5 ms·

Kind of strange that this is news. Women should be allowed to have spaces for themselves.

bushbaba 5y ago
- nyolfen 5y ago
  does replacing it with ‘queer poc’ trigger your spidey-sense?
- anonnyj 5y ago
  Yikes, chill with the whitephobia.
  - dang 5y ago
    We've banned this account for posting large amounts of flamebait. Not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Kim_Bruning 5y ago
  Churches?
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
  - plorg 5y ago
    Yeah, the implication being that white Christians making white-only churches in the name of Christianity would be pretty offensive, and by analogy cis women making their own women's spaces that specifically exclude trans women in the name of ~feminism is offensive.
  - xupybd 5y ago
    Most of the churches in my city are more racially diverse than the general population.
- erulabs 5y ago
  Why doesn't that sound great? Why shouldn't everyone be able to have places for themselves? This is more or less the entire premise of private property. This argument goes right to its ultimate logical conclusions so fast its unbelievable: From the question I just asked it can be presumed I'm 100% fine with discrimination at scale in society. I am not. And yet, should the federal government be allowed to create women's shelters? Or men's bathrooms? Or urinals which are explicitly discriminatory based on your biology? Of course. Some nuance has to come back to the conversation around discrimination. Honestly, it seems rather simple to me, although I always hold my breath and wait for someone to call me a horrible person: discrimination should be legal, and we should also lampoon and publicly mock bad and stupid discrimination. If we aren't allowed to mock anything, if we all need to respect each other, then we _need_ anti-discrimination laws. I'd fight for anyone's right to deny anyone else access to their home. I'd still think they're a huge jerk for not being nice to their neighbors.
- 5ESS 5y ago
  - the_only_law 5y ago
    Sounds like the most insufferable place on earth. But I love your username.
  - smt88 5y ago
    > A place only for white Christians sounds heavenly. What would be better about it than where you currently live? How do non-White Christians harm your quality of life?
- tasogare 5y ago
  Wtf is this? As a White Christian (living as both a racial and religious minority in my country of residence btw) this is extremely offensive. I have the right to assemble with other people on the identity feature I want, especially on the internet. I bet wouldn't dare to say the same kind of things about Judaism because you know exactly how racist and discriminatory it is.
- Minor49er 5y ago
  What's wrong with women wanting to have a space for themselves?
- ksaj 5y ago
  Is that really a good example? I used to live really close to a church that was clearly for Black Pentecostal Christians (White attendees would be accused of appropriation by nearly everyone), and there's a Korean Baptist church that doesn't even do their sermons in English! Nobody has an issue with either of these churches that have such specific audiences, so focusing on White Christians to demonstrate your point probably falls a little flat. Are there White specific churches? Mennonite churches probably could be classified this way, but it's not because of racial segregation. Comparing any of this to gender just doesn't make sense.
jmrm 5y ago
Could be easier to ensure that any space is safe to any human being instead of creating new ones to women? I'm not asking rhetorically. I genuinely don't know what kind of spaces are not safe only for women and what could make those space safer for them.
klyrs 5y ago
No worries about it excluding women of color, either?
- Supermancho 5y ago
  > No worries about it excluding women of color, either? Racism and transphobia are just political opinions, right? Human rights are so last millenium. Free association is about being able to decide (which is to say, make a choice by discrimination) about who to associate with. Conflating the legal concept of discrimination and the right to discriminate via the biological function of the senses, does not help things.
- Minor49er 5y ago
  It seems clear to me that this platform would have no problem letting on women of color. They unfortunately chose an imperfect solution to validate new members which they had to resort to due to the women on their site being threatened.
  - klyrs 5y ago
    Right. Women of color are merely an overlooked, but totally acceptable casualty. Business as usual.
floatingatoll 5y ago
It’s news that their definition of the gender “women” excludes women whose facial bone structures are unacceptable to the app. It’s news that their definition of the gender “women” excludes women whose skin color is unacceptable to the app. It’s news that their definition of the gender “women” excludes women whose biological sex at birth is unacceptable to the app. None of these criteria have any bearing whatsoever on gender. They’re saying “women” out loud, but what they’re trying to filter for in practice is “people who were sexed female-only at birth and meet a restrictive set of facial characteristics”. Women have a variety of biological sexes at birth (male, female, both, neither). Women have a variety of facial characteristics (feminine, masculine, androgynous, mixed). So it’s news that they’re trying to discriminate by redefining “women” to exclude some women.
- Minor49er 5y ago
  No, that's not the story. The story is that there is a social network for women who have excluded non-women. They have done this because on many occasions, biological males have joined their platform and have threatened their users. They have chosen an imperfect solution to validate that their users are who they say they are, sure, but they have resorted to this measure to try to keep this space as their own.
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    We’ll see. The imperfection of their solution is certainly the surface story, but I suspect it’s meant to be a haven for TERF hate speech (not just a haven for all women) and won’t survive.
- xupybd 5y ago
  To flip in on its head. Would it be okay to have. A space for trans women only?
  - floatingatoll 5y ago
    If that space defined “trans women” as only those who have completed both facial feminization surgery (with AI evaluation of their face bones) and required that they have completed vaginoplasty or vulvoplasty so that their genitals are sexed female, then no, it would be just as discriminatory to trans women as the app under discussion here is being to all women. If this imaginary trans women space accepted all serious forms of presurgical or partial-surgical proof, such as a doctor’s letter or a hormone prescription or an orchiectomy or etc, then that would not be discriminatory and would be fine. The core issue here is that this app is trying to enforce gender as purely a function of physical characteristics, denying altogether that gender is more complicated than that and is not guaranteed to be linked to any physical characteristics whatsoever. Their ”women only” definitions fail the transgender women test, the intersex test, and the “born female-sex athletes with high testosterone and masculine facial features” test. Either they are blithely unaware of these complications, or they are unconcerned with them. That is, itself, newsworthy.
clove 5y ago
For-profit ventures aren't allowed to deny service based on immutable characteristics in any country with these anti-discrimination laws, except for very narrow exceptions. This is doubly so for a service that provides networking opportunities to find contacts for businesses and jobs.
- furgooswft13 5y ago
  Saying you can't discriminate against trans women because of their "immutable characteristics" is the height of irony.
dang 5y ago
Please don't start flamewars on HN. "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
- Minor49er 5y ago
  If I knew that people were going to have such a negative reaction, I wouldn't have posted. Edit: Seeing the state of the comment section for this submission, why not remove the article?
  - dang 5y ago
    You co-created the state of the comment section. The solution is not to remove articles, it's to raise the level of discussion.

