.

> She experienced all of this in FOUR months time. Judging by that timeline, I find it highly unlikely that one could so easily chalk it all up to being in the wrong, other people knowing what they're saying/doing, and still have all those other experiences.

Why not? She was the common factor in all these occurrences, not the other parties. It would be much more unlikely that a series of 3rd parties ALL chose to attack her because of her gender.

> I think this was a case of a bunch of men who didn't know how to be led by a woman who came up with a really badass idea.

That's a statement completely lacking proof. Whoever said she came up with this idea on her own? In fact, she said herself in the blog post:

> Cryptoparty was created one very boring evening, in a very open and inclusive conversation on Twitter, a little over four months ago.

And being "led" by a woman? Again, she said herself:

> Decentralised, DIY, psuedo-leadership.

So she wasn't "leading" the men. Again, your statement conflicts with the author's own statements.

> Reading this after the article seems as if you missed quite a few of her disclaimers. For example, she admits repeatedly that she is neither as knowledgeable or experienced in a number of technical areas

And reading this seems as if you missed the point I was trying to make. I'm not saying that the others were in the right by criticizing her or putting her down. I'm just saying that it might have more to do with her lack of experience than her being a single mother. After all, I can imagine if that if any other random newbie were to enter the community and start throwing around his weight, things wouldn't be received too well either, even if that newbie were right. And I'm also not saying that such a situation should exist - it shouldn't. But it has nothing to do with sexism.

> Let's call her the non-technical founder, shall we? It's a term everyone on HN seems to understand and, usually, respect.

No, we shall not. Cryptoparty, as a community project with "pseudo-leadership" is not at all comparable to the tightly controlled, profit-oriented, founder-driven environment of a startup.

> That's effectively three strikes against her in the tech world, as far as I can see.

All I can do here is quote you, from earlier in the very same post by you:

> This is perhaps the most cunningly dangerous thing you could allow yourself as a response. In the case of any kind of discrimination or behavior that is experienced by someone else, please start working to taboo your acceptance of and reliance on "how you see it".

Really? You just violated your own taboo.

Have you ever stopped to think that your personal experiences might not be applicable to all other single fathers, because anecdotal data isn't all that useful? Have you ever stopped to think that raising a child is a serious task that requires a significant amount of time, much of it unplanned, and that many jobs/projects may simply not be able to accommodate that for logistical reasons?

> Did you actually read (and maybe re-read) the opening where she states quite plainly that she is not chalking everything up to sexism? "Some parts of this article deal with misogyny, sexism, and harassment, while other aspects of it respond to experiences of down-right douche-baggery."

Again, did you actually read (and maybe re-read) my initial post? My point was that despite her statement that it wasn't all about sexism, that seemed to be a common thread in the whole post. Following the bit about the poor Cryptoparty decisions that you mentioned, she says that she "got emails telling me to stick to motherhood and tweeting."

> But even that doesn't matter. She's the founder. She busted her ass to organize the whole thing.

> She came up with and organized the idea of the CryptoParty

Once again, she said that there was only "pseudo-leadership" and the project developed on Twitter during an open conversation. You seem to have conveniently ignored that part of the post.

> Moreover, there are things that are said that seem to me would not so frequently have occurred had the organizer been a man. If the organizer had been a man, technical or not, the tone of disagreements would have been very different.

Again, you're just assuming things here. As you said yourself, "connotation is a deceptive thing that, when focused on, makes one think s/he is successfully spotting discriminatory, sexist, racist, what-have-you acts.

> Nobody would tell a male founder that he wasn't being "level-headed", or tell him to quit, or call him emotional, or anything else that frequently is launched against women. I've seen men in screaming matches over ideas, passionately and intensely convinced they're right, shouting obscenities and hurling personal attacks that have nothing to do with the issue, and nobody ever busts in and calls them a bunch of emotional basketcases who aren't level-headed enough to lead or make decisions. And yet women don't have such privilege and protection.

Once again, you're generalizing your personal experiences. If anything, I've seen women get treated quite nicely/equally by the vast majority of men in the industry. The problem, as someone else put it, is that when only 0.5% of the participants are women, it only takes 1% of the men harassing them to make life difficult for them.

> As far as I can read, this is one hell of an account of how not to treat your non-technical founder/co-founder/teammate. It's just reprehensible and wrong.

I'm not condoning any of the things that happened to her. If it really is as she says (usually the other side has a very different tale to tell), then she was treated quite poorly, regardless of her gender or children.

> I can't see anyone from those communities acting in such a way as to throw shit in those guys' faces while they're trying to turn that talk into a panel that allows other applicants to take part with them or whatever

Have you stopped to consider how that man from Sydney who had already applied for the speaking spot felt when some newbie comes along and says she wants to turn the speech into a panel? A speech and a panel are two completely different things, and serve different purposes.

The conference had previously decided there would be a speech, and the other applicant was under no obligation to agree to participate in a panel.

Besides, if this woman is as great as you're making her out to be, why didn't she just apply for the speaker spot? Surely she would have been selected over the other applicant, given her achievements.

> Moreover, that image of the Creeper Cards is just disgusting.

Yes, this shouldn't have happened. Unfortunately, it only takes one or two people for that sort of thing to happen.

In image format: http://i.imgur.com/YBRgZ.png

In text format (with links to in-line images, rehosted to imgur): http://pastebin.com/GDVSsj8V