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Leap: An Online Community for Women

blog.ycombinator.com

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Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#211

Post by dang »

ashelmire wrote: post #171
Anticapitalist wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It doesn't read like an ad. It reads like the often repeated (and ignored) experience of women in tech.

"There hasn't really been an online forum where I felt safe to have these conversations until now. Now that Leap is here I have other people who get me who I can talk to about the stuff that is bugging me." If this wasn't written by a copywriter I'll eat my hat.

Would you please stop? She already said she didn't work for them.

Your question was a borderline personal attack in the first place, but I didn't chide you for it, even though this topic makes the downside of such an attack much worse than in a typical thread. Actually I did chide you for it, but then deleted the post because I remembered how sensitive HN users often are to booster comments posted by new accounts. I'm sure you're posting in good faith but this is a particularly poor situation in which to aggressively challenge a new user.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#212

Post by TheAdamAndChe »

dang wrote: post #132
TheAdamAndChe wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This assumption completely disregards the measurable advantage men have in the tech community. There is obviously an imbalance in the industry, but can you please provide proof that this is due to an advantage that men have? > If you have identical programs, one for a historically disenfranchised group, and one for the group that's been in power for decades, only one of those programs is shitty. Why would fighting…

> Why would fighting racism with racism or sexism with sexism be a productive Here you cross into making this yet another same-old generic ideological thread, thus guaranteeing repetition and tedium. What more we can do to explain to HNers that this is where discussions become off topic because the light/heat ratio goes to zero? I realize the line isn't obvious when a topic starts out close to it anyhow. But you know…

There definitely is something I'm not understanding if this comment crossed the line. I'm sorry, it's still not my intent to negatively affect the quality of this site.

This may seem pedantic, but what do you consider ideological? I said what I said because I saw it as a fundamental flaw of the community. I don't believe fighting discrimination with discrimination is productive, and I believe a woman-only community is discriminatory. Would it have avoided the genericism if I had tied it directly to the thread by saying "I believe this community is wrong because you can't fight discrimination with discrimination?" Or would mentioning discrimination genericize the conversation as well?

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#213

Post by etjossem »

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…

Revbird was right. Leap isn't about men trying to claw their way out of the stigma of their industry. It's about women having a place to share their experiences - because right now, it's really common for them not to feel welcome in male-dominated tech water coolers like HN or software subreddits.

Nobody is trying to exclude you from these larger spaces. Though if we want to get rid of the stigma of tech, we can start by making them more welcoming and inclusive.

In other words: if seeing something like Leap makes you viscerally mad, focus on fixing the reason it needs to exist in the first place.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#214

Post by probably_wrong »

tptacek wrote: post #181
probably_wrong wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'll go straight to the difficult questions: 1. I thought gender-based discrimination was illegal. How is Leap not illegal? 2. One of the main objections of "gentleman's clubs" was that their (male) members had access to important networking contacts, putting women in unequal foot in an unfair way when it came to businesses. Wouldn't Leap be unfair in the same way?

Gender discrimination is obviously not illegal. How do you think rec sports leagues or support groups work?

Gender is a protected class, so "it's (not) illegal" in either direction is a bit of a blanket statement. So let me try and be more precise.

In some states, AFAIK the "women-only gym" is allowed, but in others it isn't. The point, if I remember correctly, is "exercise requires such compromising clothes and positions, that the right to personal privacy trumps the right to not be discriminated based on gender". And even then, this is not a 100% clear case. Toilets and physical activity follow a similar (although less polemic) pattern.

Having said that, and as far as I understand, you need to show that discriminating based on gender is so important for your activity that it can't be done in any other way. My gut feeling is that, should anyone sue Leap, clearing that barrier would not be trivial.

I would appreciate a lawyer's point of view, and was hoping that Leap had already talked to one that could give a properly researched answer.

Edit: I found a very interesting article[1] about the law when it comes to all-female health clubs. As expected, the conclusion seems to be "it's complicated".

[1] http://digitalcommons.law.yale.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?artic...

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#216

Post by cirgue »

RangerScience wrote: post #71
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.

Sounds like you have a community that you want to exist, and that you have a vision for. Is there anything preventing you from going out and making it?

> Sounds like you have a community that you want to exist, and that you have a vision for

I do, that's why I asked the question.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#217

Post by beat »

weberc2 wrote: post #207
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…

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…

This isn't Lake Wobegon. Not all the children are above average.

You can cut this cake a different way, too... race. White people are overrepresented (or non-whites are underrepresented) in IT, and in high-status jobs. And the male/female representation ratios are different, as well.

Consider historic example, as well. Right now, women are significantly underrepresented as CEOs and senators. But a century ago, there were no women CEOs or senators. Are women less genetically inclined to their "proper" path as homemakers now than they were a century ago?

At a certain point, I start cutting the cake with Occam's Razor.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#218

Post by Crespyl »

cbcowans wrote: post #74
seany wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there going to be support for moderation transparency? Moderation bias seems to be an issue in these kinds of "closed" discussion platforms.

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 significantly affect how a community grows, and I'm always very interested to hear how new sites choose to approach the problem.

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#219

Post by thg »

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…

"The real reason why there are so fewer women in tech isn’t because of discrimination, harassment or unequal pay (although like I said these factors do exist and need to be fixed). The real reason is that most women clearly aren’t as interested in technology-related work as men are. It’s a choice. And for whatever reasons, more women seem to choose other fields."

https://www.forbes.com/sites/quickerbettertech/2015/03/16/th...

Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women

#220

Post by temp-dude-87844 »

konogasa wrote: post #193

I expect this to be a controversial comment. I might just be overreacting. If you identify as a woman and are interested in joining Leap, please sign up for our beta here. I'm a trans woman who works in tech. I think it's dangerous to open a community for women to people who "identify as women". For one thing, there are plenty of women who do not "identify as women". For instance, older women may not really know what…

Ultimately, all in-groups are decided by the consent of the majority of members, since everyone will self-select in the end: those who disagree will leave, those who begin to feel excluded will leave, those who feel unwelcome won't join. You can factor in leadership change and continuity as an additional complication, and the names and labels attached to the group will change, but the phenomenon remains the same.

Societally, we have recently gotten to the point of being able to talk about the importance of having spaces where historically marginalized groups can forge a shared sense of belonging and build up the social support structures that historically less marginalized groups have long enjoyed, but I don't believe we've gotten to the point of being able to have a reasoned debate about edge cases where different groups overlap in some ways, yet diverge in others, along axes some might find incompatible.

I also don't necessarily think that this is for the group leader to solve: this is a process that will take years of successes and blunders, and cause everyone involved to tackle an additional layer of delicate subjects that they may not be ready for. It appears that the group leader has laid out their vision, so for now, the points you raise will likely be addressed in a distributed fashion, in the minds of every member or prospective member, as time goes on.

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