nyolfen 5y ago
does replacing it with ‘queer poc’ trigger your spidey-sense?
anonnyj 5y ago
Yikes, chill with the whitephobia.
- dang 5y ago
  We've banned this account for posting large amounts of flamebait. Not what this site is for. https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html
Kim_Bruning 5y ago
Churches?
- deleted 5y ago
  [deleted]
- plorg 5y ago
  Yeah, the implication being that white Christians making white-only churches in the name of Christianity would be pretty offensive, and by analogy cis women making their own women's spaces that specifically exclude trans women in the name of ~feminism is offensive.
- xupybd 5y ago
  Most of the churches in my city are more racially diverse than the general population.
erulabs 5y ago
Why doesn't that sound great? Why shouldn't everyone be able to have places for themselves? This is more or less the entire premise of private property. This argument goes right to its ultimate logical conclusions so fast its unbelievable: From the question I just asked it can be presumed I'm 100% fine with discrimination at scale in society. I am not. And yet, should the federal government be allowed to create women's shelters? Or men's bathrooms? Or urinals which are explicitly discriminatory based on your biology? Of course. Some nuance has to come back to the conversation around discrimination. Honestly, it seems rather simple to me, although I always hold my breath and wait for someone to call me a horrible person: discrimination should be legal, and we should also lampoon and publicly mock bad and stupid discrimination. If we aren't allowed to mock anything, if we all need to respect each other, then we _need_ anti-discrimination laws. I'd fight for anyone's right to deny anyone else access to their home. I'd still think they're a huge jerk for not being nice to their neighbors.
5ESS 5y ago
- the_only_law 5y ago
  Sounds like the most insufferable place on earth. But I love your username.
- smt88 5y ago
  > A place only for white Christians sounds heavenly. What would be better about it than where you currently live? How do non-White Christians harm your quality of life?
tasogare 5y ago
Wtf is this? As a White Christian (living as both a racial and religious minority in my country of residence btw) this is extremely offensive. I have the right to assemble with other people on the identity feature I want, especially on the internet. I bet wouldn't dare to say the same kind of things about Judaism because you know exactly how racist and discriminatory it is.
Minor49er 5y ago
What's wrong with women wanting to have a space for themselves?
ksaj 5y ago
Is that really a good example? I used to live really close to a church that was clearly for Black Pentecostal Christians (White attendees would be accused of appropriation by nearly everyone), and there's a Korean Baptist church that doesn't even do their sermons in English! Nobody has an issue with either of these churches that have such specific audiences, so focusing on White Christians to demonstrate your point probably falls a little flat. Are there White specific churches? Mennonite churches probably could be classified this way, but it's not because of racial segregation. Comparing any of this to gender just doesn't make sense.

