Hi! I'm the creator of Leap. Glad to answer questions here.
I notice you refuse to answer questions regarding trans and gender-non-conforming people in general. Is your community trans-exclusionary?
Leap: An Online Community for Women
271–280 of 364 posts
Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women
#272Earlier quoted context omitted.
There's a certain style to HN discussions that feels completely natural if you've been here long enough, yet may appear excessively antagonistic to people not used to it. Specifically, 90%+ of all comments are of the "you're wrong, because..." variety. Note that there's nothing wrong with such comments: they make up a large part of any group's pub conversations as well, for example. Yet there are other sentiments tha…
For people who have been socialized to put agreeableness and pleasing people above all else, a community where it's the norm to bluntly challenge others is painfully stacked against you. It almost immediately makes you feel out of place. It can, indeed, feel like people are shouting at one another. When else would the conversation be full of nothing but clear challenge? Why is everyone an asshole? It happens that the…
FWIW I thought your comment was excellent. Part of what makes this a difficult cluster of interlocking problems is the tradeoffs in it, one of which you've identified.
On HN the goal is to gratify intellectual curiosity, so we're looking for a sweet spot of, let's call it, playful substantiveness. Under the constraints of internet discussion, it's difficult to get there. Environments become boring when they're predictable, for example predictably negative or predictably positive. At the same time it's obvious that intellectual curiosity will fare best in a culture that is welcoming to all, since if we exclude some—whether actively or passively—we deprive ourselves of the intellectual curiosity they would otherwise bring.
I do think HN's culture falls short in this way. We can't fix that by imposing any formulas, e.g. a positivity rule, because that would make the site more predictable and thus more boring again. The fixes need to be more subtle.
Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women
#273Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. We've had to warn you about this before. That's bad. I'm not going to ban you now because your recent comment history looks pretty good by HN standards, but please don't break the rules like this again. We want thoughtful, substantive discussion, not flamebait or flamewars. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguideli…
Can I edit my comment? I'd like to get this warning reversed.
Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women
#274Hi! I'm the creator of Leap. Glad to answer questions here.
I have a question you might answer: Given the disparity in different races being able to participate, will any special consideration be given to people of color in this group?
Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women
#275Earlier quoted context omitted.
> Not all the children are above average. They don't have to be. Only the majority, and I have a hard time believing that the majority of software engineers and leaders are of average capability or worse. I'm open to data to the contrary, however. > 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. Not sure what yo…
Pointing out the existence of sexism and racism does not require "elaborate conspiracy theories". As for my point, it's that systematic bias against people by race looks remarkably similar to systematic bias against people by gender. That suggests a common cause, especially when one group (white men) is the beneficiary of both. Hence Occam's Razor. A single dominant group shutting out everyone who doesn't match the d…
> Pointing out the existence of sexism and racism does not require "elaborate conspiracy theories". As for my point, it's that systematic bias against people by race looks remarkably similar to systematic bias against people by gender. That suggests a common cause, especially when one group (white men) is the beneficiary of both. Hence Occam's Razor. A single dominant group shutting out everyone who doesn't match the dominant traits is a simpler explanation than coming up with two entirely separate causes for the same observation.
On its face, your explanation is simpler, but there is a whole bunch of evidence that forces the theory of sexism/racism to become more complex. Here are a few that pop into my head (in no particular order):
* Asians are kicking too much ass; a more complex theory is needed to explain why whites aren't holding Asians back when they're apparently happy to hold back blacks (and Hispanics, to a lesser degree).
* Women approached parity in medicine and law in the '80s and '90s when overt misogyny was the norm--long before million dollar diversity budgets; do we really believe that tech is more misogynistic than medicine and law in the '80s?
* Overt discrimination is on the decline, so we resort to increasingly improbable theories of microagressions and unconscious bias, however...
