There's a political/ideological interest, heavily represented on Internet message boards, in trying to establish the notion that sexual harassment and gender in

There's a political/ideological interest, heavily represented on Internet message boards, in trying to establish the notion that sexual harassment and gender inequality are overblown issues. Therein lies the big disadvantage of the politics of outrage. Any movement that can't organize itself to make the tactical climb onto the moral high ground will continue to wallow in the lowland quagmires of outrage. The most unreasonable of one side will anger the most unreasonable of the other in an unending cycle of recruitment through the viral nature of outrage on social media. The "leaderless" movements of the 21st century are just this, and are just doing this. (Yes, I am seemingly obliged to repost this. I will repost this as many times as I can manage! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rE3j_RHkqJc ) There's nothing that involves subtlety and sophistication to understand which is going to benefit from "discussion" in a state of outrage. Racism and sexism in the 21st century are two topics which fit this. For example my "lived experience" tells me that racist micro-aggressions exist, they often coexist with forms of sexually charged transgressive psychological warfare. However, my lived experience also informs me that going around in a militant, accusatory state to combat such things is like emotional carpet bombing -- in that there is an almost complete certainty of hurting your own cause in the long term in several ways. (By causing collateral damage to innocents, for one.) So is there a point to getting upset about Y Combinator's list? No. Just about anyone has bigger fish to fry. It's also a good idea to steer clear of both such controversies and the broken individuals who might seek to exploit such controversies. If someone is upset about such a thing, it probably means there's some kind of magical thinking going on and there's a need for some introspection. (Y Combinator isn't an oracle, pg and everyone involved are just ordinary human beings, and your feelings of security about the world shouldn't depend on a world view that requires woo-woo thinking.) (tptacek -- I know I'm preaching to the choir here, but I think this is the right place to say these things.) EDIT: Finally: we should all recognize that no matter how much we might want a transparent process that gives each and every one of us all the information we need to judge YC's actions, in the real business world we virtually never get anything like that, and this won't be any different. tl;dr -- If one doesn't think YC has their head in the right place, one shouldn't be doing business with them.