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I think HN readers should do some soul searching, because this isn't contentious out there in the real world. The post has been picked up on a few different ne

• vinceguidry 11y ago
  I think you are right. Sexism stories always bring out the trolls here, and they tend to bring out ugliness in otherwise normal people. I'll do some soul searching in this space since it's clear that few others will. It took a long time for me to get to the root of sexism in myself and others. Gender is very core to identity and it's perceived as an attack on one's masculinity to be accused of sexism. To rise past this deep urge is very difficult. To see females as people instead of objects is easy to do intellectually, very hard to internalize to the point to where you can look at a female programmer and actually see a programmer instead of a woman. I think there is a certain level of ingrained social awkwardness in the tech community that exacerbates this. In other milieus, you'd never see things like codes of conduct becoming actual bones of contention. Everywhere else, guys might have their beliefs about the necessity of codes of conduct or otherwise, but know better than to actually express them. In tech, every idiot with an opinion thinks it's important enough to mouth off about.