* Even progressive universities, industries, and companies aren't moving the needle on tech diversity despite million dollar diversity budgets and bias response teams
* Even the critical theorists can't pin it on sexism/patriarchy without calling into question math, reason, and objectivity
Also, what similarities are there between racial and gender disparities that constitute damning evidence in a common cause? What do these disparities have in common that (for example) the workplace fatality gap or the longevity gap lack? This seems much too loose to support your claim that sexism/racism is a simpler explanation than the dual explanations of "different gender preferences" and "artifacts of history including historical racism".
Again, my point isn't that the cause can't be a conspiracy theory; only that it has to be a very, very elaborate one. And it seems more probable to me that some combination of cultural and biological reasons drive women to make different career choices. I don't imagine you'll agree, but hopefully you can at least appreciate why I'm skeptical about the sexism/patriarchy explanation.
Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women
#276Earlier quoted context omitted.
Personal attacks will get you banned here, regardless of how wrong someone else is or you feel they are. We've had to warn you about this before. That's bad. I'm not going to ban you now because your recent comment history looks pretty good by HN standards, but please don't break the rules like this again. We want thoughtful, substantive discussion, not flamebait or flamewars. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguideli…
Can I edit my comment? I'd like to get this warning reversed.
Ok, I've opened it for editing.
Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women
#277I 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…
>have spent most of their professional lives as men and who have often contributed to exactly the kind of working environment that makes womens' lives difficult as tech workers
This is certainly not the case for all trans women. You may not feel like you need to join a community like this, but I don't think it's fair to then speak for/to the trans community saying that none of us should.
I've heard things similar to what you're saying in the past, but I don't think it holds water. Trans women typically aren't welcome in male-only spaces, because we aren't. Often we aren't welcome in women-only spaces because of opinions like these. Usually there aren't trans-only spaces. It ends up with us being excluded _everywhere_ because of some dubious concept of "socialisation", as if every trans woman has the same experiences such that you can discriminate based on it.
>Just think of all the times you had a civilised and polite debate with other trans women about trans stuff, or about anything.
Often! I've also had civilised and polite debates with men, and been shouted down by cis women. People are people, not just their gender, and while there are trends that's all they are.
Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women
#278Earlier quoted context omitted.
Just wait until the real fun starts - it will soon become apparent that among a group that identifies as "women" there are those who would command the vast majority of the available resources, just like it happens among the group that identifies as "men" at which point that group would also need to be sliced and diced into subgroups with specific rules applied towards say... cis-women vs. non-cis-women or cis-women-t…
Leap and similar communities are not essentialist, they are safe spaces for those people who share the experience of existing as a woman in the tech industry. It is a false equivalency to conflate Leap with terf essentialism. Additionally, why the quotes around men and women? Is this an attempt to be subtly transphobic?
Doesn't seem all that subtle to me
Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women
#279Earlier quoted context omitted.
I'm not sure if it's what I said about bathrooms or the fact that I'm against double-standards, but either one is apparently controversial when supporting privacy and safe spaces. I suppose next week Naziism will be politically correct. This community is unbelievable sometimes.
Would you please not post unsubstantive comments? It's not always clear why a post gets downvoted, but going on like this is always off topic.
Is that why my parent comment has been subsequently flagged? Though my second comment was not substantive, I don't see what is outrageous or controversial about what I had said prior to that. It does not violate any part of the guidelines.
Re: Leap: An Online Community for Women
#280Earlier quoted context omitted.
On the same token, a specifically male only group tends to get crucified. It's more of a confusion of double standards, perceived or otherwise. Sure, most groups end up de-facto male only, but you never see groups actively advertised as male only.
This once again reads as an illustration of the problem. This isn't an issue of double standards. You do understand the difference in experiences, right, between members of a group comprised and in support of a minority/systematically-unrepresented group, and a counterpart group comprised of a majority/the ones often perpetuating (even if indirectly) this imbalance?
There is plenty of reason to think "systematically underrepresented" is untrue, especially because the yardstick being applied, a 50/50 target, is likely unobtainable.
Given that a "bro" was denigrated, persecuted and fired for trying to bring light to some of the causes, there is plenty of reason to think the imbalance being perpetuated is not the one you're thinking of.