jmrm 5y ago

Could be easier to ensure that any space is safe to any human being instead of creating new ones to women? I'm not asking rhetorically. I genuinely don't know what kind of spaces are not safe only for women and what could make those space safer for them.

klyrs 5y ago

No worries about it excluding women of color, either?

Supermancho 5y ago
> No worries about it excluding women of color, either? Racism and transphobia are just political opinions, right? Human rights are so last millenium. Free association is about being able to decide (which is to say, make a choice by discrimination) about who to associate with. Conflating the legal concept of discrimination and the right to discriminate via the biological function of the senses, does not help things.
Minor49er 5y ago
It seems clear to me that this platform would have no problem letting on women of color. They unfortunately chose an imperfect solution to validate new members which they had to resort to due to the women on their site being threatened.
- klyrs 5y ago
  Right. Women of color are merely an overlooked, but totally acceptable casualty. Business as usual.

floatingatoll 5y ago

It’s news that their definition of the gender “women” excludes women whose facial bone structures are unacceptable to the app. It’s news that their definition of the gender “women” excludes women whose skin color is unacceptable to the app. It’s news that their definition of the gender “women” excludes women whose biological sex at birth is unacceptable to the app. None of these criteria have any bearing whatsoever on gender. They’re saying “women” out loud, but what they’re trying to filter for in practice is “people who were sexed female-only at birth and meet a restrictive set of facial characteristics”. Women have a variety of biological sexes at birth (male, female, both, neither). Women have a variety of facial characteristics (feminine, masculine, androgynous, mixed). So it’s news that they’re trying to discriminate by redefining “women” to exclude some women.

Minor49er 5y ago
No, that's not the story. The story is that there is a social network for women who have excluded non-women. They have done this because on many occasions, biological males have joined their platform and have threatened their users. They have chosen an imperfect solution to validate that their users are who they say they are, sure, but they have resorted to this measure to try to keep this space as their own.
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  We’ll see. The imperfection of their solution is certainly the surface story, but I suspect it’s meant to be a haven for TERF hate speech (not just a haven for all women) and won’t survive.
xupybd 5y ago
To flip in on its head. Would it be okay to have. A space for trans women only?
- floatingatoll 5y ago
  If that space defined “trans women” as only those who have completed both facial feminization surgery (with AI evaluation of their face bones) and required that they have completed vaginoplasty or vulvoplasty so that their genitals are sexed female, then no, it would be just as discriminatory to trans women as the app under discussion here is being to all women. If this imaginary trans women space accepted all serious forms of presurgical or partial-surgical proof, such as a doctor’s letter or a hormone prescription or an orchiectomy or etc, then that would not be discriminatory and would be fine. The core issue here is that this app is trying to enforce gender as purely a function of physical characteristics, denying altogether that gender is more complicated than that and is not guaranteed to be linked to any physical characteristics whatsoever. Their ”women only” definitions fail the transgender women test, the intersex test, and the “born female-sex athletes with high testosterone and masculine facial features” test. Either they are blithely unaware of these complications, or they are unconcerned with them. That is, itself, newsworthy.

clove 5y ago

For-profit ventures aren't allowed to deny service based on immutable characteristics in any country with these anti-discrimination laws, except for very narrow exceptions. This is doubly so for a service that provides networking opportunities to find contacts for businesses and jobs.

furgooswft13 5y ago
Saying you can't discriminate against trans women because of their "immutable characteristics" is the height of irony.

dang 5y ago

Please don't start flamewars on HN. "Comments should get more thoughtful and substantive, not less, as a topic gets more divisive." https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html

Minor49er 5y ago
If I knew that people were going to have such a negative reaction, I wouldn't have posted. Edit: Seeing the state of the comment section for this submission, why not remove the article?
- dang 5y ago
  You co-created the state of the comment section. The solution is not to remove articles, it's to raise the level of discussion.