> If women, or gays, or trans, or people with disabilities, don't submit talks, then they will not get talks accepted. If you went along and had a terrible exp

> If women, or gays, or trans, or people with disabilities, don't submit talks, then they will not get talks accepted. If you went along and had a terrible experience as a guest (for example being the only woman in a room with a hundred men, 95% of whom are fine, but 5% of whom are creepy, meaning that you get to spend the session dealing with 5 creepy men), would you want to submit a talk, with the goal of getting up on stage and bringing even more attention to yourself? Lack of diversity is a self-perpetuating cycle - I get it, you aren’t going out of your way to intentionally make things worse, and that’s great! But it is perpetuating itself at this point, and it’s going to require intentional effort to stop it. That effort can either come from the minorities, going out of their way to fight an uphill struggle to insert themselves into an event that doesn’t want them, or it can come from the organisers, going out of their way to be welcoming to groups who are currently pushed away by the status quo.